tv show spoilers S1E8: The Eye of the World

[WheelofJuke]

So I've finally found out a way to enjoy these episodes!

 

I pretend I'm watching an old Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episode and adjust my give-a-damn accordingly.

[Seraphine]

2 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

I was thinking about this too, but Rand did break cuendillar, which they say right after is supposed to be unbreakable. That is pretty powerful in a way, even if it's understated.

 

This is true (and something I hadn't considered), but it would have been good to *see* the amount of the One Power it would take to actually break cuendillar. Nynaeve's moments have been more visually striking, and that doesn't feel right to me.

[Chivalry]

2 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

I was thinking about this too, but Rand did break cuendillar, which they say right after is supposed to be unbreakable. That is pretty powerful in a way, even if it's understated.

 

Although in the book, at least he took out one Forsaken, burned another one, and decimated an army of Trollocs before breaking cuendillar. Did he actually defeat anyone in this episode? I couldn't really tell...

[VooDooNut]

2 minutes ago, Seraphine said:

 

This is true (and something I hadn't considered), but it would have been good to *see* the amount of the One Power it would take to actually break cuendillar. Nynaeve's moments have been more visually striking, and that doesn't feel right to me.

I agree. The women's circle stole the show. They definitely will have to show Rand's capabilities early next season.

Edited December 24, 2021 by VooDooNut
typo

[Arthellion]

I think the biggest thing for non book readers was... my wife was like "Okay why is there a season two? Why is this not the last battle. Rand just took out the Dark One Right. Why does it matter that Whistle dude has the gold box?"

[Kelin]

3 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

I agree. The women's circle stole the show. They definitely will have to show Rand's capabilities early next season.

They won't. This show isn't about the Dragon at all. It's about the women, and only them.  The men apparently don't matter at all (Perrin? Lan? They did absolutely nothing in the finale).

[VooDooNut]

5 minutes ago, Kelin said:

They won't. This show isn't about the Dragon at all. It's about the women, and only them.  The men apparently don't matter at all (Perrin? Lan? They did absolutely nothing in the finale).

Guess we will just have to WAFO. ?

[TheMountain]

At this point I'm convinced that the bulk of the writers haven't read the books and actively dislike the source material. Rafe might have read them... a very long time ago. 

Edited December 24, 2021 by TheMountain

[Chivalry]

13 minutes ago, Arthellion said:

I think the biggest thing for non book readers was... my wife was like "Okay why is there a season two? Why is this not the last battle. Rand just took out the Dark One Right. Why does it matter that Whistle dude has the gold box?"

Although to be fair, the book ends kind of messy like that as well...with Rand thinking he defeated the DO, and Moraine questioning his confidence.

 

And Whistle dude ?...that's perfect.

[Blackbyrd]

19 minutes ago, Arthellion said:

I think the biggest thing for non book readers was... my wife was like "Okay why is there a season two? Why is this not the last battle. Rand just took out the Dark One Right. Why does it matter that Whistle dude has the gold box?"

Really this is a great compliment and critique of the show's first season

 

Complimentary in that it does capture Rand's POV from the books

Critique in that the gold box is one of those details that likely wasn't given enough detail to make the watcher be totally on board with caring about

[Patosulli]

I think it was a little…patchy but did the trick. Agree that the prologue didn’t get across the desperation of the situation LTT and LPD were in. Also would have been a nice moment to have LPD open a gateway when she was leaving.
 

Otherwise have accepted this as a looser adaptation of the books and think it worked well overall. They need to lay off the “intuitive healing on the edge of death” moments though. Initially thrown by Moiraine being shielded but the more I think of it the more interesting a choice it is. Excited for season 2! 

[WhiteVeils]

OK...some initial thoughts.

First of all: I think that Rafe is going big in the channeling effects this season, much bigger than the books so that later on we just 'accept' that huge channeling can exist and what it does.  It won't seem like utter power creep. I'm kind of hoping in season 2 it backs down a bit and I have some thoughts on that.

So..

1) I liked getting Lan's speech to Nynaeve this season. It was a good moment. I liked Nynaeve making the sacrifice of telling Lan how to find Moiraine.  I had originally thought Nynaeve was tracking Moiraine using her listening to the Wind, but now I decided that Moiraine has an abundant supply of small snacks she keeps eating and she drops the wrappers. ?  She gave one to Rand this episode, after all.  OK, it's not great, but it is something to work with.
2) Nynaeve was not dead at the end due to over-channeling, so Egwene could have healed her. However, it may 'bring down' Nynaeve's power level a bit next season, which I think they'll have to do over all just so she doesn't become a Deus Ex.  
3) That said, the /only/ reason 5 untrained channelers did what they did in Tarwin's gap is because Nynaeve was there doing her thing. They've established she is /so/ incredibly strong that she can do things on a power level that others can't achieve.  Her burning out a bit and getting a power reduction will help a bit there.  This event could also serve to make Nynaeve very very wary of joining any circles in the future, so times when she does (like to cleanse Saidin) can be a big deal.
4) Fine with the battlescenes with Aglemar...I really liked how that was done. No problem with the strategy...I get that he was buying time. It was solid.
5) The scenes with Padan Fain really seemed to be lacking, and I think the difference was changes made necessary because of Barney Harris leaving.  I think early next season is going to have to pull a whole lot of extra weight on the boys, esp Matt and Perrin, to make up what they lost this season.  There were some moments, and it's not beyond redemption, but still.
6) I like Rand's resolution overall...that was fine.  Saving the world by respecting Egwene's autonomy and ambition was pretty nice, actually.  It makes sense for him to run off, and maybe just having him gone for a bit will let the other two boys develop a bit more.  But Egwene and Nynaeve need to 'back off' a bit too.
7) I liked the look of the cold open a lot, but I was confused by it.  I feel like maybe we're still suffering from a biased narrator for it so we don't understand everything that was happening in the scene. Maybe we can later get more context when we actually here from LTT in Rand's thoughts.
8 ) I think calling LTT the Dragon Reborn was just a mistake made by the scriptwriters and may be something they can fix in editing if someone lets them know of it.

9) The damane don't have ball gags, but they do have a muzzle.  I don't thing any damane says anything relevant while controlled by an active suldam so it's OK. It actually brings down the power of the Seanchen a bit (the damane can't tell the suldam when channeling is occurring or warn them of things) and it means we the audience don't need to listen to them grovel, which is good, kinda?
10) Refuse to believe Uno and Loial are dead.  So there. Neah.
11) Interesting they're playing the light and dark sides in each character.  I think that isn't a bad approach and could be interesting.

Anyway, some inferences 

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

Well, Season 1 is in the books and in my opinion - with that Finale- 

@Thrasymachus gets to tell @Elder haman 

... I told you so.

 

Trainwreck. 

Horrible.

To those who love the books...it's like Frankenstein's monster - they chopped the book up into pieces and made a hideous amalgamation of the same story. 

 

To my friends who haven't read the books - they're quite confused - commented that the men in the show are really quite useless - and that the CGI throughout the Finale was bad. Like. Really bad. Hokey. 

 

But. I'll be back for S2 because I do think that both Covid & Barney Harris leaving give them lots of reasonable excuse for it being bad. 

 

But I have no faith in them and if S2 isn't immediately more like Blood Snow than the Eggy/Nynaeve freak show. I'm done. 

[Sojournsoul]

I was totally disappointed with the last episode. Nothing like the book and it fell flat. You may keep people watching your completely sad version of the story but I dare say you lost most of the followers of the books with this hot mess.

[JimGalaxy]

52 minutes ago, MasterAblar said:

I honestly find it much easier to excuse big changes which are done out of necessity. You're trying to fit in as much as you can and sometimes that means restructuring things.

 

The small changes are what annoy me. So pretty much all of the cold open just annoyed me, because I'm just failing to see why bother changing the perspective on the Strike at Shayol Ghul. But there's plenty of small details like that, a lot of them to do with Lan and Perrin.

... I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but I *am* expressing a bewilderment here. ... You're telling a story about the road from (place A) to (place B). ... small changes are 'oh, there's stopped traffic ahead, so go this way as a detour, and then get back on the straight line'. ... LARGE changes are either 'they made a left turn there, then another, and ... who knows', or 'we decided to go to (place C) first because (place C looked good).' ... ??

[EasingTheBadger]

The grolm has jumped.  

 

Was hoping it would have occurred in SE 03 or 04, but alas not.

[Seraphine]

33 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

I agree. The women's circle stole the show. They definitely will have to show Rand's capabilities early next season.

 

It's definitely coming and it's going to be big, though not sure when in season 2 it'll come. I just wanted it this episode and the episode fell a little flat for me because of it. ?‍♀️

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

Were those tattoos on the sul'damane?  Are they conflating Seanchan and Shara?

[Chivalry]

I loved Lan's speech (to Nynaeve)...just as powerful and emotional on the screen as  in the book, and absolutely terrific acting.

 

But I wish Nynaeve didn't need to tell the greatest warrior of his age (and likely the greatest tracker) how to track down his partner of 20 years. He's better than that.

[KakitaOCU]

I was happy with it.  Generally confused by the idea that everything is different.

At the end of EotW/Beginning of TGH Rand was the Dragon, one of the Dark One's seals was broken, Rand is having trouble coming to terms with who he is and what it means.  Fain steals the horn and the Seanchan have come to the western coast.

At the end of Season 1 Rand is the dragon, one of the Dark One's seals was broken, Rand has trouble coming to terms and runs.  Fain stole the horn and is running and the Seanchan have arrived.

I also am confused by people thinking this isn't Ishamael.  In the books Ishy was fully insane and borderline believed he was the Dark One (Something that gets punished later).  So this one presenting himself as the real deal fits the narrative.  Plus he talks to Lews as an old friend, not an adversary that knew him.

I Do wish they had shown a little bit more danger and damage with AoL.  But we see inside a room, it's not like there can't be war going on out in the world.  I did not get the feeling that it was LTT's arrogance, but that he saw it as a way to finally bring the war to a close.

[Mirefox]

Amalisa seems to be an allegory for Rafe.  Both were given way more power than they had any right to have and now my eyes are burned out…

[Ararana24]

Sweet hell, that was so much worse than I was expecting it to be (and I was expecting some bad stuff). I’m out, time for my 27th reread…

Edited December 24, 2021 by Ararana24

[JimGalaxy]

17 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

First of all: I think that Rafe is going big in the channeling effects this season, much bigger than the books so that later on we just 'accept' that huge channeling can exist and what it does

... I submit that if you actually believe this to be the mindset of the showrunner: 'let's do this here because it will save us time and money later' ... and if you're right ... then we're done after two seasons. I *don't* want that, and, by the way, Amazon is spending *beaucoup* money on this. DON'T let it be that.

[JimGalaxy]

21 minutes ago, Sojournsoul said:

I was totally disappointed with the last episode. Nothing like the book and it fell flat. You may keep people watching your completely sad version of the story but I dare say you lost most of the followers of the books with this hot mess.

*solemn nod* I think, perhaps, a third of the (BUILT-IN!!) fanbase. I don't know. But this was bad.

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

10 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

I was happy with it.  Generally confused by the idea that everything is different.

 

Mmmm

How about:

 

1) Borderlander men get massacred and totally suck in Tarwin's Gap - 5 untrained women OP wielders do the hokey pokey and waste the bad CGI monsters. Then burn-out. Buuut don't worry - Nyn while linked can still shield Eggy and Eggy can heart heal Nyn.

 

2) Matt is inherently evil and will turn to the Shadow - but Perrin will save the day by not going evil and sticking to the Way of the Leaf. 

 

3) Moiraine is stilled? No, just shielded...wait - we didn't explain that to those who didn't read the books and the people who did read the books - half of them have given up on the show. 

 

4) Lan is completely useless. Rand has done nothing but mope over Egwene. Perrin has done nothing & his lines are bad. Matt is MIA (good move by Barney). Sooo basically nobody cares or sees the significance of 4 of our main characters. This is the Nyn & Eggy show.