Season 2 casting announcements

[DojoToad]

3 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

They could have done that, but if you look at the timeline, there were a total of 11 days between the time they flee the Two Rivers (and the end of Episode 1) and the time they reach Shadar Logoth where they separate and are no longer together (End of episode 2).  There are 6 days between the time they reunite at the Ways and the time Rand leaves for the Eye in episode 8.  The maximum of days of Real Time that they had together to train was, absolutely at most 17 days...17 days of being exhausted, on the run, and being pursued by monsters or in the Ways, with Lan distracted caring for Moiraine wounded and Rand figuring out he's the Dragon Reborn. Even Lan can't teach Rand to be a swordmaster in 17 days.  That would feel ridiculous.

Yes, it would.  But it would have given a base for his training.  Then they start S2 with (arbitrary time period) later and he has all that time as well.  Could have done better IMO.  But I'm just Friday-evening quarterbacking...

[WhiteVeils]

Just now, DojoToad said:

Yes, it would.  But it would have given a base for his training.  Then they start S2 with (arbitrary time period) later and he has all that time as well.  Could have done better IMO.  But I'm just Friday-evening quarterbacking...

At the end of S1, Rand is by himself, not with Lan, so Lan can't train Rand...they don't have any time together.  Lan could be an arbitrary amount of time later training Perrin, and for all I know he may, but I don't think that will satisfy what you're looking for.

Rand's relationship with physical violence  and using the sword is not really key to his story arc...his relationship is much more about his relationship to the One Power and his role as a channeler.  The sword is an important symbol, about his father primarily, but it is destroyed at the end of Book 2. He uses a magic equivalent of it in Book 3, though he's off camera most of that book, and then after that he rarely uses it any more. It's not something that necessarily carries him through book 14, and Rafe seems, IMO, to be focused in like a laser on getting the setup for Book 14.  It's nice if he's a great swordsman, sure.  But it's not the heart of what he is.

 

Perrin, however, is /all/ about his relationship with Physical Violence. He doesn't have any magic ways to do his thing on the pattern...just himself.  He also, unlike Rand or Mat, doesn't have a 'pattern' way of infusing extra knowledge of how to fight into his mind from his past lives.   The choice between the axe and the hammer isn't a choice if he never learns how to use the axe.   How he uses his strength and physical power, to create or destroy, is key to his story arc. Just as the Tuathanin show Perrin the Way of the Leaf, that training of Perrin also makes physical and visible the other side of his path....as a warrior. In the end, he finds a balance between the two, but this is where those two sides form.  So the training is both character development and equipping him for later story, so it's more essential that he actually learns how to fight with an axe before he returns to the Two Rivers for Book 4. (Season 3)

[DojoToad]

On 5/20/2022 at 4:32 PM, WhiteVeils said:

At the end of S1, Rand is by himself, not with Lan, so Lan can't train Rand...they don't have any time together.  Lan could be an arbitrary amount of time later training Perrin, and for all I know he may, but I don't think that will satisfy what you're looking for.

Rand's relationship with physical violence  and using the sword is not really key to his story arc...his relationship is much more about his relationship to the One Power and his role as a channeler.  The sword is an important symbol, about his father primarily, but it is destroyed at the end of Book 2. He uses a magic equivalent of it in Book 3, though he's off camera most of that book, and then after that he rarely uses it any more. It's not something that necessarily carries him through book 14, and Rafe seems, IMO, to be focused in like a laser on getting the setup for Book 14.  It's nice if he's a great swordsman, sure.  But it's not the heart of what he is.

 

Perrin, however, is /all/ about his relationship with Physical Violence. He doesn't have any magic ways to do his thing on the pattern...just himself.  He also, unlike Rand or Mat, doesn't have a 'pattern' way of infusing extra knowledge of how to fight into his mind from his past lives.   The choice between the axe and the hammer isn't a choice if he never learns how to use the axe.   How he uses his strength and physical power, to create or destroy, is key to his story arc. Just as the Tuathanin show Perrin the Way of the Leaf, that training of Perrin also makes physical and visible the other side of his path....as a warrior. In the end, he finds a balance between the two, but this is where those two sides form.  So the training is both character development and equipping him for later story, so it's more essential that he actually learns how to fight with an axe before he returns to the Two Rivers for Book 4. (Season 3)

To be honest, No matter how well they set up the training it all would have fallen apart on screen based on what they showed for combat in S1 - Blood Snow aside. 

Edited August 4, 2022 by DojoToad

[Skipp]

2 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

At the end of S1, Rand is by himself, not with Lan, so Lan can't train Rand...they don't have any time together.  Lan could be an arbitrary amount of time later training Perrin, and for all I know he may, but I don't think that will satisfy what you're looking for.

Rand's relationship with physical violence  and using the sword is not really key to his story arc...his relationship is much more about his relationship to the One Power and his role as a channeler.  The sword is an important symbol, about his father primarily, but it is destroyed at the end of Book 2. He uses a magic equivalent of it in Book 3, though he's off camera most of that book, and then after that he rarely uses it any more. It's not something that necessarily carries him through book 14, and Rafe seems, IMO, to be focused in like a laser on getting the setup for Book 14.  It's nice if he's a great swordsman, sure.  But it's not the heart of what he is.

 

Perrin, however, is /all/ about his relationship with Physical Violence. He doesn't have any magic ways to do his thing on the pattern...just himself.  He also, unlike Rand or Mat, doesn't have a 'pattern' way of infusing extra knowledge of how to fight into his mind from his past lives.   The choice between the axe and the hammer isn't a choice if he never learns how to use the axe.   How he uses his strength and physical power, to create or destroy, is key to his story arc. Just as the Tuathanin show Perrin the Way of the Leaf, that training of Perrin also makes physical and visible the other side of his path....as a warrior. In the end, he finds a balance between the two, but this is where those two sides form.  So the training is both character development and equipping him for later story, so it's more essential that he actually learns how to fight with an axe before he returns to the Two Rivers for Book 4. (Season 3)

 

I was going to say that the way Season 1 was paced that they didn't really have time to learn much from Lan.  Thanks for breaking down the timeline for us.

 

Interesting thought on how swordsmanship isn't really important to Rand's Arc especially when compared to Perrin's relationship with phyiscal violence. I have always personally viewed the sword being important to Rand but aside from the initial relationship to his father it really doesn't.  I don't think that they are going to remove it entirely from show Rand as they have made Tams sword semi noticeable but it will be interesting how they focus on it going forward.

 

I am curious to see how they deal with the boys training or lack their of in the show.  It is never really mentioned how Perrin became so good at fighting aside from him just being a berserker.  He gets the one scene of training with Lan in the books and presumably other times until they get to the blight.  But afterwards he is just a trained Trolloc killer by the time he returns to Emonds Field, even before I guess as he takes down a squad of Whitecloaks with Gaul.... Wolf instinct I suppose.. 

 

Mat gets a pass from mentioning how his father trained him in the staff in TDR and I am really hoping they include his scene against Gawyn and Galad. 

 

And of course Rand gets alot of training from Lan inbetween The Eye and tGH but is still able to beat a blademaster after only a couple of months training by the end of that book.  I have always subscribed to the theory is that his skill with the sword is partially passed on from LTT.

 

I also suspect the idea that someone else takes down Turak to be accurate.  Rand doesn't need to take down 2 bosses per book while Perrin holds a flagstaff.

[WhiteVeils]

They made the sword more important, in some ways, in the show:  It became the way Min recognized Rand, for starters.  And the way we, the audience, recognize Tam in the Blood Snow sequence. In both those uses, it's used not as a weapon but as a means of identification, a symbolic tying between Rand, son of Tam, and Rand, the Dragon Reborn.  Ishamael/The Dark One even recognizes this and comments on it when Rand draws his blade on him, going straight from seeing the sword to his father and then dismissing that link to his identity.  I think it's an important tie for that...it's just that that doesn't actually require him to fight with it.  He may learn to...maybe not even from Lan...but it's not 100% necessary the way Perrin needing to learn to physically fight with the ax is.  
In the books, Perrin was already working out how to fight with the axe before the book started.  But in the show, he isn't...it's a little different.

[DaddyFinn]

Rand does not use his sword that much for actual fighting. He mostly spars with others and uses that as a way of meditation. 

 

By the way, aren't we getting a bit astray of the actual topic?

[DojoToad]

1 hour ago, DaddyFinn said:

 

 

By the way, aren't we getting a bit astray of the actual topic?

Again?

[Andra]

8 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

They could have done that, but if you look at the timeline, there were a total of 11 days between the time they flee the Two Rivers (and the end of Episode 1) and the time they reach Shadar Logoth where they separate and are no longer together (End of episode 2).  There are 6 days between the time they reunite at the Ways and the time Rand leaves for the Eye in episode 8.  The maximum of days of Real Time that they had together to train was, absolutely at most 17 days...17 days of being exhausted, on the run, and being pursued by monsters or in the Ways, with Lan distracted caring for Moiraine wounded and Rand figuring out he's the Dragon Reborn. Even Lan can't teach Rand to be a swordmaster in 17 days.  That would feel ridiculous.

The only time, on screen, the could have hinted that there would be training would be in the early part of Episode 2, around the same place as the of the Weep for Manatheren scene.  I'm kind of glad they kept the other scenes instead.

 

In Season 2, I don't know how it will go, but Perrin can be with Ingtar for a long time...all the time it takes to get from Fal Dara to Tomen Head. That's months.  I don't know when or how Rand will be trained, or if he will at all.  It depends on how long he is together with someone who can train him.

 

It's not only the screen time that prevents them from training in S1. It's how much /in story/ time S1 covers where Lan and Rand are together.

In the book, they train after making camp every night between leaving the Two Rivers and entering Shadar Logoth.  A length of time that isn't much different than in the show.  Where (among other things) we learn that all three of the boys already possess more skill than Lan expected with the bow - and probably the quarterstaff as well, given their explanation about contests at Bel Tine and Sunday. 

 

And then Rand and Lan train together in Fal Dara for more than a month between EotW and tGH.  Equally importantly, Rand is explicitly seen continuing to practice and improve with the sword, and to show his ability with the Flame and Void throughout the story until Falme.

 

And I'm sorry, but saying that a season that combines two books has less of a "time crunch" than one that has less than one entire book is pretty ridiculous.

 

Your previous statements that training is an overdone cliche, and audiences are tired of it, applies just as much on the road with a bunch of Shienarans as it would have with Lan.

[Andra]

Duplicate post.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Andra

[Andra]

12 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

What climatic moment for Perrin would you include for Perrin from Books 1-3?  His biggest climax moment is at the top of Dragon Reborn rescuing Faile from a dreamworld, which isn't a big 'strike for the light' moment, and also would be really difficult to film inlcude at all and will probably be cut.

Well, let's see ...

How about killing Whitecloaks?  Once with Elyas and the wolves (while protecting Egwene).  Once after freeing Gaul.

How about acting as bannerman at Falme when the Heroes needed to follow the Dragon Banner?

How about defending the camp in the Mountains of Mist from an attack by shadowspawn?

How about detecting SIX Gray Men - and killing most himself with a chair leg - that not even Lan or Moiraine had noticed?

And yes, rescuing Faile.

 

The point is that Perrin has his own fair share of "hero moments" without taking any away from Rand.

 

12 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

I don't think they want to cut it all, and I think the overall big structure of the whole thing requires a moment where the whole /world/ finds out Rand Al'Thor is the Dragon Reborn at this point in the story. A Fight in the Sky is well suited to that kind of mass-knowledge.  But nothing about that advertising requires Rand to be a super-good Swordsman either.  We'll see.

As far as the show is concerned, you may be right.  Nothing requires Rand to be even a passable swordsman.  But the scene in the book absolutely does.  It took all his skill with the sword to allow him to win, and he still had to take a wound that would never heal in the process.

As well as to receive the second Heron brand that prophecy required.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Andra

[Raal Gurniss]

3 hours ago, Andra said:

Well, let's see ...

How about killing Whitecloaks?  Once with Elyas and the wolves (while protecting Egwene).  Once after freeing Gaul.

How about acting as bannerman at Falme when the Heroes needed to follow the Dragon Banner?

How about defending the camp in the Mountains of Mist from an attack by shadowspawn?

How about detecting SIX Gray Men - and killing most himself with a chair leg - that not even Lan or Moiraine had noticed?

And yes, rescuing Faile.

 

The point is that Perrin has his own fair share of "hero moments" without taking any away from Rand.

 

As far as the show is concerned, you may be right.  Nothing requires Rand to be even a passable swordsman.  But the scene in the book absolutely does.  It took all his skill with the sword to allow him to win, and he still had to take a wound that would never heal in the process.

As well as to receive the second Heron brand that prophecy required.

Am sure they will fit in a single sword lesson for 30 seconds, Lan will say something about giving him a lesson that one time, then a flashback to Lan saying, "have taught you nearly everything I know"...And Rand will be an instant blademaster.

 

I don't think this show was really made with fighting in mind though, its not going to play a large part, I think they were going for more Walking Dead style but without the Zombies and 1/4 the action scenes and a lot more CGI.

[CaddySedai]

21 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

I'm still waiting for the super-rafe cut where each episode is a 90 minutes.

 

Or maybe just make it a thing where any TV series can be remade by Snyder. I'd love to se a super dark tone version haha

[Mailman]

On 5/22/2022 at 3:21 AM, CaddySedai said:

 

Or maybe just make it a thing where any TV series can be remade by Snyder. I'd love to se a super dark tone version haha

Snyder is terrible no idea how to edit, makes nothing shots into spectacles and cant see any plot hole no matter how large.

 

Plus he is a Ayn Rand devotee.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Mailman

[DaddyFinn]

https://www.wotseries.com/2022/06/01/new-casting-revealed-salle-salee-youri-yamanaka/

 

Quote

According to her agency resume, Salée will play the role of “Elsa Treehill” in The Wheel of Time’s second season. There is no character named Elsa Treehill in The Wheel of Time books, however, this could be a composite character combining Else Grinwell and Nicola Treehill. It is important to note that a daughter of the Grinwells appeared in season one as “Helga Grinwell.” 

 

On a different CV for the actor, her role is listed at “novice”, which tells us that this new character will be an initiate of the White Tower. The actor’s resume lists Thomas Napper as director, placing her appearance within in the first two episodes of the season two.

 

Quote

We can also report that actor You-Ri Yamanaka will play the role of “Min’s Aunt.” 

 

[DaddyFinn]

I guess can't be said it's official yet but fairly certain

 

 

 

[Jake Sykwalker]

On 4/28/2022 at 5:26 AM, DaddyFinn said:

I think it's rare that actresses are actually "realistically muscular" when playing a warrior role. 

 

I guess Ygritte from GoT is a close comparison to Aviendha and she was quite slim. Pictures can be found easily.

 

For the money they are getting paid more actors and actresses should be like Jenette Goldstein who played Vasquez in Aliens.  She cut her waist length hair and bulked up (she was already fit) for her role.  She poured everything she had into that role.  Maybe that is why she is one of the most popular supporting characters in that movie and beloved by Alien fans?

 

[SilentRoamer]

11 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

 

For the money they are getting paid more actors and actresses should be like Jenette Goldstein who played Vasquez in Aliens.  She cut her waist length hair and bulked up (she was already fit) for her role.  She poured everything she had into that role.  Maybe that is why she is one of the most popular supporting characters in that movie and beloved by Alien fans?

 

 

I agree with this - there are many, many tv shows where characters have to go through incredible body transformations consisting of great diet and very intense workout plans. This is generally more likely (in terms of muscle) to relate to male actors, although female actors have their own external physical pressures.

Dedication to the role really shows - I mean look at Christian Bale in Batman and compare him to Bale in the Machinist. Total dedication. 

[Andra]

22 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

 

For the money they are getting paid more actors and actresses should be like Jenette Goldstein who played Vasquez in Aliens.  She cut her waist length hair and bulked up (she was already fit) for her role.  She poured everything she had into that role.  Maybe that is why she is one of the most popular supporting characters in that movie and beloved by Alien fans?

 

It's also far more common today - with the increased popularity of female action stars - for women to go through this.  Another good early example was Demi Moore in G.I. Jane.

 

I would be surprised if we didn't see something similar with the prominent female Aiel and Seanchan fighters.

[AdamA]

I actually think a lot of fiction gets this badly wrong in a way that takes me out of the illusion a bit. It's fine for superheroes and people in future sci-fi with great nutrition and access to safe steroids to be super jacked, but medieval, classic, and ancient warrior types and in fantasy settings really shouldn't be. There wasn't great food access, barbells didn't exist, they're spending all day ranging in the field, not in a gym. They should be lean and athletic looking, but not big. That bugged me about the night's watch, too. Guys like Rast and Sam Tarly just aren't going to exist in an environment like that. I don't care how fat you were coming in, with the food available and how much you're walking, you're not gonna stay fat. Look at what happens to alpine mountaineers who carry in 5000 calories a day of freeze-dried pack and still lose 40 pounds in a month trying to climb Everest.

 

But anyway, the Aiel should be lean, but they should not be jacked. They live in a desert surviving off rats and cacti. That can't sustain the calorie surplus you need to build muscle.

[DojoToad]

6 hours ago, AdamA said:

I actually think a lot of fiction gets this badly wrong in a way that takes me out of the illusion a bit. It's fine for superheroes and people in future sci-fi with great nutrition and access to safe steroids to be super jacked, but medieval, classic, and ancient warrior types and in fantasy settings really shouldn't be. There wasn't great food access, barbells didn't exist, they're spending all day ranging in the field, not in a gym. They should be lean and athletic looking, but not big. That bugged me about the night's watch, too. Guys like Rast and Sam Tarly just aren't going to exist in an environment like that. I don't care how fat you were coming in, with the food available and how much you're walking, you're not gonna stay fat. Look at what happens to alpine mountaineers who carry in 5000 calories a day of freeze-dried pack and still lose 40 pounds in a month trying to climb Everest.

 

But anyway, the Aiel should be lean, but they should not be jacked. They live in a desert surviving off rats and cacti. That can't sustain the calorie surplus you need to build muscle.

Agree with most of what you said, but didn't the Aiel raise goats - to supplement rats and cacti?

[Andra]

22 hours ago, DojoToad said:

Agree with most of what you said, but didn't the Aiel raise goats - to supplement rats and cacti?

And they also had corn (zemai), tomatoes (t'mat), some kind of walnut or pecan (pecara), and a version of potato or carrot - simply referred to as "root vegetables."  As well as peppers.

Also, I don't recall them eating rats in the Waste.  But they certainly ate lizards.

 

But it is true that, aside from blacksmiths, almost no one in any of the WOT cultures would be massively muscular.  That's just not how real life works.  Even people who have to be quite strong won't end up musclebound.  They can't afford to be.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Andra

[Nik]

Yeah Aiel have crops and cattle. They grow most of their food and supplement it with dairy and meat. And the warrior societies seem to also hunt. They're not malnourished by any means.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Nik