S3E4 - The Road to the Spear

[Elder_Haman]

  On 3/25/2025 at 4:50 AM, DigificWriter said:

Popping back in with a thought that was sparked by The Wheel & Chill Show: although we've only ever seen her talk about Rand in the context of him being a reincarnated Lews, Lanfear (Mieren) has to recognize his physical resemblance to her Aiel servant Charn.

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I doubt Mieren cared enough about her servants to remember what they looked like. Especially in the midst of opening the Bore

[Agitel]

  On 3/25/2025 at 7:18 AM, DigificWriter said:

I haven't seen a lot of discussion about the fact that the Aiel songs of harvest got mythologized into The Song by the Tuatha'uon over the course of generations. It's a great way to illustrate the truth of the passage "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again".

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This is a good catch. Book readers were expecting as much since that beat parallels something from the books, and I think those of us who still post on Dragonmount have talked about it a lot already when discussing the books. 

 

That's not to minimize your point, just probably why you haven't seen a lot of new discussion on it. But yes, the Song they're looking for has been mythologized and has become more of an ideal than a literal song. If they came across the old song(s) they wouldn't recognize it as what they're looking for anymore. It's a cool plot beat. 

Edited Tuesday at 01:53 PM by Agitel

[DigificWriter]

  On 3/25/2025 at 1:43 PM, Elder_Haman said:

I doubt Mieren cared enough about her servants to remember what they looked like.

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The context of their conversation and their respective postures conveyed a very close relationship, so I don't buy this argument.

 

  On 3/25/2025 at 1:53 PM, Agitel said:

This is a good catch. Book readers were expecting as much since that beat parallels something from the books, and I think those of us who still post on Dragonmount have talked about it a lot already when discussing the books. 

 

That's not to minimize your point, just probably why you haven't seen a lot of new discussion on it. But yes, the Song they're looking for has been mythologized and has become more of an ideal than a literal song. If they came across the old song(s) they wouldn't recognize it as what they're looking for anymore. It's a cool plot beat. 

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There was some pushback against this subject last night in the YouTube Chat for the Wheel & Chill Show, which is why it was on my mind.

[Elder_Haman]

  On 3/25/2025 at 2:55 PM, DigificWriter said:

The context of their conversation and their respective postures conveyed a very close relationship

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Mieren is a master manipulator, and she absolutely sees herself as above the Aiel in the AoL. She can feign caring about someone or having a close relationship with them. It doesn't mean that she views them as anything worth remembering. 

[DigificWriter]

  On 3/25/2025 at 3:03 PM, Elder_Haman said:

Mieren is a master manipulator, and she absolutely sees herself as above the Aiel in the AoL. She can feign caring about someone or having a close relationship with them. It doesn't mean that she views them as anything worth remembering. 

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Based on the way Natasha O'Keefe portrayed the character, I just don't see any of this as being true.

 

And for all of the cognitive dissonance that her mention of Lews during their conversation initially caused for me, the overall context of the scene itself was crystal clear: she was genuinely trying to help the world - and all of its inhabitants - with her research and the project to Bore into the Pattern.

[Agitel]

Adding in some more book perspective on Lanfear...

 

I'll put this in spoilers. It's no plot spoilers, but it will be about book character motivations and backstory which the show may or may not use:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I don't absolutely rule out her wanting to accomplish something that would help others. But her driving motivation was her ambition and the accolades and power such accomplishments would give her. This isn't, again, to say she only had sinister motivations, but even before she would have considered such things (if she did have such scruples), she was largely driven by her ambition. It's part of why she was drawn to Lews Therin. She also really desired a third name. In the Age of Legends, a "third name" was granted to recognize those who made significant contributions to their society. Many of the Forsaken actually had third names, but not Lanfear, even though she was as strong as a woman could be in the One Power. This research project, if it did what she thought it was going to do, would have earned her a third name. 

 

The point about the Tuatha'an and the Song, your musings are confirmed by both Jordan and Sanderson in interviews where fans are asking questions, with the caveat the show is the show and the books are the books, but I think on this point it is pretty safe to assume they won't diverge. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

1999 Robert Jordan

The Song the Tinkers are seeking is the song Rand heard in Rhuidean—or, to be exact, the memories of that song and others like it have become merged, over the years, into the concept of one mystical Song.

 

2013 Brandon Sanderson

[Beginning redacted for future book spoilers]

 

BRANDON SANDERSON

The song of growing is not their "Song." The Song is a much more deep and philosophical concept, perhaps unattainable.

 

[Redacted for future book spoilers]

 

BRANDON SANDERSON

The Tinker "Song" is an ideal that goes far beyond any song that has actually ever existed.

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:00 PM by Agitel

[DigificWriter]

The show made it pretty obvious* what it was going for re: The Song through both its score (the Aiel harvest song plays underneath the scene where the ancestors of the Tuatha'uan break away from the 'True Aiel") and the fact that the Previously On very specifically included the discussions about The Song from A Place of Safety.

 

* although apparently not obvious enough given the pushback on the subject that I referenced

[king of nowhere]

  On 3/25/2025 at 1:43 PM, Elder_Haman said:

I doubt Mieren cared enough about her servants to remember what they looked like. Especially in the midst of opening the Bore

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maybe she does, but i doubt she can remember her servants all that well after 3000+ years.

even if she did, a resemblance wouldn't be anything noteworthy.

[notpropaganda73]

I haven't had a chance to post my in depth thoughts, I want to re-watch the episode before ep5 and will hopefully get a more fleshed out post in then. But I did mention nitpicks and I suppose one is a really petty one, and one is more a comment on the series as a whole:

 

Josha's accent in the Lewin scene really took me out of it initially, as an Irish person I had a horrible feeling and was worried we would see some Harfoot-level nonsense like in Rings of Power. But thankfully, that entire sequence is written and acted so well that I got past the accent very quickly (Although I still just think - why? None of the other sequences gave them accents like that? It was strange to me). 

 

But more significantly, I mentioned in the build up to season three that I hoped for some interaction between the Aiel and Tuatha'an in order to really help Rhuidean "land", so to speak. We had one small scene where Rhuarc stayed behind to bury the "Lost Ones". We had a "previously on" reminder before the episode. But I feel like some of the significance was a little lost because we haven't had any time with the Tinkers since S1, and while a lot of work has been done this season to flesh out the Aiel, something just didn't land quite like it should have for me, with regards to the Way of the Leaf, ji-e'toh, the Jenn Aiel and the splits that occurred.

 

Really this isn't a critism of the episode itself, as a standalone I think it's done an incredible job in getting across significant world-building and lore. More, were the crumbs laid out sufficiently, or enough importance given to them through the first 2 seasons, in order for Rhuidean to be elevated to an all-time piece of fantasy television? Unfortunately I don't think so, and while I finished the episode super happy and impressed with what they had achieved, part of me still felt quite a bit of sadness at what could have been if the show had been more consistent through the first 2 seasons.

 

Like I say I will hopefully get a rewatch and post done on all the positives (of which there are many!!) before ep5 drops.

[Mailman]

  On 3/25/2025 at 5:28 PM, notpropaganda73 said:

I haven't had a chance to post my in depth thoughts, I want to re-watch the episode before ep5 and will hopefully get a more fleshed out post in then. But I did mention nitpicks and I suppose one is a really petty one, and one is more a comment on the series as a whole:

 

Josha's accent in the Lewin scene really took me out of it initially, as an Irish person I had a horrible feeling and was worried we would see some Harfoot-level nonsense like in Rings of Power. But thankfully, that entire sequence is written and acted so well that I got past the accent very quickly (Although I still just think - why? None of the other sequences gave them accents like that? It was strange to me). 

 

But more significantly, I mentioned in the build up to season three that I hoped for some interaction between the Aiel and Tuatha'an in order to really help Rhuidean "land", so to speak. We had one small scene where Rhuarc stayed behind to bury the "Lost Ones". We had a "previously on" reminder before the episode. But I feel like some of the significance was a little lost because we haven't had any time with the Tinkers since S1, and while a lot of work has been done this season to flesh out the Aiel, something just didn't land quite like it should have for me, with regards to the Way of the Leaf, ji-e'toh, the Jenn Aiel and the splits that occurred.

 

Really this isn't a critism of the episode itself, as a standalone I think it's done an incredible job in getting across significant world-building and lore. More, were the crumbs laid out sufficiently, or enough importance given to them through the first 2 seasons, in order for Rhuidean to be elevated to an all-time piece of fantasy television? Unfortunately I don't think so, and while I finished the episode super happy and impressed with what they had achieved, part of me still felt quite a bit of sadness at what could have been if the show had been more consistent through the first 2 seasons.

 

Like I say I will hopefully get a rewatch and post done on all the positives (of which there are many!!) before ep5 drops.

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The accents were one of the only 2 things that I could nitpick about the whole sequence. 

1 Extras, just need more.

2 The range of accents across each scene even was too large and a little distracting.

Edited Tuesday at 10:01 PM by Mailman

[SinisterDeath]

  On 3/25/2025 at 10:00 PM, Mailman said:

1 Extras, just need more.

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This. That's been my #1 complaint since probably the battle in Falme. They did some wonderful camera tricks to imply the battle was larger then it was... But they still feel small. Just like Tarwin's Gap in the first Season was awfully small. Even the trailer we got for the battle of two rivers just feels awfully small... And I hope they hire someone from game of thrones or Vikings that really understands battles and their scale when they do some of the later scenes from the books. They might be able to do Dumai's Wells Justice with the Magic, but they won't be able to do it justice with the scale at this rate.

 

  On 3/25/2025 at 10:00 PM, Mailman said:

2 The range of accents across each scene even was too large and a little distracting.

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I honestly didn't even notice the range of accents too much this episode. I obviously picked up on the large shift between certain generations, but I didn't find it distracting. It just made sense that as you go further back in time, and the people become less tribal and brutal, that their accent and language would change.

[Elder_Haman]

  On 3/26/2025 at 1:20 PM, SinisterDeath said:

This. That's been my #1 complaint since probably the battle in Falme.

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Even before that. Remember the battle with Logain's "army"? It also suffered from scale problems. You'd think that they would use a small part of that FX budget to at least do some top-down shots where it's easy to add a CGI 'crowd' to the battle.

 

 

[Jaysen Gore]

  On 3/25/2025 at 4:39 PM, king of nowhere said:

maybe she does, but i doubt she can remember her servants all that well after 3000+ years.

even if she did, a resemblance wouldn't be anything noteworthy.

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I also don't think Meirin saw Rand's ancestor as anything resembling Rand; IMO, that was for the audiences' convenience and not actually intended to convey that the person actually looked that much like Rand

[Turin Turambar]

  On 3/26/2025 at 1:20 PM, SinisterDeath said:

This. That's been my #1 complaint since probably the battle in Falme. They did some wonderful camera tricks to imply the battle was larger then it was... But they still feel small. Just like Tarwin's Gap in the first Season was awfully small. Even the trailer we got for the battle of two rivers just feels awfully small... And I hope they hire someone from game of thrones or Vikings that really understands battles and their scale when they do some of the later scenes from the books. They might be able to do Dumai's Wells Justice with the Magic, but they won't be able to do it justice with the scale at this rate.

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I haven't  been too bothered by the scale issue but I realise how some would. I kinda had alot of the scenes as small pieces of battle where there aren't always a lot of combatants around. I also kinda see it like a play where a handful if people are meant to be many more. I'm not sure how I'll feel about Dumai's Wells if it isn't obviously  epic. The level of carnage in such a short time is part of the point. How battle has changed forever.

[Gary Again]

The scale hasn't been a big problem for me up to now but once the Aiel get involved it does start to bother me because that is a important point in the book is how vast those armies are in relation to the wetlands so if it's like 30 guys vs 20 guys that just isn't going to be as impressive as if you see a massive wave off Aiel come racing down a mountain or something like that. Like the end of this season I think they need grand scale for Rand being presented to the Aiel and when Randland armies start seeing Aiel they need to have that grand scale to drive home the WTF are we dealing with here moment.

 

Not really sure what the problem is either people have been using CGI to duplicate extras to create massive armies for decades so it should be doable but the fact that they haven't demonstrated they are able to do it has me a bit worried. They are amazing on the visual effects though so I really can't understand why this would be an issue just I agree they have had really limited scope on everything they have done so far. The two Rivers stuff looked really good to me but again that is smaller scale than what I think they will need when stuff really starts popping off.

Edited Wednesday at 06:58 PM by Gary Again

[Jaysen Gore]

On the people scale thing, there was a fairly large push back during the later books phase of publishing about how out of control the army sizes were getting, and you can find pretty detailed breakdowns of the fact that the world couldn't support the number of people that were showing up - like Tarmon Gaidon accounting for 25% of the males in the Westlands or something, based on some calculations. And that there are hundreds of thousands of Aiel involved in the war.

 

I think they could do with getting more extras involved - I'd like to see it get up to a couple hundred of people on both sides - but I don't think we need to see the Pelennor Fields scale battles until the very end.  Even Dumai's Wells would be better served in the 4-5,000 combatants range, instead of the 40-50,000 they had.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Army sizes easily start getting silly when people get enthusiastic, but that said such issues as the Ghealdenin Royal Army numbering about five was an issue. And it has been a consistent issue, even Whitecloak Legions appear to be no more than a handful, just some (er, many) CGI, poorly focused tents or whatever would go a long way to show a little bit of scale. 

 

In a setting like the Westlands, a hundred armed and trained men is a force to reckoned with, say turning up at Baerlon or something. But the show has consistently struggled to even reach that kind of number when it comes to troops. Which is a bit disappointing in terms of "epic" of the story. 

[Sabio]

Few lands had large standing armies.  In time of need nobles were expected to raise soldiers.  Randlands numbers always seemed ok. maybe a bit high at times.  For me it was the Seanchen that seemed like with that many people how they have not taken over the entire land by now is a mystery.

[king of nowhere]

  On 3/27/2025 at 4:11 AM, Sabio said:

Few lands had large standing armies.  In time of need nobles were expected to raise soldiers.  Randlands numbers always seemed ok. maybe a bit high at times.  For me it was the Seanchen that seemed like with that many people how they have not taken over the entire land by now is a mystery.

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Well, they have taken over their whole continent, and they took over a third of the westlands in a couple years

[SinisterDeath]

  On 3/26/2025 at 7:28 PM, Jaysen Gore said:

On the people scale thing, there was a fairly large push back during the later books phase of publishing about how out of control the army sizes were getting, and you can find pretty detailed breakdowns of the fact that the world couldn't support the number of people that were showing up - like Tarmon Gaidon accounting for 25% of the males in the Westlands or something, based on some calculations. And that there are hundreds of thousands of Aiel involved in the war.

 

I think they could do with getting more extras involved - I'd like to see it get up to a couple hundred of people on both sides - but I don't think we need to see the Pelennor Fields scale battles until the very end.  Even Dumai's Wells would be better served in the 4-5,000 combatants range, instead of the 40-50,000 they had.

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For sure.. It's just at this point, I feel like we've barely breached the 50-100 range.

[Mirefox]

  On 3/26/2025 at 1:26 PM, Elder_Haman said:

Even before that. Remember the battle with Logain's "army"? It also suffered from scale problems. You'd think that they would use a small part of that FX budget to at least do some top-down shots where it's easy to add a CGI 'crowd' to the battle.

 

 

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if I remember correctly, there were budget and/or COVID issues in season 1, and for all the stuff I am happy to nitpick, I understood the issues where it related to that scene…the fact that the trend continues, though, is troubling.  I haven’t felt yet that I’ve seen an “army” anywhere, and even Falme felt like a small skirmish.  There have got to be some cinematic tricks that they could start using to make it feel larger in scope.

[SinisterDeath]

  On 3/27/2025 at 1:21 PM, Mirefox said:

if I remember correctly, there were budget and/or COVID issues in season 1, and for all the stuff I am happy to nitpick, I understood the issues where it related to that scene…the fact that the trend continues, though, is troubling.  I haven’t felt yet that I’ve seen an “army” anywhere, and even Falme felt like a small skirmish.  There have got to be some cinematic tricks that they could start using to make it feel larger in scope.

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I'm hoping we'll start to see that near the end of this season. As I'm assuming we're going to see some of the Aiel start to come together, and potentially start going over the Dragonwall towards the Stone of Tear en masse...

[Elder_Haman]

  On 3/27/2025 at 1:21 PM, Mirefox said:

if I remember correctly, there were budget and/or COVID issues in season 1, and for all the stuff I am happy to nitpick, I understood the issues where it related to that scene

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I’m pretty sure the COVID issues hadn’t hit yet when the Logain episode was shot. 

[Mirefox]

  On 3/27/2025 at 2:03 PM, Elder_Haman said:

I’m pretty sure the COVID issues hadn’t hit yet when the Logain episode was shot. 

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Hey, I was giving the show one of my very rare benefits of the doubt, but if you tell me there were actually no excuses for it looking half-baked, I’m fine running with that…

[Turin Turambar]

  On 3/27/2025 at 2:03 PM, Elder_Haman said:

I’m pretty sure the COVID issues hadn’t hit yet when the Logain episode was shot. 

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One thing to consider  though is the amount of total money they had for season 1. There was apparently a plan to do some things differently that got lost because of COVID and the resulting issues like Barney leaving. Those plans may have been costly which requires skimping elsewhere.  Idk if that's why or they just were going for a minimalist look, lol if that was a reason.