S3E6 - The Shadow in the Night

[Storeebooq]

  On 4/6/2025 at 12:00 AM, Elder_Haman said:

How did he find his way into Mat’s dreams?

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Right! 

Ishy said to Lanfear in S2 that he has had some practice in the World of Dreams, after she complimented his abilities. If he was able to Dream for thousands of years (or even hundreds, if it was only cyclical like in the books), he would have had a LOT of time to practice and hone some skills. 

 

We know there is the ability to track things down by focusing on need. It isn't far to extend that to focusing on extreme emotions, channeling, etc. There was a lot we didn't get into even in the books about abilities in the Dreamworld, and since so much of it is tied to will and practice, I don't think it's a stretch that an extremely intelligent Age of Legends Aes Sedai would figure out how to track down channelers, tav'eren, and more in the Dreamworld. 

 

 

[Skipp]

  On 4/6/2025 at 12:53 AM, Mirefox said:

You mean you didn’t picture Min in a Hillary Clinton pantsuit?

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You didn't picture Min wearing pants and a jacket short enough that it doesn't cover her rear?  Did we read the same books?

[EmreY]

It seems I disagree with a lot of people here.  I thought it was a cracking good episode.

[Skipp]

  On 4/6/2025 at 6:58 PM, EmreY said:

It seems I disagree with a lot of people here.  I thought it was a cracking good episode.

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It really was quite fun as an episode.  Certainly have my issues with it but there was so much good about it and it was a treat to watch.

 

The Hills of Tanchico have been stuck in my head all week.

[A Memory Of Why]

  On 4/6/2025 at 6:58 PM, EmreY said:

It seems I disagree with a lot of people here.  I thought it was a cracking good episode.

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Yeah this season has been amazing so far, the positives far outweigh my issues 😇

[A Memory Of Why]

Regarding locating people in Tar and dreams issue.

 

It was confirmed that at least one male and one female forsaken were dreamers, with Ishy being a prime candidate for the male dreamer.

 

Prophetic dreams could be a nice way to "magically" locate someone who will be needed - e.g. Liandrin

[Seaine's eyebrows]

  On 4/6/2025 at 12:06 PM, Gary Again said:

She is absolutely amazing though I wasn't aware that I needed an evil Bjork in my life but I appreciate what she brings to Mogi it is amazing.

 

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Evil Bjork 🤣🤣🤣

[Skipp]

After watching the episode again I only realized this joke.

 

Lanfear:  "I am sending him a little surprise, let him handle it.

 

LITTLE surprise....... She sends Sammael. hahahahaha

[Skipp]

Also noticed when Mats admirer approaches Mat with the bracelet Mat pulls out 2 coin pouches and gives him the one he pinched from Thom.  He does apologize to Thom but it is freaking hilarious these small details.

Edited April 6 by Skipp

[Mailman]

  On 4/6/2025 at 1:23 PM, Elder_Haman said:

How does this support your argument that Ishy couldn’t invade Liandrin’s dreams?

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The first part is more my belief that he may not have been invading the boys dreams in the book but rather drawing them to some type of meeting place with him. The later just lists some things that I think are suggestive that in the books he required some assistance to lock onto them with more precision apart from the fact that he could not achieve any contact with them before Fain returned to the 2 rivers which I think considering the timing is a far stronger conclusion than the others.

[Ralph]

Is it a coincidence that she was sitting under the Shackled Man statue? 

[JyP]

  On 4/5/2025 at 5:50 PM, Storeebooq said:

I especially loved the moment of Nyneave fighting the compulsion. And can’t ignore the cute scene of Mat using his charm on the dude in Tanchico to find the bracelet. I love seeing that Mats flirtations know no boundaries 😉

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Did you catch than whenever Nyn and Elayne were choosing clothes and veils , Nyn chose a veil with too many pearls according to Min - and then we see Mat with exactly this veil afterwards ? 😛

[EmreY]

  On 4/6/2025 at 10:47 PM, Seaine's eyebrows said:

Evil Bjork 🤣🤣🤣

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Exactly!  That was what my mind was searching for! 😊

 

  On 4/7/2025 at 9:04 AM, JyP said:

Did you catch than whenever Nyn and Elayne were choosing clothes and veils , Nyn chose a veil with too many pearls according to Min - and then we see Mat with exactly this veil afterwards ? 😛

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I expected something like that from the previous scene from the way he was looking at it🤣 and yes, I loved it.

 

...

 

I'll ask a question of my own.  Did anyone obsessively replay the Rand-dismisses-Sammael scene?  When the last tendrils of power are going through his hand as he stares fascinated at them, Josha... smiles.  

Edited April 7 by EmreY

[LTL]

A common theme in your posts Mailman, is that you seem to want the show to explain everything ahead of time. You don't like that Mat gets lucky before someone has explicitly stated "btw everyone, Mat is lucky, look at how lucky Mat is." What is wrong with having Mat get lucky a few times before it is noticed by the characters that he seems to have some weirdly extreme luck?

 

It's like you want a narrator talking over the show who explains every scene to you and how it is eventually going to make sense. It's ok for the show to do things that aren't fully explained, or even partially explained and then either the explanation appears later, or maybe it doesn't. The viewer is not supposed to fully understand everything as soon as it appears on the screen. They are supposed to use their imagination and speculate at times.

[Kaleb]

  On 4/7/2025 at 5:52 PM, LTL said:

A common theme in your posts Mailman, is that you seem to want the show to explain everything ahead of time. You don't like that Mat gets lucky before someone has explicitly stated "btw everyone, Mat is lucky, look at how lucky Mat is." What is wrong with having Mat get lucky a few times before it is noticed by the characters that he seems to have some weirdly extreme luck?

 

It's like you want a narrator talking over the show who explains every scene to you and how it is eventually going to make sense. It's ok for the show to do things that aren't fully explained, or even partially explained and then either the explanation appears later, or maybe it doesn't. The viewer is not supposed to fully understand everything as soon as it appears on the screen. They are supposed to use their imagination and speculate at times.

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As Ali on the Wheel Takes podcast is fond of saying, unanswered questions are the lifeblood of television writing. Answer a question definitively and any plot points related to it can quickly become far less compelling. Leave people to wonder and speculate instead, and they get really interested.

[Mirefox]

  On 4/7/2025 at 6:17 PM, Kaleb said:

As Ali on the Wheel Takes podcast is fond of saying, unanswered questions are the lifeblood of television writing. Answer a question definitively and any plot points related to it can quickly become far less compelling. Leave people to wonder and speculate instead, and they get really interested.

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That works to some extent if the scenes work in a way that evokes the theme later revealed.  Like if they showed Mat playing dice and winning repeatedly, they wouldn’t need to explain that he’s extraordinarily lucky and later when they make it more explicit, previous scenes where luck is often a theme (like with dice) would make sense.  I’d argue that asking a peddler to find an ancient relic and then having it by the end of the episode could certainly be revealed to be a part of Mat’s luck, but doesn’t immediately evoke the theme of luckiness, just sloppy or hasty writing.

[Kaleb]

  On 4/7/2025 at 6:42 PM, Mirefox said:

That works to some extent if the scenes work in a way that evokes the theme later revealed.  Like if they showed Mat playing dice and winning repeatedly, they wouldn’t need to explain that he’s extraordinarily lucky and later when they make it more explicit, previous scenes where luck is often a theme (like with dice) would make sense.  I’d argue that asking a peddler to find an ancient relic and then having it by the end of the episode could certainly be revealed to be a part of Mat’s luck, but doesn’t immediately evoke the theme of luckiness, just sloppy or hasty writing.

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I mean, what do you think the point was of Thom talking to Mat repeatedly about how the boys are tugging on the Pattern and he wants no part of it -- and then he finds himself completely swept up in it? It's not "luck" exactly, but it is explicitly the theme of ta'veren getting what the Pattern needs.

[Mailman]

  On 4/7/2025 at 5:52 PM, LTL said:

A common theme in your posts Mailman, is that you seem to want the show to explain everything ahead of time. You don't like that Mat gets lucky before someone has explicitly stated "btw everyone, Mat is lucky, look at how lucky Mat is." What is wrong with having Mat get lucky a few times before it is noticed by the characters that he seems to have some weirdly extreme luck?

 

It's like you want a narrator talking over the show who explains every scene to you and how it is eventually going to make sense. It's ok for the show to do things that aren't fully explained, or even partially explained and then either the explanation appears later, or maybe it doesn't. The viewer is not supposed to fully understand everything as soon as it appears on the screen. They are supposed to use their imagination and speculate at times.

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Look I am fine if they wanted to make that the first point in his luckiness being seen in the show (although a few dice games would be more appropriate than a major item being discovered would be better IMO).

 

What I objected to is everyone in the in the thread relentlessly saying Mat is supernaturally lucky as to the reason why when to this point the show has not shown even one clear example of it being actually the case, if you were watching the show with zero book knowledge in no way would you consider Mat had more luck than any other character.

 

At the moment it is entirely possible that the show will use the redstone doorway to give Mat his luck as one of their gifts. Which would mean he does not have that ability at this time.

 

You may feel like it is a common theme in my posts but the show has been terrible at explaining just about everything.

Edited April 7 by Mailman

[LTL]

  On 4/7/2025 at 11:31 PM, Mailman said:

What I objected to is everyone in the in the thread relentlessly saying Mat is supernaturally lucky as to the reason why when to this point the show has not shown even one clear example of it being actually the case, if you were watching the show with zero book knowledge in no way would you consider Mat had more luck than any other character.

 

At the moment it is entirely possible that the show will use the redstone doorway to give Mat his luck as one of their gifts. Which would mean he does not have that ability at this time.

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Yes, this is my point. It is fine that we do not yet know. That is a normal part of storytelling. Maybe it is his luck, maybe it is ta'avaren, maybe it is something else. The viewer is supposed to speculate at this point and book readers will obviously lean towards Mat's luck because they are expecting that to appear at some point. Show only viewers may think it's ta'avaren, or they may not have picked up on what that is exactly and they may not know what the reason might be, or they may not have given it a second thought. All of this is fine. "They haven't given a clear and definite explanation yet therefore the show is stupid" is not a very good takeaway from this or other scenes.

 

Have you forgotten Rand being saved by a lightning strike in book one, before it has been explained why that is not totally ridiculous? 

Edited April 8 by LTL

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

  On 4/8/2025 at 7:15 AM, LTL said:

Have you forgotten Rand being saved by a lightning strike in book one, before it has been explained why that is not totally ridiculous? 

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At that stage in book 1 there had already been plenty of explanations as to why that was not ridiculous.  Moiraines explanations to Nynaeve about how channeling manifests itself without training are sufficient to make clear what has happened.

[RextheDog]

im really enjoying the season and i loved the tanchico parts of this episode...

 

weak points for me were the healing of Alana, and, one i cant see brought up much anywhere at all, is Egwene removing the whole Lieing about being an Aes Sedai arc.....i get she hasnt got a ring....but one of her biggest 'maturing' moments was owning up and accepting the consequences of her actions....

 

that said, maybe its not that big a deal in this short format....

 

rest of everything was really cool, Joshua coming into his own here...

[LTL]

  On 4/9/2025 at 12:20 AM, bringbackthomsmoustache said:

At that stage in book 1 there had already been plenty of explanations as to why that was not ridiculous.  Moiraines explanations to Nynaeve about how channeling manifests itself without training are sufficient to make clear what has happened.

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And there have been multiple mentions of ta'avaren in the show. The equivalence is that in the book, it has not been explicitly stated "Rand can channel, he creates a lightning strike without realising what he is doing." It happens without explicit explanation and the reader needs to speculate as to how/why it happens. This is fine and I'm just pointing out one clear example of similar writing in the book, to demonstrate that this is not some crazy, show-only idea that we can have things happen to our characters before it has been explicitly stated "Rand can channel" or "Mat is lucky".  

[DigificWriter]

I was listening to some podcasts yesterday and realized something that is kind of significant but that nobody has really yet commented on: Liandrin was never actually bound by the Three Oaths of the Aes Sedai despite swearing them.

[Mirefox]

  On 4/10/2025 at 5:23 PM, DigificWriter said:

I was listening to some podcasts yesterday and realized something that is kind of significant but that nobody has really yet commented on: Liandrin was never actually bound by the Three Oaths of the Aes Sedai despite swearing them.

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Why not?

[Turin Turambar]

I was of the impression that the BA did swear the AS Oaths but then had them removed and swore different ones on the Oath Rod.

 

So it might have only been for an afternoon,  lol.