I don’t care about the maksim story line, part of me quite enjoys it, it shows the warder bond and if they are going to follow through with the story as is then Alanna is a key pawn in the dark ones final plan. Maybe the key pawn, I personally don’t care about many of the story changes. And Perrin is getting his chance, non book lover friends of mine have said he is one of there fav characters and a proper bad ass. Like I said, my issue here was the loss of that key emotion, even in my non book lover friends. They never felt any sense of real peril or tension in the battle. There was no emotional output except for a real outpouring when Loial died.

Oh I’m not saying it worked, my point here is that the section of the book that I know (because it has been discussed elsewhere on the forum), many many also found and find truly emotional. A section that a friend of mine reading the books for the first time called me up after reading and asked me if I cried that first time reading it, Rafe managed to suck all the emotion out of, and then artificially tried to re-inject it with a made up scene with Loial.

Ok positive point first, the battle for the 2 rivers was immeasurably better then the battle for winter fell. For one I could see it. Now, I won’t repeat what has been said about the healing, Vala’s arc, fain. The narrative changes. My issue with this comes down to one thing. In the books the 2 rivers battle is for me the first truly emotional moment, even now after countless read throughs it still brings a tear to my eye. The moment the women step into the breach where the white cloaks wouldn’t, the build as Perrin walks through the town, the emotion of sending faile away it pulls me in, and I still remember the very first time I read it re reading that section several times before carrying on. So I was hoping, really hoping this episode would give that sense of emotion, hoped that in whatever way they tweaked it for the TV they still at least would keep that core. But no, they managed to have the individual bits there but none of the emotion, that emotional punch was saved for Loial. for me then, this episode is such a letdown.

If we are getting the red door in tear then that may be where Moraine and Lanfer fight and go through the door?

Rafe said from day 1 that Rands 3 relationships where key to the story, but they would be more of a polycule then the more one man and his 3 brides.

they seem to have used the same set and lighting for the attack on the white cloaks as they did at Winterfell.

The books that people say drag are the ones I go back to over and over when I just want to dip in for a few books. For me I think if RJ was starting the series over knowing he had that many books to tell his story you would find books 1-4 written very differently and that may have led to some trimming as certain repetition would have probably been removed the final fights in books 1-3 are all very similar, as is a lot of the general narrative of travel to a place, get captured, go back to the white tower, travel to another place, get captured.

I see it more that the crystals make your ancestors look like you so it is clear they are your ancestors. You see yourself in there role, in reality you might be taller, shorter etc.

Intrigued what you think it impacted, in my mind I can’t think how it has so far but I am open to listening to other opinions.

I did feel the book carried this off much much better, with the Aiel and Ogier creating a lot more noise

Alanna took the waygate, Perrin mentions that.

The show needs to walk a fine line between foreshadowing Verin and making it a big reveal, in the books I know I for one was shocked when the reveal happened, which was good but many TV viewers want to feel they are in on it a little bit, want to be able to go back and see the moments that maybe gave it away. We know there will be more Verin moments that make her look decidedly innocent

We never saw the Blacks arrive, only the aftermath, which was pretty horrific (if you read between the Robert Jordan sanitised version). But, I am liking the fact that we are seeing a reason for why people turn to the dark lord which is more then just simply "they are evil". One of my issues in the books is that there is very little nuance in the bad guys. The forsaken where generally all either already cruel, or jealous very one dimensional in many ways. We are at least seeing Liandrin have more depth, a reason to be who she is while not taking away how she is still evil and cruel. The others seemed to revel in killing, being able to finally be who they are. I really did like this scene, especially given we know there excess and sense of superiority will soon be seriously curtailed by one even worse then them.

Thom in the books is periphery really until book 3/4 so I can see him being pulled back into the Tanchico arc. Meeting Elayne and trying to protect her alongside Matt. I do wonder if Matt will be transported from the red door to somewhere else in the world when that happens? Mat's dagger I am assuming is in Aes Sedai hands (they are not going to let him keep that), the fact that we saw him hanging in front of red doors suggests he may still get his spear, amulet, and then memories all put back possibly they merge the 2 doorways into 1. Finally, Matt with the Horn was comic relief, and fits in perfectly with his character. He is taking advantage of it while he has it, until the reality sets in and he hands it over. I had no issues with this.

I really hope Taim is not an existing dreadlord, mainly because I do like the idea of his arc being to become a new dreadlord it shows how petty jealousy can be turned on it's head to make someone as powerful as Taim turn to the Darklord and make a pact to become one of the Forsaken.

completely disagree. I have always thought the idea that souls had to be gendered, while Robert Jordans stated definition of his world, was just silly and wrong. Especially if you think of the turning of the wheel. Why couldn't there be a female dragon at some point in the future, why couldn't it be Saidar that is tainted? Souls being un gendered does not impact the telling of this turning of the wheel in any way shape or form. This isn't a political correctness thing, it is just a logic thing, that and there where some strong moral and real social issues that get raised if you insist people in the WOT are a fixed gender. I also wonder would Robert Jordan of 2025 be as fixed on that narrative or would he more likely say "The dragon will always be male, not because the souls are gendered, but because it will always be Saidin that gets tainted and thus always be a man that leads the battle to fix that wrong", but that does not indicate that all other souls are always resurrected the same gender.

I think we can say that 2 things are true. In the books you are reincarnated with the same gender and this was defined on multiple occasions. In the TV show you are simply reincarnated and could be any gender. I still don't see how this change for the TV show breaks anything in the books given that all the characters are the same gender as they are in the books. What it does do is solve some questionable morale and philosophical issues that the books have raised within the book audience and make them non issues.

This can easily be a flashback scene, either Rand seeing something similar from the POV of Lewis, or even just a straight up flashback scene to show the audience the breaking. This works in the TV medium in a way it probably wouldn't in a book.

I mean I understand why some think that, for me I have regularly gone back and only read from 4 to 11 there isn't much I dislike in terms of the story and what some call "not much story" I love and accept but am dissapointed it will need to be cut from the show.

This could well be a flashback scene later on, we had a few of them in season 1 and I feel that there are more coming. As part of the madness Rand could see images of things such as this and then use that as reasoning to not pick up Callandor etc.

I mean this parallels nicely with the writing of the books, Jordan didn't know initially how many books he had to finish the series hence a lot of the issues in the first 4 books as he was slowly given more and more time.

I am also still to see a single arms folded under heaving bosom anywhere in the show 🙂

Couldn't go back over everything but overall was really happy with this episode. I have no issue with Choedan Kal being only 1 item and the pair of the sword of callandor. You don't need to muddy the waters with multiple "magic items" that do similar things. In terms of the visions just some minor niggles for me I wish they had shown Morin's story, the first maiden of the spear. if for no other reason then it does directly link to Rand who is the child of a Maiden. The water debt can be explained in a single line of exposition later anyway so we don't need to see that vision. The other vision I wish we had seen closer to the book, is the 7th vision, Jonai in Paaran Disen. I know we got a form of that but the disscusion about the shock lance, the shock and horror at picking up a weapon. I think also indicating that possibly the very last of the Aiel in the world left with the wagons may have been good.

so turns out they did dedicate almost a whole episode to it 🙂

People on here are upset it seems that Rand in season 2 is not as powerful with the power as Rand in books 2 and 3. They seem to want him to be super syan, killing trollocs with a thought, annihilating armies at tarwins gap and being all powerful. The thing is, Robert jordan made a mistake in books 1-3, a mistake he spent a long time rectifying in the following books. his mistake was not of his own doing, it was forced on him by the writing process. It is a mistake that many writers have discovered if they don't have a full story mapped out start to end. I call it the Matrix effect. When he started out he hoped he had a trilogy. A story to tell over a 3 act arc, so, at the end of book 1 his main character gets a major power boost, all on his own, he destroys an army, because at this point RJ didn't even know if he had a second book. Then he has books 2 and 3 greenlit and so he carries on his oddesy, Rands powers increase, exponentially, he deals with threats with a thought, he teaches himself powers without knowing how and he becomes more and more all powerful meaning he can now take out god level beings (forsaken) on his own. Then, the best and worst thing happens he is given the chance to turn this into a multi book odyssey, but, he has a problem, his main character is at this point so overpowered in relation to the world around him that he really doesn't need anyone. he has come on in his power far faster then he should have done. Especially in relation to the other main characters around him, and, how will he find himself against threats that are really dangerous when he is so powerful all on his own. So Robert Jordan removes Rands power, the immense powers he showed in books 1 and 2 are put down to the madness, LTT in his head, or just things he can't possibly remember to do again. He is sent to the 3 fold land where his, by now, stupidly good sword fighting skills are worthless and he needs to learn to fight a different way, at the same time Matt, Perrin, Egwene and Nynaeve are sent on there own arcs to power them up to meet rand as he comes back down, trying to reach a point where they are all fairly equal, in different ways. I call this the matrix problem because at the end of movie 1 there is a problem, Neo is all knowing, all powerful, he is unbeatable in the Matrix, can shape it to his very will. By the time of the second movie (at least the concept as I have heard it, to my mind films 2 and 3 of the matrix are in the same place as seasons 6,7 and 8 of GOT, a thought experiment that thankfully never happened lol), Neo needs to either be de powerd, or, a threat even greater needs to be created, something that he can't fight against, that is both Agent smith, and, a crazy unintelligable plotline about architecture and load bearing structures or something. but on a serious note it is a problem with storytelling in an episodic format where you don't map out and clearly define the plot across the whole and instead have some viague idea but fill in the details book to book. So how does this impact the TV show, well, Rafe and co can, and are, fix that glaring mistake of Robert Jordans, they can ensure that Rand develops his powers in a linear and not up and down, they can show him slowly coming to grips with things in a logical way. At the end of season 2 an unshielded rand, untrained, raw, deals with Ishy far easier then Egwene, Rafe shows in that scene how powerful he is, just a few scenes before Rand ganked a load of soldiers without a seconds thought, when the most we have seen Egwene do is have a very powerful fart (sorry schoolboy humour). So no Rand is not godlike in his powers, but, that is a good thing, that is good episodic writing, if, when writing the first line of EOTW RJ had known, I have 14 books minimum to finish this in and my editor does not want a copy of the Fellowship, I think we would have had a very very very different books 1,2 and 3. and a very different, much slower, Rand journey. It is why I say WOT starts with book 4, books 1 2 and 3 where just RJ practicing, and, it is why stating that Rafe and co "Don't know the books because they have done this and that" is, in my opinion, showing that you are looking at the individual books in isolation, when that is the mistake, you have to look at the whole and, you have to look at the reality behind the writing process and how it impacted character development in a bad way.