I mean it is all opinion, including Brandon Sanderson, and he has since said that it is his opinion that the show is brilliant there are just a couple of issues he has personally in his opinion. In my opinion Brandon Sanderson is an awful writer who writes mass produced badly edited fiction, I and my friends have tried multiple times to read and can never get through because we find the writing is just bad. However I also respect that is my opinion and lots of other people enjoy his fiction, lots of people also enjoy the twilight books and the books of Dan Brown so sales and earnings and proclivity of writing do not always indicate someone is a good writer just they know how to appeal to the masses. Given that is how I feel about BS I take his opinion with a pinch of salt while accepting his and everyone’s right to have one. But, it is just an opinion. People are mis quoting him as if he is stating facts. It is one of the issues of the internet people are no longer allowed to have differing opinions and the moment someone disagrees they are expected to defend that position factually. People just need to accept that a lot more of us then some are willing to accept actually enjoy the show and think a good job is being done we are not wrong because that is an opinion and in fact Brandon Sanderson is one of those.

I thought even season 1 was worse then wot it deviated far more from the source material.

I mean I agree the fight scenes in Witcher are better done, the battle scenes in GOT where also better, but, if people think WOT is not the story of the books, Witcher is so so so far removed from anything that was written that it absolutely is a new and different story. And the rubbish Prequel they made as well is some of the worst fantasy TV that anyone has ever made.

I mean all my non book loving friends where edge of seat for season 2, so I would argue the writers did that.

Squeezing 3 books into 2 seasons was always going to be an effort, there are elements of book 2 and 3 in season 1, also getting across the intricate details of things like the magic system is also hard to do. No we don't want long exposition, there is nothing worse the a character spouting out a load of nonsensical mush to explain something, so I think as readers we have to wait and see as things are developed and explained and revealed throughout the series rather then all being dropped from a height in season 1 and 2. I am loving Moiraine, this version of Moirane is so so so much better then the book version, she is not the all powerful Gandalf character that RJ then had to nerf in the books to make her more vulnerable. I loved seeing how becoming an Aes Sedai can impact relationships with normal family and friends, we see very little of that if any at all in the books. I also loved seeing a vulnerable side to her. The fact is that in the books we have no idea what she was doing during TGH, other then a vague explanation that she was fighting the Seanchan trying to save sisters. It also all fed into the story of Rand, we see that female channellers can't see male weaves because she spent all that time around them and they never saw the shield. Rand then can see it. This version of Lan is also the version I see later on in the books, the version that RJ changed him into, with self doubt and a fatalism, we saw that Moiraine dropped the bond without him knowing before she went off into the blight probably to try and save him, it wasn't hidden or covered up, then she rebonded him in season 2. So the Lan who took on 3 Fades was unbonded, no super sayan powers.

They edited that episode because there was an editing glitch that looked very similar to the glitcing in the world of dreams, it was a very specific change to edit a strange cut transition. Going back I am not seeing any differences. But might be my memory is faulty.

This always felt a bit incidental, I imagine it wasn't intended to be, but Masema, a bit like Fain felt like a story thread that RJ just lost interest in fully, or didn't know how to play it out. Like the Aes Sedai who went and interacted with him in the warcamp, the BS explanation for that to Perrin felt a bit rubbish. It was another story thread that just kind of petered out, especially the way he was killed off. This is def a storyline I hope has some major changes from the books in the show.

I didn’t know that (re rop) although there is still enough in those appendacies to make a far far better series then this. and @Berty1102 I can confirm making sweeping statements that assume is generally not a good thing to do. Loads of book lovers who have been reading since eotw was released or just after love the tv show and understand the reason for changes, we might not fully agree with them all but we also understand that what one loves another will always disagree with.

By all means we can discuss them, but I think looking simply at a number and then trying to use that as an argument to state a point of view is wrong, unless the person doing it is a Nielsen insider who really understands how tv metrics work in detail.

OK, Rand getting the wine is what lead to Moiraine finding him and saving him from Lanfer, it also allowed the writers to put in something from the books, something that fans are complaining about not happening. That simple request by Logain is teh trigger to allow a set of circumstances to happen logically in the story. That "entire episode" about steppin, Steppin is actually in that episode for I think a total of about 7 minutes, the episode is about Tower politics, It is about introducing Siuan, showing the relationship betwene her and Moiraine, it is about so so much more then Steppin. But, the Steppin arc does demonstrate the bond, it shows the audience what happens with a warder loses the bond. People are fixating on Steppin however and ignore that is the minor part of the episode, it is not the important thing. Remove Steppin you still have to introduce the tower and tower olitics in season 1. You still need a Tar Valon POV episode so you still have to find a reason to get Moiraine to Tar Valon, having an Aes Sedai killed by Logain ties him emotionally to all those characters, having the warder then kill himself again ties Logain to those characters. The pacing of season 2 was great, the end for me and more importantly the non book readers that I know who love the show (about 20 odd now) landed really really well, could the show do with having a 10 episode season, yes, but Falme was always going to be done in one episode you don't spread a fight like that out over 2. Nothing earlier in the show would have changed that, because that breaks all the rules of episodic TV writing.

So guilty secret I am a massive Pro Wrestling Fan (AEW not WWE nowadays if you want to know). One thing I have learnt from my years of not only loving the on screen, but all the backstage business stuff is that trying to judge success from TV ratings is just silly. So much can feed into a number that ultimatley the TV companies don't care about. Fans can sit and crow about how one week the show was really bad because it lost viewers, and then be confused when the TV execs come out as being delighted with the number because the key Demos are what mattered to them. So yes, lets look at the numbers, but, this is streaming, I am far more interested in hearing how many people in total have watched WOT since season 1 dropped, not in a single week, but overall, and in a years time I will be interested in how many people in total have watched season 2. I am also intrigued, how many new eyes came to season 1 this year when season 2 was released? Some of you don't like the show, we get it, but trying to use numbers to say empirically it is better or worse does not make the argument one way or another.

I mean how many women are killed just generally in the last battle, all those sharan women fighting for instance. Rand and Perrins viewpoint is predicated on the idea that only Men fight. We know that the Seanchan have female warriors, so when Rand went all crazy killing Seanchan warriors, he was killing women with no issues. When Perrin allowed masemas crazies to hold the line, he was putting women to death.

It is something that has grown for me with age and re reads, I have lost track but I think I was 17 or 18 when I first read EOTW, it then took me 4 attempts to get through what i still consider the weakest of the RJ books, I think the first read throughs at that age (the series was far from finished) I was caught up in how unique the story was. As I have got much older and my reading tastes. both fantasy and non fantasy, have changed I just find myself looking at it all with a different set of eyes, there are some moments of beautiful writing in it, Battle of Emonds Field is one I constantly come back to over and over, but, the way the villians are written is largely very one dimensional, which is typical of the age but held up against modern writing makes them look flat, that is my main preference for the TV show, that and the removal of all the repetition of books 1-3, there is a lot you will find on your 3rd or 4th read through. There are aspects of Rands arc that I do love, but again I read other works now and just think what could have been if the focus was taken away from heaving bosums and spankings and given to really diving into the relationships and characters, giving us more book moments between each of them.

I will return to my original, Aginor was a massive Tolkien Fan (WOT is future earth, so there was def a tolkien), and all he was trying to do was his own bit of Tolkien fan art, I mean, they didn't look like orcs, but that was because he was worried about a whole legal battle with the Tolkien estate about rights etc. :). I do like the thought that Aes Sedai in the AOL tried to use the power to replicate there fav fantasy moments :). LTT was only called the Dragon because he was a massive Wizards of the Coast nerd and wanted to be Bahamat ;).

Love that you love it like that, like I say I see all the flaws, I have seen stronger character arcs in many other books, I have seen better prose and writing structure, less repetition of both plot ideas and the way the story is told. I personally see the magic system as confused and with no structure, for me RJ and BS basically made it up as they went along in terms of what weaves could do, with a "what makes sense now" aspect. His world building, the politics and long term history of the world as it came out of the breaking is really well put together, the story of the Aiel is for me one of the best bits of lore in fantasy. I have read the series start to finish I think 8-12 times now over the what 20 years I have been reading it, and I have read each of the individual books, either as small sets or individually many many times more, at the start of the year I re read the Brandon Sanderson 3 3 times as a trilogy back to back to back and ended up feeling it contains some of the worst fantasy fiction I have read as a whole yes I am glad we got an end, but I am finding myself comparing parts (not all) of those final 3 to the end of GOT and thinking GOT did it better, which I should never be able to say about anything lol. But despite all these massive flaws I personally see in the writing style, the story telling and some of the arcs I still feel that I will be picking it up and re reading it again end to end, and I can't say that about much else.

Oh sorry I misunderstood but in that respect again I have to disagree, for the reasons given above that RJ didn't know what he was writing early on, for me personally WOT as an adult feels like a YA type novel in may ways, Rand especially frustrates me a lot, thinking again about things I have read Thomas Covenant is so well written as a character, his arc over the 3 trilogies is brilliantly done, Paul Atredies is another one, to be fair whether unconsciously or not RJ clearly fed a bit of Dune into the WOT (Freman are Aiel and Paul and Rand have similarities). Paul is even reluctant, he spends most of the start of his story trying to prevent the galaxy wide Jihad he knows his ascent will trigger. While her arc has not been finished yet Arya Stark also apparently has a really compelling one in the books, I have not read the books because I once started a series who's author went and died before it ended, not making that mistake again, but a friend of mine who has read WOT would put Arya's arc in the books up against anything in any great works of fiction. And finally the Dark Tower, Roland Deschain, end of the day when one of the best writers in history (Stephen King) writes at the peak of his power and creates one of the best book series ever written you kind of expect a complicated, deep brilliant protagonist, and you get one. So yes, Rand for me is a traditional fantasy hero, reluctant, becomes a powerful god like being and beats the dark one he is the definitive chosen one, but his depth for me always felt fairly shallow, like there was more to explore but RJ doesn't really do deep character dives. For me his strength is building worlds and lore, not writing deeply complex characters, it is why I am preferring the TV show in many ways, we are seeing new little nuances to everyone, especially the bad guys, but even the heroes are getting a different slightly deeper richness to them. Now I know other will disagree and that is perfectly fine, it all comes down to personal opinion on things and none of us is wrong.

It is of course all subject to opinion but I don't know about Rand being the strongest character in all fiction, I mean the Emperor of Mankind would probably chew him up and spit him out, Dr Manhatten would probably also make short work of him, thinking about just Fantasy you have the gods themselves in Percy Jackson, in Dragon Lance you have the Dragons and some of the most powerful wizards in fantasy, Quentin Coldwater in the magicians trilogy would crush him easily when he reaches his full power. Rand is probably not even in the top 10 most powerful/strongest characters in fantasy, let alone all fiction. @STUCARIUS I always think that when critically looking at the WOT you have to take into consideration the story RJ was writing in that moment, because it changes dramatically across the first 4 books and as a result the character motivations and focus changes. When writing book 1 RJ did not know if there would be a sequel, he had a rough idea in mind but also purposly wrote book 1 to be a self contained high fantasy LOTR rip off because thta is what his publisher wanted and end of day he needed to make a dollar, as a result there is no real long term consideration to the prose or the characters. Book 2 RJ thought he had a trilogy, so he doesn't worry to much about building or focusing on many of the anciliary characters, if you consider EOTW to be fellowshp of the ring, then in the Great Hunt he finds a reason to take his Frodo (Rand) and the rest of the fellowship away from Gandalf (Moiraine) with the clear idea that she will reappear ready for the final act 3 Rand having learnt a bit about himself on his own. By Book 3 he knew he had a book 4 and so needed to drag things out a bit more, so takes the chance to build up Perrin and realised he needed to make Matt more then his Golumn (a role he switches to Fain). I often wonder if it had remained a 3 book story would we have seen hero Matt or would he have taken up the Padin Fain role, becoming an enemy that Rand had to kill? Anyway, book 3 he needs to make Mat more interesting, not just for readers, but for himself, he needs to also make Lan and Moiraine a bit more interesting move them beyond being Gandalf and Arragorn, and so we see the shift in characterisation of both of these. By Book 4 he is off to the races no longer writing book to book, he knows he can cast a wide arc over a long series and has in his mind 9 more books to tell the story, but, now he has a problem, in books 1-3 he has developed the characters expecting a 4 book series, he now needs to pull some of them back to make the arc he wanted worth reading and writing over 9 more books, he needs to dial it back. He almost needs to find reasons for Rand to stay reluctant despite proclaiming himself dragon 3 times, killing off Forsaken like he is swatting flies and just coming on so far from book 1. Of course the girls have a similar arc, he repeats and reuses similar tropes and plot ideas to get them to where he now needs them in the new story he is writing each time. They come across as imature, petulant, for far longer then they should and he seems to struggle to understand what their ultimate role at each step should be, again I am intrigued what the Egwene arc looked like in a 4 books story. What was her and Nynaeves end point, did Egwene replace Nyn in bonding with Rand alongside Moiraine? I think had RJ known he had 12 books (later 14) to tell this story in then the earlier books would have been paced differently and follow a different thread, we would have seen more of the bonds of friendship between them, and a more gradual arc and growth. Instead, by the time he knew he had more space he had already taken the characters beyond being simply friends, he had driven wedges between them emotionally and physically with location, he couldn't find a way to dial some of that back and so had to lean into Rand and Matt being distant in book 4 and 5 despite being physically close. So yes I agree with you but I think if we understand the context of the writing of those first 4 books we also then understand why those flaws are all present.

I used to, went on a bit of a break after Brandon Sanderson finished the series, then came back to it about 4-5 years ago and have read back through it twice now, but I have read all the books out of any order multiple times. I don't know if I will ever read it again the most recent run throughs where more to see if all the flaws I now see in the series and the style of writing where just me in a bad mood on a read through or just me having taken that break and reading a ton of different stuff and getting older. The last 3 books especially, I always had a sense they where bad, now I find myself thinking they are possibly some of the worst fantasy I have ever read, I also keep finding myself wondering if I should just ignore eotw if I ever do another read through. So yeah, am in a bit of a hate love relationship at the moment, finding I prefer the story being told on TV so far in many ways more then the early books, kind of wish RJ had made some of the same creative choices and really wonder what story we would have got if he had known when he started EOTW he had 14 books to tell this story in and he didn't need to make a LOTR ripoff to get the first one published, I find myself more and more wanting to read that story.

nothing he or his writers have added is pointless, you might not agree with the creative choices but it all exposes viewers to lore, it all shows important elements of the characters and works to help develop them, in some ways better then the books (Moiraine does not really have any kind of an arc in the books). I agree 10 episodes a season would give it better room to grow, but my concern is that we where told this would be Amazons GOT, the battle of falme felt so far removed from it. I almost found myself wishing it was filmed at night, at winterfell. As rubbish as GOT got the one thing it had was vast big battles, the battle of the bastards felt big, the siege of the saved slaver city (forget it's name) felt like a real seige, you had large numbers of extras and a real sense of scale, even when the action went into close quarters fighting and close up edits and cuts. The battle of Falme had none of that sense, what it felt like was that the director had about 20 extras to dress up as seanchan or whitecloaks, and had to decide scene by scene who was which.

I don't know that whole thing was written so badly by BS that you don't get time for any of it to sink in or let you breathe. In part because it was all tied in with Egwene being put to trial and then dealt with in a few lines and Egwene moves on, we never see the emotional reaction from the characters so for me we never feel the emotions ourselves. Plus, it had been telegraphed pretty clearly with what was happening to her in the books.

Except we have yet to see the 3rd oath in the tv show.

My take on that scene was that a combination of everything mae them run, The heros, the ships blowing up, rand all of it.

Every time you cut something from the books in order to be able to allow stuff to be filmed you have to consider what that bit of story is also removing in terms of lore and information. You also have to consider the fact that teh WOT as written would make for an awful TV show, and it really would. I have a friend who works for Bad Wolf Productions here in cardif who is a WOT fan and as someone who understands making TV shows while there are some things he would have done differently he thinks the general approach to making this tv show is about how he would have approached it. As he said to me, the first 3 books have to be re thought and re planned out because as a TV story they are just boring and dull, audiences do not want to watch 3 seasons of people walking across a country chasing something or someone. He is gutted we lost Tear but understands that you have a limited budget so you either do Tear or Falme not both because with the limited time you want to get to book 4 as soon as possible Moiraine is not in book 2, that is a problem for a TV show that needs to be able to continue developing her as a character, especially given what we know is going to happen to her eventually. Now I can understand artistic debate here about what she should have done with that part of the story, however the fact is that Moiraine in the dragon reborn faces down Sammael (off page) in the tv show she has faced off with Lanfer on screen, we have seen through the arc of her family that darkfriends permeate throughout all levels of society, and we have set up potentially something to happen there in the future. We have learnt more about Moiraine then we ever did in the books, little details that are not outside teh scope of the character and add something. Lets be honest in the books Moiraine is Gandalf, as readers we know very very very little about her, that kind of character worked in the 90's but in 2023 it comes across as flat and non book loving audiences would just not feel any connection to her. As for not showing the hunt, Rafe explained that he had a very different season 2 arc planned out, and then he lost his Matt and had to keep him in Tar Valon, this meant he had to rewrite large parts of season 2. I think people are struggling to understand what an Adaptation is, it is not copying the source material and simply cutting out X% because you can't film it. every time something is cut out you have to consider what message or theme you are losing and then find ways to fit it in somewhere else in the context of the sets, cast and time you have available. My friend talked a few of us through what needed to be done to adapt his dark materials (which he worked closely on), as he has pointed out there are some huge deviations from the books in that series and each was made because making a TV show is just different. You can't do any internal monologue, you have to be very careful about what the camera focuses on because it is all there on screen, in a book if RJ wants the reader to really pick something up then he can describe it in far more detail, in TV you can't point a big arrow at something and say "pay attention to this". The best thing he said when we where talking about criticism online was this. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and always criticism is louder then agreement, but, those who criticise that X has been done have to also accept that if the show was made the way they want as many people would lambast it and attack it because of those same reasons, maybe that scene makes sense, but maybe if you add that you lose the budget for Falme, or you fail to set something up that is going to be important in season 4 or 5. unless you have been in the room with the writers and show runners and producers and all the other hundreds of people who make the choices on these things you can't simply say this should have been done instead of this. Finally he said that people also need to remember that everyone involved is creative, no one wants to simply take something and copy it word for word, scene for scene, no Director would want to be given the book and told "film it this way" Peter Jackson added his flourishes to Lord of the Rings, the writers, directors and actors of His Dark Materials where all given licence to bring something of themselves to that project. As he said even something as fixed as shakespear is made differently every time a different actor and director get to work on it. No it is not about anyone thinking they are better then Robert Jordan, but it is about letting creative human beings go ahead and create, if you didn't give them that agency then no one would sign on, or if they did it would simply be for a pay day and nothing more and then you would have an awful show with no soul.

People on here have suggested that given the whole bowl of the winds storyline is a bit boring and has no bearing on the story that needs to be told here (How Rand and the EF5 get to the last battle with the skills they need to win it) then you replace the bowl of the winds with Callandor. The girls go hunting for that.

I mean the source material for the boys is pretty much the same as the show, and that opening scene was also lifted from a genuine fan theory about how antman would beat thanos although that was a different hole lol.