Also it wasn't clear that he was stabbing Rand. Because of the angle, he could have been stabbing something just behind Rand.

Masema. But also Elayne. (Although she does not look at all like I pictured - funny how that works).

Why would Moiraine and Lan know about the consequences of severing? Moiraine has been on the hunt for the Dragon, how much experience has she had with women who have been severed? Would Lan have any idea? I didn't find those scenes to be bad at all. I think that Moiraine is going to be going on Siuan's journey in place of being held by the Finn. That's actually a pretty smart choice. It keeps your A-list actress around, gives her a really good, emotional arc to play with while at the same time eliminating a fun, but ultimately unnecessary plotline.

Episode length. You can really feel that the writers have just a little more room to breathe. That extra 10-12 minutes/episode really matters.

Great catch!

My $0.02 on E3: The Rand/Selene thing is working. She's insidious. And part of Rand recognizes that. The party was great. "Leave me again and I'll kill you" was great. Alvaro Morte is a treasure. Looks like Asmo and Logain are going to be merged, which is smart I think. Ishy trying the okie-doke with Perrin is also great. Elayne is very Elayne and the relationship with Egwene feels very authentic. Not sure what Liandrin is up to with Mat and Min. Nynaeve's journey through the rings was powerful storytelling. They did a great job with it and really seemed to break Nynaeve. I'm wondering where they'll go with her from here. Despite all of the changes, most of the characters feel like their book counterparts. My biggest exceptions are Lan and Mat. Lan is just a completely different character - I enjoy the character and what Henney is doing as an actor, but it's definitely the biggest change. Mat has yet to come into his own. But they've inverted his personality I think. Whereas book Mat always wanted to let his friends down by running off, he never found himself able to do it. This Mat actually let his friends down and thinks that is his defining feature. Curious to see how they pay this off. Great episode. Best of the series. 9.5/10

My $0.02 on Episode 2: Rand and Selene are banging. Okay, I guess. I do like the fact that what Selene is offering him (you can let me use you while pretending you're someone else) seems to bother him a little bit. I also think it was an interesting juxtaposition of his aggressiveness after just killing with the power. Excited to see where they take Rand this season - we got to see all of his humanity and also his dark side. And we can question to what extent the killing of the orderly was planned. How far is he already gone. Kate Fleetwood is amazing. Really enjoyed Verin's gut punch to Moiraine. Yeah, I know about the Dragon and the girls and your plans. They've set it up well for Verin to meet Mat and get him "on the board". Elayne does not look like I wanted her to. But she does act like Elayne. Perfect combination of snooty and approachable. I love the way they brought her little brewing experiment. Great foundation for her later discoveries. Also, Eggy and Elayne clearly have good on screen chemistry. Donal Finn as Mat is seamless and he hasn't had that much screentime yet. Not sure what's going on with Min's vision, but it is fairly obvious to me that Mat isn't stabbing Rand, but someone near him. Min is growing on me, though she's still not at all what Min looks like in my head canon. Keep on eye on Masema. He kicked ass and the actor (Arnas Fedaravicius, Sithric from The Last Kingdom) is a really good actor. There's potential for that to be a more fleshed out storyline. I love, love, love the look of the Seanchan. Love the damane. Love the pacifiers. Love the facepaint. Love the nails. Love it. And they are absolutely terrifying. Are they ever going to address how everyone (*cough* Loial *cough*) is still alive after Fal Dara? It's the one thing that is really bothering me. Great episode. I'm super invested. 8.5/10

My $0.02 on Episode 1: Love the Darkfriend Social as the open. Ishy is well-written and well-acted and they've decided to lean harder into the horror that has always been part of WoT. The bath scene with Moiraine was interesting. It was a great callback to the bathtub scene in S1E1 that I felt pretty "meh" about. The callback was fantastic, especially juxtaposed with Lan's absence highlighting the separation in their relationship. As I thought about it more, I realized: This is a good way to set up cutting the Tower of Genji. Instead of foreknowledge that she would "die" by falling thru the Ter'Angreal necessitating the shift in the bond, it is Moiraine's deep depression at having been cut off from the source that leads her to be fatalistic and drive Lan away. Eggy and Nyn at the tower was probably my least favorite part of the episode. But I do like the way that they are setting up jealousy between Egwene and Nyn ("10 times stronger!"). Both actresses have nailed their characters (even though I could really do without Nyn learning sword play). Liandrin is wonderfully wicked. Glad they gave her more to do. I don't love the casual references to everyone's sexuality (it's by far the least interesting dimension of the story and just kind of gets in the way for me - I really don't care whether Warders bone down at all, much less with whom), but I'm appreciative of the fact that Egwene didn't stumble into Littlefinger's brothel full of totties and dangling tackle. Perrin seems to be getting more to do and it's good. I like the combination of Elyas and Hurin (one of my predictions that actually came true!) and am curious about how the Wolfdream develops. (Are the visions communication from wolves who were watching in real life? Or perhaps Hopper watching from the dream?) I also loved his conversation with Ingtar at the graves - and the way Ingtar seems to feel for Perrin's loss. The boiling rage in Perrin is palpable at this point. The fight at the end was ... a little too long if I'm being honest. I liked them showing Lan as doggedly determined to defend Moiraine to the very bitter end, but it (once again) seemed to diminish Lan somehow - even though he was admittedly pretty awesome in parts. I think cutting the length by about 33% would have helped. (Also, did Moiraine see Verin's weaves? And can a woman who has been stilled still see weaves? IIRC, no.) Overall this was a solid, if slow, episode. The locations feel more ... solid to me (except some of the White Tower which still seems wanting in the VFX department in places) and the world feels more lived in. The plot makes sense and hasn't dramatically shifted anything important about the lore. 8/10.

Can we please not do the tired: "this is a bastardization of everything RJ stood for, he would be rolling in his grave!" "No! This show is the most faithful adaptation of anything ever!" "No, it's not because [my politics]" "Yes it is, because [MY politics]." thing anymore? It is so. bleeding. tiresome. Talk about the specific things you did and didn't like and why without resorting to all of the over-the-top language and chest-beating. We can have nuanced discussions. Really, we can. Just take a breath, stop catastrophizing everything, and try to talk about specifics.

Thanks! Yes. I definitely will. But I got home from a long, not great, day at work yesterday. Didn't start watching until fairly late (for me) and just wasn't as engaged with the show as I wanted to be. By the time I'd finished E2, I was too tired and decided to call it a night. I'm going to give it another watch tonight when my synapses are firing better. My initial impressions were mostly positive though.

Did you entirely miss the point of that scene? The trollocs are undeniably evil. Ishamael is convincing the little girl to ignore what she intuitively knows to be true about the nature of evil. Which is, in and of itself, evil.

For sure. If they were going to split up the EFF, Lan and Moiraine should have both been with Rand. Lan could have been split off pre-final battle by some contrivance of Ishy's. (And it would have given another opportunity to show Lan's character who would have never allowed himself to be parted from Moiraine, knowing what she was about to do.)

I understand the arguments. They even make sense. But absolutely nothing would have been lost from that scene if the writers had allowed Lan to notice her approaching. That would have elevated Lan and would have been an even stronger nod to the books. We can agree to disagree on this one.

I understand. But there’s a huge difference between “Nyn is a great tracker” and “Nyn is stealthy enough to sneak up on a well-trained Warder and put a blade to his throat.” Allowing her to get close enough to kill Lan without being seen diminishes Lan significantly.

What did I miss? To me, it seemed pretty obvious that there was some Mat stuff missing from E7. I mean the way they cut the group parting at the Ways was pretty blatant.

A few more thoughts on the re-watch: The pacing of E1 could have been improved by moving the Rand/Egwene romance to the beginning of the episode and locating it outside. Rand and Egwene could have had romantic time together and then argued about the upcoming ceremony. It would have also been a good time to slip in a quick glimpse of a Fade. Getting a quick look at a Fade before Lan entered the Winespring would have been a better tension amplifier for that scene and brought out the more horror-y aspects. E2 was a really good episode right up to the end when the VFX let us down in Shadar Logoth. Also, I hate how they did Lan dirty at the end. Nynaeve sneaking up on him was unnecessary and diminishes Lan's badassery. E3 was also a really good episode. Love Thom. Noted that Rand pulls away from the Darkfriend trying to seduce him (foreshadowing?). Good episode all the way through, but... I would have had the Aes Sedai be preparing to capture Logain rather than already having captured him. Because... The fight in E4 was just messy. If it had been a snatch and grab on Logain's camp, that would have still allowed them to demonstrate cool Aes Sedai stuff. Logain could have still killed Karene (during the initial shielding) and they could scrap the Nynaeve mass healing, which was really unnecessary. I would have had her "accidentally" heal one person near Lan (if it had to be him), which would be enough to explain why the Aes Sedai think she's so powerful, but not such a deus ex. The rest of E4 was pretty enjoyable - I especially liked the scene with Rand, Thom and Mat at the farm. E5 was really good. I liked the Stepin arc quite a bit and think the writers did a pretty good job of setting up the tower politics. E6 was okay. I forgive the writers for episodes 7 and 8 which were just sort of a wreck because of COVID and Barney Harris's absence.

Honestly, for me it was better on re-watch.

It does, though. Because the scenes had to be rewritten from scratch. They had to make sense but sacrifice a major character and account for mandatory social distancing by the actors. And they had to do it on a compressed time schedule. In hindsight, it would have been better to wait on releasing season one. But no one really knew that at the time.

I love that channel.

I agree with everything else you said. You're spot on about not focusing enough on the EFF, but the time given to Logain and Steppin wasn't wasted. The rest of the story wasn't told from the proper perspective. Have Steppin's melt down be witnessed by Mat or Perrin or Rand to set up the stakes of the bond in a way that will be personal to them later. Have Logain's capture be about Nynaeve's reaction to Logain's madness instead of yet another chance to show her being epic. I still think Stepin's story was the best written part of the whole season.

Taking Loial to the Stedding for healing would be a good way to introduce the concept and a good reason to pull characters apart.

Implies? Sure. But I think it's jumping the gun to assume that's what it will be. Maybe it means they make out and he thinks its serious, before she starts flirting openly with other men. Maybe it means that she teases him, drawing him in before rejecting consummation, then encouraging him to go be with other women. Lots of different ways it could play out without ever having sexy time.

I really dig Loial, actually. I know he's not tall enough. But the actor (whose first name is Hammed and whose last name I don't feel like googling to get the spelling right but don't want to disrespect by getting wrong) was so compelling. From the first time he was on screen, I wanted more.

Upon rewatch: Here's the metric I used to judge season one - I graded on a curve. So, A+ is the best grade. By definition very few shows are complete failures. Very few shows are massive successes. So... What does an A+ fantasy show look like? I don't think we know the answer to that since GoT crashed so badly. But it is certainly the standard bearer. Let's call it an A-. What does an F look like? Well, there are a few fantasy shows that are hot trash. Shannara is always mentioned. Let's call that a D-. Then let's look at stuff in the middle. Carnival Row, House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, The Witcher, His Dark Materials, Once Upon a Time, Cursed, Fate: the Winx Saga, Locke and Key, Shadow and Bone, etc. And Wheel of Time. Wheel of Time matches up well against most of those other shows for me (and I've watched almost all of them). So they are doing some things very well. But the writing is not good enough to truly separate it the way Thrones did. So its hard to call it great. It's a C+/B- for me. FWIW, the stuff I've seen from S2 makes me optimistic that it will improve.

Betting my fellow mods disagree, lol.