could be a satisfying way to tie up that plot. no pun intended

nope. they are aes sedai. NOBODY is going to question aes sedai, period. especially not in tar valon. anyway, in the books themselves elaida had the king of illian kidnapped, and he was brought to the docks rolled inside a carpet. nobody questions the logistics of that about the books. if aes sedai can "disappear" a king from a hostile nation, would they have a problem with three girls?

I disagree. While the logistics of the kidnapping are very easy to explain in a variety of ways and i really don't see why some people keep insisting that we need to be shown the details, there is exactly one issue that could cause confusion, and that's how they crossed the continent in a couple of days. Many fantasy shows are rightly criticized for moving characters around at the speed of plot; in this case there's a perfect explanation and it's good to show it. It didn't even cost screen time, because liandrin and nynaeve needed to have that "i have betrayed many things" conversatiin anyway. As for the shields, we book readers know the difference between tied and held shields. And while escaping from a tied shield is possible, it requires skill, so it may be above the capability of two novices and an accepted with a block. It would be really nice if logain explained it to rand, though

how does she know they didn't just pick a random direction in the woods, got just far enough to not be visible from the house, and hide there? it's what they ended up doing eventually. and unless they were in a place surrounded on 3 sides by sheer cliffs with only a narrow route of access (admittedly, given the scenery prevalent in the show, it's not too unlikely), it should be possible to just cut through the woods. yes, it's dangerous to walk in the woods by night like that, but nowhere near as dangerous as picking the obvious escape route against a forsaken. then again, moiraine knew she could find horses at the stable, and knew lanfear would not find horses, so it's not a bad plan. they just got unlucky. but wait, if lanfear knew there was a stable there, and she knew they were running there, she could have traveled. instead she got there by foot, so she was tracking them. i mean, if she does not know where they are going, she can try to track them - by night, without any skill at it. if she does know where they are going, she can use a gateway. but ok, it's only a very minor plot hole, and the scene was powerful

Indeed, the last trailer points there. On one hand, the whole setup - them thinking lan is a darkfriend - feels completely wrong and will be hard to swallow. On the other, we may actually see lan win a fight! For the first time in the whole show! Yay! I hope he does not kill the other warders

Speaking of lanfear falling for tricks, how did she track moiraine and rand to the stable and afterwards? If she could see them, she'd have taken them. Otherwise, for all her ancoent cunning, following track in the woods by night is not part of her skill set

Speaking of the whole aviendha business, i liked valda. "The more questions i ask, the more answers i get" is a great villain-defining moment. I can't say if he truly believes that it's the right way to fight the shadow, or if he does not care; and i can't say which is more scary. I liked the fight; the common mistake movies make is having the mooks attack one at a time while the others just dance around; here, just like in the shaiel scene, the aiel keeps jumping around to avoid being cornered. It's enough to keep suspension of disbelief, at least. I don't think even the greatest martial artist would stand much chances against many opponents with sword and armor, but that's the kind of mildly superhuman feats you expect from aiel Bornhald jr was also well introduced. In the books he didn't have anything special distinguishing him from other whitecloaks; here he's the one who took pity of a prisoner. His reason for hating aybara is also a lot more substantial than "he was roughly in the same geographical area my father was killed, he must be responsible somehow". At the same time, perrin saved him; now both of them have reason to hate and mistrust the other, but both also have proof that the other is a decent, caring person. There's good potential there

iirc, she mentions rand being her first in the book. and she's never shown interest in any other man. considering many maidens hit heavily on men, the fact that aviendha does not do that makes her shy for far dareis mai standard. none of her dealings with rand factored in my assessment as for nudity and disrobing, that's no cultural taboo for aiel. And i can bring you plenty of real world comparisons, because in finland people routinely take saunas naked, even mixed sexes groups, and you can find plenty of people who are generally shy/introverted but have no issued disrobing in front of a bunch of strangers. it doesn't mean anything.

while I also didn't enjoy that part, it can be explained. I mean, the previous times they were in the ways, the slightest bit of channeling attracted the black wind. would nynaeve try to channel in those conditions? indeed. and in any case, maidens of the spears were very sexually assertive in the books, maidens kisses, anyone? I agree it's not much like aviendha, she's shyer than most, but it fits very well with aiel culture.

indeed, moiraine has tried to minimize collateral damage in any case I can think of. also, in the books rand distrusted her with no real reason, just because "aes sedai bad" and "two rivers stubborn", and that felt stupid. at least the accident with the ferry was intentionally meant to give rand better reasons for his mistrust, and this episode probably also has a similar function. by the way, anyone suspecting moiraine's sister may be a darkfriend? after barthanes entered the show, what she said in the previous episode about "doing what was necessary" to restore her family name can be taken ominously

in the very first episode, when the trollocs stormed emond field, mat threw himself out of a safe hiding spot to look for his sisters. mmat can definitely lead charges, even his show version

by the way, I absolutely love the way ishamael introduces himself. his good-natured voice while he lists his epithets, as if there was nothing wrong or strange with them and "betrayer of hope" was just a name like any other. makes me laugh and gives me the chills at the same time. speaking of which, they did a good job making the foresaken actually scary. every time I see one of them on screen, I'm like "ah crap". the books never gave me that reaction

what's so mysterious about it? liandrin is an aes sedai, in tar valon. she could walk around the city with a cart full of corpses, wave her ring around and nobody would ask questions - except perhaps "how may I be of help, aes sedai?" but even if she was a normal person, throw the unconscious girls in a cart, cover them with some sacs of mundane goods, and she can leave the city like any other merchant. or, just like there are secret passages out of the tower, there may be secret passages out of the city too. really, getting the girls out of the city is the most easily explainable mystery. everyone wondering about it should come up with a half dozen reasonable explanations in a minute. it's not worth spending screen time over it. if we want to investigate logistic mysteries, I am far more concerned about how a massive city can apparently exhist amid mountainous wilderness with no farms in sight and still get food. P.S. won't comment the episode, I also think it's been the best so far but I have nothing to add. except for one thing, I was hoping we would see rakens by now.

Well, latest episode clears that forever. Moiraine referred to ltt as rand previous reincarnation

"deep down, you are good!" well, more likely, "the dark one will sacrifice you and you will never achieve immortality. really, what were the odds anyway? what kind of a stupid decision it was to become darkfriend for a million-to-one odd?" and it would actually be true. actually, machin shin spoke truth to rand too. machin shin, the wind of wisdom. she comes the speaker of the stump, the bringer of marriages, loial's mother attend you all, for she comes

i rewatched, and realized i misunderstood elayne. i assumed she followed egwene to leave the tower with her, but she was just following egwene to see what she was doing, and possibly to keep her from doing something stupid. good elayne. of course liandrin immediately spoiled it. by book canon, liandrin shouldn't be powerful enough to keep the three girls shielded, even though none of them reached her full potential. iirc, nynaeve was roughly as strong as liandrin at the time they came back to the tower. or maybe it was egwene. anyway, liandrin may be capable of maintaining a shield on nynaeve at this point, but she can't hold all three girls together. but i'm willing to overlook it, it's not really important. maybe tv!liandrin is a bit stronger than her book counterpart. i doubt she already has access to forkroot

so, more marketing for high quality TV. they have to sell those somehow

they could move it around, but they would have to introduce mat as a competent fighter at some point. the books used that scene to tell readers that mat, who did nothing special until that point and spent a long time sick, was capable of fending for himself. on the same note, i do really hope the show does something for rand swordfighting. it would have been good to see him spar with errol once. in any case, they have to show him getting some training if they want his duel with turak to be believable

I think we can safely say that, on average, married people have more sex with a partner than single people. We can also safely say that people with a happy marriage also have good sex more often than people in an unhappy marriage - unless the unhappily married suffer through all their issues only because of how great is the sex. In general, people in a good relationship tend to be happier than people in a bad relationship, at least as far as their relationship is concerned. From this, we can without doubt conclude that people who display a higher level of happyness tend to be happier. 😁

You are right for the books, but it's the reverse in television. Here, putting up a bunch of da'covale in their canon garb would be very direct, and it could constitute softcore porn. While alanna talking of "seeking your pleasure"? Nothing is shown. I haven't noticed any gratuitous sex - a few dialogues in a sauna-like environment, but no actual exposure and not sexualized. Even alanna's comment, she's not explaining anything mechanically. So I would argue the tv show is as indirect as the books

yes, ok, there is no objective way to measure cultural prudishness. [historical tangent that has nothing to do with thread but may be interesting to some] I was thinking at people from the time covering table legs because they may be suggestive, which is the silliest extreme I ever heard of in the topic. I was also tapping into the notion that pleasure was considered bad even in a marriage, and sex was supposed to not be too enjoyable - though perhaps I picked this up from hearsay and it's not historically accurate. I do know for a fact that the church started to put out recomendations on which positions were allowed and which were not, and theologians were listing the ways you were allowed to touch boobs while other ways were sinful, and that started happening in the late middle age, I'm not sure how much of that was still observed in victorian era. On the other hand, a culture that executes homosexuals is not necessarily prudish, merely homophobic to the extreme. A culture that practices female genital mutilation may have a plethora of reasons, ranging from straight misoginy to just tradition. while we generally equate it with repression, a lot of different ancient cultures indipendently came up with the idea of chopping up pieces from the nether regions of both boys and girls; lacking a specific context, I'm ascribing it more to "humans are weird" than to anything specifically related to sexuality. those cultures may still encourage - or at least say nothing - a husband and wife to seek pleasure, while victorian culture tried to discourage even that, which is why I consider it the most sexually repressive I ever heard of. [end of historical tangent] regardless of any reason to rank cultures according to prudishness, that's irrelevant. My point was simply that in the past there were more liberal cultures and so we can't say "this is historically inaccurate"

just saying that she can keep pushing the narrative also after taking the three oaths "regarding logain and the reds, I spoke the truth" Yes, at some point she certainly said something true about logain and the reds; it doesn't have to cover all she ever said. "as aes sedai I cannot lie, and I confirm you this: logain was manipulated and set up as false dragon by power groups among the aes sedai" that power group including, most notably, her and leane. "the reds have allowed logain to flee and gain power" logain fled the tower during the red coup, and he gained power afterwards, so it's technically true

true for the general population, but aes sedai can just get healed. I'd think they could be more promiscuous than many. also, zigzagged in the real world. sure, std were a strong incentive on monogamy - and while I am unable to find confirmations, I would bet that most religions frowning on illicit sex and prostitution stemmed from seeing those disease as divine punishments. on the other hand, there were plenty of ancient civilizations - agrarian, preindustrial - that were very promiscuous, especially the ruling classes. romans and greeks had sex slaves and widespread same-sex relationships outside of marriage. though that sexual freedom was much lower for women, because of pregnancies. even in the middle ages europe was a lot less bigoted than it's generally known, with the church pushing for more restrictions on sexuality gradually in the late middle age. in fact, the most sexually repressive time was renaissance and victorian ages. those were the times when you could get burned at stake for homosexuality - in earlier times nobody cared much as long as it wasn't too obvious. again, a few nobles would stand out, but they were more exceptions. all in all, I think we can't take history to say what is or isn't realistic. in fact, history shows us a lot of different examples that can be used to justify pretty much anything

On the other hand, I liked it because it fits them so much. they are both extremely skilled social players. they can read volumes in a raised eyebrow. they can ask you a couple innocent questions and from those understand things about you that you yourself never suspected. they could read the comments in this forum and from those somehow predict who will win the next elections. so it makes so much sense for them to just spend some time around each other, mostly ignoring each other, and yet somehow understanding everything. I can see their married life. M looks at T T looks at M M looks at T T leaves without saying a word Thom noticed the slight twitching in moiraine's finger; it means she's nervous. and she gets nervous when she doesn't have a good breakfast. it means they run out of milk, so thom went to the market. Moiraine perfectly understands where he's going and why Just one word: ta'veren very convenient for the plot

even in the books there are places where characters throw around numbers wildly. i remember nynaeve remarking on the circle healing mat that it was twice as powerful as her, despite being made by a half dozen of the most powerful sisters available with vora's sa'angreal. so no, don't put much faith in characters throwing numbers.