I'm going to go with the obvious guess that they're combining books two and three.

Rand will go off alone like in book three, but then get sucked into a portal world with Lanfear. After that, he'll either end up in Tear or Falme. Seems likely he'll run into Min during his travels, and probably stir up some crazy Ta'veren shit in some towns he passes through.

Mat gets caught by the reds and healed, joins up with Thom, starts manifesting his luck power, beats up Galad and Gawyn, goes off to save Egwene after the Seanchen capture.

Egwene and Nynaeve join up with Elayne in Tar Valon, spend some time in the tower - Elaida will be there too, with backing from Liandrin against Siuan. Lots of politics. Eventually Egwene will be handed over to the Seanchean by the black Ajah, Elayne and Nynaeve will go to rescue her.

Perrin and Loial go hunting for the horn with Elyas/Hurin, Uno, and Ingtar. Perrin learns about his wolf powers during the hunt and meets Faile. This group will be dealing mostly with threats related to Fain and possibly whitecloaks.

Moiraine is shielded and feels humbled, realizes she has to let Rand find his own way for a while---he's the dragon, can't be shepherded so easily, the pattern will guide him better than she can.  She and Lan will spend the first half of this season on a research mission, looking for better prophecies and trying to remove the shield. The second half of the season will be about finding and rejoining Rand before the big climax.

I'm actually terrible at WOT geography, so it's hard for me to really picture how everything might play out on a map. Depends on how much they use The Ways and other fast travel methods. But I feel like everybody ends the season in the same place, which means we either get The Stone of Tear, or the battle at Falme, but probably not both.

Either way, we get the big moment with the horn, and the Seanchan will be in the middle of it. Probably also the Aiel. I fully expect to meet Aviendha next season

4 minutes ago, Windigo said:

The mistakes are growing, it is one thing when I see issues with cannon that have been changed,  but when the show is changing the rules and canon of the show it is a big problem.  They really need a show continuity editor. 

Yeah, I agree. Nothing is going to piss off book fans more than playing it fast and loose with the magic rules. I get changing the rules---the magic system from the books is probably impossible to translate accurately---but they need tight standards for whatever they go with.

From what I've read it seems like Sanderson was helping some with this aspect, but he was cut out of the process on these episodes.

3 hours ago, Skipp said:

Posting this from reddit but I don't have a direct quote for the sources but this has been gathered from a number of interviews and behind the scene things.

 

 

If true we certainly had a subpar episode compared to what we should have had. 

 

While I enjoyed episode 8 it was certainly disappointing to me as a book fan but I am not going to let it impact my enjoyment of waiting for season 2.

I haven't done a full rewatch of this episode yet, but I've watched some reaction videos, and mulled it over a little more, and this is pretty much where I stand.

This episode was definitely kind of a hot mess. Just as messy as episode one, or maybe even messier, but for different reasons.

It's pretty obvious that a lot of the problems come from last minute changes to the Fal Dara battle. They had been planning on doing a lot of practical effects for trollocs, and suddenly had to come up with an ending where there was basically zero melee fighting at all. Melee fighting requires people directly interacting with pure CGI creatures, which I'm sure is very time consuming and painstaking to pull off in a believable way. It's not something you can do at the last minute while your budget is evaporating under your feet.

So, the result is Fal Dara soldiers fighting Trollocs through arrow slits. And the women Channelers have to obliterate the trollocs before they get close enough to actually threaten anybody. But you still have to add some kind of danger to that scene to have any impact, so we get the whole burnout sequence.

Even so, the Nynaeve death fakeout was a terrible call. Same for the Loial death fakeout. Too many death fakeouts in general. They even had the fake Moiraine death during the blight dream sequence.

I think they knew they had a really messy episode and decided to throw everything and the kitchen sink in there to try and make it feel like a big deal. Smoke and mirrors, basically

The script for this episode had a lot of mistakes like you might see in the messy first draft of a work of fiction. There are things here that should've been cut before they made it to the screen,

That said, episodes 2 through 7 were all pretty well executed. I didn't love 6, but that was more about choices they made than execution. 

Episode one felt like it had been hacked to bits by studio execs, but the Winternight battle was great. Episode eight felt broken like they filmed the first draft of a script. The stuff with Rand and Moiraine was cool, and the burnout sequence was neat until the Nynaeve death fakeout, but everything else in the episode felt half-baked.

So, out of eight episodes, they managed to do solid work for six of them, and the other two had some good bits mixed in. That ain't bad. Plenty of shows started worse and eventually became really good.

But for me, this show isn't on some kind of bubble. I don't have any arbitrary line in my head where I'm going to bail if they don't measure up. Most TV shows go through good and bad patches during their run. Same with book series---Crossroads of Twilight exists, and some of the other "slog" books are tough to get through as well. But it takes more than that to make me jump ship.

I figure this show will be like any other long work of fiction. Some parts will be better than others, and one messy episode isn't going to matter that much in the larger scheme. Not for me, anyway.

1 hour ago, JenniferL said:

This was posted in the Articles and Interviews thread, but I think it belongs here too. Rafe clarifies the intention behind some of what we saw and that Moiraine really is stilled and not just shielded. 
 

https://www.cbr.com/wheel-of-time-rafe-judkins-interview/

I like this interview because Rafe isn't being shy about the purely commercial/economic justifications for a lot of his decision making process.

For example, the Moiraine/Lan/Nynaeve tension is definitely a big deal in the books, but from a TV-writer's perspective it's a huge opportunity to suck in certain viewers who aren't even fans of fantasy fiction. Romances, in general, are one of the most tried and true ways to keep people hooked on a TV show, so they're going to be brought way more to the forefront. Lots of screen time. But there's always a trade-off.

More romance screen time means less screen time for other things. Reduce the amount of romance in this season, and there'd be a lot more time to do other important plot stuff.

But from watching non-reader reaction videos, I've noticed that the romance scenes are working exactly as intended. In certain episodes, those scenes are literally the highlight moments for some non-readers, and other plot points are much less important.

Rafe seems to be very naturally inclined to go with the standard TV playbook whenever he gets a chance. Love triangles, fakeouts, cliffhangers, romantic melodrama, shock-value scenes, big overblown moments that turn things up to 11, unanswered questions, drip-feeding details to keep people tuning in...

A lot of this might also be coming from Amazon. I'm sure they wanted to throw as many tropes as possible into this season to maximize the chances of commercial success.

When I've said the show has a pulpy sensibility, this is the stuff I'm talking about. For me, it's not really a criticism---I actually enjoy that whole vibe most of the time---but I never really expected to see the Wheel of Time filtered  through that kind of aesthetic. It is a strange experience, to say the least. But I am curious to see how it plays out going forward.

For me this is just a very weird show. Not what I expected when it was first announced. I'm having a very good time with it, but I'm not surprised that some other readers are much less pleased.

I'm still on board, but I went in expecting some pretty radical changes. From the beginning I've tried to see the WOT TV universe, and the WOT book universe as totally separate entities, and it has worked pretty well most of the time. 

That said, this episode was a weird one. It probably caused more mental friction for me than any previous episode. There were a lot of moments where my book knowledge was clashing with what was happening on screen.

In the end I still found it quite entertaining but I don't think it was a homerun. Some moments didn't hit right.

Loved everything with Rand and Moiraine's story. That was all solid to me.

Ishy was great, best thing in the episode.

Pretty sure Moiraine isn't stilled. Just shielded and tied off.

Perrin needs to drop the way of the leaf ASAP---the way of the leaf makes for boring TV.

Enjoyed the Tarwin's gap battle, including the burnout aspect. I know it violates book lore, but it worked on screen, and was a good way to showcase the danger of the one power.

The Nynaeve death fakeout was a bit too far--- it felt like they've gone to that well a few too many times. .

Does Egwene have some weird special power to resurrect the dead in the show? The way it played on screen didn't feel like normal healing. There was just a tiny thread of the power.

I feel 100% confident that Loial isn't dead. He's replacing Mat's storyline here and will go hunting for the horn with Perrin.

The most surprising thing about this show to me continues to be the pulpy sensibility. They absolutely don't shy away from leaning into melodrama and old school TV tropes. I actually enjoy that sort of vibe, so it's not an issue for me. But I certainly didn't expect it going in.

Overall, this felt like the episode where they really sever ties with any attempt to follow the book story timeline. I imagine we'll continue to see the book inspiration behind many parts of the show, but from here on out it will be two books per season, sometime three, playing out simultaneously, with much more drastic storyline changes and more compression. It should make things easier because it will be harder to directly compare it to the source, and the writers will have more freedom to adapt the structure for effective delivery within the constraints of the TV medium.

Overall I would give the season somewhere between 7.5 and 8.5... Best episodes were 7, 5, 4, and 3. Weakest episodes were 1 and 6. Episode 8 is pretty much on par with episode 2 for me, right in the middle.

I suspect a lot of non-book readers would rank the episodes very differently. Episode 6, for instance, was very well done and had a ton of great scenes. My problems with it mostly stem from my book knowledge. I knew what I was missing out on, basically.

I need to marathon the whole season soon and see how it hits me in binge mode.

9 minutes ago, TheDreadReader said:

 

 

It might be useful to think of how the last battle conceptually played out in AMOL when thinking about how they might end season 1.  

Leak spoilers below...

20 minutes ago, FanofKnotai said:

When you take into consideration the idea the books portray “The wheel weaves as the wheel wills”, these things are more than mere coincidences. All of these things were specifically placed there by the pattern to show them their path. 
 

Also, at this point Moiraine still doesn’t know for sure (but she has a STRONG idea) who the DR is. So taking Rand/Perrin/Mat makes sense. 
 

Then we have Mins viewings in Baerlon. She sees that all of them are connected. She sees a darkness around them together that the little light pinpricks are starting to fill up(I think that’s how she describes it??‍♂️). And she says once Nyn shows up it all seems more inevitable. 

Moiraine at this point doesn’t know about the dreams and so is convinced she needs to get everyone to TV to consult with Siuan. Which is why she’s so adamant at persuading Nynaeve. 
 

Once these threats to the Eye from three different sources are revealed to her she changes her plans. 
 

I don’t see how it’s a shot in the dark. She already knew what the Eye was because she had been there before and so knew that the DR, whichever one it was, was the only one who could wield it. Admittedly this part we don’t know till after they decide to go there, but with all the rest were given before this just comes as further justification imo. 
 

plus,…you know…it’s the title of the book. I would understand more if people said it took “too” long to decide to go there after all the hints they were given. But not that it came out of nowhere. 
 

As far as the ways…Lan told them Caemlyn was surrounded by Shadowspawn. And Moiraine said even if it wasn’t, they needed to get to the Eye NOW (turns out she was wrong on this one). Not in the several weeks it would take to ride there. So again, no choice but to alter the plans. 
 

 

I don't want to shit on Eye of The World here, because, as I said, I really love the book. I love all of the first three books, and enjoy the quest-style storylines a lot more than some WOT fans. 

But for me, that whole sequence actually makes less sense when you know more about the world and the overall context. At that moment in the story, viewing it through the eyes of Rand with limited knowledge, it's pretty easy to just shrug and go along with it. Moiraine is all-knowing, or seems that way to the EF5, and so it seems like everyone should just do exactly what she says. 

But the blight is an incredibly dangerous place, as are The Ways. She's going there with two untrained female channelers, one warder, and three farm boys who don't know how to fight. She knows these people are all potentially very important to the future of the entire world, but instead of taking them to safety and making a careful plan, she leads them right into the heart of perilous danger. And she makes the decision just on the basis of a few coincidences that she believes must be some kind of signal from the pattern.

She has already been to The Eye once, which means she shouldn't be able to find it again, at least according to most people's understanding of how The Eye works. But she seems sure that her need is so great it will show up for her anyway. 

There are all sorts of very good reasons not to go, but she makes the decision with total conviction. She's rolling the dice, hoping that Ta'veren and The Pattern will come along and save her bacon in the end. It only makes sense if you feel absolutely certain that a massive wave of destiny is going to carry you to victory. 

It's not that much different than what they did in the show version. Siuan's been having strange dreams about The Eye. She thinks the Dark One might be weak, but he's getting stronger, so there's a limited window of time to act. Let's yeet the untrained dragon in his general direction and hope for the best. Maybe The Pattern will protect us. The justification is very flimsy. 

But that's just my opinion. I understand if everyone doesn't agree, and I'm not trying to change anybody's mind about TEOTW. It's an extremely fun book, and I love the constant feeling of desperation, especially in the Rand/Mat sections.

The plot twist in Camelyn doesn't ruin anything for me. But I did hope that they would come up with a better way to do it in the show.

5 hours ago, FanofKnotai said:

How was it rushed when the Eye was mentioned throughout almost the entire book? Rand’s dream in Baerlon. Rand’s dream on Domon’s boat. Rand’s dream after Four Kings. Perrin’s dream with the Tinkers. The story the Tinkers told Perrin and Elyas…once Moiraine FINALLY heard all these things on top of the story Loial told, she knew the Eye should have been their destination all along. How is that rushed? 

The way it comes about felt very rushed to me because the whole decision is arrived at due to an avalanche of coincidences that pop up at the 3/4 mark of the book. Yes, some of the seeds had been planted earlier, but none of the EF5 even knew what The Eye was. It was not the focus of the story at all for the majority of the book.

With nothing more than a series of coincidences to go on, Moiraine suddenly decides to drag a bunch of young, inexperienced people into the ways, which are incredibly dangerous, and then take them all the way to the blight. It is a total shot in the dark and makes no tactical sense at all. 

The only reason it works at all on the page is because Moiraine is so secretive that the reader assumes she knows exactly what she's doing. And also because the book had just introduced the concept of Ta'veren, which made it seem marginally more plausible for her to make such a sudden, rash decision based on nothing more than reading the tea leaves.

Don't get me wrong, I love EOTW. I think I actually like it more than a lot of WOT fans. The book never fails to entertain me. But every time I read the scene in Caemlyn where they decide to go to The Eye, I have to kind of shut off my brain for a few pages to stop myself from thinking too hard about the logic of it.

What they did in the show honestly seems to have the exact same problems, which surprises me. I figured they'd go out of their way to make the decision feel more logical, but it seems like they just kind of threw something together.

I think the real reason Mat didn't go is because they lost the actor and had to hack together a scene to explain it. If there's no Barney at all in the next two episodes, then we'll know for sure.

I'm hoping they were able to get access to him and grab a few scenes to drop into the next couple of episodes, but I don't think so.

I'm sure they've come up with some kind of internal motivation to explain everything without ruining Mat's character. They've had plenty of time to stew on it now, and I can see a lot of ways to make his decision feel relatable.

5 hours ago, ilovezam said:

 

Is that right? I watched the video and my understanding was that he'd put LOTR right in the middle of the spectrum, and WoT between LOTR and The Shining. He even straight up said "75%" at one point.

 

I'm still mostly enjoying the show at this point, but we've gotten 3 out of 6 episodes where it doesn't follow the books for the most part. Change doesn't automatically mean bad since Ep 4 was amazing IMO, but I really struggled with 5, and even more so with 6.

 

I cannot imagine it being considered to be on the same tier as LOTR with regards to faithfulness to source material

I totally agree with this take. As of episode 6, I would put this a little further from the source material than LOTR.

I've been mostly enjoying the changes so far, just because I like not knowing exactly what will happen next, and I see the TV WOT universe and the book WOT universe as separate, but related, things. 

I loved episodes 4 and 5, but had some major issues with the most recent episode, and am eager for them to put the main plot back in the driver's seat again. I feel like most of the changes in the last three episodes derive from the decision to make Moiraine the primary protagonist for this season. To get to the heart of her character, they have to establish a lot about the White Tower and her place in it. Lots of stuff that isn't explored at all in book 1.

Episode 6 is kind of the culmination of that, and I think it served its purpose extremely well. It defines Moiraine, but at the unfortunate expense of shoving everything else completely to the side for an entire episode. I think I would've appreciated it a lot more in a binge format where I could immediately move on to the next main story beat.

I'm starting to wonder how much of Barney Harris's material was cut from the final edit of the whole season when they found out he wasn't going to be available at the end.

Where there whole character sub-plots they had to cut around when they realized they wouldn't be able to pay them off in Fal Dara? Did they decide to reduce his screen time because they didn't want people to get too attached to him?

There was quite a bit of Rand/Mat stuff in the first 3 episodes. Then suddenly all their scenes started getting a lot shorter. We drop in on them for a few seconds, and then cut away real quick without giving the scenes time to sink in. The Grinwell farm stuff, for instance, was plenty dramatic, but it felt like everything was very rushed.

Anyway, it seems possible that some of the issues with focus on side-plots these last couple of episodes (especially in ep 6) might be a case of editing around scenes that had to be thrown out.

Things felt off in episode 6, in pretty much the same way that episode 1 felt off. It was less obvious, because this episode had so many outstanding scenes, but now that I've had time to let it sink in, I think episode 6 feels kind of broken.

I wonder how different it is from the script Sanderson read? Maybe he'll comment on it eventually.

I think if Mat isn't in episode 7 at all, Min will make some comment about, "One of you is missing, there should be another one here!"

She'll be freaking out about it, and she'll make it seem like everything is much more dangerous now because Mat didn't come along.

Maybe she'll even say something about the pattern, and the missing person always being there in other turnings. A nod to book fans.  

Probably goes a little beyond the scope/specificity of things Min can usually say based on her visions, but they're going to have to do some heavy lifting to smooth out the story if they don't have any more Mat scenes this season. 

Also, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Min is pivotal in identifying the dragon. I don't think she'll be the only factor, but something she says will lead to a cascade of  events that ultimately reveals him.

They moved her back this late into the season for practical reasons.  Now it's time to reveal the dragon, and they have access to a powerful seer at just the moment when she's needed for the plot. They're going to take advantage of that.  

9 minutes ago, elteryon said:

 

 

Felt like a Ter'Angreal to TAR?

Yep, had the same thought. That room didn't feel like a real world place. More like an idealized meeting place based on Siuan's past. I'm guessing Siuan is a dreamer, based on this and her comments about dreams.

This episode actually rubbed me the wrong way several times, and I've been more or less fully on board up to now.

I was fine with the diversion into tower politics and Aes Sedai world building in the last episode, but two in a row like this was a little too far. It's time to start dealing with book material again soon. More Rand and Mat please.... They haven't had a real pivotal plotline since episode 3. Too long.

The total focus on Moiraine in this episode made the ending feel rushed. It didn't work on screen when everybody agreed to go.  The reason for going to The Eye was always a weak point in the first book. Very rushed. This was different, but has the exact same problem. They should've taken the time to come up with something better for the adaptation, but they would've had to center the episode on that, and they clearly felt tower politics was more important than making the plot feel coherent.

I'm complaining a lot here, but I actually liked the episode anyway. I was entertained and engaged throughout. It might be the best written (from a dialogue standpoint, anyway) and acted episode so far. But as a book fan there were things that made me rage.

Best moment = Moiraine healing Mat

Worst moment = the rushed ending

I'm going to re-watch shortly, and will probably like it more the second time. But I'm ready for them to make the book stuff the main plot again for a few episodes. The first three episodes were following the spine of the story pretty closely. Everything was different from the book, but I could clearly see EOTW at the core of it.

The last three episodes have diverged from that. They were all good, but we're running out of episodes now.

The moment where Moiraine heals Mat is a pretty close approximation of a book scene. Different but well done and I loved it. More of that please.

9 minutes ago, A Memory Of Why said:

Just musing here, but what if!!

 

In this timeline Else is Brigette Reborn?

A lot of archery imagery here, her whole family had a bow so good guess she'd end up learning, plus all the B dolls.

 

Unfortunately the Pattern needed to kill her so she could be ready when the time comes so it sent two TV...

 

Unlikely but a fun thought, interesting to think how that would impact Matt and her dynamics later..

Yeah, that would be cool if she remembers him and that encounter later in the show.

2 minutes ago, CaddySedai said:

 

I'd never describe RJ as YA (even in part) or the show for that matter. But to your point one of his strengths was the stories were accessible to all ages.

 

Whether you were under 13, A teen, an adult - you would find something to like about the stories. Written so its not too hard to understand for youths, but not childish so as to turn off older readers. And not too gruesome to turn off those youths.

 

He walked a fine line between writers like Zelazny and Tolkien. 

Yeah, that's a better description than mine but I think we mean the same thing.

The difference these days is how much shows and even books are pigeonholed into very tight boxes in terms of age range. If you start a show with a younger character, you're almost forced to censor the hell out of your content by networks.

One more quick thought about this show up to now...

I LOVE how it seems light and breezy... Almost YA in terms of darkness and violence. And then suddenly it turns everything up to 11.

It's like a huge fake-out in every episode so far. Which is very true to the spirit of the books. A lot of the time RJ's prose can feel a little YA in tone, but then out of the blue horrible shocking things suddenly start happening. 

This show is absolutely capturing that dynamic.

I liked this episode a lot. Not sure if it's my favorite yet. Need to think on it.

There were things I liked and didn't like.

• Everything with the tinkers was awesome. Way better than I expected.
• Aram was especially awesome. The actor playing him has mad charisma and is incredibly talented.
• I liked most of the world building stuff in the Aes Sedai camp.
• Oddly, I'm reminded of vintage Star Trek in the way they're doing world building in this show. Old Trek, both the original series and next generation, was built around standalone episodes with a new threat every week. Every episode they had to build up a new alien species -- their culture, physical attributes, and etc. Consequently, there were lots of on the nose conversations about these things scattered around everywhere. With the huge amount of lore in WOT, they're kind of forced to do the same thing in pretty much every episode. This will probably continue for a while, and that's okay as long as they're doing it well.
• I could feel the strain on the budget during the forest battle scene. It felt very much like a TV battle scene, not a movie battle scene. This is fine for me -- I don't care about stuff like this that much -- but the people complaining about budget issues aren't just blowing smoke. Take away some of the shiny effects, and it could be a gun battle between two "armies" in a MacGyver episode. I know that's a little hyperbolic, but it really felt cheap, much more than Winternight, which I thought was more than adequate.
• Nyneave and Lan's romance is progressing nicely.
• I was really enjoying Thom, and it sucks that he's gone so fast.
• I love how dark this show is willing to get. The final moment with the Grinwells...
• Rand and Mat abandoning Thom to the fade feels a little different with them being more mature characters. Wasn't a fan of how that ended, even though it was faithful to the books in some ways.
• Everything about the final showdown with Logain was awesome.
• Holy shit at Nyneave's AOE heal.
• I feel like there are a million easter eggs in this episode for fans. Can't wait till people dig into it.

14 minutes ago, Skipp said:

Here is an interesting post on the WoT Show reddit.

 

This user has complied most of the major reviews out there and compares them with the author's previous works and it has seemed to match my own conclusions. Authors that tend to review genre type shows review WoT more favourably, Where as the authors who reviewed the show negatively, for the most part, either rarely review genre TV or review genre TV negatively often.  The redditor has done a rather nice deep dive into this.

 

While this is ultimately a small sample size, a total of 28 reviews it quite an interesting look.

 

Yeah I saw this. It was a pretty cool breakdown, and kind of confirmed something I had been suspecting since sometime yesterday. There seemed to be this big divide between "nerd" media, and more traditional outlets. 

Seems like this show, at least in the first season, mostly appeals to people who already like fantasy or science fiction, and doesn't cross over all that well with people who don't. Which probably shouldn't be surprising since EOTW generally has less crossover appeal than almost any book in the series.  

I LOVE Eye of the World. I loved it back then, and I love it now. So many great scenes. I enjoyed all the traveling, and the constant struggle to survive while on the run. I really liked the horror elements too. When I first read it way back in the day I was mostly a horror fiction fan, and the scene at the farmhouse with Rand and Tam at the beginning just hooked me like a fish. 

But no matter how cool EOTW is, at least to people like me, there's no denying that it only has a tiny fraction of the elements that ultimately make this series really great. 

This whole clean vs dirty thing with the production design is really just an aesthetic taste issue, I think. 

Like, go watch David Lynch's Dune, then watch the new version. The art direction in the David Lynch version is much more vibrant with colors everywhere. It's not really meant to resemble real life. The new one is harsh, spare, empty... Still good, but very different. I actually prefer the look of the Lynch version, even though the new one is a better telling of the story. 

I think with fantasy and historical shows we've gotten in a loop where critics (and maybe even some fans) think everything needs to look "real" to be good. But actually "real" is not objectively better than more stylized settings. 

This adaptation of WOT blasts you with color and contrast. It's almost like the Wizard of Oz or something... Very, very stylized with images that pop. More like a cartoon in motion than any attempt to faithfully recreate reality, at least based on the trailers. 

Some of the critics seem to pick up on this, and those have praised the production design. Others are totally missing the distinction. 

Overall I think this bright, colorful, vibrant style is more true to the vision of the books, and I'm glad they went that way, even though it's clearly hurting the critical reception some. 

6 minutes ago, WalterKohl said:

Yeah...  I was surprised how bulky they where...  in my head they were just snug to the finger, these seem bulkier and like they would be a pain in the backside to wear...  Of course I don't like flashy jewelry, but I guess this is more bling for the show and will make great merch....  ? 

Yeah the serpent rings are just ugly IMO.

I think they wanted them to be really noticeable on camera. A practical consideration rather than aesthetic. I get it, but I think they took it way too far.

Based on reading a lot of these interviewers over the last week or so, I get the feeling that Rafe and co actively wanted some members of the production team to not be book fans. In some respects it seems like they were happy to have outsider perspectives on certain things.

Overall I'm impressed with most of the costume choices I've seen. I especially like the weird aesthetic of the Whitecloaks. The only big misses for me are Lan (but that's growing on me), the tinkers, the Aes Sedai field/combat costumes--I'm thinking particularly about that shot of the Reds in the field---and the serpent rings.

Moiraine's travel outfit looks great. The pants are fine. And I love the way the Aes Sedai really go all in on their Ajah colors. All the footage of the sisters in the tower wearing their formal outfits looks great.

Lorne Balfe's crazy prophetic Age of Legends rock opera concept was probably my favorite thing about this show.

Until today.

This is pretty much beyond my wildest dreams of the lengths they would go for fans of the books. And for new people to introduce them to the world.

WOW!

If true, I'm going to go ahead and take this as a good sign that Amazon are getting a very positive response from test audiences. And probably good analytics data, too, in terms of the hype that's building.

Could be other reasons, though. Maybe they're just all in, hell for leather, on building a huge fantasy audience on their streaming service. And maybe covid played a role, too.

But I'm trying to remember... I don't think I've ever heard of a big show like this getting a third season renewal before season one even aired a single episode. I'm pretty sure I've seen it happen with second seasons, but never for season 3.

On the non-gendered soul thing... I honestly think it's pretty simple. The showrunners believed, rightly or wrongly (rightly IMO) that you can't have a mainstream show in today's world where the chosen one who will save the world absolutely has to be a dude.

I mean, yes, you could do that, but it would draw a lot of distracting negativity from some of the same people who would love other things about the WOT universe, like the greater prominence of female characters in general.

If you want to use inclusivity as a selling point, but then make it clear from the beginning that only one of the boys can stop the gathering evil, it kind of undermines your whole sales pitch right out of the gate.

Additionally, by going this way, you make it easier and more natural to get Egwene out of Emonds field, and make her role in the early part of the story much more prominent, which is a good thing since she becomes so important later.

Making Egwene important early brings her story to the forefront from the beginning, which will help them make season one feel more like the later books where Egwene is pretty much the second protagonist. This way, you get that dynamic from the get-go.