Back in season 1, I speculated that one of the things they could do with Rand was completely exclude anything of his internal conflict from the camera, and it would all be about how other people reacted to him, effectively changing the story of WoT from "the price of carrying that mountain" to "pity the world that needs a hero". But this show running team very quickly proved they did not have the skill to do that without turning Rand into a tyrant. My current speculation - especially with the red door vision - is we're getting the Tower, taking the women off the board for a couple of seasons. I don't know if they'll do the whole release / rebirth / mind trap thing though. And while I expect Lanfear's outcome will be the same, the hand doing it will be different - I doubt they have time to build the "putting down a mad dog" thing. I don't think they'll give it to Rand because of Jon / Dany parallels, but I could see Meirin taking Mesaana's outcome. Cause Real Housewives of Randland

More Random thoughts based on the feedback - I know internally that a big chunk of time passed between Egwene's first foray into T'A'R and her trip with Moiraine, but they sucked at showing it; so again, Egwene looks overpowered and uber competent - Siuan's line that Elayne is out of the tower is not a lie - she's hunting black ajah, and was not given specifics how - the Amico / Joiya murder scene did take place in the books - only in the Stone, not the Tower, and with Egwene, not Elaida. And it does serve a story purpose - making it blatantly clear that Elaida is not Black. - time compression / storyline overlap has created a problem that none of the WG's are actually in the Tower to watch the collapse as due to production limitations, they need Egwene to be two places at once (the Waste and the Tower) - beefing Alannah's role up is beginning to feel like the "undercut the boys" complaints from Season 1 - once again, there is a woman in a much more prominent arc than was present in the books; this time in the battle of the 2R's - the Maxsim / Alannah scene is Frodo / Sam all over again. It was dumb then, and it's dumb now. But it's Hollywood fake drama - Natti getting barbecued, I suspect, is taking the place of murdering Perrin's family. That way, he doesn't get a second massive grief hit, given that they fridged his wife. - the interpretive dance approach for the Wave Mistress; I actually like that the Sea Folk channelers is a full body activity - this isn't exploding some dirt, or making a fire dragon; this is affecting the weather, and should be a massive effort. - I'll be curious to see how much of Egwene's vision was looking into people's dreams, and how much was her as a Dreamer Maybe more to come...

I thought it was a good, not great episode; too disjointed and exposition heavy to really flow as an episode, but it included a lot of book stuff, and I didn't hate all the newly created stuff. Random thoughts... - I was surprised at what happened to Natti, and disappointed that the horror of that moment was downplayed - yet again the Wolverine level of self healing ability in this show is robbing the Aes Sedai of any risk - Elaida and Siuan's interactions were great - Aviendha's few scenes were right out of the books, making me thing they'll go that way, and the Sister Wife thing makes me think we might get the Rand relationship after all - Elayne is so much more likeable in the show than in the books; stunned to see the Sea Folk, and thought the entire esthetic was great. - We got to see the proper destruction a warder can do; need to see Lan do this at least once before the end - the dream sequence was good; hate the fact that the intro of Egwene and Lanfear was forced beforehand, though. Could have done with a "who's the girl?" - Has Egwene failed at anything on the series yet? And final thought that I haven't seen anyone else call out, because it was a throwaway line, but years have passed since Moiraine's little chat about listening to the wind with Egwene in the Two Rivers. Man, I hate how bad TV is at conveying time's passage.

On the people scale thing, there was a fairly large push back during the later books phase of publishing about how out of control the army sizes were getting, and you can find pretty detailed breakdowns of the fact that the world couldn't support the number of people that were showing up - like Tarmon Gaidon accounting for 25% of the males in the Westlands or something, based on some calculations. And that there are hundreds of thousands of Aiel involved in the war. I think they could do with getting more extras involved - I'd like to see it get up to a couple hundred of people on both sides - but I don't think we need to see the Pelennor Fields scale battles until the very end. Even Dumai's Wells would be better served in the 4-5,000 combatants range, instead of the 40-50,000 they had.

I suspect that male channelers would be more likely to take over nations / build nations, mainly because they would not allow someone like Artur Hawkwing (assuming he couldn't channel) to stand up to them, and men were in general more powerful than women channelers. There would have been no 3 Oaths, at which point, it would become a much more authoritarian state, enforced by the volume and strength of channelers; Saidin would replace the sword in feudal society, and the King's champion would be the most powerful user of the Power in the world. And given their power, it would be mutually assured destruction, permanent cold wars, and somewhat constraining to society evolution. I think women who could channel would likely be stilled, but kept as breeding stock for more male channelers, as the need for replenishment of channelers to support the ruler and their armies would preclude destroying them. Hmmm. I don't think I have a good view of human nature. good knowledge of human history, but maybe not an optimistic view as a result.

I think they have to keep the kidnapping, because otherwise there is almost nothing for Perrin and Loial to do between the end of the War in the 2R and forging the hammer. Have her grabbed as part of the retreat from the Wells, and have Perrin and the Seanchan eliminate the Shaido at the end of the following season, and you can cut it down to maybe 1 episode worth of material.

I also don't think Meirin saw Rand's ancestor as anything resembling Rand; IMO, that was for the audiences' convenience and not actually intended to convey that the person actually looked that much like Rand

The only way I see this happening if it's a visual flashback aligned with Rand's little speech to Lanfear about Sammael and Rhorn M'doi...hope seemed to die that day. Visuals to accommodate the memory, and show the audience / Lanfear that it's real. Otherwise, a powerful moment, but doesn't impact our heroes

So based on what has been said above and shown so far, here's my villain take...all speculation The men are fairly straight forward I think Sammael is in Tear, taking Be'lal's place, and will be destroyed at the end of next season when Rand takes the Stone I think Asmodean shows up in the next couple of episodes and lasts a couple of seasons when an unknown assailant kills him in Tear (maybe after he takes Moraine's place in the little girl scene) sometime in season 5 I think Season 5 ends with Dumai's Wells, with the Black Tower but without Forsaken involvement I think Rahvin meets his end in season 6 in Camelyn - this and the Wells could be swapped in timing I think Taim is replacing Demandred, and the Black Tower is replacing the Sharans in the Last Battle. They were a WTF did they come from moment in the books and would be the worst kind of cheat in the series On the Women, I'm less sure, but one of them is with the Tower, and one is with the Seanchan I am not 100% sure of the timing because i don't know if the vision with Latra giving the Sarkanen to Rand was pre / post sealing, but there's a possibility the black lady with her was Semhirage. I expect Moggy's plotlines will remain mostly unchanged For Lanfear, see below; either she's almost the same, or .... Looking at what I put forward when I broke this down when the series was announced, I'm down to about 4 important plotlines I'm not sure if we're going to get: - Morgase, Tallanvor, Lini and the escape from Rhavin - Siuan, Leane, Logain and their trip to Salidar - The tower of Genji and what drives it - Galad and the Whitecloaks There are easy opportunities to cut off (if you'll pardon the pun) those plotlines over the next season or so. I think we're losing Illian, Berelain, the Red Veils, Shara, and Far Madding completely, and the other important ones (Salidar politics, the Menagerie, the kidnapping) will get pared down to a reasonable length

Not to point too fine a point of this, but many of the Judeo-Christian religious vows have origins almost as long. Imagine what were to happen to a shame based culture like Japan had all of their ancestors sworn an oath to uphold the 10 commandments, and then to become a leader of men, every feudal lord needed to find out they were breaking those oaths as samurai. Western society is guilt based, not shame based, and so our frame of reference for this kind of oath violation is really different than the Aiel's.

I think it had value because it literally showed that some Aiel could not move past a certain discovery, and they become stuck. It's foreshadowing.

Yes, and a speculation of mine (MAJOR BOOK / SERIES SPOILERS?) is that:

The other thing I'd toss out there is a reminder that LTT's genetic lineage was completely ended during the Breaking. So there is no way for anyone descending from LTT to exist in today's world - he had no surviving children.

Speaking of things I hate, but can't let go - I have a question:

Superheroes keep losing their masks, too...it's a Hollywood trope, or a contract obligation, or a lack of faith that audiences can't tell people without seeing their faces. Either way, this fits into the "hate it, but let it go" category for me