34 minutes ago, Shawlee said:

Could be a complete speculation honestly, and I want people to tell me if this is wishful thinking but do you think Elayne just bonded Rand on the season 2 finale? I have a feeling they are bringing/replacing the Birgitte Bonding story line forward? I mean if you notice the weaves passed between Lan and Moiraine in the scene where she reopens the bond, and there was a weave for a moment that passed from elaine to rand, it looked identical. It could just be they are using all 5 elements and mistook that as warder bond weave. However, even Nynaeve can't heal a wound from shaddar logath dagger. It was Flinn and the two yellows together that saved Rand, when he got stabbed by it. This is not a wound that can be healed with only saidar, it needs saidin as well. I DON'T KNOW but I have a feeling they might just make the storyline where only reason Elayne could heal him is because she tethered Rand to her life-force. What do you think 🤔?

I don't, but what I do think is she just created the affinity for someone she's healed as Nynaeve had with Egwene in the books, allowing her to find the group in Camelyn in EOTW

17 minutes ago, WoT you say said:

I believe Cadsuane was mentioned in passing by an Aes Sedai in one of the WT scenes. I can’t remember which one though; would need to re-watch and update this thread. Anyone else remember noticing that? I was excited to hear it at the time, because I assumed it meant we would meet Cadsuane later, and I enjoyed her character in the books. 
 

My guess on Verin is that she is a Darkfriend. That’s such a fantastic element of the books that I can’t see it being left out without a good reason. With Verin having a sister named Adelas in the show, I assume Vandene is subsumed in Verin. So with the S2 example of Barthanes being ordered to kill his aunt, and possibly his own mother if necessary, maybe we’ll see Verin struggle with being ordered to kill Adelas?

Cadsuane was mentioned, but it could just be an easter egg, not foreshadowing. 

And yes, your thoughts on Verin align with mine.

6 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

Rafe has stated that the writers had a mouth drip moment when he revealed a major character dies so that leads me to believe he is not keeping her in the show, now she might return but if the Finn are being removed I can see her being dead dead and Lanfer as well. 

Aside from the EF5 and Lan, I don't think anyone is safe in the TV series. 

I legitimately don't think they're looking to treat Egwene as the Dragon Reborn. I think what they are doing is setting up Egwene as the main protagonist who watches as her best friend and former lover becomes a 3,000 year old legend who is going to to break the world to save it, then watch him struggle as he becomes a ruthless dictator and potentially insane.  As she learns to trust this violent monster to do the honourable thing.

We are getting very little of what's happening in Rand's head (only what he's impacting in the world, and how others  treat him),  and so for most of the second half, I think they're going to play Rand as a villain (think Dumai's Wells from the Aes Sedai perspective, or the Nobility of Cairhien, or any other decision as he becomes "emperor"). Elayne had a speech about him becoming a king and that he needs to- she will see it, Egwene won't, and that will be the character conflict. 

Then they will have him interact with Tam for Veins of Gold, and show that there is a very big difference between a man being hard (pardon the pun), and a man being strong. 

That has been my expectation since about 1/2 way through S1, and nothing I've seen to date makes me want to change my mind.

thanks!! Didn't know that could happen. and yeah, I'm thinking they get rid of both of them. Neither of their AMOL closures are really satisfying, so better just to leave them

29 minutes ago, Scarloc99 said:

I think Moiraine is going, possibly to never cone back, that is the catalyst for so much of Rands growth and development. Cadsuane will come back at that point, personally I am much happier with Shohreh as Elaida she has a much much bigger rold then Cadsuane has in the books, lets be fair Cadsuane basicly spends her time either pissing rand off, or being banished by him. 

See, you're still thinking Rand is the main character of the series. There is very little Cadsuane does that Moiraine wouldn't work better for, you keep your lead actress, and its a byproduct of eliminating the Finns, which is already a possibility.

It's a shame we can't do Polls:

1. Moiraine's book arc remains untouched, and Ms. Pike is about to go fishing for 3 seasons

2. Moiraine's journey ends in a different way, more permanent way, but at the same point in the series

3. Moiraine assumes Cadsuane's role in the show, and they redo all of her and Lan's arcs as a result.

These also happen to be in my order of preference.

17 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

I too wish they'd made Shohreh  in the role of Cadsuane. Hopefully they get another top actress to play Caddy.

 

I hope they make Elaida nasty and slightly deranged, but they do seem to want to avoid having a character being truly evil, even though there are plenty of real people throughout history that you can say were evil.  I'm really hoping they do the DO well. I'm eager to see what they come up with. 

Hopefully we get Cadsuane. No guarantee of that, especially if they eliminate the Finn and the attendant catfight.

7 minutes ago, nsmallw said:

Having cast such a big actress for Elaida, Shohreh Aghdashloo, i expect that they increase her time on screen much like they've done with Moiraine being Rosamund Pike.

Possibly, or given the role size, I could see then organizing her shooting schedule so they get everything they need from her for the entire season in 2-3 days. for season 3-5, and then make her a regular in season 6.

15 hours ago, Skipp said:

No actual indication, could have been a stunt double for all we currently know.

or the Couladin casting.

33 minutes ago, Skipp said:

 

I do wonder when we will get SH.  I am thinking end of season 3 or season 4 at the earliest.  I wonder if that is the reason they have left the Myrddraal mute in the show to contrast with SH.  I personally think it was a mistake as I loved how creepy they could be when they decided to speak but it would make more sense in this type of case.

I'm not even sure we get Shayol Ghul yet, let alone Shadar Haran. Since the seals have been repurposed to capture the Forsaken, not the DO, the whole approach to the end of the book is up in the air.  Plus, given the massive time constraints, I don't know how much Forsaken on Forsaken action we're really going to get

4 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I mean, he had 1600 pages to be creative, he could have focused on finishing Fain off properly, or writing a better Verin send off, or just writing better books, Robert Jordan did not leave him a half finished book, he left him a load of notes and ideas that he had to put together into a story. 
 

Now personally I actually like Androl, I like the arc he gets and I enjoyed the use of gateways, I really hope we see the volcano scene. But, we don’t get any real depth to Ansrol, he is a typical BS character, the issue is he looked better then the actually RJ characters that Brandon tried to change. 
 

 

Creativity in terms of something new that hadn't had RJ's direct hand in; it's a big difference, as I understand it, to create from scratch, versus playing with someone else's toys.

15 minutes ago, Elendir said:

I hope that finn gate/arc will be cut out. It doesn't give much to character development. Making it properly would need a lot of money and I can be easily replaced or be done differently.

 

Any prophecy can be done by other way, for example by Min. Any artefact can be found in Rhuiden. Mo can be imprisoned in White Tower.

There is one really, really big problem with cutting out the Finn gates... you'd have to come up with a way of taking those players off the board, either permanently, or in some other fashion that can be undone for the end of the story

1 hour ago, Elder_Haman said:

Except that I believe the weave for a gateway takes more time than it does for Blink. And I don't recall anyone holding any other weaves at the same time as channeling a gateway. So it could be a problematic weave to try and use mid battle.

Moggy's gate didn't look like it took much time at all.  I do grant you that no one held one and channeled something else, but we know channellers can split weaves (Rands bolts of doom), and Gateways were tied off in the books (Avi's bomb).

plus we don't know if they're going to make Gateways power restricted yet.  And I don't trust the SFX team not to want to replicate something that was legitimately cool. So Travelling can't be too easy, or the audience will start going "why don't they just"

6 minutes ago, Scarloc99 said:

Why this obsession with portal stones by people? RJ didn’t use them beyond book 4 so I would be happy if they were removed. Rand needed one because he had hundreads of Aiel, if it sticks as it does the end of episode 8 you have a far smaller number to transport so Rand could just learn to teleport. 

I won't speak for others, but for me, it's because they don't have to deal with the Black Wind in the Ways (which still hasn't paid off), they help expand the metaphysical world of WoT, and most importantly, because they don't open up the plot issues that Travelling does. Sanderson abused the crap out of gateways, but I would refer you to Blink's fight scene against the Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past to see what you could really do with Travel Gateways in combat.  We've already had people talking about why Ishy didn't just port behind Egwene's shield, and they're right. In world, it can be done.

Portal stones are very rare, still require traveling to and from them (they aren't Travelling's instantaneous), and don't have to deal with paying off the constant use of the Ways needing to pay off with the Wind catching a bunch of people.

But I expect they'll just use a Way Gate.

1 hour ago, Robbin Poh said:

Brandon is certainly fit to criticize, but his opinion on what was done correctly or wrong is not necessarily true. Don't forget that Brandon himself assigned so many pages to Androl, and many character interactions took on a two dimensional cardboard tone.

So much focus spent on developing how to hack gateways, but what was the point? Just to insert a little action-adventure story arc for Androl and his Aes Sedai

The point to this was to give one of the most prolific fantasy authors in history the ability to exercise some creativity while writing 1600 pages or more of someone else's project. It was the "let me have something" point so he wasn't just transcribing notes, but actually writing.

I wasn't thrilled with the way the gateways were abused in the Last Battle, but they did help solve the problem of the Light being grossly outmanned by the Dark

56 minutes ago, Pandemonium said:

It looks like Caemlyn might not be in season 3.  maybe that will be a season 4, unless Morgase was already cast?

The thought that occurred to me last night - S3 opens with Domon docking in Camelyn and our heroes offloading, picking up Elaida and the boys, and then most of them heading back to the tower on the way to the Waste. 

There would also be a huge opportunity - move the Finn Gate from Tear to Camelyn, and have Elaida's foretelling come from the Finn instead of an inate talent.  Have the Camelyn library supply the Portal Stone knowledge to Rand, and off to Rhuidean they go.

The Tanchico thing is interesting; Nyn and Elayne are going to spend very little - if any - time back at the White Tower.

17 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I mean Rafe has already laid the groundwork for future things, Verin, Alanna, the focus on the bond which I think he intends to make that land as a far more tense moment at the end of the series then BS did in the books, it really has the potential to be an edge of seat moment. 
 

Egwene and her dealing with the pain of dealing with Renna, that foreshadows her being beaten in the tower and hopefully the Toh moment. It was a massive shame they couldn’t do the scene Rafe wrote at the end of season 1 with Egwene saving Nynaeve with herbs and skill, because again that bookends really nicely the end of season 8. 
 

So there are plenty of moments running through from season to season, if you think about the books most of the really major “prophesy” moments happened once Robert Jordan knew he was getting enough book space to pay them off, so really book 4 onwards. 
 

I do agree that he has an overall orc of what each season will cover, and then individual episodes are written by the team, and then the director of each episode gets to make tweaks and changes based on how they want to film things, but those main themes and scenes I think have been planned out. 

There's a big difference between random foreshadowing, and specific projections of future events, especially of Min's visions. The only show I've ever seen put shot footage in the can for years is Babylon 5, and it didn't do much of it. Given cast turnover risk, I think they'll continue to be careful with specifics, even if general foreshadowing is there

21 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

Rafe has planned out an 8 season arc and has not changed that, season 3 is being made with the intention that the 8 seasons arc remains. So at this point in time I don’t see that changing. 

I think there's a big difference between laying out the arcs and overall structure, and having the individual scenes identified.  So I expect what we'll continue to get is visions that payoff in the season itself, but few if any specifics that go across seasons that aren't really freaking obvious. So we may get the Finn's speech to Mat about Tuon and his eye, and Min's panicked ones at the Tower or Cairhien, but few others.

2 hours ago, DreadLord31 said:

I wouldn’t say his comments about the writing are balanced; but I would say overall he does share opinions both good and bad about the show. And I feel the same way. 
 

The acting is superb. The directing - they are getting the most out of the actors. The CGI was much, much better than S1. 
 

As Tv, it’s pretty darn good - I think BS said he thought S2 of WoT was better than RoP (and I totally agree!) 

 

What BS says about the writing though was something like “I know it’s not everyone, but for me, I can’t enjoy something unless there is set-up and pay-off … and the show isn’t doing that.” Yes, yes, I know he didn’t say those exact words. But watch the Dusty Wheel Episode of his watch through with Matt Hatch and Daniel Greene. That is the spirit/gist of what he said! 
 

I also thought it was quite interesting to see the three of them disagree about how Taverene works, about how SL dagger works, and about bad-guys not doing obvious things to easily win. 

I think this is a good summary of how I interpreted Brandon's comments on the series, if you expand it to include their debate around Moiraine and the Oaths. 

I think WoT S2 was decent television (I haven't / won't watch RoP so can't compare, but it was better than GoT8), I think Season 2 is light years ahead of Season 1, and that the writing team did get better at internal consistency. They're still not good at it, but they did get better.  Hopefully with 3 relatively straight forward plots next season, they are able to take the time to set things up and pay them off more effectively.

Also, from a certain point of view, if they show that Egwene is doing everything on her own, her outcome could be considered a payoff to that. But the thing with Theme that I think Brandon is missing is it's the most subtle part of an artistic work to develop, and as an author, he has months (most authors have years) to ensure the theme is consistently developed across the length of the story. But script writers don't. I honestly can't think of any TV (aside from maybe Breaking Bad and the Sopranos (as you sow, so shall you reap), and Sons of Anarchy (cough, Hamlet, cough) where complex overarching themes were successfully applied

So of the two, from an enjoyment perspective, I think it much more important that they fix the internal consistency issue first, and worry about the overarching theme later, since Rand still has the entire stone versus steel arc to go through.

17 hours ago, Finnssss22 said:

<<snip>>

 

My best educated guess for 8 seasons is something along the lines of...

S1 book 1+NS

S2 books 2+3

S3 book 4

S4 books 5+6

S5 and S6 books 7-11

S7 and S8 books 12-14

Ah, this is where the difference lies, then. I expect almost all of season 8 to be used for book 14, with maybe only Genji and Veins of Gold pulled in from book 13.  In envision Season 7 ends with cliffhangers - Mat going in and Lan charging the Gap, and season 8 opening with Veins.  

I also don't think we get the Cairhien Docks and Dumai's Wells in the same season. They're too big emotional moments to have them too close together. So I expect the first ends season 4, and the second season 5. 

So with that, seasons I think seasons 6 and 7 need to cover most of books 7 through 13 - everything after Dumai's Wells up through Egwene as Amyrlin and Perrin forging the hammer. Not saying it can't be done (eradicate the Shaido at Cairhien, for example, eliminates the kidnapping entirely), but it's going to be very hard

2 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

<<Snips>>

 

I like these kind of numbers but I think you have to look at it slightly differently, you are comparing the telling of an entire story end to end (LOTR) to what is really just the opening chapter (WOT). 

Now when that fat is all cut off the meat of the real story needing to be told we lose stuff, lore, history, and so Rafe then creates scenes to allow that stuff to be added back in in a new format, he looks for threads across maybe 5-6 storylines and then tries to weave them into a succinct self contained thread for the TV show to get across that point clearly. 

 

In season 2 Moiraine was needed, first of all because she is not in book 2 but the audience needs to stay invested in her so the emotonal hit of what happens to her later really hits. The bond thing was important because again it is key not just to Lan's arc, but also to Rand and the last battle, so we have seen what happens when the bond is lost because of death, and the difference if the bond is removed (I think in season 1 Moiraine un bonded Lan rather then shielding, in season 2 we saw her re bond him), again that will be important at the last battle. 

 

I also think one of the biggest takeaways from LOTR is that something on the page that is maybe only 10 mins of read time (battle of Helms Deep) on screen needs far far far more time to give justice to. 

I get what you're saying, but it's all the fat that has to be cut off the bone, with only 5-6 storylines being left, before they add back some new things to try and bridge the lore that makes me thing the cuts are going to be very deep.  So yep, it's the 6 main plotlines represented by the EF5 + Elayne, and cut off almost all the side branches and tertiary characters. 

Your Helm's Deep comparison is also apt, because we need to find run time for the major battle set pieces involving Perrin in the Two Rivers, Mat and Couladin at Cairhien, Dumai's Wells, The War at the Tower, Tarmon Gaidon, and maybe one of Rand's battle with the Seanchan (in Arad Doman?),  Perrin with the Shaido, or the Compulsed Borderlander fights , dpeending on how big the fight at the cleansing is. Each of those would be half to most of an episode each (only minor inserts for dramatic tension) and big chunks of the seasons budgets. And I expect TG to be the last 3 episodes of the show (Tuon leaving, Egwene leaving, the Pipe). So there's almost a season worth of combat across the remaining 6 years. Because it's Helms Deep or Battle of the Bastards they'll be compared to.

I'm along for the ride, don't get be wrong, but I'm torn - I don't know if it's better than them to cut more entire plotlines, and leave time for the rest to breathe, or for them to try and keep as much as they can, but create a rushed, unearned feeling in their emotional payoffs.  I'll use Elaida as an example - how much screen time do you think we'll get from her as Amyrlin? 20 min? 30 min? over 4 seasons? She can do a lot, but earning her outcome is going to be very difficult. So is it just better to show her sit down as Amyrlin and not again until Egwene is captured, or should they show what's happening inside so we know Egwene is justified? Decisions decisions...

5 minutes ago, Finnssss22 said:

 

Not how it works. Not even remotely. 

RJ liked describing things in detail and took up a lot of pages.

The show can encompass pages and pages of description in seconds on screen.

Dialog also isn't an issue as the books are not what would be considered heavy dialog from a screen writer's perspective. 

The issue going from PoV to 3rd person information delivery. 

The books could deliver mountains of information on history, character/world background, prophesies and attitudes quite easily in multiple pages.

The show has to deliver it through straight up dialog most of the time.

Dialog just in general eats the most screen time by far and now you're adding even more.

 

Regardless a simple page count is not going to get any meaningful results.

All of what you say is true, and were arguments discussed before the series started. But now, we have 2 seasons of actual evidence of Rafe's approach to adaptation and the depth of cuts. And its comparable to the usual measuring stick of fantasy adaptation (with similar artists' writing style, even)

The showrunners have already cut almost 1/3 of the covered plot content in the first two seasons, while adding maybe an hour of content not in the 14 main books per season. So maybe it's not 6 whole books worth of content, maybe it's only 3 or 4 more.  But more major cuts HAVE to be made. And the slog by itself isn't enough

2 hours ago, EmreY said:

 

One day we'll move beyond this.  I hope to live long enough to see that day.

Not sure which way you mean this - creators need to get over forcing character arcs where none existed in source material, or I need to get over wishing they wouldn't do it? 

9 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

I know about the timer and that you're supposed to sync it and all that. Still wish that they'd have been able to put it on twitch and not have to deal with any of that.

This would have been a copyright strike without doubt, especially with it being such new content. so this is what they could do

8 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Yes.

They have 26k followers.
Season 1 they were the official Amazon "WoT" after show.
Their lives routinely get 10k+ viewers.
(The Brandon Sanderson secrets one got 84k)

In terms of "WoT" Content creators, they have one of the largest followings.
Greene is larger, but I don't think he's a "WoT" content creator?

 

Greene started out as purely a WoT Creator and book tuber, but has expanded to many other things, and has self-published a book.

I think the reality is if you posted a lot of content about the books,  there's not much left to do besides review the episodes. And the more you loved the novels, the harder it will be - as the Dusty Wheel guy said - to Unlearn what you have learned.