When he first heard Thom I didn’t notice the singing. I though he was maybe distracted by a game of dice and I thought we were going to see him go and win a dozen rolls in a row or something.

It would have been so easy to have any character, even the guys selling it to him, to just say something “you have the Dark One’s luck” or something like that to hint that there is a supernatural element to Mat’s fortunes.

And wasn’t Noal supposed to be really rough looking? Like a crazy old man with a bunch of scars or something? I don’t remember his description exactly. Plus, I may be misremembering but didn’t one of the EF kids call Jain “she” at one point? Don’t hold me to that one.

It was the juxtaposition of the naieve/idyllic upbringing the the EF group with the horror of the Enemy that makes the difference in times work in the book. The tone changes as the kids grow. They were to WoT what the Hobbits and the Shire were to LotR. But instead, we started this show off from the very first episode with a Shire where the Hobbits are thieves, drunks, adulterers, pushing their women off cliffs into a river, casually sleeping with each other, etc. if you can’t at least recognize that that is a change of tone then there is no way to even debate the merits of it.

This is very old, but I just read an article about Lord of the Rings. Apparently, Ian McKellen instructed Sean Aston to grab Elijah Wood’s hand when he first sees a recovered Frodo in Rivendell because it is a small detail in the books that fans would be looking for and would be excited to see. Now obviously LotR is not a spot-on adaptation, but this is the way to approach it - what details, no matter how small, can we squeeze out of the books while doing our best to adapt the author’s story to new medium. This show very, very clearly takes a polar opposite approach - what details can we change while changing the story in a way that we think it should go.

Rafe Judkins has entered the chat, folks.

For what it is worth, if you go through frame by frame, there are sometimes spear shafts and sometimes not, and I’m guessing they couldn’t put them in for some of the moves that are impossible with actual spears. Further, she wields them as swords, the one in her right hand often looks a bit like a curved scimitar, and in a couple frames it even looks like it has a crossguard and at one point a hand guard. I’m not arguing that they were swords anymore, but they definitely botched the effects and choreography. No matter what she was holding, she was sword fighting and if were to believe they were spears, we also need to then believe she’s completely incompetent with them and holds them high up the shaft near the blade and uses them with downward slices…

It’s pretty clear in the book that she has to be angry to channel.

So, who is getting stabbed next week? It is the Battle of Emond’s Field, so there is bound to be some martial violence. Loial has already been stabbed by the Shadar Logoth dagger. Perrin has already taken an axe to the chest and been stabbed in the side, just this season. Alanna just took a dozen or so bolts. If I had to guess, my money would be on Faile “dying” as a motivation to set Perrin off. I suppose Bain and Chiad are lesser possibilities. Maksim is another possibility if they want to beat the warder/aes sedai relationship angst to death.

Nyn’s block is poorly defined. She already managed to get through it to help examine the a’dam for no apparent reason other than the writers needed her to. If I had to guess, based on what we’ve seen elsewhere with Eggy and her a’dam, I’m guessing they are going to have Nyn break her block in some sort of battle with wills with Moggy and give her a scene where she overcomes the impossible through sheer will or something like that.

Agree 100%. I’ve been saying this since day 1. They tried to make this show something different than the books and it is Wheel of Time in name only, a façade.

That got a little weird. I get that it is a bawdy song and I agree that it was great the way Elayne didn't realize what she was getting in to, but once the song started, the women all began rubbing themselves in such a weird way.

“adapting the utilization of the magic to fit specific plot requirements” is the same as saying “changing the lore and creating inconsistencies to write the story the way we want to.” Hence the amateur garbage they keep delivering.

Agree 100%. Deus ex machina is one of the laziest and most immature story devices and its overuse always lessens the stakes. It doesn’t matter if the genre is fantasy, competent writers will look to minimize it. It is especially obnoxious in film and television where there is often less exposition like you might get in a book to explain it. But you’re spot on - the writers didn’t need to do it here, but they wrote themselves a problem they likely didn’t have an immediate solution for and waved their magic little writers’ wands and made some healers. This show is lousy with example after example of this and even uses it in lieu of actual character growth. On top op this, how was Eggy’s first lesson with Moiraine in this show? Based on what we’ve been show, the Cauthon girls are vastly more powerful than Egwene if this show wants any internal consistency.

I just watched it frame by frame. When she first manifests them, the one in her right hand might be a spear as there might be a visible spear shaft behind her hand. She then proceeds to downward slash everything in sight, twirl it over her head, do some sort of downward block (with clearly no spear shaft visible). If I were to concede that they were spears so as not to destroy the lore, then the other option is pure dog crap fight choreography that’s intended to look cool but makes no sense.

The only way these writers know how to show a relationship is by having characters bang. They couldn’t write an evolving relationship to save their lives.

Reactions while watching: 1. Wait, what? Ishy was in TAR 95 years ago? 2. Moggy spitting in the food🤣. Edit: Oh wait, it went from funny to horrifying. 3. I know what they are setting up with the little girl, but they’ve already used the cliched trope of having the closed and distant woman begin to melt when she watches the warrior being good with children in season 1 when Nyn and Lan had the exact same scene… 5. Thom still sucks. They gave him some colors in his coat, but he still has nothing in common at all with the book character. They also didn’t use him enough in S1 to make me think that Mat (who was not in his right mind then) would hear that voice across a market, have it mean anything, then even get excited about finding him. 6. This TAR nonsense is backwards. Eggy didn’t just stumble through it last episode, she showed mastery. She was able to instantly control it, guide another through it, and visit the dreams she wanted. But now she’s learning? 7. Rand’s talk with Moiraine was…interesting. We finally got a saidin/saidar distinction (should have happened in S1), and even a cut-off mention of it being gendered. But Rand’s lines seem to be implying that the writers want to take this in some direction where everyone realizes there’s just one power? I’m not entirely sure where they are going with this. 8. Good grief, if Mat’s sisters are going to heal Alanna….yep, it happened. There are absolutely zero stakes in this show, wounds of any kind mean nothing unless the writers want them to, and everyone can heal just about anything. 9. Avi with swords was complete and utter garbage. I don’t care if they weren’t real, she still wielded them, fought with them. And no, they weren’t spears. Tanchico was fun, Elayne was fun, Moggy was creepy, all of that was good.

I hear a lot of theorizing about

Ooof, same. I know it’s all fantasy gobbledygook but we have decades of pronunciation to go on and some of the show pronunciations make my ears cry; Tar Valon is by far the worst offender. Audiobooks aside, surely Jordan and Sanderson have said some of these names in the past.

If season 4 is not yet greenlit, what is the turnaround between given the go-ahead and releasing a season?

Rafe did not explain anything, he justified post hoc.

I agree with all that except for Perrin. I think they could have easily shown his struggles with violence by killing a Whitecloak. No need for the fridging (or wife).

I agree with your points about Jordan‘s shortcomings. I think the forsaken are more interesting in the show so far but I also think they did Ishy dirty because that was an incredibly weak death. As for the romance, I love how Jordan covered for it, especially with the boys, by running joke that each thought the other two were better with the ladies than himself. I think part of the issue I and others had by starting the series off with Rand sleeping with eggy, Perrin, Perrin being married, and Mat seemingly having relationships with the ladies is that we miss out on that charm and awkwardness of the boys growing up, learning about the world, but also assuming they’re not doing it as well as the others.

Hearsay, but it would also make sense, especially if WoT is underperforming.

I don’t remember if he was ambidextrous in the books, but I do know that after