IMO, yes, it did change things by adding a layer of genuine unpredictability to the early narrative because there was no guarantee that the identity of the Dragon would in fact be the same in the show as in the books. I would also argue that it changed things by allowing Rafe and Co. to add layers to Egwene, Matt, Nynaeve, and Perrin's individual characters by offering hints as to why each of them might potentially be the Dragon Reborn.

I don't like the books despite having read some of them, but I can definitely say that, if I did like them, it still wouldn't have had any impact on my enjoyment of the show because I've resolved to treat adaptations as wholly separate entities from the source material that spawned them and therefore judge them on their own merits (or lack thereof).

Yes. Even if there was no actual consideration given to ultimately changing the identity of the Dragon, Rafe and Co. nonetheless gave themselves pre-emptive justification for doing so by changing the metaphysical nature of reincarnation in the WoT universe as established by Robert Jordan by making it so that, within the world of their TV adaptation, male souls could be reborn in female bodies and vice versa, and admitted as much.

It's not, though. I can no longer find the source, but Rafe did post comments about himself and the other writers having changed the underlying lore of the WoT novels in order to conceptually degender Souls. He also additionally stated - and emphasized - a separate change that had been made with regards to the Prophecies of the Dragon but that came about as a consequence of the degendering of Souls: making the validity of said Prophecies something that was in question due to the passage of time and the flaws of human translation.

Two things: 1) How closely Rafe and Co. have "followed the books" is not an objectively quantifiable thing and has nothing whatsoever to do with the things that they've changed or added 2) Slavish adherence to source material does not actually fit the definition of the term "adaptation"; true adaptations absolutely deviate from the material from which they're adapted and do so as a matter of course

Several of the things that have been brought up here in the last few posts (Caemlyn, Bayle Domon, Elyas) have either been explicitly confirmed to be - or are highly suspected to be - part of Season 2, rendering arguments about their lack of inclusion in this adaptation moot.

You don't have to agree with the decisions that Rafe and Co. have made, but there's a difference between disagreeing with their decisions and openly doubting or downplaying their actual conpetence/abilities as storytellers by questioning the level of thought behind the decisions that have been made and the ramifications/ripple effects of said decisions.

My point is that Rafe and the rest of the people involved in making the TV series, by their own admission, wrote and crafted the narrative in such a way that they altered the gender-centric nature of reincarnation as Robert Jordan conceived it, thus making it legitimately possible for the Dragon to have literally been anyone, male or female, within the world of the show, and even though they didn't go so far as to actually change the true identity of the Dragon, they very much could have had they so chose and would have been able to justify and explain such a drastic change within the narrative context of the world.

Speaking strictly for the show, Rafe and Co. have said that the reincarnation of souls in the WoT world is no longer gendered, meaning that someone who was born as a man in a previous life could be reborn as a woman, and vice versa.

I started my rewatch last month, and as of posting this will be rewatching The Flame of Tar-Valon on Friday

Rafe and others involved with the show have flat-out stated that the underlying lore of the WoT world has been changed vis-a-vis reincarnation. The concept of female Dragons is not an "unreliable narrator" scenario; it's the manifestation of an actual literal lore change, and one that has been admitted to upfront by the creators of the show.

Ornateness and size don't have anything to do with ease of application or of function. The collar is pretty clearly two pieces that go around the neck and across the shoulders and are then joined/fastened together seamlessly. Circling back to earlier conversation, the mouth gags are pretty clearly pacifiers, even being described as such by the new costume designer, and also pretty clearly are not externally attached in any way, which again raises questions about why the damane don't remove them, but in thinking a bit, I figured out a reasoning that I hadn't thought of before: mental conditioning. If a damane were repeatedly physically punished for removing their pacifier gag, it likely wouldn't take long before they stopped doing it in order to avoid the punishment.

I watched 71 of GoT's 73 episodes (I'd been prematurely spoiled on the final two episodes prior to their airing and was so angry about the direction in which they took the series in the eleventh hour that I skipped them), and so I stand by my assessment of what went wrong with the show in the end and why the reception to its conclusion ended Benioff and Weiss' careers in Hollywood. Hmm. I still think they're awesome as a visual indicator of dehumanization and slavery regardless of what they actually are.

Off-topic tangent to address Game of Thrones: if you're chalking up the disastrous conclusion of that show to a lack of source material, you're seriously misdiagnosing the situation because what caused the demise of that show and Benioff and Weiss' career is not the fact that they had to 'make up an ending', it's the fact that they pulled a massive bait-and-switch on thousands of viewers at the eleventh hour after having spent the previous 71 episodes flat-out lying to said viewers - repeatedly - about certain characters and their narrative trajectories. Okay, tangent over. Now to a few thoughts on the trailer: * If Moiraine has been Stilled (as I believe is the case and as has been intimated by Rosamund and others), I'm pretty sure that her Oath of exile would be nullified, which would open the door for her to return to Tar Valon * Having said that, though, I'd forgotten that we already knew that Moiraine was going back to Cairihen and that we saw Siuan get out of a carriage in a previous trailer, so it's entirely possible that if we do see them reunited in the present, it happens in Cairihen * I have a very strong feeling that the two conversation scenes we see involving Siuan are being 'transposed' together by fans due to the fact that Siuan is identically dressed in both * Speaking of Cairihen, I would not at all be surprised if that city is used as a temporary convergence point in the same way that Season 1 used Tar Valon as a temporary convergence point * I still love the fact that the Damane are gagged with metal plates/pacifiers, although there is a part of me that wonders why they don't just spit them out or otherwise remove them * I'm trying to figure out if the trailer is implying the existence of overt narrative time-skipping and whether or not I like the notion * Circling back to the Damane, is it wrong of me to perversely hope that we get to see Egwene all 'gagged up' at some point?

As i noted previously, the changes that Rafe and Co. made to the underlying lore regarding reincarnation make it possible for the figures that Logain saw/heard to be both legitimately previous Dragons and manifestations of the madness caused by the corruption of Saidin. Also, the Tamrylin calling Lews the Dragon Reborn was definitely a deliberate change that fits with the other alterations to the reincarnation lore that Rafe and Co. made.

^ My broader point, relative to this topic, is that Lews being referred to as The Dragon Reborn opens questions and speculation about the Dragon(s) who came before him in show lore and also makes it possible for Logain's claim that previous Dragons spoke to him to be both literal and a product of the corruption on Saidin and makes it literally possible for Elusha, the female figure who was shown encouraging him to kill the King of Ghealdon, to have been a previous Dragon.

Not according to the 3 books in the series that I've read and everything that I've found online. Lews Therin Telamon, in the books, was, to my knowledge, labeled The Dragon posthumously and all prophecies regarding him apply specifically to him being reincarnated in the future relative to when he lived, whereas in the show, he was specifically referred to as The Dragon Reborn while still alive.

The TV show changed Robert Jordan's underlying lore so that A) Lews Therin Telamon was himself the reincarnation of an earlier Dragon and B) the Dragon could have legitimately been reincarnated in female form, so the voices that Logain hears/figures that he sees are accordingly heavily implied to legitimately be past Dragons. What that does or doesn't mean for Rand - the actual reincarnation of the Dragon - versus what it meant for Logain- who merely believed himself to be the Dragon - is yet to be demonstrated.

And my point is that this notion is objectively fallacious because there is no universal definition of 'faithfulness' versus 'unfaithulness' when it comes to adaptation.

I don't need to justify or explain an objective reality. There is absolutely no way to quantify what does or does not qualify as a 'faithful' adaptation because if you were to ask 100 people to tell you what makes something a 'faithful' or 'unfaithful' adaptation, you would get 100 different - and contradictory - answers.

The entire concept of a 'faithful' adaptation is a fallacy. Ten Things I Hate About You is no more or less 'a faithful' adaptation of William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew than the 1967 Franko Zeffirelli film that starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the Peter Jackson Middle-earth films are no more or less 'faithful' adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit than the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings and Rankin/Bass Hobbit and Return of the King animated movies, and the upcoming HBO/MAX live action Harry Potter television series will be no more or less a 'faithful' adaptation of the Harry Potter novels than the already-existing live-action films. TLDR: The Wheel of Time is not somehow an 'unfaithful' adaptation of Robert Jordan's novels because Rafe Judkins and his team of writers and producers have made adaptational choices that some fans of the novels object to, and would not be a more 'faithful' adaptation if they had not made said choices.

@Jake Sykwalker There is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to adapt something; the notion that there is is a fallacy. Rafe and his team have made adaptational choices that you clearly disagree with; that doesn't mean that said choices are wrong or that they lack purpose or indicate a lack of understanding of or appreciation for the WoT novels. It also doesn't mean that the TV series is a bad adaptation of said novels.

And it's been demonstrated to you that your thinking is objectively and unequivocally wrong with regards to the canonical validity of the show making this choice, so your continued objections do very much come across as homophobic and condescendingly dismissive.

I would argue that it's not actually a reasonable take to be demeaning and dismissive of the Siuanraine relationship or to deny that there's explicit Word of God (Robert Jordan) confirmation that there is textual precedent for it in the source material, precedent that Rafe and his writers drew on in order to deepen and enhance both of the characters involved, and will leave it at that. I would like to point out, though, that the show doesn't just draw on Robert Jordan's comments about pillow-friends and the text of the novels in order to deepen Moiraine and Siuan's characters in relation to each other; it extends that to other characters as well, namely Alanna, her warders, and Liandrin, and does so by either heavily implying or outright stating that Moiraine also had pillow-friend relationships with Liandrin and Alanna and that Alanna's warders are as sexually active with and attracted to each other as they are to/with her (Alanna) directly.

I feel pretty confident that the wording was intentional, but also agree that it in and of itself doesn't indicate anything about Jain Farstrider's gender one way or the other, which I think was also intentional. IOW, if you want to take that line as confirmation of Jain being female in the world of the show, you're free to do so, and if you want to reject that more literal interpretation for a more ambiguous interpretation, you're free to do that. Personally, I'm in the 'gender change' camp because it fits with Rafe's approach to adapting the WoT novels and adds more nuance to the lore of the show specifically.