I don't think her son is a channeler; he's just old. I really wanted Show!Liandrin to be around the same age as Alanna, Moiraine, and Siuan because then her and Moiraine being "Pillowfriends" would have a ready explanation.

So many people who are hardcore fans of the books have so thoroughly disproven and debunked this claim that it's starting to become the literary equivalent of the "Big Lie".

Hopper has been in the show since Episode 3 of Season 1.

We'll just have to agree to disagree here.

Both of these comments are objectively incorrect. Rafe and his team of writers expressly structured the WoT TV adaptation in order to center Moiraine as the central narrator (usurping the latter role from Rand despite the overall story not being hers), similarly to how the 2019 Swamp Thing television series was built around Crystal Reed's Abby Arcane although the story it told was that of the titular Swamp Thing (Alec Holland).

So it looks like Episode 4 put the kibosh on the idea of Show!Liandrin being contemporaries with (and therefore around the same age as) Moiraine, Siuan, and Alanna, which makes me wonder why she (Liandrin) felt familiar enough with Moiraine that she could caress her (Moiraine's) face without her (Moiraine) objecting.

The equivalent to what you're proposing would be writing off Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy Summers for the entirety of Season 6 of her titular television series before suddenly bringing her back for Season 7 It would confuse casual viewers and give them a reason to stop watching the show.

Possibly, but I think that it's far more likely that they would just craft the story so that she maintains an onscreen role even though her character was absent from the novels.

Alexandre Willaume Is a Recurring Cast member, which means that it's expected for him to drop in and out of the show as necessary. Rosamund Pike is both a Main Cast member and the Series Lead, and it is rare for a TV series - even one based on pre-existing source material - to sideline a Main Cast member, especially one with Lead billing, by putting them "out of sight, out of mind" for any significant length of time unless forced to do so by external circumstances. Maintaining Rosamund Pike as the Series Lead but having her drop off our screens for seasons at a time solely because her character's role in the novels is diminished and she disappears off the page for a significant chunk of the story is ridiculously unlikely.

An interesting thing that I learned via the Talk'aran'rhiod podcast, sourced from WoT book consultant Sarah Nakamura: all of the Seanchan actors with speaking parts are American, but weren't told to adopt any particular way of speaking or regional accent. This means that the decision for Suroth's 'Voice', Alwhin, to speak with a noticeable drawl was made entirely by actress Jessica Boone herself.

Going off the evidence-based presumption that, like Show!Moiraine, Show!Liandrin is in her 70s, I'd say that her son is, at most, pushing mid-60s and suffers from some kind of pain-causing condition that's made him physically waste away, especially since she wasn't aware that the crimsonthorn draught wasn't actually easing his pain the way that she thought it was.

Two things: 1) Production for Season 2 started in July 2021 and finished in February 2022 (7 months). It's impossible to know with complete certainty how long Season 1's original production schedule was supposed to have been, but at the time of the COVID shutdown in March 2020, they'd been filming for about 7 months (since production had begun in September 2019) and had completed the filming for at least part of Episode 7, so I'd say that we probably would've been looking at an 8-month shoot without the shutdown. 2) The main cast of any given TV series are typically signed to multi-year contracts in order to guarantee their availability and avoid schedule conflicts, although if a schedule conflict does come up, most shows will generally be willing to try and make accommodations within reason.

I'm not convinced that Liandrin's son was actually as physically aged as he appeared, but that seems to be a minority point-of-view.

No, they didn't. Liandrin doesn't throw the jug at the wall until both Leane and Sheriam have left the chamber.

What "people observing"? The audience? Not everything that the writers are doing with certain characters is misdirection. Liandrin can be aligned with the dark and still be genuinely pissed off by Nynaeve following her and still genuinely invested in and wanting to help Nynaeve become an Aes Sedai.

It's already been confirmed that Season 3's story is going to largely (and nigh-exclusively) be derived from The Shadow Rising (Book 4).

@Rolan Salvane Nice quote. I hadn't heard it before, but it echoes something that I'm fond of citing, which is a statement from Lucasfilm Story Group member (and inspiration for Rebels supporting character Mart Mattin) Matt Martin that the concept of Canon is only relevant to the people responsible for actively working on the creative side of any given IP.

I think some book fans are letting their knowledge predispose them towards believing that very little of Liandrin's behavior in the first 3 episodes of Season 2 is genuine because I would argue that there's no logical reason for her to have reacted the way that she did to Nynaeve following her if it was something she (Liandrin) wanted to happen, nor is there any logical reason for her to have angrily hurled the water jug against the wall of the Arches chamber if she wasn't genuinely upset about Nynaeve failing and not coming back as expected.

Liandrin having a son is the leverage that Moiraine held over her in The Flame of Tar Valon, so there's clearly something Red Ajah rules-based that stopped the former from seeking the Healing services of the Tower for him.

The implication that Moiraine and Liandrin were "Pillowfriends" comes from the scene in "Blood Calls Blood" where the latter intimately strokes the former's face. Dialogue from the same scene also rather heavily implies a past relationship between them beyond their both being Aes Sedai. Regardless, we do know that Moiraine, Alanna, and Siuan are contemporaries because of dialogue indicating as much either directly or indirectly.

Inspired by the reveal of Liandrin having an elderly son and by some things I was reading on Reddit and elsewhere, I wanted to discuss Aes Sedai aging and what it might mean for the personal timelines of characters we care about. I've tagged this thread with both show spoilers and book spoilers because while I'll be sticking solely to the show, I wan to allow others to bring whatever book knows they might possess to bear. Rosamund Pike said in an interview that Show!Moiraine is in her 70s, and it's heavily implied in Season 1 that she, Alanna, Siuan, and Liandrin are all contemporaries of one another at the Tower and that Moiraine and Liandrin were "Pillowfriends" at some point, which would mean that all four characters would be in their 70s. Assuming that this is all correct, it implies several things: 1) that there's not a standard 'slowed' rate at which Aes Sedai age relative to one another 2) that Liandrin's son appeared as physically elderly as he did because of an illness that Liandrin can't heal or otherwise have healed, not natural aging 3) that it was unprecedented for an Aes Sedai in her 50s to attain the Amrylin Seat before Siuan did so (since, IIRC, somebody says something in Season 1 about her (Siuan) being the youngest Amrylin in history) Thoughts?

Suroth asks "are they ready?" and Ishy immediately responds. He's really on that palanquin with her.

Sean Bean and Mark Addy weren't producers on GoT and their characters' permanent deaths were written into the source material. Also, to clarify what I'm saying, Moiraine will either be permanently killed off (which I personally doubt), or the show will do a 'fakeout death' that is 'undone' for the audience through the mechanism of the show following her character to wherever she ends up after 'dying' and depicting what happened to her without there being a gap in time. IOW, if Moiraine 'dies' in Season 3 and Rosamund doesn't depart the cast, we as an audience will be shown that she's alive shortly thereafter and part of Season 4 will involve us seeing her go through whatever she went through after her 'death', whether through the means of original storylines or storylines pulled forward from the books.

It's not a good look to equate PTSD and a mental condition that might be dementia with insanity.