I didn't read the full conversation history, but I'm inclined to agree that what Moiraine did broke the Oaths too. Lan explicitly warns her that she might be killing innocents and she straight up said she'd sacrifice them all if it improves Rand's chances at all. It seems like a bizarre loophole to the Oaths if you could just nuke people from a long range and go "oh yeah I didn't know they were Darkfriends or not, they were too far away to see, lol!" But the real answer is that the show writers simply don't particularly know/care about the lore, IMO. Egwene being able to use the a'dam on her sul'dam with an intent to kill, Siuan being able to attack Lan with the Power, the absence of the two Halves, the lack of relevance of the Dragon Reborn, all points to that. In season 1, Brandon Sanderson said in a podcast that Moiraine was initially written to directly kill that ship captain and his boat in one of the early episodes, before he wrote in a suggestion to change that scene because her Oaths wouldn't allow her to do that.

I liked most of the episode, especially with Mat and Lan finally doing awesome stuff, but the scene with Ishy failing to break an injured Egwene's shield while watching Rand slowly walk up to him to stab him was "she has a tell" levels of stupid. Did they run out of CGI budget or what?

I can't believe Rand has not done anything big for all of 16 episodes. Even Perrin have had better feats at this point.

Yeah, that line does seem like it could be possibly read that way linguistically. But we do know that Moiraine is desperate to keep Rand out of the Tower, at least at this point.

I found the exact exchange from Episode 6: Rand: "You moved him to Cairhien, didn't you? So that I'd come here." Moiraine: "Yes, of course. Away from the White Tower, where you'd never be able to see him, where he'd never be able teach you." After the Eye of the World, Rand made Moiraine promise him to "tell them I died", and then he just left on his own in the Season 1 finale. Rand being at Tar Valon is definitely the last thing Moiraine wanted, and she was willing to FUBAR her relationship with Siuan to make sure that didn't happen.

She definitely never said that. And why would Moiraine ever think that Rand was at the Tower?

I wonder what was even Moiraine and Siuan's original plan for Rand. Siuan berates Moiraine for not having taught Rand anything about channeling, but Moiraine in S1 specifically said she would not teach him because he'd go crazy and because it's dangerous. And yet in S2 Moiraine also went out of her way to facilitate Rand learning from Logain. We know from the books that women could not reach a man how to channel to begin with, but that's not what been presented in the show so far. The really bizarre refusal to properly engage in the sai'dar sai'din divide because that would be problematic today put the narrative in a really odd place when it comes to this stuff.

It was also the exact same move Liandrin did against the Wonder Girls that made Elayne go "SHE BROKE ALL THE OATHS" 😛

Haha, the classic "Your Honour, I pressed the trigger of the gun I pointed at him, but I did not actually want him dead!"

Doesn't Siuan break the Oaths when she attacked Lan with the Power? If the Oaths can let you set shockwaves to slam random peeps against a brick wall that's a hell of a loophole right there.

I'm just memeing about the triple post 😛

Flicker flicker flicker?

Lan randomly finding out some secret info about saidin and of Logain's Talent out of his ass was very bizarre. It almost kind of suggested that he'd always known but "took this long to do his duty" because he was moping over his emotional damage. What a useless subplot that finally ended after 7 episodes. And what a relief that it's over. Also did not enjoy Siuan really stupid decisions with regards to the Dragon Reborn. Her whole little secret with Moiraine is to find a way to support and guide Rand while holding back the larger Tower's impulse to try to fear and "cage" and dominate him. That's what made them interesting and clever and their little relationship so spicy. Them essentially "breaking up" now because of Siuan's change of heart (that had no build up because she was MIA for 5 episodes) was really weak. Really like Elayne and Nynaeve's dynamic and the Aiel, but other parts of this episode was mostly odd. I'm also not sure where they're going with Mat being born in the Darkness or whatever, it's been two whole seasons and it's gone nowhere. If Lanfear could have just randomly yeeted Mat to Falme after knocking him out, why involve Min at all? If the Dark wants Moiraine dead now, why did Ishy only bother with stilling her to begin with?

I meant that the show showed Shienarians fighting the Seanchan just as well as Ryma's Warder did (I would argue they had fancier choreography, too) until they were in both cases overwhelmed. And surely Lan is supposed to be a way, way, way better fighter than Aviendha (if no OP involvement, of course)

I'm not sure Ryma's Warder fared any better than the Shienarians against Seanchan soldiers in the show. As for Lan vs Trollocs in s1e1... I don't know it just feels too difficult to contextualise. Just from the show we're not given any reason to believe a Seanchan warrior or say, Aviendha, couldn't have done that. It doesn't help that Lan hasn't done anything cool since.

I'm rusty on the books, but I was under the impression that Gawyn and Galad were repeatedly emphasized as genius-tier fighters even at that point (even though they were bloody idiots too) If you're just watching the show, there's zero set-up on Alanna's himbos being good fighters beyond the realm of usual trained soldiers, and if Mat beats them, the implication will be weighted more heavily towards of "Wow, Warders really never win a fight, they suck lol" as opposed to the revelation that Mat kicks major ass.

That would hardly have the desired impact though, we have never seen Alanna's Warders being shown as capable fighters of any sort

I loved this episode but I chuckled a little bit from that bit with the Sitter. IIRC Sitters are selected entirely for their political acumen, and I think neither the book audience or the show-only audience would know to associate Sitters with being more likely to be able to resist torture or anything of the sort. If anything, my impression of Sitters was that they are mostly just bickering, politicking Sisters who frequently come across as petty and small-minded. They would probably be the first to break under hardship/duress if I had to guess 😛

I hated Season 1 with a passion, but Season 2 has been much more enjoyable and shown a marked improvement in just about every way. Except Lan. I have no idea what they are doing with him. His excessively stoic exterior is probably one of his most defining traits in the books. I get that this is not at all healthy in the context of modern psychology, but Lan is such an odd choice of character to rewrite into this soft and deeply vulnerable man. He was straight up on the verge of tears sharing that he wasn't considered equals by Moiraine and that was such a bizarre writing choice. Still waters run deep, and it would have been so much more impactful to have him occasionally show deep emotion for people who he truly cares about when he is usually hard as stone, at least in the exterior. Every scene with Alanna and her himbos and/or a heartbroken Lan just did not make a whole lot of sense for me and really hindered each the episodes they were in. The latest one in Ep.6 where they accused of Lan of being a Darkfriend and going "but we were friends who always supported you!" was... odd. Also, both the good major fight scenes across the two seasons we've seen so far are from Aiel. They suggest that Aviendha is a much more formidable fighter than Lan, who is supposed to be one of the most dangerous non-magic fighters across the whole dang genre. I get that's it's probably much harder to choreograph something high-octane that shows Lan's skill visually because he's been fighting monsters like Trollocs and Fades, but the show really needs to give Lan an incredible choreographed fight soon. The show makes the Warders look like they're mostly average soldiers with a sword. Hopefully Lan gets his mojo back when he stops being heartbroken. The show really has gotten a lot better compared to Season 1, and is miles ahead of something like Rings of Power (even though that might seem an incredibly low bar). It still irks me that the consistently worst parts of the show across both seasons are the completely original stuff like Moiraine's interpersonal drama after getting stilled(?) and Warder drama. We are so short of episodes that many things have to be cut, so writing this extra stuff in and having this stuff turn out to be not particularly well done is such a bummer.