1 minute ago, VooDooNut said:

I can definitely understand that rational. But even in the early  books the wolves have a keener sense of evil in Perrin's dreams than he does. It seems out of character for the wolves to be controlled by Ba'alzamon. Am I forgetting a scene in the books where the wolves do Ba'alzamon's bidding?

It's not that the wolves are doing his bidding.

It's that Ba'alzamon is lying to him about what's going on.

It's true that in the books we see the wolves (Hopper, specifically) acting to protect Perrin from Forsaken in the Dream.  But there's nothing to say that before Perrin met the wolves, Ba'alzamon wouldn't have inserted fake wolves into one of his deceptive dreams.  Specifically to make him believe something false.

It's just the kind of thing he would have done.  Either to make him think Laila was a darkfriend when she wasn't, or more likely to make him think wolves are evil.

We know from the books that a wolf would never have eaten a human body, so we already know from that fact that the dream is a lie.  Kill a human?  Absolutely.  Eat one?  Not at all.

8 minutes ago, Skipp said:

I never said Mat abandons Rand in tFoH, I only used that term in relation to the event in tGH.  I just said he attempts to leave at that time. 

 

I only brought it up in response to Gothic saying "But he never leaves him...until Rand either leaves him or orders him. "

I didn't say you did.

My point was that the things that prevent him from leaving - even though he kept saying he wanted to - applied during the Great Hunt as well.  Including his "ideals."

Book Mat had ideals that precluded him abandoning his friends.  Even in tGH.

Show Mat apparently doesn't.

17 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

There's still the wolfish growl right before he spins around and hits her

That's just a noise he makes because he's fighting.  A noise we never hear him make again until Valda, because he never fights again.  It's true that by then he's developing his wolf nature, but it hadn't happened yet by Ep.1.

There's no indication it has anything to do with the ability to smell Shadowspawn that he develops later in the story.

16 hours ago, VooDooNut said:

The wolf eating her in the dream is what really sold me on Laila being a dark friend.

But that was a "Ba'alzamon dream."  So it almost had to be a lie.

On 1/25/2022 at 1:26 AM, Andra said:

 

Update (if anyone cares any more):

The gold ear decoration Kerene was wearing apparently gets buried with her in Ep.4.  It was visible when Stepin carried her body to the grave, and we don't see him remove it before the shroud gets laid over her.

Moiraine also doesn't have hers through all of Ep.5.

We first see her wearing it in the opening scene of Ep.6 (right after Siuan's origin prologue).  She has it through the entire episode right up until she leaves the Tower for the Waygate.  After that, nothing.

 

No indication in the show that it has any significance beyond simple ornamentation.

Aaaaand ... a final update on this:

When Moiraine leaves the Tower in Ep.7, she's not wearing it any longer.  We never see it again, though because her hair almost always covers her ears, it could be there occasionally, just hidden.

So to recap - it isn't the same thing Kerene was wearing, which appears to have buried with her.  So she didn't take it from her as a Fremen-style commemoration.  She has it through all of Ep. 6 (including the "love shack" scene) and only has it on her right ear.  When she leaves Tar Valon she no longer wears it.

It could have something specific to do with her and the Tower, but it's never explained.

The fingerless gloves are just something she wears pretty much whenever.  And are also never explained.

3 hours ago, Skipp said:

Mat is with Rand at that point because he was told he had to go to Rhuidean or else he would die.  I don't doubt Mat's friendship in tSR but lets not pretend that he didn't have other motivations at that time.

 

And he did try to leave Rand after tSR but a mixture of Ta'vereness and his own ideals always stopped him.  Only after the battle of Caerhein did Rand put his foot down and told Mat he wasn't going to be able to leave.

But the only reason he knew he had to go to Rhuidean or die is because he didn't leave Tear when he could have.  Leaving Rand after discussing it with him and basically getting his permission is not "abandoning" him.

Having other motivations doesn't change what he actually did.

And his "ideals" preventing him from leaving is the entire point.

Book Mat had those ideals.  Show Mat apparently doesn't.

1 minute ago, Skipp said:

But we have no idea why the Eye was needed.  And clearly another male channeler could use the Eye, Aginor in this case.  We have alot of assumptions as to why the Eye was created, possibly due to the foretelling touched upon in tSR. 

My understanding from everything eventually told to the readers later in the books is that the purpose of the Eye was to hide the things it contained from everyone except the DR.  The Banner, the Horn and one of the Seals.  The "need" which made it accessible was to get those things because the DR had to have them.

Aginor could use the Eye once it was found, but it took the need of the DR to find it in the first place.

Moiraine is supposedly the only person in 3000 years to have found it twice, and she couldn't use it.  Anyone else who could use it (like Ishamael, Aginor or Balthamel - or even Taim) couldn't have found it in the first place.  That's basically what "Ba'alzamon" intended all along.  To get someone there with "need" who could pin it in place in the real world long enough for his people to get to it.

1 hour ago, Skipp said:

That's right, during the pillar flashbacks in tSR the Dragon banner and Callandor are shown, a foretelling is mentioned and Someshta is there.  I think there is mention of a group of Young Male Aes Sedai that haven't channeled long enough to go mad, I suppose these are the ones that make the Eye.

 

But yeah the details of the foretelling are not revealed so we can still only guess as to the purpose of the Eye.  I don't think it will be an issue in later seasons.

There are two (and a half?) links between the Eye and the Dragon Reborn.

The first is the pool of untainted Saidin.  The whole idea of "need" being used to get there, it pretty much guarantees that only the DR would ever be able to both find the Eye, and use it.

The second and a half are what's hidden in the pool.  The Dragon Banner, and the Horn.

I call the Horn only half a link, because though it's only used in the books to aid him, according to the lore it could be used by someone else.

4 hours ago, ilovezam said:

But the animated short between saidar and saidin was presented as though it was an Aes Sedai lecture though, which makes it even weirder. Maybe that was a pre-Breaking class? 

I suspect that's the way they will play it.

The shorts all seem to know more about the world than any of the living characters do.

11 hours ago, ilovezam said:

Yeah, but "there are rumours of four ta'veren here" did not seem to make much sense, and left both show-only viewers and readers utterly confused. I think saidar/saidin was more important to explain, and could have been explained on a basic level much more easily, especially since they wanted to deal with the taint and not being able to see each other's weaves. 

I'm also not sure why Moiraine would try to mislead Rand about not being able to teach him if she knew about saidin/saidar. It's just weird all around.

And then when Fain has his bizarrely long conversation with Perrin in Fal Dara after taking the Horn, he tells him more about ta'veren than we've heard in the entire show so far.  And he says all five of them are.

9 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Doesn't hold. If moiraine had a sa'angreal that she herself could use, then she herself would have used it, in emond field.

 

The show did sacrifice a bit of consistency in the name of what looks good, but there's no plot hole of that level of magnitude, and i trust the writers that far: if moiraine had a super oowerful weapon, she'd have used it.

 

Now, the writers not having thought of a backup plan for a woman dragon, that's the kind of lesser plot hole i totally think they can make

 

We don't actually know she didn't use it in Two Rivers (Emond's Field doesn't exist in the show).  We know she had it with her, because we see her wrapping it up in cloth in the very first scene in the show after the cold open, when she's packing to leave the Tower.  Two years before she ever gets to Two Rivers.

Which means she either always knew the Dragon could only be reborn as a man, and all the lines that say the opposite are lies (and she can't lie) or it could be used by both men and women.  Or possibly she's got another one somewhere with her for women, which we never see.

14 minutes ago, SingleMort said:

I think they both got short-changed. Having Mat stealing from his friends and the dead, having Perrin kill his fake wife and try to hook up with his best friend's GF smh. I feel TV Mat is further from his book character than TV Perrin though. IMO Mat is probably the most light-hearted main character in the first book (until he's under the dagger's spell) but in the TV show they made him the most troubled and darkest (apart from actual darkfriends). It was actually difficult to tell how much the dagger had changed him because he was so shady to begin with.     

Definitely Mat is the most different.

I'm just more disappointed by the way Perrin's different than the way Mat is.

Mat at least still has some life to him that can be addressed.  Perrin doesn't even have that.

7 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

RJ solved a problem with real life monarchies where the ruler is birth order based.  The empress encourages strife and battle amongst her many offspring so that the most competent and deadly is left standing.  This lowers the odds that the family will lose power due to incompetence.  

Something else about this - especially when contrasted with Daes Dae'mar - is the idea that what makes someone rise to the top may or may not have anything to do with doing a good job once they get there.  But then it's a problem with any form of government, even a representative democracy.

What wins the game of houses doesn't necessarily make a good ruler.  What wins elections doesn't either.  Just like being next in line for the throne by birth doesn't.

But they're all attempts to come up with a system that does just that.

18 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

I won't jump on board until I see him rubbing his ear. ? 

18 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

*humming intensifies*

But will there be plums?

1 minute ago, SingleMort said:

Mat is favourite character. So much so that I built my own Ashandarei during lockdown. But I couldn't stand him in the first book. I found him really annoying kinda like how Merry and Pippin were in LoTR. During the second book it kinda felt like RJ had given MAt a soft reboot and his character appealed far more to me after that. I think he became my favourite character his luck started to kick in. I'm hoping TV show Mat also gets a reboot to his character because boy oh boy he sure needs one.  

He's mine too.

Interestingly enough, when I was a kid I played around with something I would describe today as being a toy Ashandarei.  About fifteen years before EotW.

I think the "old Mat" that those characters were talking about was the Mat before Shadar Logoth.  Like the one that played the prank on the Whitecloaks in Baerlon.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to see enough of that version of Mat to really judge.  I actually liked the glimpses we got of his deeper character when he started yelling the Old Tongue fighting trollocs.

It's interesting - initially I was the most disappointed in the treatment he got in the show.  Since finishing the season, I'm even more disappointed about Perrin.  At least Mat hasn't simply become useless. 

23 minutes ago, Skipp said:

I don't know if RJ changed the way he wrote Mat or if it is because we only started getting Mat PoV chapters in tDR but Mat reads very differently to me after that point.

I think it's the POV changes.

Because pretty much everyone who knew him before was quoted at one time or another saying that the Mat in GH and DR was practically his old self - except for physically.  With the girls even commenting on him joking and playing dice with Hurin even when he couldn't get up from his stretcher.

2 hours ago, Skipp said:

You're right, they didn't know what was causing the illness for either of them at the time.

 

As I said before Mat couldn't leave or threaten to, he needed to recover the dagger.  But by making clear to Rand  "he wasn't the same anymore" and would stay clear of him for the journey is what I see as abandoning a friend especially at a time when said friend is dealing with something devastating personally.  While Mat could be said to be having practical self-preservation reasons to the new we don't get to see how this would have played had Rand not gone portal surfing.  While we can label it as a shock reaction, one that Mat eventually overcomes, it was still his initial reaction

 

I apologize for using the word abandon as it certainly suggests something stronger that was shown in book.  When i first read the book I certainly felt like Mat had abandoned Rand in a time of need.

 

We also get a hint that Mat did something bad to Rand in one of the **Flicker** possibilities.  While that is not something to lay much stock into we know that they are all possible worlds.

It's not so much about whether his reaction was warranted or not, it's about whether he would have maintained it had Rand not disappeared via the Portal Stone.  And given their interactions once they reunited in Cairhien, I think it's fair to expect that he wouldn't have.

Any resentment he showed after that point was all about Rand getting a big head, and Mat being expected to act like a servant.  Not because he could channel.

The response when he found out about the channeling was snap reaction to the shock.  A response I have no doubt he would have reconsidered if he'd been given the time to.

Friends can have flares of anger with friends.  Friends can trade insults with friends.  Neither of those things make them enemies unless they continue after consideration.  Mat's reaction was a flare that would have cooled off after consideration.

Trying to get back on topic ...

On 1/14/2022 at 5:02 PM, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

Yep.  Just re-watched episode 1.  Certainly looks like she was about to wallop Perrin from behind.

On 1/14/2022 at 5:02 PM, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Rafe come out and say that Laila wasn't a darkfriend? 

 

I found it: 

https://www.cbr.com/the-wheel-of-time-showrunner-debunks-laila-darkfriend-fan-theory/

 

I'm torn. On the one hand, the show seems to totally set up that Laila is a darkfriend. But I could also believe that Rafe literally did it on accident haha 

Having just re-watched the episode, I don't see the whole "she was about to kill him" bit.

What I got from it was simply that they had each just been fighting their own trollocs, and she was just preparing to defend herself if Perrin lost.

Because he was pretty occupied himself, he didn't realize she had already won.  So when he hears something moving behind him, he spins around without thinking.

She's not a darkfriend who's going to kill him, and he didn't detect something about her with his wolf senses.  Nor did he lose control of his "inner rage."  It was just an accident.

14 hours ago, Humbugged2 said:

How could they recast and re-shoot on sets that were destroyed a year earlier ?

 

Mat in books 1-3 (up till Ch 18) was Gollum who trusted no one until they broke him out from the curse and then got a massive rush of the ta'veren kicked in

 

He was temp healed in book 1 ,the dagger was stolen and he slipped back into being fully cursed like Bilbo

Book 2 Mat is nowhere near as "cursed" as book 1 Mat.  He was repeatedly described as being mostly back to normal, except for looking more and more thin and worn out.  The universal distrust was never back.

And book 3 Mat is unconscious virtually the entire time until he's finally healed.

After that, he's the old Mat he was before Shadar Logoth, with the exception that his luck is much more pronounced.

15 minutes ago, Skipp said:

Mat telling Rand that him that he isn't same anymore and doesn't want to be around him isn't abandonment?  Especially after after Rand and Mat were taking care of each other on the way to Camelyn while Dagger/Channeling sick?

 

Hell yes that I would that is abandonment.  We never got to see the extent of it one way or another due to the portal stone.  Not everyone will see it the same way as I but that was a shitty friendship on his part.

It's not abandonment.  It's a snap reaction to a shock.

He didn't leave, and didn't threaten to.  He was only saying he would keep his distance within the party.

And neither of them knew on the way to Caemlyn that either of them were sick from the dagger or channeling.

Just now, Skipp said:

This is an interesting topic.  If the bowl of Winds can't be used by men does that mean only women regulated the weather in the AoL?  Were there bowls that only men could use?  Possibly the bowls were designed to be used only in a circle which would then require women to be present.

 

That is slightly contrary to the idea that many bowls were suppose to be used in to control the weather on a wider basis.

 

Did the girls just luck out and find a bowl that could be used by women?

I think it's more likely that the Bowl was originally designed to be *usable* by either just men or just women, but that it worked best when used by both in a circle.  Because it utilized both powers, but didn't seem to regulate the changes it caused as well as it should have.  Because it didn't have anyone to control half of what it was doing.

Also, while Elayne and Nynaeve believed they were making up the need for men to channel, it may have actually been true.  Since they found it by using "need" in TAR, and part of that need was to find something to convince Salidar to ally with Rand.  And needing his help to use it properly would definitely fit that.

2 minutes ago, Skipp said:

Moiraine said that Male channelers poured all of their strength to make that sa'angreal.  That leads me to believe there is a difference.  But no, we don't have definitive proof yet.

True, there have been inklings that could be explained by them tapping two separate powers.  But there have also been inklings that they aren't.

3 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Or there are male and female and, potentially, both.  It's not breaking anything to say it's possible in this version of the wheel.

If I remember correctly, there was speculation in the books that there could be items of Power that both men and women could use.  Though that might have only been referring to ter'angreal.

The Bowl of Winds for example, used both saidar and saidin.  And while the claim that it needed men channeling to work was invented by Nynaeve and Elayne, it's certainly possible that it would have worked better with them than it actually did without them.

But again, that was a ter'angreal.  Not an angreal or sa'angreal.

8 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

the simplest explanation there is that moiraine had access to a male sa'angreal. perhaps it was just another object in the storeroom and nobody else knew what it was. perhaps she could sneak it out with siuan complicity.

female sa'angreal, on the other hand, are very coveted by the aes sedai, and moiraine could not have snuck one out of the tower.

 

It's certainly not a matter of "bothering to get one". moiraine would have certainly gotten a female angreal for her if she could have gotten her hands on one.

I would say that the simplest explanation is that in Rafeworld there's no such thing as male or female sa'angreals.  There really has been no clear messaging in the show that they use separate powers and would therefore also use different "amplifiers."

Even the explanations for why men can't safely channel don't actually say it's because they draw from a different Source.

So Moiraine brought something that either one could use, regardless of who it ended up being.

6 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

Mat abandons Rand in tGH once he learns he can channel.

6 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

What the...?

Do you even remember the events that happened? Because it doesn't seem that you do...at all.

Ingtar...horn...dagger all in the last chapters. And guess who sounds the Horn? 

Yeah, I was going to say something on that.

Mat (AND Perrin) avoid Rand because they think he's putting on airs.  But they don't in any way abandon him.  He had actually threatened to abandon them.

All that time, they didn't know he could channel.

They learn he can channel when they see him with the Dragon Banner that Moiraine had hidden in his saddlebags, which he had just yelled about.  Because he still thinks she wants to set him up as a false Dragon for some devious purpose.

The only thing that they do differently after that is to sleep on the other side of the camp.

The night they learn he can channel is the night he(?) activates the Portal Stone.  And he disappears.

On 1/24/2022 at 1:14 AM, Andra said:

 

 

So, I've been back through the first three episodes.

The odd fingerless gloves are in the very first scene of the Ep.1 prologue.  Don't know what they are, though Moiraine frequently holds a pose as if her hands hurt.  No idea what that means.

The gold plating on her ear(s) doesn't appear yet.  She's wearing earrings instead so far.  The first scene that shows us enough of her ears to tell is the bathtub scene with Lan.  And she clearly doesn't have the gold plating.

 

I'll keep looking - the scene above with Kerene should come up in Ep.4.

Update (if anyone cares any more):

The gold ear decoration Kerene was wearing apparently gets buried with her in Ep.4.  It was visible when Stepin carried her body to the grave, and we don't see him remove it before the shroud gets laid over her.

Moiraine also doesn't have hers through all of Ep.5.

We first see her wearing it in the opening scene of Ep.6 (right after Siuan's origin prologue).  She has it through the entire episode right up until she leaves the Tower for the Waygate.  After that, nothing.

No indication in the show that it has any significance beyond simple ornamentation.