Well, here we are. I have many thoughts. 😅 First of all, easily the best season finale yet, but we all know that is a VERY low bar to clear... - Elaida went through the doorway and spoke to the Aelfinn? That didn't happen in the books, did it? Or did I just not remember that rather important plot point? At any rate, it adds a bit of extra drama to her take-over, so I didn't mind it. - What was the point of setting Sammael up to be the Asmodean stand-in, if they just throw it away and eh... string it up... in a single episode? "You will train Rand." "Oh, no you won't. Forget I said anything." - Melindhra approaching Lan from behind with a spear. Me: "Are we already at the token impaling for this episode??" - I'm glad they addressed Elayne's knowledge of Lord Gaebril, but I feel like it was rushed through very quickly. It should have had more moments of confusion on both sides. "What do you mean Lord Gaebril? There's no such person." "What are you talking about? He practically raised me." etc. etc. They both just came to their conclusions super fast. Probably because there was a LOT of plot to fit into this episode. - Balefire looked great. There was no discussion about its dangers or forbidden nature though. That might come later I suppose. - Mat and the Eelfinn was pretty cool. I couldn't decide whether the make-up was tacky or great. Maybe both. 😅 I'm glad we got the doorway and the fox-head medallion, even if it was moved to Tanchico. - Are... Are Min and Mat a thing...? I feel like the show-runners are determined not to give Rand any of his canonical girlfriends in this show. There's practically zero hints of it with Aviendha, and I'm not even sure if Elayne and Rand have been in a room together more than once or twice. - I laughed out loud when Nynaeve turned into Moses. - We didn't get her showdown with Moghedien though! I was really excited for that one! - Lan is still too emotional. - The whole ending sequence just kind of confused me. I'm not quite sure what was happening. Why was Moiraine just channeling randomly out in the desert? Was she trying to summon Lanfear to keep her away from Rand? Or was it a suicide mission? And surely with that amount of power, Lanfear would have immediately recognized the super glass ball and grabbed it for herself. In fact, this fight made Lanfear look very weak. She should have been able to snap her fingers and cut both of them into ribbons. - Ahhhh, Moiraine is this week's impalement with zero consequences. Gotta have one in every episode! (I'm sure in the Two Rivers somewhere, Alanna stood on a pine needle and needed Mat's sisters to heal her...) - I'm kind of in shock about Suian. There was still so much of her story to tell! The escape! The healing! The relationship with Bryne... Ahhhh, that's it, isn't it? They didn't want her to have any romantic relationships except with Moiraine, so off with her head. Very disappointing. I wanted to see her story continue to play out. (Then again, maybe beheading can be healed in this world? I wouldn't be surprised...) - I feel like Rand's big reveal moment to the Aiel didn't hit as hard as I was expecting it to. Perhaps it's just one of those things that works a lot better in the written word. It doesn't help that Couladin has only been in one or two scenes, so non-book-readers would probably have no idea who he even is at this point. - Overall, a good episode that hit a few big notes. Still some baffling decisions to drastically change the text for... I dunno, reasons? Three major players have been killed off this season, and yet made-up characters like Maksim continue to get extra running time. - I have no idea where they might go from here. I assume next season will be leading up to the taking of the Stone. Maybe we'll see Moiraine, Lanfear and the door in Tear? Would it be expecting too much to imagine Season 4 might get us to Dumai's Wells?

This thread gives me the LOLs. 😂 Scene 1 for next season: (Alanna and Maksim walking past a shop.) ALANNA: "Wait a moment. I want to get some needles to fix the holes in my clothes." MAKSIM: "No! Alanna, don't!!" (Alanna walks into the shop and is instantly impaled by a thousand needles.) MAKSIM, TO THE SHOPKEEPERS: "Excuse me, can any of you channel?" SHOPKEEPER: "Oh yeah. No problem. I'll fix her right up." (She channels. Alanna stands up again.) ALANNA: "Righto. On we go then."

Where's the Ep8 thread? I have so many thoughts! 😅

Hmmm. I have many thoughts. Overall, I thought the episode was pretty good. Still some really, really baffling decisions that are being made in the adaptation that I just cannot understand. But I'll try and put my thoughts together... * It might just be me, but the range of accents in the Two Rivers drives me crazy. I'd mentioned earlier how dumb it is having Rand, Mat and Perrin all speaking in different accents when they literally grew up in the same isolated society. Different Two Rivers characters in this latest episode were talking in all range of different styles. Did no one on production think this would come across as really fake...? * I dislike the use of modern real-world curses. (ie. "You b***h!" "F***ing wetlanders.") Randland has its own selection of swear words that different characters use. Hearing phrases like this in the Wheel of Time is just eye-rolling. * All of those Trollocs and Darkfriends, but not a single Myrddraal...? Did the show runners just forget that they existed? * I really like Faile. Loved how she grabbed Perrin by the beard at the end of the episode. * OMG, are they seriously impaling Alanna AGAIN?? And she's being healed by the Cauthon girls AGAIN?? Are they actually serious right now? I can't even. * It was good seeing Aram's journey through the episode. You could see he already had doubts, but once he picked up the sword, there was no turning back. * Valda was burnt to death by teenage girls...? Uhhhh, okay. I guess the rest of his story will go untold then. * I continue to feel like this show has really done the character of Padan Fain dirty. Out of all of his cool moments, I don't think any of them have made it into the show. This version of the character is so different, they might as well give him a different name. * This episode reminded me how cool the design is on The Ways. * Loial... I mean, they couldn't... Are they seriously...? Was the makeup too costly and time-consuming? Will they somehow find a way to bring him back later? I mean, it's not like he hasn't died on this show before.

You weren't put off by an entire season of Moiraine thinking she was stilled and arguing with Lan over nothing, then suddenly realising, LOL, wasn't stilled the whole time! Time to use the Power way outside of my capabilities and forsake my Tower oaths to just murder a bunch of people who don't even know I'm there? Or Elayne unable to walk because of an arrow in the leg, but somehow managing to climb a tall tower and get to the top before anyone else? There were so many things wrong with season 2. I think it was only marginally better than season 1. Nynaeve's trip through the arches and Egwene's capture by the Seanchan were the highlights for me. Really great acting all around in those scenes. Thankfully, on the whole, season 3 seems to have improved in quality quite a bit. Let's hope it continues.

Yeah, this is suggesting that he could touch the real world for like, 100 years. I also really miss the original Ishamael from the book, the tall imposing, scary man, whose eyes and mouth are furnaces of fire. The actor here plays it fine, I guess, but he's not scary. Rand's dreams in Book 1 are among the most impactful and memorable scenes in the whole series for me, and I was really sad they were 99% removed for the screen adaptation.

I saw that as Moghedien playing with Nynaeve, almost setting her a challenge to try and figure things out. If she is strong enough to break through the compulsion, she's a bigger threat than Moghedien first thought.

On the Amazon app, he's just listed as "Mat's Admirer." I'm gonna guess the answer is no. Juilin's hat was a fez.

A definite improvement over last week. (Phew!) - So great to have Thom back, even though he's still a bit too "grim" a gleeman IMO. That hat he's wearing... I feel like he might pass it on to someone else before too long... *wink* *wink* - OMG, they mentioned Saidar and Saidin! /collapses - I really liked the scene between Rand and Moiraine. Great acting from both. - Do you think the backstory that Faile gave Perrin is true, like it's her new show-canon? Or do you think she was just making up a story to throw him off the scent? If it's true, I'm gonna guess we won't see Davram in the show. Which is no enormous loss, but it's an interesting change nonetheless. - As Perrin and Faile were getting to know each other, I was thinking it would be good if they stretched the relationship out a bit. Maybe save their official "getting together" for another season or two. Since, y'know, he was just telling her about how he fridged his wife. Oh. Nope. They're making out. Okay then. Anyone else think that was kind of sudden? Especially since the subject they were discussing was Mat...? 🤨 - And yeah, totally agree with A Memory of Why. Two completely untrained wilder teenagers using complex healing spells by imagining themselves as a flower? So much eye-rolling. Hopefully Alanna's story is mostly finished for now. That story thread has been the weakest part of this season. - Moghedien is awesome. My favourite baddy in the show. The scene of compulsion with Nynaeve and Elayne was brilliant. Very similar to how I remember it happening in the book. And Nynaeve clutching the bracelet, and Moghedien's reaction. "You're... fighting me...?" SO good! I hope their animosity continues to grow. - Josha got to show some range towards the end. He's getting better and better I feel, as he gets more to do with the character. - Egwene: "Rand, death can't be healed!" ... ... "Oh, except that one time I did it. LOLz." Overall, while the story still took its fair share of liberties, it was more in line with the first few episodes, that feel like they're capturing the spirit of the books, much more than last weeks, which just felt like fan fiction.

A nitpicky lore inconsistency I noticed in the most recent episode... Earlier in the season, Lanfear told Moiraine that Moghedien was the only one who could create gray men. In other words, gray men hadn't existed for thousands of years. Then Siuan says, "Oh look, a gray man snuck into the White Tower." How does she know what a gray man even is? She hasn't been in contact with Moiraine. By logic, no one in this time should even have any idea what these soulless men are called.

Moiraine and Siuan? "Romantic relationship" is a stretch. It's suggested they may have played around a bit when they were studying in the tower together. It's like one paragraph. Both characters have romantic relationships with men in the main story. As for Aviendha and Elayne, could you provide a quote to back up that claim of "heavily implied" romance? Admittedly, I'm only in the middle of Book 7 in my third read-through, but I was NEVER given any impression that their relationship was any more than good friends / makeshift sisters. Having them be lesbian lovers in the show rings entirely untrue to the text, and just comes across as wild hand-waving, "Look at us! We're a modern, progressive show ticking all the boxes!"

It's the Wheel of Time! If the show's creators didn't want to adapt Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, why the hell didn't they just write their own show? Can you imagine the absolute outrage that would have reverberated across the planet if Peter Jackson had made the same level of changes in his adaptation of Lord of the Rings? But the source material was respected, treated with dignity. THIS is the story we are telling. We're not trying to rewrite it to fit our own ideals. I just wish this show's creators showed the same level of respect for Jordan's work. That's not me demonstrating ignorance in storytelling, it's me wanting the show to live up to the legacy of the books.

Aw man. I should have known it couldn't last. That was... not good. After last week's amazing episode, this feels like we've reverted back to Season 1 or 2. Somehow, they made entering Tel'aran'rhiod, one of the most exciting and intriguing concepts in the series, seem really boring! Not to mention that it seems really unclear how this version of T'A'R even works. It doesn't seem consistent with the original version, and Egwene just somehow masters dream-jumping in a day? And we've suddenly gone from following the book's story, back to "let's just make up our own plots." Sigh. Another Aes Sedai gets punctured by multiple wounds, but nah, it'll be fine. And having characters like Moiraine staring off into the distance sadly, because she's sad she's not with her lover... That is SO not Moiraine. Everyone seems to be crying about their loved ones this episode. I know they've made it very clear that defined races just aren't a thing in this version of the world, but it just doesn't ring true. If Lan, who in this version is Asian, is the king of Malkier, and he meets someone else from his ancient heritage, why is she blonde? And the sea folk, who in the books were very dark skinned, here are just a mixture? I think I saw a blonde guy on the boat. Accents are also a weird one. Mat's cockney-ish accent certainly fits the character, but are we to believe he grew up in the same society as Rand, Perrin and Egwene, who all have different accents? Even Mat's mother has a completely different accent to him. Just little details that stand out to me and make the show seem fake. Another thing that struck me about this episode was that the direction and continuity seemed off in a number of different scenes. A character would be looking in one direction, then the shot would cut, and their head would be in a different position, causing a jarring jump cut. Overall, a disappointment after the highs of last week, and definitely the weakest episode this season. 😞

But the way I see it, is that Rand's ancestors didn't ACTUALLY look just like him; Josha was merely cast in those roles so that people watching the TV show would "get it."

But let's not forget, there is a WHOLE lot of "not-much" between Books 6 and 11. I would say the majority of those books could be easily glossed over, and the plot would barely be affected at all.