I don’t believe that it is stated or implied that anything that happens in the Ter’angreal is true. Certainly it doesn’t make sense that Aginor would have been around to assault Nynaeve at some point in her past. It does seem to be the case that the three rings might have some element of past, present, and future, but that doesn’t seem to align as well with the things that Egwene sees. It’s also apparent that the things seen are associated with fears of the candidate. It may be that this is a representation of a past fear that Nynaeve had in order for her to face it and overcome it. So not necessarily something that happened but perhaps something that she was afraid of. It isn’t really ever made fully clear, but I don’t think it’s meant to be the case that Nynaeve was actually assaulted in the past.

The three oaths are generally grounded by the oathgiver’s grasp on reality. It is at least implied that the oaths can effectively be broken by someone able to manipulate her own view of reality to the point that she doesn’t believe she is violating the oaths. Verin is able to somewhat defeat the BA oaths by literally interpreting “hour of her death” when it might have been intended figuratively. Of course, the BA oaths is worded somewhat unnecessarily poetically. Or maybe it was a backdoor that some early reluctant BA member built in. That said, RJ treads very lightly in this area and I think that is for the best as a story needs to feel like it has rules and that breaking rules at least has serious consequences.

This is a key to enjoying wheel of time in my opinion. You aren’t meant to like the protagonists all the time. They get more likable towards the end.

That’s actually what happens in the book, too. Perrin and Elyas have this discussion, right after the Ravens pursuit. It would hardly have been adapting. Just acting out a scene from the book as written.

It’s stated that GC is always significantly older than Birgitte. When she is ripped out, this is not a normal life as she appears as an adult with an understanding of who she is and remembers some of her past lives. She dies and will then be able to be born normally, although presumably not for years at GC is only a baby at the end of the series.

Mat doesn’t have any POVs until book 3. Not including the ravens prologue (which wasn’t part of the original publication) Rand and Perrin have almost all of the POVs in book 1. Nynaeve has a few and Moraine has a paragraph at the end of the book. But if you are arguing that we need inner monologues to understand early Mat or Egwene, you aren’t being fair.

I considered this on my first read through and I have heard others did so as well. But was there ever a statement that RJ actually had planned this? The reason I ask is that I eventually ruled it out because the timelines don’t work. Olver had to have been born before the beginning of the series, but Gaidal Cain is with Birgitte in Tel during the first part of the series. While time can pass differently in Tel, I think this applies only to the speed at which time passes. Time must still continue forward in all dimensions and someone cannot travel to Tel and see GC there if he is already born as Olver. In order for Olver to be GC, either Olver has supernatural aging abilities or otherwise doesn’t have a natural human lifecycle, or the weirdness of time in Tel is much weirder than we are ever shown. Or maybe child Olver can travel to Tel and be there as GC when asleep or something. Or maybe children haven’t received their souls yet, but that’s a bit creepy.

This claim has been made before in this forum and I’ve quoted the actual dialog from the book that could have solved this problem word for word. Perrin has a discussion with Elyas where he explains his inner turmoil and Elyas talks to him about leaving the axe when he no longer fears using it and such. It would be a great scene that would have explained a lot and easily developed the character.

You’re missing the point. Dedicated fans re-reading the book and understanding all of the lore drops is not the metric here. You need to find people with no context or history with the series and have them casually read TEotW. Then, see if they can explain the details of the lore after reading through it once. I agree with you except that I don’t think this is Dunning-Kruger. Dunning-Kruger is when people who are bad at something are unable to accurately assess their lack of competence. You seem to be using it to say that people who are good or experienced at something are unable to accurately assess the difficulty for the average person. That seems related, but it’s sort of the opposite.

Leaving story and characters aside, it’s a stark contrast to watch GoT or LoTR compared to WoT. WoT was just so far behind in apparent production quality and polish. I was also astonished by the amount of money they spent for that level of product to come out of it. The lighting, special effect, fight choreography, and sets didn’t feel good. Costumes were okay, but I don’t think they stood out as exceptional either. They just wouldn’t have pulled it down if the other parts were right.

Uno is a masculine archetype that Rafe either didn’t understand or didn’t want to develop. It’s just one of many examples of Rafe wanted to rewrite the story the way he wanted it to be rather than adapt the story as it was.

I’d agree with your assessment that WoT is mostly set in a period analogous to the late Middle Ages or early renaissance. This is consistent with the military, nautical, and agricultural technologies that we see and also reflects the general level of trade and connectivity in the world. It seems that the Taveren are implied to have accelerated things with Rand’s school causing the steam engine and other Industrial Revolution technologies and Mat revolutionizing warfare with dragons and pike formations.

8 year olds generally can’t fend for themselves and by and large never have been expected to. 12-14 is very different than 8 and even in cases where some adult responsibilities and rights were given to teenagers, that doesn’t mean that those civilizations didn’t understand and expect that people to continue to mature and grow. Respect for elders was a common value in many ancient and middle age civilizations.

Do you have a source or any data for this? Because I’m pretty sure that 8 year olds have never been adults in any recorded human civilization and certainly not 300 years ago. It’s perhaps true that young children were expected to have more responsibility for chores, caring for younger siblings, and even perhaps handling paid work. That’s very different from seeing them as adults. Adulthood may have perhaps been more of a sliding scale, but in many cases full adulthood may have been actually later. If your point is that the concept of a hard line where adulthood begins for everyone at a fixed age regardless of other factors is a relatively new concept, I would agree. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say that adulthood used to start much earlier. Sexual maturity may have been an important dividing line, particularly for women, but it wasn’t the only one.

I think the foretelling was the way to go. I would have included a lot of NS content in episode 1 as I think it would have been good television, given an opportunity for a more epic start, and also been more satisfying to book purists.