You can define your terms how you like. The reason I think people are using the term “fakeout death” is that the show is creating the problems that fakeout deaths create in that it undermines the stakes and sense of mortal peril. If characters are fighting, I know from general life knowledge that if one of them gets stabbed through the chest, it will be fatal. Thus, I sense the peril and understand that the current conflict is high stakes. However, if it’s established in the universe that characters can simply heal each other from wounds that should be fatal, I no longer know what the stakes are. We are no longer in a universe where real world judgment can tell us what mortal peril even looks like.

The justification for using spears was that spears are not dedicated weapons since they can be used as hunting tools. Swords are only used to kill people. Logically, that leads to the conclusion that it doesn’t so much matter how you use the spear. The important thing is that it is a dual use tool. The same thing comes up with Perrin’s hammer.

He’s there in the books.

That’s a hell of a question to ask about a character that effectively doesn’t exist in the book.

Perrin is literally not in TFoH. So he’s due for a break.

Definitely should be mutton.

It’s not unprecedented that a monarch might execute the head of a noble house and make peace with the heir of that house. Considering that the heir is likely the child or close relative of the previous head of the household, the forgiveness is significant. Familial guilt is somewhat foreign to modern, western sensibilities, but looms large in many historical and some modern cultures. The fact that all of the descendants and relatives of the guilty party are not considered to bear that guilt is meaningful forgiveness in this context. Even for the executed person, it allows for the ability to leave a legacy that can carry on the name and influence and could constitute a real negotiating point in a peace deal. That said, I think that the question is more the degree to which this was a betrayal of trust on Morgase’s part. Did the heads of households negotiate a deal that they understood would mean their own deaths because it would allow their families to survive? Or were they lead to believe that they would be allowed to live and then deceived?

I’ve heard this a couple times before, but I’m skeptical that CPR makes it better. In addition to feeling anachronistic(just my opinion), it also feels like a fakeout death that undermines the stakes. It’s drama for drama’s sake that doesn’t serve the larger narrative.

Perrin sneaks into the WC camp in the two rivers in TSR.

If it makes no difference, why would they change it in the show? You can’t intentionally change a bunch of things and then when anyone objects revert to saying it doesn’t matter. It mattered enough that they changed it. Matching it to the book is the default. Changing it needs justification. And it’s frankly really weird that anyone reads a romantic relationship into the sisters. Which part of them being sisters makes people think that they are also boinking?

Rage made up a part for his boyfriend. It’s nepotic drivel.

Sammael probably also has more consistent pronunciation among book readers. I bet we don’t all say Be’lal the same, especially considering it’s never really been clear what was intended by the apostrophes.

I don’t have any numbers, but I think it was always going to be a challenge for numbers to go up season over season in this type of show if the early seasons aren’t well liked. Regardless of how good season 3 is, new viewers will have to watch the first two seasons to understand what is going on(and that probably even applies to book readers since the story has diverged so far). If season 1 is great, you can tell people that the show is great and already into the third season. If it doesn’t get good until season 3, you’re stuck telling people to bear 16 hours to get to the good part. That’s a much less compelling sell.

If Sammael is replacing Bel’al and just straight up only really doing Bel’al things, what was the point of naming him Sammael? Someone just thinks the name sounds cooler? Bel’al was probably the most vanilla of the forsaken, but if you want to include his plot points you should just include him.

You don’t even need to go slippery slope on this one. If this is just a fixed portal between a specific room in the white tower and a particular hut in Tear, that is already an immensely powerful resource in the context of Randland. Those two places are weeks of travel apart and both important centers of the world. The transfer of information alone would be valuable, not to mention that various other important journeys would be shortened as well. What restrictions do you think would make that not useful? Yes, it’s more useful if you can move it and change targets, etc. But it’s still pretty useful in its most basic form.

In the books, weaves do not have integral verbal or somatic components. Words and actions are just mental crutches that some channelers developed to aid in forming certain weaves. Compulsion requires that a command be given, but I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this command would necessarily be verbal or audible to others. A deep understanding of the brain would allow a forsaken to cause the subject to hear the command inside his or her head by touching the right parts of the brain in just the right way. Perhaps this would require two simultaneous weaves, but that should be well within Rahvin’s capacity.

I had assumed that the meetup was in the tower and that the item used was simply a connection between two rooms. In that case, it can easily be a terangreal that only works for those rooms and only the Amyrlin knows about it and she shared it with Moiraine. Mostly, I assumed that because, as you point out, the implications of the meetup being in a random hut in Tear are actually rather significant. Not only does it raise questions of why they are using this technology for sexual liaisons rather than finding the dragon, it also raises the question of what this hut in Tear actually is. Who maintains it? Why does no one explore it from the Outside? Siuan wouldn’t be wandering around Tear alone for reasons of her station and the relationship between the white tower and Tear. Worldbuilding is a foundational part of the WoT story telling. The writers don’t get to declare by fiat that something doesn’t matter to the story and thus won’t be explained when it breaks the worldbuilding.

The wheel of time being what it is, why would they be sure that it is a prequel and not a sequel? 🙂

What do you mean by tragic? In a general sense, bad people doing bad things is tragic since it would be happier if they did good things. But I don't think that is really very interesting in terms of analysis. If you mean tragic in the specific tragic hero sense, Lanfear fails to meet that archetype in lots of ways. Tragic heroes are generally good people who make tragic mistakes that lead to downfall and disaster. Lanfear is selfish and evil.

On the subject of minimum strength to use a sa'angreal, Lanfear also suggests that the reason the female Choedan Kal and associated access key are destroyed during the cleansing was that Nynaeve was not strong enough to use it under full control. She states that had Rand trusted Lanfear to use to Choedan Kal, it would not have been destroyed at the cleansing. Unreliable narrator in addition to Lanfear just being a master manipulator are what they are, but it seems that Lanfear is meant to have told the truth in this instance. That said, we don't really get any indication that any other angreals or sa'angreals have limits on how powerful a channeler needs to be to use them. Perhaps this is just because the limit scales with the power of the angreal and most angreal have limits so low that practically any channeler can use them. But even Vora's sa'angreal, Callandor, and Sakarnen don't ever seem to have a lower limit on the power of their users. That said, all of those are only ever used by fairly powerful channelers in the books. Also, my browser wants to autocomplete Choedan Kal to Choedan Kaleidoscope, and I think that should be part of the head cannon from now on.

For sure there’s no reason that Gaebril has to be Sammael. My logic was just that Sammael is in, but he’s not one that has enough of a story to make the top 8 in my opinion. Combining him with Rahvin, who has more interaction with confirmed characters, would be a reason to build his storylines.

One thing to consider is that Sammael may be Gaebril. Adding scenes and a battle in Illian in order to facilitate the showdown with Sammael has not really been hinted at. In the book, this encounter has tons of buildup and preparation that is somewhat of a dead-end, so I can see it being cut for time. Also, if they were following the storyline of the first three books, we would have already been to Illian and Moiraine would have already already learned about Lord Brand. That means that Rand's encounters with Rahvin and Sammael may be merged into a single encounter that covers much of the same ground. Possibly that will occur with Ishamael/Morridin present in order to create the link with Rand. And Nynaeve and Moghedian should be present as well with their Tel battle. Frankly, there are a lot of climaxes left to happen and I think we should expect that some of them will be merged. If that's true, I think your other 3 are Asmodean, Demandred, and either Semirhage or Mesaana. That leaves you with a 4/4 sex balance. I don't think any of those last 3 will be introduced soon since their parts all come a bit later in the books.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but I still like it. It’s not really intended to be just about combat skills. The AES Sedai are just generally complacent in their one power skills and not motivated to develop new weaves and generally improve their power.

Mostly Lost, but also really almost everything that JJ Abrams has ever made. Introduce mysteries because they make it interesting and people will keep watching to find out. Then never actually have an answer for the mysteries and hope that people forget before the end. The SW sequel trilogy is another example where he sets up a bunch of mysteries that in retrospect he never answers or explains. The general point I am making is that if you do something in the storytelling that is consciously mysterious (like a non-sequitur time jump), you have to eventually explain the mystery. That should be obvious, but it apparently isn’t.

For sure if you’re breaking the autopilot expectation to create intrigue and raise questions that you will later answer, it can work out well. But you have to commit to paying off that intrigue rather than going full JJ Abrams. Never go full JJ.