Yeah Mailman, I know you love the show but you really gotta stop doing this.

I'm prepared to give the show a lot of leeway on a lot of things, but I also thought the open was terrible. Not only terrible in an absolute sense, but also a terrible decision to alienate so many book fans immediately. I wonder how many book fans watched the open of epsiode 1 and turned off in disgust as it looked like the writers hadn't even read the books. Certainly it started off the series in a way that was very jarring for a lot of book fans and left them needing to win back trust, which they failed to do for many. Firstly, in the Moiraine scene, the insertion of "we don't know if it's a boy or a girl" seems jammed in and unnecessary. Even if they want to go the route of "maybe the girls could be the dragon", it'd be far better to do that later on by some conversation between Egwene and Moiraine where Egwene questions the assumption that the dragon must be reborn a male and Moiraine admits that as people don't remember their past lives, there is no way to know for sure that people are reborn the same gender. I think that makes sense within the world and would go down far better with book readers, who by that point would hopefully be more confident that this is simple misdirection for show-only viewers. As is, it came across clunky and immediately alienating. To then follow that with Liandrin's "you make it filthy" just adds insult to injury. In my opinion it's even worse. The darkfriend angle is almost irrelevant. The Black Ajah constantly have to worry about being caught in a lie. They're not going to just casually throw out a pointless lie like that, whatever the circumstances. It being Liandrin vs it being some other Aes Sedai is close to irrelevant in the scene making sense. It becomes clear later on that Aes Sedai know enough about saidin/saidar that they are not ignorant enough to say this so it's just a poorly written scene in my opinion. It feels like it was written as a standalone scene that someone thought would be a good, dramatic open, without regard to the details of what was said. Again though, even if all the criticisms I just laid out were ultimately justifiable in some way, it's still blindingly obvious that a large proportion of book readers are going to watch these first couple of scenes in horror, thinking "what on earth is this I'm hearing?" Book fans could have been some of the strongest proponents of the show if they liked it and they will be the harshest and most vocal critics if they don't like it. I feel like there was a meeting about the opening scenes where the attitude was "let's just hit the book fans with the fact that there are going to be a ton of changes right from the start and then from that starting point they can start to enjoy the show." Unnecessary and incredibly poor decision in my opinion. So many people wanted it to succeed and the writers just needed to work with the book fans a little more in that regard, be a little more gentle with the plot points they want to bring in that deviate from the book rather than "BAM in your face" in scene 1.

Given that I've posted a couple of times a little off topic, I'd also like to give my main feelings on the cancellation. I think it's a real shame given the direction things were going. Season 3 was a genuinely good season of television and if it had been that quality from the start, I imagine we'd be in a very different situation. Circumstances also played a part. Had the timetable been sped up by a couple of years, we'd probably be getting a season 4, even given the exact same seasons 1-3, so that's unfortunate. Rather than be annoyed at Rafe, or anyone else though, my main feeling towards everyone involved with the show is gratitude. It seems clear to me that Rafe put his heart and soul into doing the best he could with the show, regardless of whether I agree with all the choices he made. I always thought that WoT would be far too hard to turn into a good tv show to ever see it happen, yet they dealt with some aspects of it better than I could have imagined (some blunders also, don't get me wrong). There are characters, cultures, scenes and moments that I never thought I'd see on screen, that I'm super happy to have been able to see brought to life. There are also a huge number of other people who did a great job on the show, both actors and behind the scenes. Some no doubt cared more than others, but particularly seeing interviews with many of the actors, it's clear that they took the job of representing their character very seriously. I loved the cast and some of the performances were brilliant, it's a real shame for them that they don't get to continue the show. Some of Zoe's work in season 1, Madeleine as a damane and Josha in Rhuidean jump out immediately as outstanding but so many cast members did the show and the books proud with their portrayal. Not that they'll read this, but to everyone who gave it their all, I wish them all the best in their future careers and I'll be rooting for them to succeed in whatever they do next.