You could say Ishy was the DO's champion.  Why does the DO need Shaidar Haran when he has Ishy?    

The thing is as Rand discovered, what winning is for the DO isn't necessarily what a mortal might consider winning.  I feel mortals can never understand what a being like the DO thinks or views things.  They think in mortal terms.  Rand saw for the Light to win and destroy the DO would ruin free will and basiclly create a world the DO wanted where there is no choice between good or evil.  Rand thought the DO idea of winning was to destroy hope, make people despair and beg for mercy.  The DO doesn't see winning as his armies destroying the army of light, he wants to destroy hope.  

I always felt all the other worlds and such was the patterns fail safe device, where if the DO does win on one world there are other worlds where the pattern still chugs along on.  

The DO doesn't learn because he attracts the same type of people every time.  Selfish, greedy, self serving, ones who will plot against each other as much as they do the enemy.   His followers will never understand him

A bit off topic but it would be interesting if you had a Wind Finder say use the female statue to channel into the bowl how far you could change the weather.

If you look at Star Wars, it took Luke 3 movies before he was powerful, he wasn't able to over power the bad guy in the first movie, they slowly built his powers.  In the final three they had the main character already able to read the bad guys thoughts and beat him in a light saber duel in the first movie.  I hated it because you lose out on a lot of character development.  Rand was only super powerful because he was able to tap into that untainted pool.  After that he went back to not knowing what he was doing for multiple books.  In the series they unleashed Nyn and Egwene as being some super channeler and saving the day way too quickly.  Anything they do now will feel anti climatic and not shocking since IMO they built them up as being all powerful way too quickly.

I think there is free will, LTT could have refused to try to seal the bore, Rand could have refused to go to the waste, Rand could have said screw it and hooked up with Lanfear.  Now would something of happened after that would have forced LTT or Rand to try it later?  But the big issue is the pattern seems to set people up to fail.  LTT never could have succeeded, so the pattern pretty much set him up to fail and go insane.  Tigraine was set up to die.  I see it as the pattern can push you to towards something and your fate might be set but in the end the person does still have some (sometimes not alot) of say in it.

Free will a big factor of WOT, which is why no one is destined to be good or bad every turning.  The Forsaken next time will be different souls, so to give people a choice.  

The issue is BS has said the song they seek doesn't exist.  I think it's punishment for their breaking away from their oaths to serve the Aes Sedai and went off on their own.  

The Aiel to me is another thing the pattern forced to happen because has the Aiel not broken away from the leaf then Rand would have failed.  For the Dragon to succeed the Aiel need to split and the Jenn needed to die out.

Except Perin did attack first and admitted he killed the Whitecloaks for killing wolves and not for defending himself.  He didn't kill in self defense.  Killing someone that killed an animal isn't justfied, even if you feel the animal was your friend.  The Whitecloaks do have a right to be wary when you discover strangers hiding in the darkness.

They are sure to make a few shorts like they did for season one.  

Lanfear had no hand with any of the Trollocs in Tear.  According to the Companion "On orders from the Dark One, Semirhage sent the Trollocs and Myrddraal to aid Rand in Tear against Sammael's shadowspawn."  But no mention as to why the DO did that.  Lanfear simply wanted to keep Rand guessing.   As the Companion states "she wanted to aid Rand as long as it didn't bring danger to herself" and "she wanted to help Rand against the other Forsaken in sofar as she could do it without exposing herself." So if she said yes and Sammael found out then she would risk Sammael seeking payback.  So why take a risk like that for something somone else did?

I wonder if it's an advantage to not have access to the whole lore of the series you're making.  Rafe has access to the whole WOT lore and world and people expect it to stay true all the time.  Where with the LOTR series they mostly have to use obscure source material and make a lot up.  

It might have to do with Jain became a hero because of his deeds and the sacrifices he was forced to make. he was used by so it wasn't anything he willingly did. Mat's "greatness" was more of the result of other's memories being stuffed into him.  A lot of people do good deeds in their lifetime, Mat was certainly someone who would help and do the right thing.  But a lot of his greatness was simply going through those doorways and a few episodes of selfishness which could have doomed the world.  It's possible things like his taking the dagger work against his making hero status.

Seems like the Sharan ones were warped and sort of suggest the Wyld would oppose the Dragon.  The companion just says Dem exploited and fulfiiled the prophecy of the Wyld while in Shara looking for that artifact he had.  Moghi at the end tried to control them by showing no one could sense her channeling.  So, it seems like to fulfill it Dem had to use the True Power so he couldn't be detected channeling and would seem like what he was doing was miracles.  It's unlikely Rand would have ever had the knowledge or skill to fulfill prophecies he knew nothing of.  

I think there were a few reasons.  He started to suspect the Dragon Reborn and He Who Comes with the Dawn were the same person.  He reasoned out the Aiel must play a purpose and would never accept him as an outsider.  Rhuarc surely filled him in on some of the prophicies like being born of the blood but not raised by the blood.  Accepting Tam wasn't his real dad and his mom was a Maiden of the Spear.  I always suspected Rhuarc probably hinted at least he needed to go to Rhudiean.  He understood the Aiel didn't care about the Dragon Reborn and would soon leave if he didn't do something and he needed the Aiel behind him.  He also knew enemies wouldn't expect that move from him and it would be easier to spot the enemy when they did appear.  Plus his vanishing would leave his allies worried about when he might suddenly return thus helping ensure they wouldn't risk betraying him.

Rand claimed he learned of the doorframe from reading a book.

Two Rivers was described as being at the end of nowhere.  A place where most outsiders that arrive are merchants.  So the average simple local farmer is probably clueless to most places that aren't a major city.  

Rand doesn't want to be a political power but if this guy who looks nothing like Rand claims to be Rand, there will be a lot of explaining he would need to do.  Cas especially would have a lot of explaining to do if she mentioned anything.  The Aes Sedai would be really upset.  Like why did she just let someone who looked like a captured Forsaken just walk out of the camp, especially if she thought it's Rand.  My guess is still she will use the knowledge to watch Elayne and Avi.  That would allow her to keep tabs on Rand if he shows up.  If Rand should start to cause issues, she could pass a message on to them saying she knows the secret and to have him stop.

If things end up a mess there won't be a COVID disrupted shooting excuse this time.

I think it was left in the cave.   Ishy was holding it when Nyn and Moriaine ran for their lives.  Rand was bleeding out, nearly blind, and carrying Ishy so it's unlikely he picked it up.

On 10/15/2022 at 6:57 PM, Skipp said:

 

There is alot of over laptop between the two books.  Do the wonder girls need to be kidnapped twice?  Does Rand need to Fight Ishamhel twice?  Do the groups need to split up only go end up in the exact same location twice?  There is certainly room for it to be trimmed here.  We know Mat is skipping his book two arc(what arc?), and just going for his book 3 arc. 

Actually the wonder girls got themselves captured 3 times, once book two and twice in book three.  It probably means all the other times the wonder girls managed to get captured/fall into a trap in later books will be cut also.

Two books in eight episodes seems like alot especially when they are already adding stuff for Moiraine and Lan.

I doubt she feels Rand is going to stir up much trouble, but knowing he is alive does mean she can watch his three women now to see if he shows up.  Being Aes Sedai she could use the information if say Elayne started causing issues or such.  I suspect she feels Rand has earned his freedom but watching his ladies could allow her to keep tabs on him now.

That is sort of my guess is Mat will be chilling in Tar Valon when the Wonder Girls arrive sort of like Mat in Book 3.  He might possibly meet Thom again and go running off to save the girls.  

I saw it as possibly a Black Ajah meeting, the Companion says the BA always meets with hoods on.

I'm not sure it was him disappearing as it was RJ just not mentioning him. Rand surely would have noticed if Darshiva simply vanished for any length of time while working for him.  He also probably had other off screen duties like looking for where Rand hid the seals and locating the Choden Kal.  So I assume it was more of RJ just not putting him in scenes.

At least in the books the Whitecloaks avoid the Borderlands where the Aes Sedai are usually respected, so they wouldn't look too kindly on the Whitecloaks hunting Aes Sedai and causing trouble.  You don't seem to see them in Tear or Illian (which are both strong nations).  Andor is a strong nation so they mostly pass through and avoid causing too many issues near the cities.  Most of the other nations are too weak to really put up alot of issues to the Whitecloaks.  But alot of the land (even in Andor) is mostly no mans land where about anything can happen.  The Whitecloaks are mostly bullies that do what they wish in a lot of places becuase most of the nations are too weak to stand up to them.  

I wouldn't say it's the best show ever but I'm enjoying most of it.  Sadly it does show where WOT is lacking,