#wotwatch

4. And then we get the super-awesome shot of the tall ‘moss-covered mountains’ that are actually abandoned skyscrapers. Perfect match for the Age of Legends scene that we get at the end of the season. Continue to love how they wove in the post-apocalypse threads. Subtle but once you know, you can see it in lots of place.

5. I really like how this opening scene with Egwene is all very metaphorical for how embracing saidar is described in the books. And getting our first glimpses of Egwene and Nynaeve is great, but I also like how it’s in the context of this woman-only group in their community because that’s a huge part of their story that they will need to navigate in the future (we know they’re both planning to head to the White Tower as of the end of S1). I do think it’s very interesting how the ‘Women’s Circle’ is not a governing body here but rather the community that all women join when they’re old enough for a braid. I don’t think we get any mentions of the Village Council or Bran as the Mayor either. The Two Rivers seems purely people chilling without a leader and just being a small community together.

6. The locations are so pretty. So, we get introduced to Moiraine & Lan, then Liandrin, then Egwene & Nynaeve, and now we have Rand and Tam. Tam is remembering the old days. Aw, this intro with Rand and Tam is cute, plus it does set up: wolves acting strangely, that Rand’s mom is out of the picture (implied dead), and him and Egwene as childhood sweethearts.

7. I think the show did a good job of marrying together the different backstories that Rand and Egwene’s romance have in the series. In the show, they’re first loves, currently in a relationship but inexplicably not married for reasons that perhaps neither of them could put a finger on if you asked them directly. Before Egwene gets the Wisdom apprentice invite, I imagine they would both vaguely say, “oh you know. we’ll get married some day” and then just keep not doing it.

8. This set of scenes in the Winespring does a good job setting up the friendship between the three boys. We see Rand and Perrin worrying over Mat losing money; and then Perrin also comes over to talk to Rand when he notices him brooding off by the wall. And Mat, in his more teasing way, is trying to make sure that the three of them stay connected as a friendship unit, even if Perrin is married and Rand is with Egwene and off in the mountains most of the year besides. And Perrin and Mat are both introduced in context of their friendship with Rand. This scene is also used to show how insular the Two Rivers is, hearing news of the world only second or third-hand.

9. Lan and Moiraine are such drama llamas, I swear. So Dramatic at all times. Nynaeve gets positioned as the village Protector even here in this introduction -- she’s the one that challenges Lan and tells him to name himself. Nynaeve and Rand are the two characters set up to be the most distrusting of Moiraine, but we see a lot of whispering between villagers in the background.

10. It’s an interesting set of shots that they set up here, actually, given some of what happens later. The people that Moiraine looks at: first, it’s Mat with the girl that we find out later that he stole from; then Nynaeve with Lan in the foreground; and finally Egwene with a shot that racks focus to include Rand and Perrin behind her (who will have a brief love trangle-ish moment later on in the season). But I like this shot of Moiraine looking around and clocking all the potential people who might be the correct age to be the Dragon Reborn.

11. Again, on a rewatch, Perrin’s secret crush on Egwene (and Nynaeve’s knowledge of it) is actually made pretty clear.

12. We get introduced next to Mat’s change in backstory which I’ve personally thought was a brilliant choice from the beginning. Mat’s background feels fairly disconnected from his characterization in the books and this new backstory grounds him as a character, gives him some strong motivations and some strong personal fears. It does add a slightly darker/seedier side to the Two Rivers, in that the Cauthons have clearly fallen through the cracks, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing either.

13. But the set-up here really is heartbreaking for Mat -- a father that is constantly breaking his mother’s heart, a mother who is so consumed by her husband’s betrayal that she’s barely a mother to her children, and Mat left to essentially parent his little sisters. And it sets up Mat as someone who has both strong reasons to want to be far away from the Two Rivers (to escape his family and the reputation his family would have in the village) and to return to the Two Rivers (to take care of his sisters). And he’s also set up as someone who only has his ‘true self’ seen by a handful of people -- his sisters, Rand, and... potentially Perrin, though Perrin doesn’t get as much screentime about it, and potentially Nynaeve as well -- and everyone else sees this surface gloss of who he is, including Moiraine, Egwene, and his own parents.

14. I do actually wonder if part of the reason that they cast the sisters so young was because filming just takes a long time, longer than the books are set in, so they may just be planning to have the events of the books take place over a longer time frame.

15. We do see here than Egwene and Rand’s relationship is definitely favored by both his father and her parents. Tam and Rand stay behind after everyone else has left to help the al’Vere’s clean up the inn, essentially acting as in-laws already. The scene between them alone is really good, too, and you can feel the tension of Egwene having something to tell Rand and being uncertain about it, and Rand is clearly aware that something is Going On but isn’t sure he wants to know, and so they ended up sleeping together first and then dealing with their actual issues afterwards.

16. I also really really love the platonic bath scene with Moiraine and Lan. Nonsexual and nonromantic intimacy between people who are essentially platonic life-partners at this point. It’s a great look under the ~dramatic~ surface that they were portraying to the villagers earlier. And it’s nice that our first bit of nudity is a guy’s butt. And I love the implication that, over the years, Moiraine has embraced some of the customs from Lan’s homeland.

17. Rand does essentially take this as something of a break-up while Egwene seems more torn on whether it is or isn’t. But then part of the issue that they end up running into later on in this episode and at the end of the season, is that Rand likes to process things alone in his head and Egwene wants to talk it all out as it’s currently happening, so they have some communication incompatibilities but it isn’t chalked up to Women are just Like This and Men are just Like That, the way that things like that tend to be spun as in the books.

18. And the intro to Padan Fain, where we find out that he acts essentially as Mat’s fence for items stolen from people in the Two Rivers works really well and it just... it does make me sad about how the show had to get adjusted post-Covid, and was not able to have Mat end out the season facing off against Fain, as I’m sure he was originally supposed to do. Fain’s whole speech about how he hated going to the Two Rivers every year would have hit harder if he’d been saying it to Mat.

19. We do see here, in a more subtle way, how most of the villagers are eyeing Moiraine and Lan suspiciously.

20. The sort of semi-post-relationship conversation with Egwene and Rand on the mountainside is very good as well. That she knows where to look for him when he’s in a thoughtful/brooding mood and the actual content of the talk as well. Honestly, I feel so puzzled by a lot of the complaints from some people about Rand’s behavior towards Egwene that I saw? It all makes perfect sense to me? She breaks up with him but then, next episode, she wants him to be instantly over any heartbreak and, at the same time, offer her boyfriend-type cuddles at night. And I get it from Egwene’s PoV too -- it’s a very stressful situation and she’s used to looking to Rand for comfort in stressful situations, so she’s going back to her instincts/old habits. But it’s just weird how I saw people call him clingy when she is the one who literally tries to physically snuggle up with him after she breaks up with him? How is he supposed to ‘just get over her already’ when she’s doing stuff like that? idk some people don’t seem to expect men to have human emotions and it’s weird to me. She’s allowed to be nostalgic about him to Aram but he’s not allowed to be nostalgic about her.

21. Rand had a whole Vision about his future (not the magic kind) and he needs some time to adjust to that vision changing. And, like... that’s fair and completely a normal human reaction to being broken up with and I do not understand why I saw so many people being weird about it when this set of episodes aired. It’s not like Rand had a made-up fantasy about Egwene -- they were literally in a romantic and sexual relationship! That ended extremely abruptly! And then they all got traumatized by having their village attacked! Even without the additional trauma that Rand was operating under, his behavior made sense.

22. Nynaeve and Moiraine do get off on such a hilariously bad footing here. Moiraine takes such a terrible approach to trying to feel Nynaeve out on her parentage, etc. Though I can see how the sort of overwhelming presence that she’s trying to use here would work against a lot of people, but it just majorly puts Nynaeve’s back up. I’ve thought a lot about how Rand might react to learning that Moiraine sent the Red Ajah after Mat, but Nynaeve would also have an extremely explosive reaction, especially because she shows a lot of sympathy and understanding for Mat in Primeverse.

23. Aaah, Nynaeve firmly establishing herself as The Protector of the Two Rivers Folk and she is, she so very much is. Zoë Robins is just so perfect as Nynaeve and I love her in the role so much. The casting is so on-point.

24. We get another establishing friendship scene with our three boys. And Mat just instantly can tell something’s wrong with Rand, even as Perrin is just like ??? about it. He susses out that it’s about Egwene and that it was Really Bad in terms of their relationship. Then a little later, we also get the bit where Rand and Perrin give some money to Mat so that he can buy lanterns for the girls. There really is kinda a vibe where Mat is extremely emotionally aware of both Rand and Perrin, and while Rand and Perrin are both emotionally aware of Mat, they are not particularly aware of each other. Which tracks with Perrin having a secret crush on Egwene and that making himself distance himself from Rand (slightly). Rand and Perrin still care about each other but don’t ever really get the one-on-one scenes that Rand and Mat, and Mat and Perrin get. But they did a really good job setting up these three as a close friend group.

25. And we do see that Egwene is also sad over the ending of her relationship with Rand (she’s crying on the bridge) and Nynaeve comes to listen to the wind with her. I do think it’s interesting that they set up both Nynaeve and Egwene as each having strong bonds to two of the boys but somewhat-to-mildly disapproving of the third one -- Nynaeve is very compassionate with Rand and Mat later on, but tells Perrin to go home to his wife; Egwene was in a romance with Rand and trauma-bonds with Perrin, but has a more antagonistic view of Mat. It makes things feel more complex than they were in the books, imo.

26. Oh, hey, that’s a beeswax candle! Nice. I love what they did with the candle ceremony. The show did such an interesting thing where it made the whole Wheel and the reincarnation feels a lot more like a vibrant cultural aspect than it does in the books. It influences the Two Rivers beliefs here and it influences the Tuatha'an people’s beliefs when Perrin talks to them in later episodes. It just really grounds the people’s behavior when it’s attached to these spiritual rituals (and I am saying this as an atheist who does not personally perform any spiritual or religious rituals -- I don’t do it, but it is a very common part of the human experience and it makes sense that it would have this kind of impact on people who live in this world). And the whole idea that the candles light the way for souls to come back and then you have a celebration to remind them of what’s worth coming back for.

27. The little touch of Nynaeve setting out the candle on the other side of the river and wiping away her tears immediately and walking away, because she feels like she needs to be strong for the village and not let them see her show her pain. And then her not dancing at Bel Tine. Those little touches showing how she has to set herself slightly apart from all of them.

28. The horror of the Trolloc attack in the middle of the dancing works really well, imo. We don’t see any of this in the book because we’re entirely in Rand’s PoV but this whole section does set up a lot: we see Mat going back into danger to act as a protector, we set up Perrin having an understandable trauma centered around the violence of the axe, we get Nynaeve trying to protect the villagers and Egwene by her side ready to fight with her, we see the initial panic of the villagers and then them rallying together, we have Padan Fain sneaking off in the middle of the attack, and we get Rand and Tam dealing with that same horror in isolation up mountain. And we get to see how well Aes Sedai and Warders work as a team, which was very cool and useful. They did a good job with the choreo there, because it really does feel like they can anticipate each other’s moves. And Egwene and Nynaeve both get a close look at what Aes Sedai are capable of accomplishing.

29. We don’t get to see Rand and Tam’s conversation in the woods here, but since this is a rewatch, we all know that it happened and will impact Rand’s behavior going forward. He just found out that his dad picked up a kid in the aftermath of a battle and took him home, so he’s got an identity crisis going on in the background of every scene that he’s in from this point forward.

30. I’m just gonna feel bad for Egwene for a moment, because she went through the rough journey of believing that Nynaeve was dead from here until they’re reunited in E6, and then post-E8, she is potentially going to be told/implied to that Rand is dead as well. Anyway, like I mentioned above, I totally understand why Egwene seeks Rand’s comfort in E2 because this is a very traumatic experience.

31. Moiraine and the Winespring collapsing together is such a cool shot. I really love it. Epic. And Lan covering her to shield her from the debris. What an amazingly visual illustration of what a Warder does.

32. Rand arriving back to the absolute ruin of the town. Heartbreaking. Ah, and Egwene telling Rand that Nynaeve ‘is gone’. Just this whole section of people counting up their losses is heartbreaking. And the little moments of connection in the tragedies, like Egwene and Rand hugging each other or Mat putting his hand on Perrin’s shoulder. Interestingly, the hand motions that Moiraine does here to heal Tam are similar from what I remember of how she draws Shadar Logoth’s corruption from Mat, both scenes that Rand witnesses.

33. Rand immediately challenges Moiraine which was another thing that viewers held against him despite it... making sense? He talks about the same sort of logic later on re: Thom as well -- that it’s possible that the convenient stranger who showed up right before the trouble conveniently helped them in order to win their trust. Rand doesn’t know that Moiraine is getting Protagonist Hero Shots.

34. The things that Moiraine tells them (notably: she tells them because Rand challenged her): that an Aes Sedai saw glimpses of the future twenty years ago, that the Dark One is waking, that his whispers are in the backs of their minds, and that the Dragon (the one person who can stand against the Dark One) has been reborn and is one of the four of them. And that they need to leave, because the Trollocs are chasing them, specifically, and if they stay then the town will be destroyed.

35. I’m also intrigued by the implication that maybe the entire village just learned that one of their four kiddos is the Dragon Reborn? Since Moiraine isn’t leaving in secret the way that they did in The Eye of the World. It’s difficult to say, because everyone else is busy working on the town and we don’t get reaction shots. But everyone does know that their four kiddos are very publicly leaving with the Aes Sedai and it’s clear that there were goodbyes, if short ones, so even if they don’t know that the Dragon is involved, they do know more than the Two Rivers knew in the book.