Light, Rand!!

Tiny Moiraine, Giant Lan, and Nicolas Cage Rand

I am a book reader. A reader of books, if you will (and I think you will). The Wheel of Time series on Amazon Prime has been a very emotional journey for Me, Reader of Books.

On the one hand, it has been amazing. The acting, costumes, score, writing. But a small part of me was kind of sad: it wasn’t the book series I had fallen in love with. For the first two seasons, it was kind of telling a story vaguely parallel to the story told in the books, and as much as I was enjoying it, it wasn’t quite THE STORY that I wanted told, the story that captured me as a 12 year old holding that big honking book.

Season 2 was even better, stronger, building on what worked with Season 1 but noticeably still telling an altogether different story from the books, with characters who shared the same names and some of the same story beats but otherwise entirely original characters compared to the folks I loved in those books—their motivations, fears, joys, successes, failures, just altogether different. Show Rand and book Rand share the same name and perhaps even look a lot alike, but they were just entirely different people.

And then Season 3 started.

Suddenly everything was different. It was … well, it was exhilarating. It was the book. It was the story, the characters, the sheer awesomeness of what is unique about The Wheel of Tome from the books. Suddenly we were following something very like the story I had fallen in love with. The characters were suddenly very recognizable. Each episode made me more delighted than the last.

And then came episode 4.

Without spoilers, I will say this: it is this point in the book that made The Wheel of Time special, unique from any other fantasy book out there, from any other story anyone else was telling. The sequence told in episode 4 is an incredible, stunningly well-adapted rendition of the best part of The Shadow Rising, Wheel of Time Book 4, the most pivotal moment in the series where it ceases to be anything like the somewhat Tolkienesque world we are introduced to, where it truly becomes its own thing. It is seeing what Rand and Moiraine see that we realize what this whole thing is about.

And they knocked it out of the park. I am floored. I don’t know what I can say or add that hasn’t already been said or added. At the end of the episode, I just sat there, filled with … what? Awe? Satisfaction? Relief?

I was just overwhelmed. The most important moment in the books, arguably, is that sequence, because the rest of the story—an additional 11 books—hinge on this moment, build on this sequence, and they absolutely nailed it.

And finally I feel like this thing I have loved for so long is properly and truly shared with everyone who hasn’t yet read the books. I couldn’t be happier with this episode.

*spoilers through S2E8*

This has been a very solid season. The direction the story went was unexpected and yet fits the overall books’ direction, and lots of little changes and retroactive adjustments made a big difference for me—like giving gleemen back their colorful patched cloaks, letting us see more weave colors, etc. While I appreciated S1, one of my issues was it not fully feeling like the WoT setting I had grown to love in the books, and this season very much did.

Where does the take get hot?

I, um … I thought the writing and pacing of the second half of the finale was kind of … bad?

Okay, let me explain.

Example: We have Lord Ingtar and Loial and Masema (the “and Peggy” of the trio) just … they have the Horn now, and they mention in one line that “A Carhein woman helped us sneak it out” … and that all happened off screen, and while I could infer we’re talking about Lanfear, it really felt like we had skipped a scene, especially since I’m pretty sure that was these characters’ first appearance in this episode and we had no notion that they were trying to escape or what their plan was, etc.

And from that point in the episode to the end, it just felt like everything had been clipped down to bullet points. The dialogue felt super abbreviated, and in other places felt like a line was added in a super awkward way to make sure the audience understood something that I think they could’ve inferred.

I think it would’ve been more powerful, for instance, if when Rand sees Elayne, he doesn’t say anything—just stares and then we cut to the awesome shot of Elayne’s head haloed by the sun

Likewise if we had just cut to Aviendha, Bain, and Chiad just looking up in awe at Rand and the fire weave dragon in silence, I think it’d have been more powerful than Aviendha saying “Car’a’carn”

It’s like they just ran out of runtime and had to condense the finale down to its barest bones. Which is almost certainly what happened.

Okay, but that’s not too hot of a take.

Okay, here’s where the fire falls.

For all the above complaints

It was

And I really do mean this

In my humblest of opinions

A big improvement on the ending of The Great Hunt.

The Great Hunt’s ending was spectacular imho right up until the Horn of Valere is blown. And then it flies right off the rails. The Great Hunt spoilers below, but it’s not really all that different from the S2 finale in terms of outcomes.

A mist arises

Artur Hawkwing and the other Heroes of the Horn appear

They talk and have some playful banter that didn’t age great (“and women!” Brigitte Silverbow said. “And women,” agreed Hawkwing [audience gives a hearty chuckle])

Rand leads the heroes of the horn into … battle? And Perrin has to be Rand’s standard bearer and Mat is asked to just keep toot-tooting on the horn to … inspire the troops? And they spend the battle just … holding a banner and rooting on the Horn?

Ishamael is there in the mists

But it’s in the sky???

But it’s not because the Heroes of the Horn are on the ground

But they’re also in the sky?

And Ishamael and Rand don’t have a channeling battle; they have … a swordfight? Except Ishamael is using a staff? And I guess they’re like One Power proxy weapons because they have supernatural abilities if they make contact?

But the Heroes are definitely on the ground because when Rand has the upper hand, the battle goes well for them and when Ishamael has the upper hand it goes poorly for them?

And everyone can see Rand and Ishamael fighting in the sky like it’s friggin’ Fantasmic with no explanation as to why or how or what purpose it serves, just that that’s the prophecy and so they’re in the sky and everyone (especially the young women) gets to be super impressed with Rand?

Mat, presumably, is still just a-tooting on the horn of Valere the whole time

And then when Rand stabs Ishamael, he, they, it … no more in the sky?

Rand is found wounded on the ground and not in the sky?

And then things pick up again at the end of the book.

But it’s one of those moments that throughout the rest of the series is just like … what? Huh? What was THAT? Nothing like it ever happens again and nobody ever attempts to make it make sense. It’s just one of those things that just … we have to move on from.

Season 2 finale resolves most of that in ways I really like. Exception: the Dragon Banner that is just a fire weave illusion from Moiraine … that gave off the same vibe to me as that scene in Eragon 2006: “And are we together, Saphira? AS ONE????” (Dragon roar and fire.) I just imagine that Moiraine is sitting there channeling the weave and Lan is like, “Okay, Moiraine! Now make it roar!” But. Minor quibble.

BUT ANYWAY. The finale just kind of felt rushed, like it needed to be 30% longer. But the changes were imho big improvements on the Fight in the Sky of The Great Hunt.

By making the “sky” part just a tall tower made it all make so much more sense and less silly. And having our whole main cast together with Rand and DOING STUFF and not relegated to tooting merrily on the Horn of Valere and holding Rand’s stuff for him was a great improvement. Egwene taking on Ishamael and actually surviving against him for as long as she did, Perrin coming in, Elayne healing Rand, etc. Such an improvement imho. Taking one of the few WoT moments that I always cringed at and making it a solid, grounded moment.

That’s my super hot take. Don’t hate me.

And Uno as a hero of the horn was amazing. Could not have loved that more.

Spoilers through WoT S2E5, and very minor spoilers through book … oh, 6 or so?

Basically, I’m so loving the changes in S2 so far from the books. In S1 I struggled with them; in S2, not only do they make more sense, but I think they’re improving on the source material. In particular: Liandrin.

In the books, she’s kind of a minor antagonist. Very little depth, her motivation is that she … wants to be evil, I guess? Doesn’t like feeling powerless, sure. Here are the minor book spoilers, and I say minor because at this point I doubt that the show is going to stick with these story points:

In the books, she was already a Darkfriend when she came to the White Tower as a novice. We don’t get a ton about her motivations except that she had a rough childhood. And after she hands Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne (our wonderful Wonder Girls!) to the Seanchan, she becomes a background villain whom the Wonder Girls mostly engage with indirectly, and who vanishes from the narrative in a bit of poetic justice but ultimately she winds up feeing inconsequential. She picks a fight with a Forsaken and is punished with Footnote Syndrome: she doesn’t die but is basically made irrelevant to the rest of the story. No more Liandrin.

Season 2 is giving her much more depth and sympathy, as it is with all the Darkfriends, turning them from faceless or one-dimensional baddies into characters you can understand, even root for to some degree. And I suspect the show is going to make Liandrin a much more relevant character who will stick around a lot longer and be a more involved part of the Wonder Girls’ story arch.

That is all, till next time.

That is what we have had

Nothing

We hunger, Amazon

We hunger for more

We cannot long endure this desert

Our feet burn on the hot sands

Our skin sizzles under the sun

Our throats parched and angry

We know, yes, we know that SDCC is coming

We know that this is probably where water lies

We know

But we hunger

Hungry!

We must feed

We require

And more photo drops! They aren’t dripping with details, but there may be something to be gleaned.

Starting here with Moiraine in her lovely blue dress, still wearing her Great Serpent ring. It seems even unable to channel (still debated as to whether she is stilled or just permanently shielded), she isn’t letting on and is still presenting herself as Aes Sedai.

Rand with his shaved head still wields his heron-marked blade. Come to think of it, we really haven’t seen him use it in the show hitherto, and there’s certainly opportunity for him to in S2.

Perrin doesn’t look so very Way of the Leaf-y here. Definitely seen some action. Golden eyes—surely a bad sign, per the Children of the Light! Not sure the context here, but he looks older and more experienced than in the photo drop with Aviendha. Except he seems to be wearing the same clothes? And the lighting is the same? Different point in the same sequence?

Mat and his trusty quarterstaff. The Two Rivers had competitions of staff(?) and bow, and Mat has enough practice there that he’s no pushover. Come to think of it, we also didn’t see Mat in action in S1, more just … running.

Notably, he seems to be in the same place as Perrin, based on the lighting and coloring of the building. Is he following them? Traveling with them, even?

Not really much to add here. It’s Lan. Could be the White Tower … or anywhere else. Nothing really revealed here. But it is an opportunity to look at Daniel Henney, and that’s never a waste of time.

Finally, The Wonder Girls! Egwene and Nynaeve team up with fellow Tower initiate Elayne Trakand, the Daughter Heir of Andor, which is technically the kingdom the Two Rivers is situated in, but an Andoran tax collector hasn’t been seen in Two Rivers memory, and most Two Rivers folk would be surprised to learn they have a queen. Isn’t the White Tower a marvelous place, where princesses and rural tavern owners’ daughters are equal in station? I’m pretty skeptical of Nynaeve’s story about the old Wisdom being turned from the Tower because of her rags—I would bet she wasn’t strong enough in the Power for consideration. Some people can barely channel a trickle of the Power, others vast rivers.

I realized I hadn’t overanalyzed this one yet.

Nyneave. My beloved. Wisdom of the Two Rivers … feeling deeply conflicted about having begun training at the White Tower she so despised. But why has she accepted training, after having proven so stubbornly opposed to the Aes Sedai?

Well, for one, she still feels a need to protect Egwene. (Mat is also in the Tower, but I’m not sure Show Nyneave knows that.) For another, I think she needs to feel able to confront Moiraine, and she must be an Aes Sedai, or at least know their secrets, to do that. Of course, we don’t know if she knows Moiraine can no longer channel …

(I’ve been not posting because I was moving! Time for posting again!)

All righty. And now we have Mat. Mat Cauthon.

I still don’t know what happened with Barney Harris. I don’t want to pry or anything. There are rumors it was related to the COVID policy and vaccines, but as some have pointed out, the vaccine didn’t even become available until after they returned to film eps 7 and 8. So it’s still an unknown. I just hope the poor guy is okay. Haven’t heard a peep from him since.

But we have Dónal Finn stepping into the role, and to a casual viewer, I don’t even know that they’d notice based on the costuming and makeup alone. I’m hoping the transition is seamless.

But of course we’re in a bit of an awkward position, narrative-wise. Because of how they had to salvage the situation with Barney Harris at the end of Season 1, Mat was last seen in Tar Valon, seemingly under some dark influence, looking at the White Tower, and Moiraine had just sent the Red Ajah after him.

This is very different from the books so I have no idea how this is going to go. What I do know: in Season 1, Moiraine helped separate Mat from the dagger, but warned if he touched it again, it may not be possible to separate them again (without Mat dying). The dagger is still in the White Tower, probably what Mat was going back for at the end of Season 1.

Perrin and Aviendha. We see quite a juxtaposition: Perrin stands unarmed, still conflicted over the hammer vs the axe—the hammer of the blacksmith that creates vs the axe of the warrior that kills. The Way of the Leaf that he learned about in the last season left a deep impression on him—taking on the role of the warrior led him to kill his own wife, which he can’t help but blame himself for even if it was an accident. The axe has brought him nothing but trouble.

Meanwhile, Aviendha the Maiden of the Spear is friggin ready to GO. As Thom Merrilin told Mat in Season 1, Aiel will only kill when they veil their faces, and Aviendha’a veil is UP. Killing time!

Trying to make this blog as spoiler-free, show-only crowd safe as possible, so I’ll just point out:

I love this shot. The EW article explains Nyneave and Egwene have gone back to Tar Valon, where we last saw Mat and the end of S1E8. There they’ll train to be Aes Sedai. We saw in Season 1 the Accepted dresses, which was super cool. And here it looks like our first shot of the Novice dress. Plain white, as in the books.

The novices of course are often given chores and kitchen duty, as we see here. Builds character. Plus it seems to be a kind of hazing. In a way, it brings all Aes Sedai together: they all went through the novice phase and survived it. But it sure isn’t easy, and the weak are weeded out.