Yeah, we're like, 24 hours or something from Season 3 coming out, but better the last minute than never, right? I rewatched episodes 5-8 for this, and it does feel worthwhile to get my thoughts, concerns, and predictions committed to paper, so to speak, before the new season is released. For this one, we're also adding a short "I sure did notice" section, for things that I genuinely don't know what to make of but I did, y'know, notice. I wrote these down as they occurred to me, so they're not going to be in chronological order. Spoiler warning for the first two seasons of the show and possibly all of the books although mostly the first three.
Stuff I Liked
- The parallels between Moiraine and Lanfear. There's this thing in the books, with most of the female Forsaken, where one woman on the side of the Light chooses them as a personal antagonist, based on some actual or imagined similarity between the two of them. Nynaeve chooses Moghedien in the middle of her "Oh, but I'm such a coward!" arc. Egwene chooses Mesaana, and actually makes a direct comparison between them. Cadusane chooses Semirhage on the basis of her rigidity, and her inability to cope with indignity And Moiraine, of course, chooses Lanfear, for her obsessiveness, her ruthlessness. The show actually emphasizes this connection more than the books, both by directing some of Lanfear's jealousy at Moiraine, and by having Moiraine talk about Lanfear's cruelty like, five minutes after she killed a horse she probably didn't need to kill and threatened a stablemaster she absolutely didn't need to threaten. Both of them clearly think they're primarily fighting each other for the state of Rand's soul, and act as though everyone else, including Rand, the Dark One, and the Creator, is just kinda also here.
- Barthanes. So I guess he is a darkfriend in this version too, but he's still just Small. He's probably the least sympathetic non-Forsaken darkfriend who's motivation we've been told so far, but wanting to restore the family's good name (presumably after the clusterfuck that was Laman Damodred) is an understandable, human thing to want, and he's so earnest about it. I also like how the first thing he reaches for in a difficult spot is manipulation, playing on emotional connection, because Moiraine does the same thing when Siuan corners her at the Waygate. She doesn't actually try to explain herself, doesn't give Siuan any new information, any reason to trust her, just "I've been more honest with you than anyone" and "If you ever loved me" as though that's what matters in this situation. This lets us know that Moiraine's (mis)handling of the situation is based in genuine panic and distress. When she has the wherewithal to be the kind of person she wants to be, she doesn't do this. She uses reason, explains herself, show's at least something of an understanding of where other people are coming from. But when she's tired, or frightened, or doesn't know what to do, she acts like a fucking Damodred.
- The way Aviendha pronounces Perrin's last name. This is a really small thing, but when he introduces himself as Perrin Aybara, she laughs, and when she says his name she puts an audible space between the prefix and the rest of it - ay Bara. It's pretty firmly established in the books, and lightly hinted at (so far) in the show, that the Aiel have retained more of the Old Tongue than most wetlanders. Which means she likely recognizes the matronymic prefix. This 6'2" (or 6'5", depending on which webpage you're looking at) dude with a full beard just introduced himself as Perrin, daughter of Bara.
- I really like this version of Dain. For one thing, I like that we meet him before Geofram's death. Butmore generally like, he so...chill? Like, he notices Perrin being even mildly cagey about who he is and what he's doing here and proceeds to just, not ask for his name? Like, that's his notion of being polite in this situation. Perrin is being kinda weird, and Dain just keeps being nice, welcoming, and relaxed, until Perrin actually frees Aviendha. But even after that, when they reconnect in Falme, he doesn't blink before working together with Perrin, even though the last time they saw each other they were fighting. And I suspect part of that is Perrin's decision to spare him (without which, obviously, he wouldn't have made it to Falme), but I think he's also basically just that kind of guy. He's... secure. Untraumatized. Which I guess is usually described as "innocent", but innocence caries a connotation of fragility that I don't think is appropriate here. This isn't someone who's never had anything bad happen to or around him and is gonna shatter when it does, but he is someone who has been able to handle most of the hard or painful things life has handed him, and whose sense of self-worth and self-efficacy hasn't been meaningfully threatened by the things he couldn't. And I'm gonna be really interested to see what it takes to push him into the state of despair and alcoholism in which he spends most of the books. I also like that when he and his guys fought Aviendha and Perrin, he uses the same tactics that Lan describes to Rand in The Shadow Rising, although I do wonder whether that means we're not gonna get the interaction between Aviendha and Ruarc that immediately follows that moment in the books. Also I like that he uses an axe. Sets him up properly as an antagonist for Perrin.
- All the adult women being adult women at each other. It was really Moiraine's interactions with Anvere in the second half of this season that made this stand out to me, but it's been a thing throughout the entire show. I don't really know how to describe this one, except that the women in this show - and in case it somehow escaped your notice, there are a lot of women in this show - look, act, sound, and, crucially, interact with each other, like the women I grew up around, and not like most of the ones I see on television.
- There's a similar thing with the dynamic between Lanfear and Ishamael that I find equally difficult to adequately describe. I don't want to say 'They remind me of my parents.' because my parents aren't, y'know, literal Boogeymen who serve a world destroying force of evil, but like, they do. The way they talk to each other, the way they touch each other. My parents don't do the thing where the male half of a couple speaks English less, and the other home language more, than the female half, but I have certainly met plenty of couples like that. Lanfear and Ishamael aren't even technically in a relationship, but they, I dunno, like with the thing above, they act more like an actual couple who like each other and enjoy each other's company than most television couples.
- I did not think we were going to hear Stepin's name again, even after Nynaeve quoted him during her Accepted test. Longtime readers, and really anyone who's spoken to me in the past three and a half years, know that I'm maybe have some emotions about Stepin. So naturally I was totally normal and okay (literally screaming) when Lan said "Did you think I forgot what you did to Kerene and Stepin?" because yeah, actually, it kinda seemed like the show itself and everyone in it forgot about Stepin, and I am so, so pleased to be proven wrong. In particular, also, I appreciate the explicit assertion that Logain also killed Stepin, even though in a strictly mechanical sense, Stepin stabbed himself in the stomach a month after Logain was gentled. This may also help clear up for show onlies who have not had it explained by their book reading friends that Stepin's death was a result of the broken bond, not just a reaction to normal grief. I think this may also be an effort on the part of the writers to claim the mind control exception for the way Stepin's suicide was portrayed, which is too little, far too late for anyone who was watching the show as it aired, but may be of some use to those binge watching the first two seasons.
- Mat and Rand's reunion. There very much still is toxic masculinity in this setting, but there's not a lot of misogyny or homophobia to go with it. Men aren't necessarily allowed to seek comfort, express the full range of human emotions, or value their own safety and well-being, but they are allowed to like, touch each other, be affectionate, say they love each other. Also, y'know, Mat has to make fun of Rand's hair, but still. Also, if the books are anything to go by, they're gonna be spending a lot more time apart than together going forward, and I think this really helps cement how important they are to one another, and how much they trust each other, which is gonna be important for making sense of their dynamic when they try to cooperate while hundreds of miles apart and unable to communicate directly.
- Renna. Okay so in the middle books we start getting perspectives from the Seanchan. For the most part, this doesn't do a lot to make the Empire as a whole more likeable - these characters aren't here to explain themselves, they're here to do a job, and that job is conquer the Westlands for the glory of the Empress, may she live forever, not to engage in apologia about it. They are, however, fully human people with a decent depth of internality, and most of them are really goddamn competent as well. This one is a commander who's very good at tactics and cares about his men (getting his ass handed to him by the protagonists because they have resources he couldn't possibly have anticipated). That one is basically just a fighter pilot, joking with her buddies about retiring and buying an inn, which none of them will ever do because who could give up flying. That other one, well, she's trying to cope with a dark secret about her government and still do her job, and honestly she'd have been much happier in a world where there are no damane and she took up like, falconry instead. Were it not for the fact that they lose, and often die in the process, they'd be plausible protagonists in their own movies, y'know? Anyway, book!Renna is not one of those. She's a pure antagonist, presented only through Egwene's perspective, and while she's clearly good at her job and was a reasonable person to whom to assign Egwene (more on that in a moment), her job is, y'know, psychologically breaking enslaved women so they can be used as living weapons. Show!Renna is not quite like that. She's impulsive, she's unprofessional, and I would be genuinely surprised if she's handled the training of a damane before, much less a recalcitrant former marath'damane. I don't know how she talked her way into this assignment, but I don't get the impression that she's really qualified. She doesn't know how to handle the weaves, for one thing. During the strength test, she says "I don't need anything from you for this", indicating that as is the case in the books, the sul'dam effectively channel through their damane, but when they're defending the tower top, Egwene is able to effectively refuse her, indicating that Renna cannot perform the weave for a fairly simple fireball, and must rely on Egwene to do it for her. Some sul'dam do, per the books, cut body parts off of disobedient damane, but it's kinda looked at askance, not so much for the cruelty, as for being an indication that you couldn't manage her by less brutal means. Part of this is that damane are not viewed as slaves, but as animals, and you get about the same range of norms and attitudes about the use of pain in training that you do about, say, dogs in real life. It becomes clear pretty quickly that Renna thought she would be able to handle Egwene, and has no idea what to do when the job turns out to be more difficult than she expected, and that something, likely her career and professional reputation, are riding on a success that it's becoming increasingly clear she can't achieve. She's an evil horse girl, basically. She just had to take on the most difficult, untameable animal available, because she was sure that she, and maybe only she, could do it. Unfortunately (for her) she was wrong and also she's awful, but the basic shape of the trope is there.
- Lan helping Rand get ready to see Siuan. Listen, I have a thing for men helping each other get dressed, okay? And it gives me emotions when Lan acts parental towards the boys. Also Lan's response to Rand going for his sword when he tries to take it stands in clear contrast to the "Put that down" from the previous season, giving us, I think, an indication from a reliable source that Rand has substantially grown and matured in the ??? months since season 1, episode 6.
- The early and explicit acknowledgement that Lews Therin, Lanfear, and Ishamael were all friends. The pattern likes to do things pretty close to the same way every time. Not exactly the same, but it will put people together, repeat stories, that kind of thing. It also doesn't have great... aim, which is why you get things like false dragons, Caar al'Thorin al'Toren getting his hand cut off, and a bunch of people with Arthurian names showing up around the Dragon rather than around Hawkwing. So Lewd Therin's notion of putting Ishamael and Lanfear into stasis so they can't be reborn with him, and won't just play out the same story in their next life, is a pretty solid one. But the pattern is going to want, maybe need, the Dragon to have similar relationship dynamics, even if they don't play out the same way. Only it doesn't have the actual Ishamael and Lanfear to work with, so it has to make do, and that's kinda how we end up with like, Egwene, who shares some of Lanfear's essential qualities (ambition, reactivity when slighted, facility with the world of dreams), but doesn't share others (vengefulness and obsessiveness), and would take really extraordinary circumstances to follow the same path, and Mat and Perrin, who have most of Ishamael's essential traits between them, but divided so neither of them could ever actually be him (notably, Perrin doesn't remember his past lives at all, and Mat doesn't have much potential as an academic). I like that it's put a lot more up front here, rather than being the kind of thing you only catch on a 6th or 7th read.
- Moghedien! Softly, softly, from the shadows... Sorry I don't have any actual thoughts here, except that she's appropriately unsettling and I'm eager to see more.
Stuff I Have Reservations About - Dropping Ingtar's darkfriend reveal. I know they literally just didn't have time, but he still dies, and this left him in a really weird spot. At the present writing, I think I'd be okay with it if the show just wanted to pretend that happened, or better yet cover it in a flashback, but I'm a little concerned that they're just gonna drop it and that will end up feeling sorta incoherent.
- The Three Oaths all having originated in Hawkwing's time. This was kinda gestured at in season 1, and apparently I didn't talk about it then, but this is a little weird. In the books, the second Oath dates to the founding of the White Tower, the first to the Trolloc Wars (likely in response to Tetsuan's promising to send aid she had no intention of providing), and we don't know when the third Oath was introduced, or whether all its many caveats were part of the original version, but World Of indicates that it was in place by the end of the Trolloc Wars. Having all three instead be the result of Hawkwing's siege on Tar Valon gives the Aes Sedai less agency, and Hawkwing more importance, than I'm entirely comfortable with. It also has very different implications for how that siege, and by extension the last years of Hawkwing's life, went, and I don't know if the show is really prepared to deal with that. It's sort of important that neither having an Evil Advisor (probably Ishamael) not a desire to avenge his wife and children (who...may have been assassinated by the Tower?) made Hawkwing any better at war than he already was, which was very good, but not good enough to breach the shining walls. If the much stronger Tower of a thousand years ago, led by Deane Aryman, couldn't withstand like, just some guy (some guy with essentially Yes in all fields related to conventional warfare, but some guy nonetheless), they have absolutely no hope for the Last Battle. None. Of course, what we know about this, we have from Egwene in S1E2, who doesn't necessarily have the facts straight, and Liandrin in S2E5, who could lying or have herself been lied too, but if so that introduces the separate issue of this is history, Hawkwing shouldn't matter enough to be worth being coy and mysterious about.
- It's a really small thing, but Elayne being the one to successfully channel first when she and Egwene were restrained by the Seanchan just kinda bugs me. Channeling without using your hands, especially a weave you've already been taught to do with your hands, is very hard. It made some sense in S1E5 that Egwene could do it, since she hadn't been taught any weaves any particular way and Valda just told her it was possible, but Elayne's education, such as it has been, was more conventional. I would have been fine with this if we'd ever seen Egwene do her little no-hands fireball in front of Elayne, since they're both very fast at learning new weaves, but so far as I can recall, we haven't.
- This is actually an even smaller thing, but astralagus and elderberry are for helping you not get the flu when you're stressed and not getting enough sleep. They're not "calming" herbs. Most of the herbalism in the show, where it referenced real plants, has been pretty accurate, so this surprised me.
- Liandrin's backstory. This one bothered me so much I ended up writing fanfiction to try and make it make sense, but that required a lot of really specific circumstances, and synthesizing two things from the show I wasn't wild about with some propaganda from the books. Child marriage isn't what you might call a thing in Wheel of Time, domestic violence is pretty rare, and child abuse actually approaches unheard of. The only way I could make this work is to say that Liandrin, who swore to the shadow absurdly young in the books (like 12), was from one of the "darkfriend villages" the Whitecloaks occasionally talk about, because no one on the side of the Light would do that, and the show hasn't provided anything like that much context. Even then, in the books, at least one of the Forsaken considers child abuse to be over the line. There is like, one culture in the between the Aryth Ocean and the Spine of the World that engages in socially sanctioned sexual abuse of teenage boys, but even then, not prepubescent children and not girls. I can kind of get my head around wanting Liandrin to have a more sympathetic motivation, but the show is going to have to either deal with having changed the setting such that Liandrin's having been "beaten, starved, given to a man before [she] bled" is meaningfully a thing that can happen, or establish in no uncertain terms that this was a horrific, vanishingly rare thing that would be unthinkable even to most of the worst people in the setting - in no uncertain terms because the audience all live in a world where this kind of thing isn't unthinkable - and so far I haven't seen a move to do either one.
- And speaking of the unthinkable, why does anyone in this setting know or use the word "slave"? For my show-onlies, if I have any, I need you to understand that at one point a character who's pretty well centered in the mainstream of Westlands culture encounters the word "da'covale" for the first time, mentally translates it, and almost throws up. I get that this is probably difficult to get across on screen, and that making the characters talk around the idea of slavery would take up more of the show's already very limited time, but literally just having them know the word represents a meaningful change to the setting and I don't have a lot of trust that this will either be explored or contained.
- Mat being a Hero of the Horn. Obligatory reminder that this is not the "things I think are bad" section. And this one almost doesn't even go here. Mat isn't just a Hero of the Horn. "Since the day of her birth has the Dark One marked Blaes as his own, but not of this mind is she - no Darkfriend Blaes of Matuchin!" Compare "Mat was born mine." I love this. I love how it reinforces that souls aren't gendered in this setting, and is reinforced by Mat's having been visibly female in a past life as seen in the drug trip scene. It also should absolutely put to bed any concerns about Mat turning to the Shadow. Heroes of the Horn don't serve the Shadow. They can't. And Blaes, specifically, won't. But given how many other small-but-loadbearing aspects of the setting seem to be getting ignored for the sake of drama or expediency, I'm more than a little worried that this won't actually put those concerns to bed and it's gonna keep being a Thing.
- Where and how did Lan, Alanna, Maksim, and Ihvon intercept the Amyrlin en route to Tar Valon? They were traveling south from Arafel, presumably on the Shol Arbela road. Siuan was traveling north, from Caemlyn, presumably on the unnamed road that runs up through Braem Wood, since for some reason she was traveling by carriage and not by boat. I guess it's possible that their considerably smaller, and therefore faster, party actually went around Tar Valon to meet her on the road, but it's bugging me.
- Lan and Moiraine's reunion on the beach. I gotta stress that this scene gave me Emotions, but I don't actually feel like anything was resolved, and it didn't escape my notice that Moiraine never actually apologized. We still don't know what she was referring to with "you failed me", and while obviously she can't have been lying with all that about thinking Lan's better than she is, it doesn't actually do anything to address the fact that she massively betrayed what the relationship between an Aes Sedai and her Warder is and means. I guess if Lan's willing to tolerate that, I should too, but I'm worried the show is just gonna proceed like everything's fixed now, when it very much is not.
- Perrin actually killing Bornhald. This is one of those ones that I'm sure felt simpler than doing what happened in the books, but it was pretty significant to this plot thread in the books that Perrin didn't kill Geofram. He killed some other Whitecloaks, but not Dain's actual father. He also wasn't, y'know, hiding in the dark and afraid for his life. I don't know how the hell we can resolve this one, unless maybe we're gonna do it where Dain is also a Wolfbrother, because there's not gonna be any getting him to understand in this version of events.
- What was Barthanes doing? His instructions were to kill Moiraine (technically, to remove her from the board), and if Anvere suspected anything, to "deal with" her as well. But as best I can tell, he made no actual attempt to do anything about Moiraine, and skipped straight to trying to kill Anvere? Like, am I forgetting something here, or does this not actually make any sense?
- Tower Law regarding the Dragon Reborn. It's acknowledged in this scene, and elsewhere, that as far as the Tower knew the Dragon was as likely to be a woman as a man. If the Dragon were born a woman, would they still have done all that with shielding her and having her channel only when and what they decided? Or do these laws only apply if the Dragon reborn is a man?
Stuff I Feel Better About
- Most darkfriends having reasons. In the books, there are a few
darkfriends who turned to the Shadow for understandable, if not always
sympathetic reasons. Most, however, are never given a chance to explain
themselves, and many of those who do are basically like 'Yes, I did it
to get ahead. We're all playing the same game here, and it's not my
fault if you're worse at it because you have irrational hangups about
siding with the ultimate evil." The best we can confidently say for most
darkfriends is that they almost certainly weren't expecting the Dragon
to be reborn or the last battle to come within their lifetimes. In which
context it's just, y'know, a social club, a networking opportunity,
something to do on the weekends, only with the occasional murder. In the
show, so far, every darkfriend who has any opportunity to explain themselves has had a comprehensible, human reason for their decision. Even Suroth, based on her reaction to Ishamael saying "And I know why you swore your oaths" has more going on than a desire to climb the hierarchy of Seanchan faster than her own abilities would otherwise permit.
- The Whitecloaks. Their opposition to the Seanchan, and to slavery, does a lot to complicate their unambiguous assholery of the first season. So does Dain. And Bornhald's efforts to rally the people of Falme against the Seanchan gives us at least the beginning of an idea of why anybody puts up with them. They're still antagonists. They're meant to be antagonists. And I have serious questions about taking a cavalry charge into a city like that. (I have matching questions about the Seanchan letting them do it). But they've been complicated and humanized enough to make Galad joining them, and Dain's long, complicated arc, feel like things that could happen and make sense.
- Logain being in Cairhien. This one isn't like, resolved for me. We know Moiraine arranged to have him moved, which is a hell of a lot better than nothing, but I'd still like to know how the thing was accomplished, given that as I understand it she wasn't supposed to have contact with other Aes Sedai. But I feel a lot better with an incomplete explanation than with none at all.
- Aging up the Aes Sedai. I still have more questions than answers, and most of the concerns I expressed previously still stand, but we do now know how Siuan and Moiraine came to hear the prophecy, and what their position was at that time. Now, Siuan not having herself been deputized into a fate-of-the-world level quest as an Accepted is gonna make me look a lot closer at her choices concerning The Girls, but I think it's quite manageable.
Stuff I Feel Worse About
- What was actually going on with Moiraine, and with Lan's bond. Technically we get an answer on the former and can make a guess about the latter, but "Tying off weaves is a lost technique so Moiraine was shielded and didn't even know it, but Lan figured it out and was able to direct Rand on how to remove the shield" is kinda unsatisfactory and too clever by half besides. Like, I get that Rand very notably broke out of a tied of shield made with saidar one time in the books and this has given a lot of people the impression that any sufficiently determined person can break out of a shield if they just apply themselves, so if Moiraine had any way of knowing she was shielded she would have been able to fix it on her own, but Rand a) had days or weeks with literally nothing else to do, b) had direct assistance from a male Aes Sedai from the Age of Legends in figuring it out, and c) was considerably stronger than any of the women who shielded him. Moiraine, who is strong in the Power for a modern Aes Sedai but not on a level with, for example, Egwene or Elayne, not being able to break a shield she can't directly perceive or touch, which was put in place by one of the Forsaken, would not reflect a lack of personal grit and determination on her part. Letting us think she's stilled between seasons was a reasonable application of suspense, but making both the characters and the audience wait this long for something that wasn't even that much of a mystery is just annoying, and making tied off weaves a fancy Forsaken thing may cause problems down the road. And the status of the bond is never actually explicated. We can kind of figure that in Season 1 Episode 8, she didn't actually mask Lan's bond, she released it, so that he wouldn't have to go through what Stepin did when Kerene died. This would have been reasonable, since Moiraine had every reason to expect she was gonna die at the Eye. The Light knows they spent enough time in Season 1 establishing what was at stake for Lan if she did. But it never actually says, and even Moiraine's nonpology doesn't include any mention of having released the bond to protect him, much less whether she did it before being shielded (understandable, and not totally outside of Aes Sedai tradition) or after (weird, unhelpful, kinda petty, raises questions about how releasing the bond actually works).
- This is the world's tiniest nitpick, but when Mat is gambling with the
random Cairhienen guys right before Rand finds him, it sure sounds like
one of them said 'Oh God', which the closed captioning seems to support.
Once again, what does anyone in this setting think a god is, please?
Actually, I changed my mind, this isn't small, and I'm moving it to
Stuff I Feel Worse About, because Ihvon having some concept of gods is
potentially explicable by his being a Warder and having had the
opportunity to read Very Old Books at the Tower or talk to people who
have done so. Why does this random Foregater not only also know the word
'god' but invoke it like it means something to him? Like, this is probably just
carelessness on someone's part, but this is not a setting that will do
well with careless handling on details like this. As with the child
marriage thing, audiences are going to expect things to work basically
how they do in the real world except where otherwise specified, and in
this case, how things work in the real world includes the existence of
multiple distinct religions, religious conflicts, and a lot of people
who believe in gods. Those things, in turn, have impacts on a lot of other things in the world in which we live, and Wheel of Time very clearly does not experience those
impacts. Which is fine if there are no gods and basically only one
religion, but becomes nearly incoherent as soon as people start casually
saying "Oh, God". They could fix this, honestly, by having someone say "god" in a context where it's clear they mean the same force or entity referred to in the books as the Creator, but they would have to actually do that.
- The handling of black characters whose names are not Nynaeve al'Meara. Remember how I said I was holding out hope for a black Aes Sedai besides Siuan who gets a name and doesn't die? Guess the monkey's paw curled on that one, huh? Yeah I do not think what happened with Ryma was cool. If she was freed by end of season, I was prepared to be okay about it, but she wasn't and I'm not. Obligatory reminder that I am not especially qualified to talk about issues of race, but come on. I don't think you have to be especially qualified to have issues with the third named black Aes Sedai in the series (and one who's considerably darker skinned than Siuan), being fucking enslaved. That feels like kind of a no brainer, actually. Don't fucking do that. We see very little more of Elyas in the second half of Season 2. He's fine, I don't have any problems there. Our other newly introduced black characters are the der'suldam (I know she has a name), and Turok. So that's two more villains, and Turok doesn't even have a chance to show the audience how good he is with a sword, which was, to be clear, in the books, very nearly the only thing he was good at. Also Uno pretty well establishes that Heroes of the Horn appear as they most recently did in life, but Hawkwing is apparently white in this version? I know it takes a little attention and extrapolation to notice that he was probably black in the books, but this was an easy way to regain some ground and they just absolutely did not take it.
- What the hell is the hurry about getting the Horn back? On the one hand, for book readers, this is sort of answered. Ingtar knows that the Last Battle hasn't happened yet, the Dark One wasn't defeated, because he's a darkfriend. Unfortunately, since they didn't take the time to let him explain that he's a darkfriend, he just instead inexplicably knows that it's not over.
- The Seanchan. Renna's thing about the Empress uniting everyone under the Light did not help at all here. None of the Seanchan have been meaningfully humanized, and we've actually seen more of them individually being shitty and capricious than we had at this point in the story in the books. The show is gonna have a hard time making time later to establish that the Seanchan are like, basically just human people, so unless they're planning to just not do Mat and Tuon, we might be in some trouble here.
No New Information
- Aes Sedai classism and the possibility of Novices being expelled. We learn essentially nothing new about White Tower policy regarding admissions or rules for Novices.
- Min's Aunts. We have gotten no further Min backstory. I dunno what the hell they could do to fix that, but they haven't done it yet, if anything can be done.
- How to circles work in the show? We do see another circle, and it doesn't look like anything went wrong with it, but that doesn't really give us much to go on.
I Sure Did Notice
- "Our master's needs will change with time, you know. And all marath'damane will be leashed." is in imabic pentameter. Suroth is using iambic pentameter here. Idek, but it stood out to me.
- Same scene, Liandrin's lowkey sul'dam cosplay, with the blue cloak over the red outfit, and the triple braid. She might claim to think that what they do is an abomination, but she's trying to make herself look or feel more like one of them.
- Verin's conversation with Sheriam. She opens by mentioning Seraille Bagand, who was Mistress of Novices under like three different Amyrlins, despite the position usually being filled by the incoming Amyrlin with a sister from her own Ajah, and eventually became the Amyrlin Seat herself. And then she ends the conversation with an apparent non-sequitor about Tetsuan, the first Amylin raised from the Red Ajah, and the first Amyrlin to be legally deposed by the hall. If you're willing to read way, way too much into it, this feels like Verin is hinting to Sheriam that she has reason to expect the sitting Amyrlin to be deposed (like Tetsuan), and that if Sheriam positions herself right, she could be the next Amyrlin, like Seraille.
Anyway, that's what I got. Looking forward to Season 3, and sincerely hoping that in two weeks, when the first four episodes are out, I'll have a more timely report for you. Expect at least one Dresden Files post between now and then. Until next time, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!
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