Entire season with book spoilers!

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Well, this show certainly had its ups and down, with the finale being the biggest “down” for me until now.

I think what bothered me most about the show as a whole is not specific changes from the books to character arcs or whatever. I don’t care if Perrin had a wife.
It's the general changes in details.
Calling Ishamael the Father of Lies instead of the Betrayer of Hope? Healing dead people? No in-world slurs except for a single “blood and ashes” from Rand?

I also HATE this strange focus on “the five of them.” Seriously. Egwene I could understand - she has a huge part to play in the White Tower and such. But Nyneave? Her biggest parts were literally to link with Rand for him to do all his shit.
And speaking of Rand, they completely down played the Dragon Reborn! Seriously, the whole series is about him in the books! Everything that happens revolves around him. Every book starts with parts of a prophecy about the dragon reborn. The Dragon’s death both opens and ends the series… What the hell were they thinking?!

This show needs to come back into focus REALLY fast.
I’m the last person to invokes PC culture as a bad thing (seems mostly positive to me most of the time), but this insistence on putting more emphasis on women in the show, thus derailing the MAIN PLOT of the book series, is infuriating. I’m sorry, it just is.
If you want to do a show like that, pick another book, or do original works. This was just bad.

Don’t get me wrong - there were plenty of things I liked as well. The Dragon Procession was very good, the Ways, even the Two Rivers in episode one, and of course Shader Logoth, the Whitecloaks, the Tuatha’an with their Way of the Leaf, the Fades.
This show did a lot of things right.

The problem is, the things it did right are smaller and easier to get right from the books, while the things it did wrong were huge plot issues.
 

Morgana Arakos

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I'd encourage you to give the show some more time before you conclude that the increased emphasis on the female characters has derailed the main plot. My guess is that we see more of characters other than Rand this season because, after this season, Rand is going to eat up a lot of screen time and we needed to build that foundation. I also think the show is trying to present the early seasons through the lens of where the story ends up at the end, rather than replicating them 1:1. I think a lot of the justification and explanation for this choice can be found in this quote from A Memory of Light (book spoilers!!):

“Here is your flaw, Shaitan, Lord of the Dark, Lord of Envy, Lord of Nothing, here is why you fail. It was not about me. It’s never been about me.”
It was about a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet. A woman who had crawled when she had to. That woman still fought.
It was about a man that love repeatedly forsook. A man who found relevance in a world that others would have let pass them by. A man who remembered stories and who took fool boys under his wing when the smarter move would have been to keep on walking. That man still fought.
It was about a woman with a secret, a hope for the future. A woman who had hunted the truth before others could. A woman who had given her live, then had it returned. That woman still fought.
It was about a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall in his sorrow and protected those he could.
It was about a woman who refused to believe that she could not help, could not heal those who had been harmed.
It was about a hero who insisted with every breath that he was anything but a hero.
It was about a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten, and who shown with a light for all who watched, including Rand.
It was about them all.
~Rand al Thor”

I think building up the non-Rand characters won't ultimately detract from Rand's story. Because we love Nynaeve, Moiraine, Egwene, etc. we also understand why Rand loves them, why he wants to protect them. When we move into more of Rand's character development, we'll share the love that he has for them. His desire to protect his friends is a core part of his character, and something that we've seen emphasized this entire season.

Lastly, I'll just say: I don't think any of the character was the main character this season. I think the main character this season was the world. The show needed to make people understand the history, metaphysics, and culture of a huge and complicated world. Moiraine being prominent gave us access to the aes sedai in ways we wouldn't otherwise have, for example. I feel like a lot of the plot had to take a sideline to worldbuilding because it's much harder to accomplish that level of exposition on screen without resorting to infodumping. Now that non-book readers know what aes sedai, the dark one, the dragon, the wheel of time, the pattern, ta'veren, etc. are, I think we'll jump into the actual story at an accelerated pace next season.
 
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Moiraine being prominent gave us access to the aes sedai in ways we wouldn't otherwise have, for example.

I don’t see that as a good thing.
In the book, the Aes Sedai at this point were legendary, powerful and mysterious!
Here we already see them as squabbling children before the show even starts.
 

Morgana Arakos

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I dunno, my memory of the books is that the aes sedai spent quite a bit of time squabbling like children. :laugh:

But, I also think that in the books we know aes sedai are mysterious and powerful because we can see other characters' thoughts about them. They can't rely on that in the show, so Moiraine serves as a conduit to show the aes sedai world directly instead.
 
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I liked the tv show. Brandon Sanderson described it as another turning of the wheel which is a pretty cool explanation.
I can borrow from Brandon a bit more - " Journey before destination". I think we have some major events (destinations) that we will go to in the show - things like Fall of the Stone of Tear, Glass Columns of Rhuidean, Dumai's wells, and so on. But the way we get there (the journey) might be different in the tv show. As long as they are faithful to the characters (and I think they are for now) this is pretty exciting because I like the mystery again. Even though I have read the books I can still theorize and be wrong.
 
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I enjoyed most of the show, but I think it suffers from having only 8 episodes. If Rafe had gotten what he wanted, a two-hour opening episode and then 10 episodes, that would've made a huge difference. My biggest complaints is that it feels a bit rushed in some of the episodes, and that we didn't see enough stuff with some of the E5.

My second biggest gripe is that Rand just didn't feel epic enough. We got a very discrete door breaking, but other than that, not a lot. No lightning. No impressive feat at the Eye of the World. If they'd made his actual "sealing" at the end more epic, I would've felt perfectly fine. Now it just felt a bit anti-climactic, even if I liked the dream sequence. The general changes at the Eye of the World I liked, it was all so weird in the books.

It just feels to me as if they didn't do the Dragon stuff well enough. Moiraine seems to know very little about the prophecies - why would she otherwise think they could ignore all of them and just immediately seal the Dark One? I don't know. I didn't like that part. The "who is the Dragon" I was fine with - I didn't really enjoy it myself, but it seems non-book readers liked it, so that's all good.

However, I do feel like these things can, and probably will, get better in season 2, so I'm hopeful. The stuff I really liked in S1 I really liked. The idea of how channeling is portrayed, the One Power battles, the sets, the costumes, the actors, etc. The Logain episode was amazing, the Siuan episode was great. Lan/Nynaeve is great.
 
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Yet another thread where Morgana has said almost everything I want to say, and put it far better than I could. :laugh: Beyond everything she said, which I agree with 100%, I also really like that I don't know exactly what's coming. I can speculate and get excited and anxious and have lots of anticipation for each new episode while still knowing this is a story that I well and truly love.
 

Lithiel Morn

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I dunno, my memory of the books is that the aes sedai spent quite a bit of time squabbling like children. :laugh:

But, I also think that in the books we know aes sedai are mysterious and powerful because we can see other characters' thoughts about them. They can't rely on that in the show, so Moiraine serves as a conduit to show the aes sedai world directly instead.

I can mostly agree with that, but I feel like we could've resolved your second point by having people in Emond's Field actually react to Moiraine's presence more appropriately. It would help set them up as mysterious and powerful.
 

Euler Gaebora

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I think we have some major events (destinations) that we will go to in the show - things like Fall of the Stone of Tear, Glass Columns of Rhuidean, Dumai's wells, and so on.

This here is something I'm really worried about. In my head these events, and similar events, are so incredible and on an epic scale. I really hope I am wrong, but I expect to be disappointed especially after the "big" trolloc battle in the last episode. I'm expecting that the other battles and events will be equally tiny, quick and dull (in comparison to book events) and I have never wanted to be more wrong in my life :(
 

Morgana Arakos

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Fwiw, I'm pretty sure the battle in that episode was sized down because of covid restrictions, since it was still pre-vaccine and early on in the pandemic. I think you can expect to see much more exciting battles in the future.
 

Euler Gaebora

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I'm really hoping you're right :) I am really excited by the series in general though. It was a blast!
 
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