Clearly, she was only mostly dead.
I thought the finale was kind of disappointing and anticlimactic, but it wasn’t a total disaster like the end of Game of Thrones. It just set up the next season in a less than stellar way.
Egywene should have yelled, “Hey! Whatcha got that’s worth living for??”
His name was Lews Therin Thelamon, they referred to him as “dragon reborn” but really he should just be the dragon. It was a title for the leader of the male forces of the light. He had a plan to put the dark one back in his prison and stop the war, the amyrlin seat was like “nope, too risky, you are going to let the dark one corrupt the source of the power”. So he went at it without women, succeeded but at the cost of the dark one tainting the male side of the power. Then him and all his buddies went insane due to the taint and destroyed the world.
Thanks - but did I doze off and miss part of that during the episode/season? I heard his plan - I heard her say ‘nope’ - Would have been kinda nice if they would have shown him failing - it wasn’t clear to me his title was ‘Dragon’ or that he was the first, etc.
I know they have made comments along these lines -but NOTHING that I recall made it as clear as you just stated.
Don’t know what they are doing in the series, but lore-wise not even Lews Therin Telamon is the first of that particular soul. The Shadow and the Light have been fighting for untold numbers of years. It’s just that Lews Therin was the most recent, and the only one with any extant prophecies in the current era, and his title was “The Dragon”.
Well we know the result of what happened because of the state of the world after 3000 years, the dark one is caged and the male half of the source is fucked and the world is medieval instead of sci fi. She called him “dragon reborn”, which is dumb imo.
And they were an advanced society 3000 years prior? Spaceships or at least planes, etc.?
You saw the flying ships during the flashback. It was straight up sci fi with magic. I guess technically they would be planes, as far as i know there was no space travel.
No kidding. Between real life and dreams it seems like there were 20 of them.
Me also. Like you, I haven’t read the books so there is a lot fewer things for me to wonder why they changed them or left them out. And I will absolutely watch next season. I hope it’s not a full year until it starts.
Yeah, the battle with the Big Evil was kind of a let down. I’m hoping that’s not the last we’ll see of him. Moraine did say it was just the first battle so hopefully we’ll get some better visuals in season two.
I was thinking he couldn’t have been the original Dragon because that would kind of go against the title of the series. It wouldn’t be much of a wheel of time if it’s only turned once before in history.
This seems to be the most popular book fan takeaway. If not for Lews Therin getting corrupted and passing it along to all the male channelers who went nuts, they would still be living in a SciFi age. The time we see now, with Moraine and the five, is 3000 years after civilization was destroyed.
The planes seemed more like the Jetson’s flying cars. They were floating around the middle of the city, some going almost straight up. Not so impossible if you think of our time being 2021 years and their time being 3000. Who knows what Earth will look like in another 1000 years?
I’m pleasantly surprised that so many people watched the last episode already. I watched at 3:30 am. I figured no one would watch until after the holidays.
That was 3000 years AGO from the time of the show, not the actual year 3000. Also, civilization has been going longer than 2021 years in our world. But yes, it did look like Jetsons flying cars, to me the shot of the city reminded me of Wakanda from the MCU, retro futuristic sci fi.
I do believe the Dark One is the main antagonist the entire book series. Does he often take a visible form like he did in this episode? I thought he’d be more Sauron in that we…never see him.
That’s a great comparison.
I hope he’s not gone, that would be a letdown. I wish they hadn’t gave him a human form, even the form that got an arrow to the head wasn’t really well done. If they had to give him a form at all, I would have preferred something like Darth Vader or an empty suit of armor. I would prefer they didn’t show his features at all.
I understand why they gave him a human form when he was trying to sweet talk Rand. Don’t want to scare the new guy away or anything. Still, when he first appeared I don’t know why they had to give him a human body with a fire filled head. Presumably he can look like anything he wants, let’s see some imagination.
It looks like the viewership was great, top Amazon show for 2021.
Considering the average age on the board, this thread should be humongous.
The series also attracted a slightly older audience profile, with 65% of its watchers in the 35-64 age range — which makes sense, given that the book series began in 1990, spanning 14 volumes.
Also, where did the white crystal that Moraine had at the end come from? And what about the statue Rand used to increase his power 100 fold? Does he still have it?
Not everything we as viewers think we know, or that Rand and Moiraine think they know, is necessarily correct or complete.
I’m a long-time book reader, and I don’t think this is a fair complaint at all. The one thing the show has really gotten right is the characters. If all the main characters had different names, and I was asked to figure out which one was which, I would get them all, 100%. The paths they have taken, the things they have done, the places they have been, are all more or less divergent from the books. But this is by no means Starship Troopers or Lawnmower Man or something where the title of a popular work and a few character names are lifted and then applied to totally unrelated characters in totally unrelated situations.
In fact, for all the fairly significant divergences from the book’s plot, where the characters all are (emotionally, geographically and situationally) is fairly close to where they all are a the end of EotW. And the biggest divergence, Mat, I will give them a pass on, given COVID and the actor leaving. (That’s assuming that a few stabbings were non-fatal.)
I had some issues with that scene (in particular, if you’re going to make what you assume is a doomed last stand and take out as many trollocs as possible, which makes sense, at least stand on top of the city walls so you’re as protected from arrows as possible while sacrificing yourself). But that level of army-wipe-out is in fact perfectly in canon, both in show and in book. It’s almost precisely the queen of Manetheren sacrificing herself, and burning herself out, to destroy the trolloc horde. Why did she wait until after her king was dead and her army destroyed? It’s the same both times. The big difference is that Amalisa was nowhere near strong enough, even in the throes of desperation and grief, to do what she did unaided… but she borrowed strength from two of the strongest living female channelers. And then she burned herself out, and almost them. Absolutely perfectly in line with lore.
Overall, I enjoyed the season a lot, and the finale a lot. A few issues I do have:
-I think the show often sacrifices clarity of exposition for exciting moment/exciting image. For instance, the channelers standing out in the open for no reason, as discussed above. Or Nynaeve appearing dead just for the drama, when it’s presumably intended that she is just badly wounded. Or Moiraine saying her oath to Siuan out loud, when it’s presumably intended to be inaudible to anyone else in the room. Or the massive fleet of perfectly-lined-up Seanchan ships summoning a huge tidal wave to wipe out… a nearly empty beach and a girl?
-I won’t defend at all the business with Lan only being able to track Moiraine because Nynaeve tells him how to. That’s just silly.
-I think the pacing of the season as a whole had some issues. In particular, we had this awesome moment at the end of episode 4 (or 5?) where Nynaeve heals everyone and Logain is gentled. Super awesome peak of excitement. And then, the next episode, it’s hardly mentioned, and we instead have way too long of a grieving funereal sequence for the warder. It just killed the momentum.
-They’re defining walking a tightrope of when to introduce new words/concepts/ideas to not overwhelm the new reader. For instance, they never mentioned saidar/saidin (the names for the male and female half of the true source) at all. I do think they should have brought up the Horn of Val’ere once or twice over the course of the season. Thom could certainly have sung his song about it, or something. As it is, it just came off as McGuffin-y.
Overall, I think I give season one 3.5/5 stars. But I think it has a lot of potential to grow as it finds its feet. Apparently the budget is increased for season 2, and I think the approach they are taking of not focusing on just a single main character will work better as the narrative unfolds and expands.
But it wasn’t five untrained channelers, the lord’s sister was trained at the white tower. She just did not have enough innate power to become a full Aes Sedai. Egwenne and Nynaeve provided that in spades.
I think there’s room for different interpretations of that scene, but I didn’t get that sense of a powerful channeler sacrificing herself in a last ditch effort from it. Nynaeve and Egwene show no signs of being burned out until well after all the Trollocs are dead. They seem to be doing just fine nuking the Trolloc army until Amalisa is unable to let go either due to losing control or being seduced being able to draw more Power than she ever has in her life.
They were essentially a group 2 untrained but very powerful channelers, and several trained but very weak channelers wiping out the largest army the Dark One had sent in a long time in a blink of an eye, and this was mainly portrayed as being dangerous to Amalisa and the other two. If you’re going to establish that these 5 can do that now, then there’s no reason why they can’t do the same again and much more in future battles when Nynaeve and Egwene are better trained and linked with more powerful and more disciplined Aes Sedai. Why do we even we need a Dragon Reborn at this point?
We’ve seen powerful full sisters taking on handfuls of soldiers or trollocs before in the show. To me this was too much of an escalation in power with not enough of a cost or explanation for why this would be a one time thing a’la Eldrene.
I’m finally watching it now, and… I can’t even. It’s more than just characterizations, the actual setting is being changed; almost NOTHING matches canonical lore. And as near as I can tell, most changes aren’t even in service of anything; it’s like somebody made an adaptation of a half-remembered conversation where somebody ran through the barest plot outlines of the books.
Just noting that it was not me you were quoting even though it says so.
First, thanks for the informative post. About the part above, I thought Moraine had severed whatever magical tie she had with Lan so he couldn’t follow her to his death at the Eye. When he finds her at the end, he asks her to restore it, but she no longer can because she had her powers taken away by the Dark One.
Unless you are talking about literally tracking her by following her trail, then I agree. From the little I know of his background in the show, he should be familiar with following a trail. I missed whatever Nynaeve told Lan about Moraine having a tell. What was it?
I have never in my life willingly re-watched a tv show but I’m tempted with this one just because I’m not sure of so many people names or place names or the nature of some of the relationships. First I’m going to check out the wiki for season one and see if I can pick up some answers without getting really spoilered.
I hope you are right on this. I really don’t want to watch, for instance, a whole Season Two about Rand and then have Season Three cover what Perrin does over the same time period as Season Two.
Well, yes, since they torture.
I am in epi 3, and I have a couple comments
“Looks like meats back on the menu, boys!”
and a mining town? Ok, they mine- what? And who do they sell it to? The economy makes no sense.
Finally smoking? Really Amazon?