Perversely, I would probably be happier if they had a year between releasing chunks (which would give them more time to work on them, I imagine) rather than spacing them out with a week.
Personally, I think that my ideal would be doing shows as miniseries. Release about 2-3 hours of content once a month.
Of course, so many shows are going to 6-9 episodes a season now, rather than the traditional 22. In some ways that’s better, in that there is not the filler content that often is needed to pad out the season. But, it also means less content overall.
Did anyone catch if the, let’s call him the adversary at the Eye, was using an object (presumably a ter’angreal) to pause the scenarios with Rand?
I don’t recall a book parallel but also don’t claim to retain much.
He had something on his hand, and I noticed that Lews Therin and Latra Posae also wore a similar item. Looked like a gold loop of some kind.
I know a show has to be more streamlined than a book to get the point across in a shortened time, but this show has so much filler. Moraine & Siuan, not in the book and was filler - Rand & Egwene, sleeping together not in the book and a lot of it, Perrin and his made up wife, in bed/fight scene, not in the book. Imagine what they could have did in those slots. I don’t feel this added anything to the storyline.
The only time in the book when Rand saw his possible other futures was when he was using a portal stone and he saw several different options appear before him, as everyone that travelled with him saw theirs.
I think the kids naivety in the book was a missed opportunity. Small village kids travelling the world. The books showed how they grew up, matured and became who they were suppose to be, was the story.
Adding the non sex sex scenes was filler and unnecessary. Making Moiraine and Suian a couple changes so much moving forward and unnecessary. The changes to Ewgene & Nynaeve using the power, Nynaeve had trouble connecting to it. And where are Elayne, Gawain and Galad - they have big parts. Why is Min 40 years old.
I understand streamlining is necessary to put 14 books into 8 seasons, but so many changes…
They pulled some stuff from other books into this season, I think. Moraine and Siuan, while not implicitly lovers in the books, certainly had a backstory and their own secretive plans that they kept to themselves.
While Rand and Egwene never got together in the books, there was a whole lot more “will they/won’t they” that took up far more book time than was devoted in the show.
Perrin’s wife had what, 90 seconds of screen time? I’m not sure I like how they changed his backstory there, but I don’t think it cut into the runtime to an appreciable extent. In the books, the blacksmith he was apprenticed to had probably more screen time and influence on him than his wife did.
If they had freed up that time, it would have just left more time for braid tugging and woolhead shaming.
As Brandon Sanderson said, we should think of this is as a different turning of the wheel. Similar people in similar situations, but we shouldn’t expect things to be more than vaguely follow the same path.
Personally I don’t mind. If it were a word for word, scene by scene faithful recreation of the books, then we’d all be complaining that things don’t match exactly how we imagined them. It’s a different tale using familiar characters and settings, but is is a different tale.
I get the streamlining - 14 books dont’ fit 8 seasons I get it. If Min is to be one of the 3 why is she 40
The husband/wife blacksmiths had huge impact on him and they show up later. Again he was an innocent niave kid - who had to make choices that were suppose to be new to him.
It’s more than just streamlining, it’s a different tale.
The Wheel weaves a pattern, and this is a similar pattern, but the threads aren’t all exactly the same.
She’s going cougar in this turning of the wheel, it seems.
How many pages in the books were devoted to Perrin’s internal struggle with violence? I don’t know, but I do seem to remember it going on and on interminably. I’m not a huge fan of the whole wife thing, but him killing her on accident probably saved a dozen pages worth of angst on his part.
Also, in the books, I really didn’t like his pacificistic nature. He was attacked by monsters, and is still being attacked by all sorts of nasty things. Being a pacifist in the face of that is pretty irrational. However, it is exactly the sort of irrationality that someone may take up after having accidently killed their wife in a battle.
When he was asked, “Are things better now after you picked up the axe?” (or something along those lines), my response would be, “Well, if I hadn’t picked it up, then I’d be dead now. So, I guess it depends on whether living is better than dying.”
Now, if I were completely re-writing the whole turning of the Wheel, I think it would be fun for Perrin to stay with the Tuatha’an, and he swears off violence along with them. Those wolves that follow him around, OTOH, not so much. Honestly, that’s the only way that non-violence ever works out, if there is someone or something else willing to get its hands (or claws) dirty on your behalf.
agreed on pretty much all you said. Rand’s Mom was the best part of series so far.
true about his internal struggle, could have been a long road explaining that. Elyas would have explain a lot about the wolves but they skipped right by him.
finished watching it all this week. Put it off so I could watch them back to back. I knew it would be so different and it would piss me off and my much smarter half would not have been able to put up with me between weeks if I watched it one at a time… It is what it is, accept it and hopefully it gets a bit better now that a lot of explaining is out of the way.
Also, their pairings in the books never made much sense. In both cases, I remember thinking, “She loves HIM? Really?”
So the show made me want to read the book. I am, about 500 pages into Eye of the World (it seems it’s a 750 page book)… and it’s painfully slow. The groups are seperated and it took forever for Rand & Mat to get to Caemlyn and for Perrin and Egewene to well, get to where they got captures. Tell me it gets better.
It gets A LOT slower. This are the fast paced books still.
Oof, I guess in that case… I prefer the show 
But I’ve heard a lot of people say the books get better and Eye of the World is kind of meh.
Holy shit, no.