I could kinda buy it, but it’s kinda a plot hole. Maybe the a’dam does not regard itself as harmful, or Egwene’s intent to harm Renna was cancelled out by the a’dam’s “desire” to be placed on a victim. Renna was very weak in the One Power and had never practiced using it on her own, only through the leash, so I wouldn’t expect her to know how to defend herself with it.
Anyway, I disliked season 1 but adored season 2, especially the final episode. It really left me wanting more.
It’s not the TV series but, for fun, a YouTuber (Martina from Nerdforge) decided to bind all 12,000 pages of ALL the Wheel of Time books (14 of them I think) into a single book. Yes, it is dumb, she admits as much. But, it’s kind of amazing, if impractical.
I just finished binging this, and while I greatly enjoyed this season and it was a significant improvement over the first it is a bit disappointing that they keep cutting out iconic scenes for apparently no reason. Of the top of my head:
Now, I understand budgetary changes like Shaddar Loggoth and Tarwin Gap, and even story changes like Egwene rescuing herself (which i actually prefer). But this seems like it is skipping a lot of the “fuck yeah!” moments from the books. It’s like taking the “I am no man” scene out of Return of the King, it doesn’t change much in the story and anyone who hasn’t read the books wouldn’t even miss it, but if you know it just doesn’t seem right at all.
She was, but whatever hurt she did Egwene she would feel twice as much. She even tells Egwene this as she is being choked. Egwene beat her because she just took the pain, which Renna had probably helped condition her to. The whole thing was a game of chicken, and Renna had no chance.
I fixed your spoiler tags. It looks like you didn’t put a line break in before the closing spoiler tag. In Discourse, a spoiler needs to either be all on one line, or have a line break between each of the tags and the text.
Thanks! That might be the only thing I didn’t try.
It just hit me that it seems like they are going to pair Min with Mat and Aviendha with Perrin. Which I would be perfectly ok with. No Faile and no harem is win win in my book.
Season 2 is really a huge step up IMO. I’m finding myself really looking forward to the next episode each time, while in the first it sometimes felt like ask slog. I’ve got 2 episodes left.
Season 3 just started and whooo…what a banger of an opening! (I won’t spoil it)
Two episodes have dropped so far (March 13, 2025).
Good to know! I’ll come back to check this thread in two months, after the whole series is available for viewing.
Actually, there are three out now (March 13).
Overall, I’m feeling pretty positive about these three episodes. I thought the first two seasons were fairly mixed… individually excellent moments, and fine acting, strung together with clumsy plotting and weird timing. So far season 3 has some of the same issues, but with more of the good and less of the bad.
(Spoilers incoming.)
Things I did not like:
-Most of the action was exciting and watchable, but also somewhat hard to follow. Who was hitting who? Who was on what side?
-Way too many “that person got stabbed, but then they got healed so they were just fine” fakeouts
-Weird power-scaling. How did Alanna almost singlehandedly beat like 5 BA at once? And what good were her warders possibly doing?
-I’m not often one to complain about things being too dark, but during the axe/cards/mirror attack, it was too dark
-I still don’t care at all about Alanna and her warder (rip)
-Even if it was supposed to demonstrate his character, no way anyone lets Mat be that casual with the horn of valere (particularly jarring as it happens immediately after Moiraine tells them to keep a low profile… haven’t they learned their lesson about heeding her warnings?)
-There is still a general feel of lack of consequences. Rand just declared himself the dragon reborn! Mat just blew the horn! There was just a massive battle in the hall of sitters! But then for the most part we won’t mention those things. They only have aftereffects and impacts when the dialog calls for it. It’s almost entirely forgotten the next day
-Whatever Lanfear and Moiraine’s plan was. They were freaking out Rand’s friends… why?
Things I did like:
-The way they did Gaebril
-Gawyn and Galad (I actually liked their fight with Mat more than in the book… in the book Mat’s victory seems totally ridiculous, here it’s clear that he is now fighting with his hero knowledge, and doing so starts to set him down his path) (Also, I’m totally fine with Galad banging novices. Yes he’s an uptight prude, but “don’t have casual sex with consenting adults before marriage” is a rule from our world and our religion, not necessarily courtly Andor)
-The brief bit we saw of the forsaken
-The Aiel
-Faile
-Elaida
-Just an overall improvement in production quality and writing. Nearly every frame feels like a professional expensive complete non-cheap-flimsy-Netflix show in a way that S1 and S2 often failed to.
And in general, I feel like things are now positioned for all the important arcs of The Shadow Rising to play out.
So, I’m psyched.
I’m re-watching season two to tickle my memory before watching season three, and man had I forgotten how fucking sullen everybody is. The queen heir is fast becoming my favorite character because she doesn’t mope around all the time.
Still, I’m enjoying the show.
I think that was the point. It was chaotic and no one could easily tell who the enemy was. They are all Aes Sedai. Who is to know which is a dark sister till they attack?
Yeah…Liandrin in particular had a lot of plot armor.
Episode 4 was a bit trippy and hard to follow. Mostly giving backstory which is good for the story but unless you really follow closely it is hard to decipher.
As a long-time book reader, I obviously knew what was going on (this whole section was lifted nearly verbatim from the books). If anything, I would have thought that they were a bit heavy-handed with emphasizing “each step forward is a step backward in time”. But if you were a bit confused and I thought it was a bit to obvious, that probably means they hit a happy medium.
I thought the episode was very good, but not quite great. The visuals were stunning, particularly for the sections of Moiraine’s life. But the writing felt a bit on-the-nose at times, and there were some puzzling visual choices (like in one of the flashbacks, where we see the guy and his son (grandson?) pulling the wagon alone, even though we just saw a later-on flashback with multiple wagons). I don’t think they did a good job of showing the number of “true” Aiel dwindling over time, as there never seemed to be more than 20, except for when there were 10,000 wagons.
Still, I loved watching it… hopefully non-book-readers got at least some of the impact those chapters had in the books, which was considerable.
This show is strange. I like it well enough while watching it, but it makes absolutely no impression on me. I watched the previous 2 seasons and yet remember almost nothing about the plot or who any of the characters are save for the major ones. Even this season, i’m finding characters that had stuff happen to them only an episode or 2 before I when they appear on screen again I have no idea who they are (i.e. the wizard woman and her warder(?) who showed up in the attic in episode 3 2 [see I can’t even keep the episodes straight]).
Other shows I can follow just fine but this one…
I followed it fine since I also read the books but I read them 20+ years ago so it took a bit before the memories clicked back in. If you have not read the books I think this might’ve been difficult to follow. Just my guess.
Structurally, I didn’t find it too hard to follow. But there were a lot of missing details. Or maybe I just missed them.
Wasn’t very clear why all those wagons were being set out. Safety, I guess, and we saw them entrust the sphere artifact thing to one of the wagons, but why the others?
I guess this was connected to the big rip thing that happened earlier, and I gather it was protection from male Aes Sedai that the rip (called the Bore, apparently) enabled. But again, not very clear. Apparently there were a bunch of other artifacts sent out on different wagons, but we only see the one.
And I gather that there was a split among the Aiel with regards to the Way of the Leaf, prompted by the bandit attack, which they later justified by using spears instead of swords, which I guess can at least be used for something other than violence. Maybe an axe would have been better? I lost track of who called who “oathbreakers”, but from this it seems that all modern Aiel are oathbreakers, with only the Tinkers remaining committed to the WotL. Does anyone still think of them as Aiel?
It annoyed me that the one old dude could pull a wagon on his own. No way. Not on a rough trail, at least.
I’m more than halfway through the season two rewatch, and I’d forgotten that the wicked Liandrin Sedai is the same actress as Mary Cattermole from Harry Potter.
ETA just as I finished typing this, I saw that the actress who played Cho Chang also plays one of the tower Sedai.
That’s my recollection. 2nd Age (Age of Legends) Aiel followed the WotL. Over time in the 3rd age, some stopped following it but retained the name Aiel. Those that still followed it became known as a Tinkers/Tuatha’an. But that history is forgotten. This revelation to potential chiefs and wise ones by the ter’angreal in Rhuidean is psychologically damaging to modern Aiel.
I recall the book including many more visions and that I found this chapter/section confusing.