#The Shadow Rising

[syl-stormblessed]

everyone loves talking about the batshit worldbuilding in WoT but I feel like everybody tends to overlook the Vaguely Evil Elves From Another Dimension that have their own officially licensed chutes and ladders-esque board game that you Cannot Ever Win

[shitpostingkats]

They weren't lying. This Shadow do be Rising.

[halcyon-autumn]

I forgot that there’s a moment early in The Shadow Rising where Berelain looks at Mat when they’re all in the Stone, mutters “too much like me” and goes off to try to seduce Perrin. Incredible. We were deprived of Mat & Berelain as friends who bounce around the Westlands, bringing out the absolute worst in each other and trying to solve problems with gambling, sex, and lying through their teeth. I’d greenlight five seasons of a spin-off on concept alone

[dream-of-ravens]

Can I just share this meme I made back from book four.

[highladyluck]

Wheel of Time theology:

“Oh yeah, the Devil is real and he’s been leaking out of Hell for the past 3,000 years. There was an industrial accident at the high-energy particle metaphysics lab”

[flo-n-flon]

"Do not let Lan follow me. He will try, if he sees me."

[agardenandlibrary]

.... don't these women have anything better to do than fight over Perrin?

[purplepotatobread]

The Wheel of Time but take a shot every time Mat, Perrin, or Rand thinks that they are bad with women and that the other two are better.

[pillowfriends]

today I was like “hmm maybe Thom and Juilin have a thing” so I started reading the books with that in mind and so far it’s changed nothing, it fits in with canon perfectly. as far as I’m concerned there was a whole rivals to lovers arc with them that RJ forgot to write, and now they’re happily partnered or FWB. it’s free real estate!

[two-ponds-and-a-bowtie]

can't wait til we see the mercedes benz symbol in tanchico next season 😍😍

[normallyiminsane]

Is Nynaeve supposed to be this funny?

[boooklover]

“If you ask the lion to protect you from wolves, you have only chosen to end in one belly instead of another.”

Robert Jordan, The Shadow Rising

[adri-atics]

The Shadow Rising featuring another Rand & Mat duo adventure was not what I was expecting, but by god am I thrilled about it

[halcyon-autumn]

Robert. Robert why did you write this if you weren’t implying that Elayne and the Sea Folk lady had sex.

[butterflydm]

2x8 - some thoughts this morning (mostly about rand)

The contrast for Rand between this and last season's finales.

Facing Ishamael alone in the dark vs alongside his friends in the light.

Going off by himself after the confrontation (with no one in Fal Dara being aware of his actions) vs being heralded by all of Falme.

Moiraine willing to kill him because she doesn't trust him not to fall to the dark vs being willing to do whatever it takes to support him because she does trust him.

And within this episode itself, we have Lanfear telling Rand she's the only one who cares about him (manipulative technique to try to keep Rand emotionally isolated and dependent on Lanfear) vs that beautiful ending of him being supported by all these people who genuinely care about him (and not the guy that he was 3000 years ago).

I loved the placement of where the heron is on Rand's palm. I always thought it was in the middle and it felt kinda awkward to me but it looked really good the way that they did it.

book spoilers through the shadow rising are below

I am sad that the /wot subreddit freaked out over Rand's power progression getting smoothed (just like they did last finale) because they were doing so much better for most of this season. Alas, sigh. /wotshow is somewhat better, at least.

But, yes, about Rand's power progression. One of the big things about book 4 is that Rand is desperate enough to learn the One Power that he is willing to use one of the Forsaken as a teacher. That means that Rand needs to not be a powerhouse badass. The books mostly handled it by powering Rand up at the end of each book and then depowering him back at the start of the next one, but a lot of that was buyer's remorse on Jordan's part, imo, as he realized he'd accidentally made Rand too strong for the next part of the story. If Rand had already had those big power moments from the books, then it would be jarring that Rand is desperate enough to let one of the Forsaken that close to him (especially after everything with Lanfear); this isn't a book so we can't get Rand's internal justifications for the choice. The viewers need to believe that Rand NEEDS Asmodean. We've seen that Rand has raw strength, but his control is shaky and he doesn't have anyone to learn from.

The show turning Rand's growth into something more steady is good, imo. Right now, even as untrained as he is, Rand can run circles around non-channelers without thinking about it (killing Turak and his entire squad), but he's unprepared for facing other channelers because he lacks finesse and control. So... he needs a teacher and Logain didn't work out.

Enter Lanfear's way of contacting Rand while not contacting him. This actually feels like a clever way to handle it -- that Lanfear might use Asmodean as her proxy to stay informed about Rand while covertly helping him out, since she's kinda in time-out right now.

Also -- I've had a thought about the plotline that Ingtar didn't get... what if it goes to someone else? Mostly, I am wondering this because Lanfear specifically said, "Light protect you, Rand al'Thor" at the end of the episode. There are none who walk so long in the dark that they cannot seek the light?

I've also had a thought about Siuan. I know there are a bunch of theories out there that basically boil down to "she wasn't acting the way she really feels in her heart" and most of them don't really do anything for me. I just don't feel like the evidence is there and Siuan's actions are reasoned out and clearly explained in the episode.

...and then we learned in this episode that Ishamael did not want Rand in Falme. Not yet.

So everything that Lanfear did in 2x7 was entirely of her own design. The only thing she did on Ishamael's behalf was deliver Mat to him. But she and Ishamael were not working together to bring Rand to Falme.

So I think that there's real potential that Ishamael has continued screwing with Siuan's dreams this season; because we can reasonably guess that he was the one who gave her the idea of Moiraine taking the Dragon to the Eye of the World, and we've seen both Ishamael and Lanfear playing around in TAR this season, and compared to the tiny bit we got about Compulsion, we have gotten a LOT of exposition about TAR and multiple scenes set there.

Rand believed that Ishamael wanted him in Falme, but he was wrong. Ishamael didn't think he was ready yet.

...but if Rand is locked up in the White Tower for months? Shielded from the One Power and helpless? Completely isolated from anyone he cares about? Maybe then making a deal with the Dark One would start looking a lot more tempting.

And all of sudden... we've got motive (Ishamael wants to break Rand emotionally), means and opportunity (TAR/dreams, which we know he has access to), which were things that were missing from the other theories that I've seen.

Briefly: the 'it was all a ruse by Siuan' theory lacks proper motive imo -- attempting to trick Rand in this way is just as likely to backfire and make him unwilling to ever trust Moiraine again and Moiraine should absolutely know that by now; and the 'Siuan is under compulsion' theory lacked proper opportunity because we saw how Siuan brushed Liandrin off in 2x6 and she's been traveling all season so Traveling or Skimming to find her in order to Compel her would be more difficult, for the same reason that Lanfear didn't Travel when she was trying to chase Rand in 2x5.

I am also thinking about how the various changes that the show made will affect some storylines in the future. Renna, Seta, and Suroth's early deaths definitely impact a storyline later on and I definitely want to unpack that at some point (did Suroth die? I will double-check when I do my rewatch).

I really want to talk about how much I deeply loved the choices they made with Mat's storyline but I think I want to do my rewatch first, because I'm pretty sure my brain blanked out for parts of it because I was so happy. Everything about Mat in this episode was just so beautiful.

But there has been so much Mat foreshadowing for Rhuidean and certain other future things that I do find it confusing when people say that the show is going to skip those things for him. Maybe the fact that Ishamael's 'past lives tea' was confirmed to be a lie will make some of those people think twice about their assumptions?

Oh! The glorious contrast of Ishamael, LTT's BFF in his past life, being the "betrayer of hope" and then Perrin giving Mat the Horn and telling him to take it to Rand, saying, "you're his only hope". That's so good, that's so tasty, I can't wait to dive into the Ishy-Mat compare-contrast.

I plan to write up a post about my thoughts about where we might go in s3, and I'll post that next week sometime. This weekend is for my rewatch and my deep dive, and I'm really looking forward to it. So much happened in the episode that I know there's a lot that I missed talking about last night.

[gondorsfinest]

started wheel of time book 4 yesterday and god have I missed this woman