#i'm just too excited! wotshow speculation is my favorite pastime!!

[markantonys]

wotseries did a little article about the south africa filming which apparently officially started today, and there's nothing crazy in it but i'm so desperate for crumbs that i'm bringing the little tidbits i found interesting to you all!

they speculate filming will last about 2 months

they speculate some tanchico scenes may be filmed here as well as aiel waste scenes

crew members spotted include people associated with all of the season's directors (block 1&4, block 2, and block 3). which might mean the waste scenes (and/or possibly tanchico scenes) start as early as 3x01/2 and/or span as late as 3x07/8 (the director for blocks 1&4 is the same, so we can't say for sure whether they're there for both blocks or just one of them). wotseries does specifically say they believe they may be filming for material as early as 3x02.

they are confident that rosamund pike, daniel henney, madeleine madden, ayoola smart, and josha stradowski are involved in the filming. (actually, they said they were confident about the first 4 and assumed josha was also there since rand yknow has to be there, but i'm 99.9999% sure josha mentioned being part of this filming in the december interviews, so i'm confident.) so it does sound like exclusively the waste crew right now, and thus i'll take the tanchico speculation with a grain of salt, although of course it could be that there are tanchico scenes that are scheduled for later in the shoot and those actors may arrive at a later date.

now for some of my mini musings! first, season filming length. this would put s3 filming at april 2023-april 2024. s2 filmed july 2021-may 2022 and started airing in september 2023. the s2 film end date-air date gap would put s3 at august 2025, while the s1-s2 air gap (1 year 10 months) would put s3 at july 2025. could be we're looking at summer 2025, or could be that amazon wants to alternate septembers with ROP and will put WOT s3 at september 2025, or could be they want and are able to start getting seasons out a bit more quickly and are hoping for spring 2025. who knows! i'll be very curious to learn ROP s2's release date and potentially get a sense whether alternating septembers is their plan or whether they're aiming to start having a fantasy season out every 8-10 months instead of every 12.

second, The Mat Question, given the recent rumor that mat will be part of the tanchico plotline. donal is starring in hadestown which is happening right now, so he's obviously not involved in this filming - at least yet. possibilities are:

a) most/all of the filming is for the waste, and mat is not part of that plotline at all

b) mat is part of the waste plotline in some capacity, but all his scenes were already filmed in the studio and donal doesn't need to participate in the south africa shoot

c) donal does need to participate in a portion of the south africa shoot and an understudy will take over his part in hadestown for a bit while he's doing that (i know nothing about how long-running theater productions work, so i have no idea whether or not it's likely that he would take a theater job or be hired for a theater job if he already knew he wouldn't be available for a chunk of its run)

i don't really have any guesses at all here. mat is destined to be the most mysterious and hard-to-predict character of every season!

third, i'm thrilled to have unofficial confirmation that madeleine is part of this filming and i hope to soon see an end to the "egwene will go back to the tower instead of accompanying rand & co straight to the waste from falme" nonsense haha

fourth, the potential timeframe of the waste plotline. that it spans episodes 3-6 is totally unsurprising, so it's the bookend blocks i'm most curious about. arriving at the waste in 3x02 makes sense to me - this would give them a whole episode with the gang together in falme, and then everyone can split up to head off on their trips. there's also a bit of a possibility that the suspected 3x02 material could be just the end of the episode, and rand's group spends most of the episode in a different place such as caemlyn (a theory i love very much and will hold onto as long as i possibly can!). i thiiiiiink previous leaks placed rand's rhuidean visions in block 2, and in the books the rhuidean trip is just about the first thing they do upon arriving in the waste, so it could be that their arrival is sorta like the 3x02 cliffhanger and then we dive into rhuidean and such in 3x03.

then for block 4. again, we don't know for sure whether this director is here for anything to do with block 4 or only for block 1, so this might be a moot point. but the potential block 4 i can think of for rand's plotline is either a) they're still in the waste all the way through 3x08 as in TSR, or b) they leave the waste sometime in 3x07/8 and go to either cairhien or tear for a big battle. option B would probably still involve some waste scenes in this block even if they ultimately end in a different location, so i don't even know why i'm bringing up anything to do with block 4 because we're no closer to guessing the location of rand's crew by the end of 3x08 than we were before!