#rafe said the main reason for making him a hero of the horn at all is simply that they were trying to tie together

[markantonys]

i've seen some talk about how it's out of character for mat to react positively to being a hero of the horn. you have to remember that show!mat is in a VASTLY different emotional place than book!mat, due in large part to the changes necessitated by barney leaving. if mat had gone with them all to fal dara, participated in the battle there, gone on the hunt, and not had a whole arc of thinking he's a shit friend and person, then sure, maybe he would be in a position to go "ugh! i don't want to be a hero of the horn! this sucks!"

but instead, mat's been beaten down and had his self-worth completely crushed. he thinks he's a worthless piece of shit who was a worthless piece of shit in all his past lives and will be a worthless piece of shit in all his future lives. so when he finds out he's actually a hero of the horn? yeah, he reacts positively! it's a much-needed moment of validation for him, a realization that maybe he CAN be a good person (and it's also a much-needed moment of positive catharsis for the audience, after a pretty heavy season). book!mat was never in an emotional position like that, and so he would never have had a reaction like that.

so yeah, show!mat IS quite emotionally different than book!mat at this point. some of the change was pre-planned (the backstory they gave him) and some really, really wasn't. but they've rolled with the changes to show!mat and are keeping him an emotionally realistic character in his own right, rather than trying to shove a square peg into a round hole by giving him book!mat behavior that wouldn't fit with the development he's had in this version.

they're keeping the "hero who says he's not a hero" vibes, but where the books leaned on "he doesn't WANT to be a hero (because it's too much work and too dangerous)", the show is leaning on "he doesn't think he CAN be a hero (because his self-worth is so low)". there's no denying this is a change, and i can see why that bothers people (especially longtime readers; *i* met show!mat first), but i for one think it's actually a good change that makes mat, to me, a more realistic and grounded character and a more likable and mature person.

plus, this is only season 2 and so much of the season was spent on getting mat back on track to where he needs to be for season 3 after season 1 forced a complete rewrite of his season 2 story. there's every possibility he might develop a more complex relationship with heroism later on as the story gets darker and the stakes get higher.

[markantonys]

Apologies if you've answered this question before, but if things had gone down differently and Mat hadn't had to have been written out of 1x7 and 1x8, what do you think his s2 arc might have looked like?

an intriguing question!! i believe rafe stated that the original plan was to have the 3 boys on the hunt for the horn as in TGH, but the changes they were forced to make to mat's storyline made them decide to double down on the isolation theme and send rand and perrin off on their own too. and while it was unplanned, i think it actually turned out so perfectly because s1 introduced us to the kids in a group and then in pairs, and splitting them up fully for the bulk of s2 was such a great way to dig deeper into each individual character. in the book perrin and especially mat just kinda get dragged along like sacks of potatoes while the lion's share of the hunt storyline is about rand, so i'm kinda hard-pressed to imagine how those two would've had enough content specific to them in s2 if all 3 of them had been together! (i don't know how far they actually were into planning s2 when all the shit went down during s1 filming, so it could be that rafe's mention of the 3 boys on the hunt was only a vague idea at the time and they never had the chance to nail down too many specifics of what s2 would look like for mat and the other boys.)

now, back to mat. in s1 he had more "reluctant hero" vibes (doesn't want to be a hero, just wants to go home) while in s2 he had more "self-doubting hero" vibes (doesn't think he can be a hero, thinks he's doomed to repeatedly let down the people he loves). and there's definitely some self-doubting hero vibes in s1 mat too and some reluctant hero vibes in s2 mat, and overall Mat Doesn't Think He's A Hero is a consistent throughline of both seasons, but there is a slight shift in WHY mat doesn't think he's a hero, or at least a slight shift in focus on which of a couple reasons is the main one. and this is almost 100% due to The Great Waygate Abandonment, i think. mat for sure had low self-esteem in s1 too, but the s2 arc of "mat is scared that he's a piece of shit who'll keep on abandoning his friends when they need him", that organically grew out of The Great Waygate Abandonment and i don't know if it would've been as much of a focus for his s2 emotional arc if he'd gone with everybody to fal dara as originally planned. as such, while i think him being a hero of the horn would have been the plan regardless, i don't know if that moment would have been framed exactly the same way or would have felt like such a cathartic moment of validation for mat. (but maybe it would have, because like i said s1 mat certainly struggled with his self-worth too. the idea of him being scared of being just like his dad came from 1x01, after all, even if s2 was able to enhance it even more thanks to having a concrete instance where mat failed to show up for his friends.)

and to think that we never would have known the beauty of The Great Cauthor Reunion if The Great Waygate Abandonment hadn't happened! although, in TGH rand gets separated from the group and then mat and perrin (et al) find him again in cairhien, so it IS possible that an original plan for s2 could have still featured rand going off on his own for some portion followed by a cairhien reunion. but it wouldn't have hit nearly as hard if they'd only been separated for a brief time as it did when they hadn't seen each other since the waygate!

The Great Cauthor Stabbening is another interesting thing to ponder. would that still have happened if mat had gone to fal dara? i think so. i suspect that rand getting the shadar logoth wound from mat rather than fain may have always been the plan, because it's just so hard to get fain into rand's storyline and makes a lot more sense to keep him limited to being an antagonist to perrin and mat (like, sure fain could've stabbed rand at falme, but it would just feel kinda random bc the two of them have very little narrative connection to each other even in the books and none whatsoever in the show). i also think it makes sense to switch the wound order so the dagger one comes first because the dagger is never as much of a focus again as it is in the first couple books/seasons, so makes sense to strike while the iron's hot and have rand get the dagger wound early while the dagger is still relevant, and save the shadow wound for later.

and s1 set up mat and fain's relationship and many people have speculated that fain's fal dara scene with perrin was originally supposed to be with mat, so i think the scene of him meeting up with mat in falme and trying to tempt him with the dagger would probably still have happened regardless, and i think mat accidentally stabbing rand with the dagger would probably still have happened too. however, i don't know about the min viewing angle. it's definitely possible that Mat On The Hunt could have still encountered min and the rand stabbing viewing could have still happened, but it's also possible that that viewing and the mat-min meeting grew out of the s1 changes and that in a different version mat would've stabbed rand by accident but not had any prior idea that that was fated to happen, and maybe min would have been involved in the girls' storyline instead like she was in TGH. but then, a preexisting mat-min connection improves the story beat of them both ending up with the seanchan together, so maybe they did plan to have them meet up in s2 regardless (meet up AGAIN in this case since mat would've briefly met her already at fal dara in this version). who knows! it's so interesting to think about all the alternate possibilities, and so delightful to realize that for me personally, none of the alternate mat s2 ideas i've come up with in this post are things i enjoy as much as the version we actually got. saying that they made the best of a difficult unplanned situation is an understatement!