#wot on prime s2

[cairhienin]

lanfear in the third age like

[lesbians-4-shivroy]

wheel of time was selling me pretty well on the whole "forsaken bad" ideology until they put lanfear in that fucking suit because if i draw the line anywhere it's at disagreeing with sexy women in suits

[highladyluck]

I love the horrible Seanchan step pyramid palanquin that appears after the night battle where they took the town. I also love the immediate juxtaposition of Rand stepping up at work to more well-off & powerful patients, filling the shoes of the guy he murdered. Let’s climb up in the world through violence together :)

[trollocks-in-my-bollocks]

Wheel of Time screenshots combined with video titles from Dr. Tracey Marks’ Youtube channel - Part 1 / Part 2

[ginnyjyng]

Where is Siuan Sanche you cowards!!!!

[amemoryofwot]

[radiantmists]

okay so im just thinking about egwene's whole "nynaeve came here to protect me but where is she when I need her" and the fact that nynaeve heard that in the context of what's gonna happen at the end of the great hunt.

because on the one hand, egwene is going to need nynaeve and nynaeve is going to come through for her in a big way, but on the other hand, there's going to be a few weeks there when egwene needs her and nynaeve isn't there and given this lead up, i think that is going to hurt even more than it already does.

[illusions-in-octarine]

Selene is just. So unspeakably gorgeous. But I'm also cracking up because she's such a poser. She just cannot, for the life of her, stop being L[redacted].

Why yes, Rand, come into your room. I'm only waiting here, perfectly posed on your empty bed, midnight hair flowing down my shoulder. I'm only in the perfect colours to contrast against your shining white sheets. I'm perfectly normal, Rand, can't you see?

[apocalypticavolition]

Wheel of Time Season 2 Episodes 1 - 3 Thoughts

In my reread - which I won't be doing today, or probably any day that a show episode comes out in the immediate future - this is the part where I'd have some sort of snark warning about spoilers to shoo away the viewers who might not have blocked the relevant tags for some reason. This is about the show, but I will be discussing a few things that will be spoilers to show-watchers only - and if you haven't caught up at all then obviously I'll be spoiling the show.

After seeing Apple TV's Foundation blossom into this beautiful and entertaining show that had almost nothing to do with its source material, I figured I could come to Wheel of Time's second season with an open mind. And hey, episode 1 of the show made me think that we were over the rough part. Yeah, I had to meet its plot changes in the middle, but if I was willing to do that, the show seemed to promise that I would be rewarded. After the three episodes released so far, I'm not quite sure. I want to love the show, but I'm not a show lover.

And yeah, it starts with the opening. Jordan's world is one in which evil doesn't prosper and makes no illusions about being an alternate system of morality that good guys just besmirch because they're meanie pants. Having a little girl pet a rape-and-murder machine that's purring at the prospect of human contact isn't a great start for me, and frankly there's just something about Ishamael in this scene that feels like Nandor from What We Do in the Shadows, which isn't a worthwhile comparison.

Nor does the new show intro excite me. The previous season's over-focus on the Aes Sedai felt to me like a mistake overall but the concept of the opening sequence was still strong. I wanted to see it change and evolve over the course of the eight seasons, but now we're just given a few seconds of a snake devouring itself. It's a major step backwards.

But these are quibbles. I know they're quibbles. If they were the biggest kinds of complaints I had against the show I'd move on. Things get a lot stronger from there, showing us some great TV! Let's break it down:

Moiraine and Lan: Moiraine is not taking being shielded well. This is a legit reaction. Her misery is clear and the bath scene is a great contrast. Lan's attitude isn't much better. It's well-acted, well-set, and seeing changes like Verin being folded into Vandene is good! Like I said, I get that it's TV, I get that there have to be changes, and this little change works. Heck, Bayle Domon showing up works. He's fun, Moiraine fucking him over is fun, it's good TV. It's a little frustrating that we still don't know what the poem is (I mean, I know as a reader but still), but that's all in good fun.

But I do have problems with the division forming between Lan and Moiraine. Not that it's happening at all, under the circumstances it makes perfect sense. However, the characters and narratives taking the stance of, "Moiraine is suffering trauma so she's allowed to be as cold to her best friend of twenty years as possible and he just has to take it" does not work for me at all.

Then there's the Fade sequence. In the next episode, Lan will apologize for not sensing the Shadowspawn coming, which raises the question - why didn't Moiraine sense them coming? She's shielded, not severed. Why did the first Fade go down so easily? Why is Lan so terrible at fighting Fades when he spent his whole life training to do so? At least Verin saves the day. Really, Verin is awesome in general and I have no complaints, she's everything she should be for this adaptation.

And then comes the double dose of cruelty. First we get a summary of how Lan and Moiraine met, based on the New Spring novel, but we leave out the coolest part, which frankly only does Moiraine dirty. Though, they do Lan dirty too by making the sexual assault he suffered something to laugh about as a funny cultural affectation instead of the rape that it clearly was.

And then things go downhill. Book Moiraine might have been cruel in setting up the transfer of her bond to Lan, but she didn't make it happen right away and she didn't explicitly tell Lan she never thought of him as an equal. Her behavior is abhorrent and unheroic and while Moiraine's always been on the utilitarian side of things, this is just more than I'm willing to deal with. It also only makes Alanna feel skeevier as a character, which is impressive considering all the rest of the stuff she pulls. And that's it. They're gone - and frankly, for show Moiraine all I can say is "good riddance".

Wondergirls: Egwene is overall good, Nynaeve starts well enough. I don't really like Nynaeve's getting to skip the novice phase taken away from her - I feel that Rafe's love of Egwene consistently tears down the characters around her and now that she's chiding Nynaeve that she should be happy I feel very vindicated in this belief - but I can live with it. Nynaeve choosing to suffer rather than address her block is good. The Aes Sedai politicking about how to train Nynaeve and who should be her mentor is great! Egwene's jealousy is in-character.

Nynaeve training with Alanna's Warders though, while impressive, feels like mostly an excuse to give those two a few extra lines. And Alanna feels genuinely skeevy in this incarnation; I had thought her advice to Egwene was just inappropriate metaphor until the characters clarified, and at that point I'm just wondering why Alanna is supposed to be a positive representation of polyamory if she's clearly trying to groom Egwene on the side. Like, at least Liandrin being a bad mentor and person overall is clear from her interactions with Nynaeve. Of course, much less about Liandrin is clear in general. She steals medicine as if an Aes Sedai wouldn't be able to obtain such things without question)

And then we meet Elayne. Book Elayne is a sweetheart, only stuck-up in the most basic of ways (taught to walk around with her nose in the air). Show Elayne makes several faux pas and doesn't seem to present much reason for Egwene to want to be her friend. "I haven't seen a soul", she says, surrounded by servants. She says she spent six summers in Tar Valon but her attitude screams six summers in Seandar. Sheriam at least seems like she's gonna beat some sense into her, but I shouldn't be rooting for that outcome, should I?

Meanwhile, Nynaeve follows Liandrin out of the tower and discovers her dark secret, a son dying of old age. At first my associate and I thought it was all going to be some kind of ploy to impress Nynaeve and influence her ajah choice, but it's all legit. I thought that Liandrin having a son was fine, but my friend is less convinced and there's something to be said for that. Liandrin's attitude doesn't scream, "son she's outliving", and it adds to the sense of incoherence to her character.

Elayne just barely manages to recover as a character during the drinking sequence when she chews Egwene out, which also sets her up nicely for her bullshit. Not sure what I think about the convenient drama of Nynaeve overhearing Egwene bitching about her, but at least it kind of goes places. It helps explain why Nynaeve's so vehement about the testing, anyway.

Her testing is... where things start really going downhill. The beginning is fine (though the whole "attacked by bandits" thing doesn't work for me at all for the Two Rivers - not in the last season, not in this one), and the middle is a good adaptation, but then we hit the end. The fake out's good, but then... Ugh. In the books, Nynaeve wills the portal back, but that's not what happens here. Further, Liandrin's motivations remain incoherent: if she's a Darkfriend working to bring about these peoples' downfall, Nynaeve's death (a huge loss for the Light) shouldn't be something she's this upset about. Like yeah, corrupting her would be more fun, but a win's a win. But the Shadow doesn't want wins in this episode. It wants to lose as hard as it can.

Sheriam is also a bit odd here but since she may not know Liandrin is Black I can buy her behavior as being generally shitty while covering for herself. I mean, "your grief is your own" is so unnecessarily cruel that it's clear that she's Black. That said, not sure why she's discussing arches with the girls when my impression is that the test was supposed to be something of a secret until the novice was ready to advance. Nor do I think Elayne is done any favors with her absolutely hollow condolences - Sheriam was more believable as a sympathetic ear.

Egwene confronts Liandrin, which leads us to yet another situation where somebody on the Shadow could easily eliminate one of the five ta'veren but absolutely refuses to do so because... it wouldn't be sporting? She then tries to save Nynaeve while Elayne talks her out of it, but makes absolutely no difference whatsoever (ah well, at least she isn't personally responsible for bringing Nynaeve back). Then Nynaeve... does come back. For no apparent reason. Apparently every other woman who entered this segment just killed themselves after missing the first door out. At least book Nynaeve forces the arch to reappear - show Nynaeve only forces the scenario to stop being scary and the arch shows up anyway.

Perrin: I thought that Marcus was the weakest actor last season, and while he's grown quite a good deal, it also feels like he's been given the least to work with. He's with mostly new characters bar Loial, who doesn't get the love and attention he deserves. Everyone in his sequence exists to push him along, and he doesn't have much going on just yet as he's reacting to what goes down. I do like how they're representing his power, and again combining Elyas and Hurin is the right sort of choice for TV, but I feel like Perrin was meant to be bouncing off of at least Mat at this point. His writing is very on the nose when he and the Shienarians are burying the Darkfriends, it feels very much like we're just being told what he feels instead of being shown it.

But hey, while the woman in the house horror sequence was not remotely something Perrin went through, and it was pretty changed, I honestly didn't expect it to show up at all, so I'm calling that a win for him. It's well-acted too, he doesn't have too much dialogue telling us how he feels so it works. That said, his place in the world gets a lot less certain as we go on - I assumed he was in the east like the books, but he seems to have crossed thousands of miles to go west considering what happens. Why are the Seanchan here? Why is Perrin where they are? This isn't a coincidence, it's blatantly forced.

Also sorry not sorry but the damane outfit isn't dehumanizing like it should be, it's just dumb. The damane in Perrin's arc is, as far as I'm concerned, named Little Miss Binky. Speaking of LMB, it bothers me a bit that she can sense all these channeler women when in the books the testing required the use of the a'dam. This is a random-ass village, there shouldn't be two sparkers. And Uno should not be fucking dead and no amount of Suroth's nail batons is going to make it okay for me (okay actually there is an amount but the season isn't going to run that long so same thing).

We end Perrin's arc in these three episodes with him waking up in a carriage with Ishamael, being stabbed to death as part of the Shadow's plans to bring about-- No wait, that would be competent. Instead, Ishamael is super interested in Perrin's character development (why bro?) and lets Perrin escape with Elyas while the two ditch Loial (unforgivable).

Mat and Min: Being imprisoned at this point works based on where the story ended up, but Liandrin is just kind of a cipher throughout his story. She's clearly relishing the opportunity to be evil editing him out of the letters she reads, but this is about as evil as she gets beyond the wrongful imprisonment. Why does she give him cakes in the next episode? Why is he being kept alive for months on end? There's no clear motivation for her character - if she's being a villain, she should have offed him long ago. If she's following Tower procedure in some fashion, it should be clearer.

Mat manages to make contact with Min - no one noticed his efforts, which is fine, but it stretches credulity that none of Min's captors notice that her wall is suddenly damaged after this. They're great friends and I love this for what it is, or rather what it seems to be. It really helps their relationship - though not her characterization - that he's not interested in having her read his future. Shame, considering what she sees.

After some more time, Nynaeve's apparent death prompts Liandrin to set Mat free. He almost goes to help Egwene, but then decides to ditch her because fuck Mat's character, amirite? One actor ditched us so all Mats have to be shitty now even when it's a central facet of who he should be. Then he doubles back to Min - why is he doing things in this order, this is the least logical order - but it turns out that this whole thing is staged by Liandrin and that Min is working with her. What the actual fuck?

Rand: I'm not loving how little attention he gets in the first episode, but whatever. The main problem is that his motivations are obscured to us for such a long period, and we aren't really given a clue as to how he figured out this was an option in the first place. At first I simply thought it was weird that he'd go to Cairhien when he knows he's a time bomb and that being a nurse-type made sense considering his overall sense of altruism.

Really, most of the hospital stuff works in isolation. The soldier suffering from PTSD is a nice touch and it helps build up the Rand as Aiel foreshadowing that the show hasn't had much time to get to yet. I don't like that Rand is cheating on Lan with another teacher but TV shows I guess.

Then we jump into a darker Rand. He stalks the asshole orderly and assaults him, in part with the power (though this seems to be unwilling). I thought this might be madness coming on early, but the truth isn't much better. Of course, before we find it out we get to see Rand hook up with Lanfear. Book Rand was clearly compelled and overwhelmed by a hottie being interested in him, but this atmosphere is gone here as well. Rand took one look at the slippery slope and said, "Watch how fast I can get to the bottom!"

And meanwhile, Lanfear is bizarrely self-aware! "I pretend you're Lews Therin," she all but says. "Go ahead and think of other women while you're having sex with me, your crazy and obsessive stalker!" The Forsaken are cartoonishly evil people because only someone cartoonishly evil would sign up to work under Satan. They shouldn't try to argue that they're actually good guys and they shouldn't have healthy standards in their romantic relationships!

So Rand's secret plan was to get close to Logain, which just... Why is he here? He's a war criminal who had an army of loyal fanatics! Even with the severing, he's way too much of a risk to toss amid the general populace for exactly the reason we see: a young man who can channel goes to him to learn how to carry on his traditions! Logain being Rand's teacher might be a good way of combining book characters, and he's certainly an awesome actor, but there's not enough of this stuff.

Rand learns more about the hunt being called, which is just going to raise further questions. I will note "Queen of Illian" and thus have to ask: have they relocated Berelain in this show? Have they just gender-flipped the king? These books don't need gender flips like they seem to like doing with her and Farstrider.

Then Rand and Lanfear end up at a fancy party. There's no clear explanation for how they got in, nor why the royals would be confused about Rand and Lanfear's identities. She lives at the Foregate, people! He's renting a room! The foreign prince thing doesn't work in this context! Then Rand gets an awkwardly designed infodump about the cruelty of the royalty and the reveal that the Hunt is a fake. Presumably the whole thing is supposed to be a fake that isn't happening outside of Cairhien, but that's not actually clear - and after a long sequence of Rand's arc being well-written if objectionable for his hunting down a man and beating him half (?) to death to steal is job, it's just a low note.

But hey, we get to see Logain be psycho and Lanfear be psycho, so that's pretty fun. Not really sure where Logain's gotten the impression he's the descendant of a man that is most famous for having killed his entire family, but that's crazy for you I guess. Rand also burns down the inn, an incident which everyone treats as no big deal despite the general flammability of everything in the vicinity.

Closing Thoughts: The TL;DR of all of this is, "Just as I got comfy with it, it got weird." Rand is darker than he should be at this point, Mat continues to lack the loyalty that defines him, Moiraine is awful to Lan in ways that the narrative gives no hint it disagrees with and past and future sexual assault is on the table for him, Nynaeve loses the behavior that justifies her being special and just survives by fiat, Elayne is way too awkward and rude, and the Darkfriends pass up every opportunity to eliminate or properly capture Mat, Perrin, Egwene, and Nynaeve, all of whom should be high priority targets. This season started strongly and I hope it can recover from these hiccups, but I'm worried that little details will continue to fail to add up like this.

[aceofthegreenajah]

okay okay fuck that was so cool

notes about the trailer: (beware of spoilers)

A+++ song choice, haunting and fitting!

N accepted trials: two moments in, the one with the blood and one in two rivers

R and Moiraine talking to Siuan - R is after his cairhien arc, so at the end of the season after falme? Or in the middle on his way there? Maybe cairhien -> realizes needs help with the power, goes to tar valon -> finds out the others are in trouble at falme goes there -> season 3 to wastes

Lanfear waking up looking cool as fuck

‘Something that calls for blood’ and then really dramatic moments for all of them except Perrin just has a puppy :)))) Is that Elyas’ voice?

Logain looks HAUNTED

M + dagger = Liandrin messing with him, testing him, bribing him???

Horn delivered to the seanchan but no sign of fain, is he out of this season?

Liandrin with the ring melter alone -> delivering rings -> is she doing it in secret?

Perrin with a kid, his sister? I suppose it’s useful to introduce his family now before they become, ehm, relevant in s3... but what’s the context? wolfdream?

‘you have no conception of the power they wield’ oooh I’m so looking forward to the forsaken

Perrin killing a whitecloak - does he free aviendha, did her fight scene look like the same place and time?

Who kills a fade, one of the shienarans? Too dark couldn’t see...

Explosion = Mat is here, breaking in (f.ex. to free egwene) or out (in tar valon)???

No Elaida or gawyn or galad - but then they probably wanted to focus on the characters watchers only would know.

[cairhienin]

rand and moiraine making the collective decision that their best bet of making it out of cairhien is to call rand’s balls to the wall murderous ex-girlfriend is funny but it’s even funnier that they were correct and that she took the time to do the outfit change of the century beforehand

[tranquil-traveler]

The last WoT S2 episode had me like

[highladyluck]

I think Lanfear should get to set her place of employment on fire multiple times and wear a cool outfit while doing it

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Ok, so I don't normally cover film and tv on this blog, but there is (paper-thin) precedent for some adaptation chats, so I'm rolling with that because even having slept on it, I have a couple of absolute WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK moments in the writing for WoT s2 ep 4 that I just want to low-key yell about.

First, can we take a second to talk about how CLUNKY the writing is when Liandrin pivots from "yes, its sad when our secret children die" to "oh hey, by the way, your friends are in probably mortal danger and the tower is going to do jack shit about it." That pivot was so abrupt and blunt and off-topic that even an emotionally devastated Nynaeve--who, as far as we can all tell, is still of the opinion that Liandrin is a snake--should have twigged to something being OFF about that. I'm sure the writing was intending to sneakily set that up, and I can see threads in the first three episodes that could bolster that argument, but as @apocalypticavolition said to me when we were chatting, "I did not expect we'd go from 'how do you cope with shit' to the answer, 'your friends are kidnapped.'" That heel-face-turn is too freaking abrupt and too freaking blunt and the wisdom of the Two Rivers--who's whole thing is people reading and management--shouldn't have fallen for that for so much as a nanosecond.

Second...WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE PLAN, LANFEAR? You have Rand tied to a bed, you've just admitted you're a monster too, and you're doing scary magic shit...If Moiraine does not show up to stab you off Rand, what the hell was the next sentence out of your damn mouth? How does this fit with your show character? (We're just not gonna talk about how much she has diverged from book Lanfear.) Like, as a standalone, scene, this is kinda threatening and scary and shocking, but if you look at the scene in context...WHAT THE HELL WAS THE NEXT SENTENCE IF YOU HAD NOT BEEN INTERRUPTED??? Was she going to praying mantis him? How would the dark one have felt about that? Hell, how would Ishamael have felt about that? And if she wasn't about to praying mantis him, then WHAT? I am vividly and powerfully reminded of Lindsay Ellis declaring that the laziest shot in the Phantom of the Opera movie is the one where the phantom is dangling his phantom weight on the noose around Raoul's neck but cannot hang him because he's tied to the grate. This is very much the vibe I get from Lanfear declaring herself a monster and doing spoooooooooooky one power stuff.

None of this is to say the performances were bad; the actors are by and large doing herculean work with the drek they're given. These are WRITING problems, and pretty fundamental ones at that.

[closetfascination]

Loving Verin - she is embodying the exact vibe I hoped for.

[amemoryofwot]

My speculation on the current available titles of S2, what order and what content they may have:

A Taste of Solitude: well we know this one is first, and of course Rand’s on the run, Mats in jail, Perrin’s preparing to go after the Horn, Egwene and Nynaeve at the Tower. Moiraine and Lan are experiencing the solitude of not having the bond. Everyone’s sort of alone on their path but we know that’s not for long.

Eyes Without Pity: ok I think a Perrin centric episode second would make the most sense, as the Hunt will be the most dynamic initial plot while the Tower brews and Moiraine gets closer to Rand. Of course this is the title of a Perrin chapter in EotW and his golden eyes being an obvious reference here. Could be an opportunity to explore Wolfbrothers with Elyas. Less obvious could include Fains atrocities along the way, the Eyeless themselves, and even Rand’s hardening to survive. The eyes of Avi and Dain as Perrin intervenes in their conflict. The chapter also includes the eye of Hawkings statue, so having some Seanchan setup here could be a fun Easter egg.

What Might Be: going with the promo pics that we know are episode 3, I think this will refer to Nynaeve’s Accepted testing and the scenarios she will experience through the arches. Interestingly, considering we do not have the Aginor conflict we are probably getting a whole new scenario if they stick with three, or perhaps it will be just one elaborate scenario in including Lan on his horse like in the promo pic. This could also be Moiraine’s arrival in Cairhienin and a fun place/contrast for some of her backstory along with Lan’s in Nynaeve’s testing.

Daughter of the Night: ok this one is probably reaching the hardest I admit, but I’m going off of WoT Up’s Lanfear breakdown video that places her in the Foregate causing some ruckus. Basically in the behind the scenes trailer there’s a figure with dark hair and a white cape/cloak slowly walking in the background waving their hands while people run away from explosions in what appears to be a ramshackle sort of town. Lanfear might have been seen with Rand before in the previous eps but here might be her reveal. Although that’s not much for an episode, so maybe we also see her visit Mat in the Tower before he sets off, and maybe she has a role with Barthanes.

Strangers and Friends: here I think the key is reading friends as “Darkfriends.” I feel like this would be an amazing place for the Liandrin reveal at the very end of the ep. Otherwise, I’m not too sure, but perhaps this would be a good place for a Mat centric episode as he leaves the Tower. This could maybe be the Cairhienin episode, but then “Daughter of the Night” is such a specific title it’s hard to place.

Damane: well this is pretty self explanatory. Egwene centric episode iykyk. Wondergirls in Falme with Egeanin. Rand taking six months to get through the Portal Stone lmao. Mat arrives? Definitely struggling a bit with what Mats up to this season and how he fits in. This one I think has to be the last in the order that we know of so far.