I don’t know how I missed this the first time around, but I’m rewatching the show now and I just noticed that Jain Farstrider is now female in the show! Huh 🤷‍♀️

Where did this get confirmed? Last I saw there was no indication of this change being made. 

 

A ton of speculation went around for a time because of how Rand said something since it grammatically was poorly written (the writers room on S1 was kind of terrible at seeing how words would translate to screen)

 

Most people seem to have left the issue as “undecided” until another more clear reference is used. 

 

It centers around where punctuation actually is (and so far I have yet to see anyone with the actual script in hand.) Thanks to Rand for being confusing - again. 

 

For all we know the script says himself - our actor said herself - and noone in edit bothered to care. 

 

No I… A girl I know used to read this book every day. Thought she was Jain herself. Reincarnated. 

 

vs 

 

No I… A girl I know used to read this book every day. Thought she was Jain, herself, reincarnated

 

also notice it does not mean anything for jain.

it's been established that men can reincarnate as women and viceversa in the tv show, to the point that aes sedai themselves don't know if the new dragon will be a boy or a girl. so jain can be a man and a girl can stll be his reincarnation

I feel pretty confident that the wording was intentional, but also agree that it in and of itself doesn't indicate anything about Jain Farstrider's gender one way or the other, which I think was also intentional.

 

IOW, if you want to take that line as confirmation of Jain being female in the world of the show, you're free to do so, and if you want to reject that more literal interpretation for a more ambiguous interpretation, you're free to do that.

 

Personally, I'm in the 'gender change' camp because it fits with Rafe's approach to adapting the WoT novels and adds more nuance to the lore of the show specifically.

I wonder if jain will even be included in the tv show at all. merging him with thom makes a lot of sense, since thom is more or less in the same places and can do all the same things.

Thanks to everyone for clarifying! I definitely made that assumption based on how I interpreted the wording. You all correctly pointed out that the way it was worded could be interpreted either way. It doesn’t matter to me either way, I just didn’t catch it the first time and since I interpreted it to mean “Jain herself” I was caught up in the moment! Appreciate the input. 

I think it's most likely switched in the show. For all the reasons listed above, but also because unless you have captions on, most viewers are going to hear the name as "Jane" and make assumptions, and they don't do anything to dissuade viewers from doing so. So either Jain is a woman OR that dialogue is just very badly written, and while both are definite possibilities I'd prefer the former.

I’ll admit that I assumed Jain was female in the books until it was clearly stated otherwise 

Spoiler

Jain died clean, is all I know

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Edited June 26, 20231 yr by Joe B