king of nowhere

if the show gets deleted tomorrow, i will be happy i got this episode. it was everything i could hope for. well, i was hoping we'd see a bit more of the age of legends and the breaking of the world, but that will do. the hole in the sky was chilling. the wall of spears, with the "leave your weapons here, you will take them back if you return" gives a very strong sense of how much time has passed, and how many aiel died because they couldn't bear the secrets of rhuidean. the corpses littering the columns are also a deviation from the books that works perfectly.

i didn't notice at first, but on rewatching I'm seeing that every time someone new meets "gaebril", they pause for a few seconds... then they act again as if they've known him for years. those few seconds are the time for compulsion, of course. well done.

Outside of work hours, she is in the white tower majorette club

Which also make little sense. They are just standing there around siuan. Heal her, weave a shield, or get out of the way.

i don't know how i missed it previously, but i just noticed that alanna was one of the green sitters. she was there at the battle in the hall, when five black sisters won against a dozen others. then the surviving four blacks were joined by others, and then alanna faced them all alone. and she was more effective than all the others in the hall before. really. alanna alone can fight seven black sisters, but alanna plus a dozen others can't handle five. it's completely inconsistent. it's illogical. it's also completely unnecessary. there was no need for that scene.

i second this idea. occam's razor and all that; saying "a foresaken did it" is just a lot simpler than explaining bubbles of evil.

Cutting people in two with air is not hard. Actually, i'd say the worst power creep was the destruction of the trollocs in the end of S1. Healing is also too effective; seems like everyone has the improved healing that nyn invented halfway through the books. I don't think it will be a big issue. Everyone being able to heal may be, though

Maybe. Maybe not. Something divisive elicits much more discussion than something universally liked. Most of those 8 pages in the first season were massive arguments between supporters and detractors of the show. There are very few detractors for S3, so less arguments. That said, i fear a lackluster first season may be an insurmontable obstacle. I doubt new viewers will pop in just for season 3, if they didn't watch S1 and 2 before. Or if they stopped watching after S1.

You mean, more stupid than taking a stroll through shadar logoth? Yeah, they never do anything that brash in the books Not exactly working together, but the books do have similar moments of the "we can't fight her, she's not killing us at the moment, let's just play along". Remember that rand worked with asmodean, and moiraine knew and did nothing about it

season 2 was a marked step up over season 1, and season 3 has improved over that. this is wonderful

lanfear mentions sakarnen as a female sa'angreal. does this mean there is no choedan kal? will rand cleanse the source with only callandor? doesn't seem enough. the healing waves that the yellows were trying to heal mat were the best channeling cgi yet. elaida is badass. they absolutely succeeded in painting her as a skilled politician with only a handful of scenes.

morgase is a lot more bloodthirsty in this version. i wonder how it will shape the future of the story. i expect her to be killed for real at the end of the season, though. perhaps it will give the wronged houses some stronger reasons to resist elayne during the succession. and gaebril cannot be one of the foresaken, as siuan refers to him with familiarity, he's been prince consort for a time. maybe a foresaken will take his place. i have to say, the weirdest part of the whole show is the different enforcement of discipline in the white tower. accepted that can leave the tower, novices that can take men in their rooms, talking to aes sedai with familiarity.... it's actually a much nicer environment. makes it harder to believe that 20% of them swore to the shadow

the episode was overall great. and it felt like the books, more than the previous seasons, despite obvious changes. i'm super thrilled i was a bit wtf when alanna went alone against a half dozen blacks and almost won. however, i can't get mad at her for doing the one thing i always blamed the aes sedai for not doing: training. alanna clearly is a trained fighter, unlike most women in the tower who are just powerful. still, 1 v 6 is a bit too much. well, she did lose in the end. not too thrilled about that scene, but i can live with it. the other criticism i have of the episode is elayne and aviendha. i was fully expecting the script to bring her relationship to fully romantical (in the book they are only a very short step from that), but i was also expecting it would take a lot more time. the elayne-aviendha relationship, in fact, is one of the best, in saga that's generally mediocre on relationships. elayne and aviendha build up trust and intimacy over time, having them go full lesbian after a relatively short time together loses on that. so it's not a matter of the destination, but how they got there. - rand and perrin were playing snakes and foxes, so they are keeping at least some parts of that plotline. - maiden's kiss was a lot of fun. for bain and chiad, mostly. - the bubble of evil was well executed, even if it was mostly lanfear's doing. i wonder if it means no genuine bubbles of evil in this turning of the wheel. - i was expecting to see more of egwene's accepted test, but we got the relevant concept. - jaycim carridin keeps his name, but he's unlikely to be a children of the light while also being a gray men.

S2E8 has highs and lows. let's see CON fight coreographies, pretty bad most of the time. PRO perrin actually killing bornhald, it's got potential to work the conflict with dain a lot better than "my father charged into the fog and got blown up by damane, I'm sure it's all your fault somehow" CON everything regarding egwene as damane is wrong. really, renna, just stop threatening and cut her tongue already PRO bornhald had an actual battle plan, and it was a pretty good one. he also gave a good speech before, showing what the children of the light are at their best. CON egwene holding off ishi for so long. i remember months ago arguing that it was fitting for her to be able to hold for a time, but on rewatch, i think it's just too long. besides, ishi could just cut that shield with spirit. CON the way the seanchan soldiers keep charging the heroes of the horn. really, a bunch of mist coalesces into people midair, and you just keep charging? PRO mat creating the ashandarei. others criticized the scene, but i liked the piece of out-of-the-box thinking. CON elayne healing rand from the shadar logoth wound. it's an extremely difficult wound, and elayne (leaving aside that she sucks at healing, that's the kind of details they can change in the show) is untrained. really, there was nynaeve right there, she's established as the best healer, let her embrace the source just long enough to heal rand. endings are complicated, and they have been the weakest parts of both seasons. of the first three books, as well. hopefully it will get better as the books themselves improve on the endings

sure, bela could reach the white tower from falme in a few minutes travel and defeat the black ajah while she's there, but for her imperscrutable equine reasons she let her human attendants believe they are doing all the job. a regular horse, though, is much slower than a ship over long distances.

i can't see the episode. i have the email regularly, but the link to season 3 only shows the "making of". was it something that was streaming, and can't be reloaded? i had important business to attend earlier, and was hoping to catch up later. if that's the case, i'll just see the episode next weekend. actually, thinking on it, i have important business next weekend too. well, i'll watch it soon enough

agree on that, it's very irrealistic as swordplay, but can fit if they are showing off. from the clip of gawyn and galad with mat watching, they arrived in the tower and they had been in the tower for at least a few days. they had to testify against liandrin, anyway. then there was the battle, and they decided to leave again. makes sense. and traveling by ship is faster and cheaper than traveling by land, so it makes sense they'd take the ship instead of using the road through maradon and the borderlands.

S2E5, halfway around the episode moiraine is bare-shouldered, and she still has a scar from where she was hit in S1E1. nice attention to detail.

how? i don't see anythin in my prime video how not? take the boat at falme, go around the continent all the way to tear, go up the river erinin to tar valon. a month also looks quite right as time, on a fast boat. which you get, if you have an aes sedai with any skill at air on board.

i have to say, i always love the good-natured way ishamael says he's called betrayer of hope. the juxtaposition between his look as nice guy and his mannerism of nice guy and what he actually says is both hilarious and frightening

True. The best book-friendly explanation would be that the wall is a terangreal

I agree it could have been better. There was no need for the BA to get up and calmly walk to the middle, as if for a ball, before channeling. A quick weave while seated would have worked better for surprise. Though, thinking of it, the very BA didn't knew each other identities, so moving to the middle could have been a way to identify each other and avoid friendly fire. Yes, the way siuan and the others were knocked out, there was no reason to not finish them; better put them under a pile of rubble, like nynaeve. However, most sitters reacting poorly to the fight was absolutely justified. Both because most of them haven't fought with the power since their final test a century before, and because of how surprising it was to have not one, but five black sitters. Ultimately, what could have been better were small details. There may be practivlcal filming reasons they did it like that, too

You are right that men with the spark don't get old. But you are miscalculating the demographics of a preindustrial society, even one with oddly effective healtcare. If you remove children, as they are too young to have manifested channeling, those between 14 to 21 years of age may well be over 20% of the total, maybe even 30%. Anyway, the greater point is that the reds we see are sitting in tar valon, not chasing channelers. This strongly sabotages their effectiveness. The tower divisions also sabotage it; i wouldn't put it past the blue ajah to not share news of male channelers from their own spy network simply to make the reds look bad Regarding dumai wells, the wise ones are also mot accustomed to fighting with the power. And they were far, which reduces their effectiveness. Regarding the raid on tar valon, it was a small military unit surrounded and outnumbered in enemy territory; a well organized military would have rebuffed them hard. Oh, and i absolutely agree your main point that the respective power and competence are bent for story sake. It's happened already. Some of that, like nynaeve struggling with her block, is in the book. Just saying that for the specific scene, aes sedai giving a poor show is not unexpected

i don't know, the books don't clarify it either. but cadsuane alone found more male channelers than any four red combined. this means she was doing something right, and the rest of the reds were not. as a rule of thumb, i think staying in the tower playing politics wasn't helping in their goal. the tower was viewed as such, yes, but how much was it reality? we're talking the same tower that let everyone think they let malkier fall to hide the fact that they were unable to help. also, their suckiness has to be put in perspective. the tower was immensely strong, because it held one thousand channelers. it had monopoly on channelers. a single channeler can destroy hundreds on a battlefield, can reach kings and queens. so the tower was really the biggest power on randland, but only because of the lack of competition. which also ties into the tower suckiness. they never had to try. they were so strong, being the only ones with the power, that they never needed to use the power. the threat was enough. so they stopped using the power for anything practical, and they lost training and capacity for it. no aes sedai was trained for fighting over channelers, because there was nobody else for them to fight - except some hapless male channeler, completely untrained, half mad, and outnumbered five to one. they went into decay, but since they were still so strong that nobody could challenge them, they never had to reform. and the black ajah was sabotaging them all the time, of course.

dude, if you didn't understand how much the tower sucks and is useless, you haven't read the same books as i did. yes, the aes sedai were damn useless, and their whole institution made channeling useless. the reds were supposed to chase channeling men, but were actually doing a really poor job of it, finding only a handful. it's not like they moved out of the tower to actually go searching. the grees were supposedly the battle ajah, trained in battle... except we never saw any of them training for battle, ever. you'd think they may want to send a contingent to the borderlands, to help battle the trollocs. no, they were stuck in the tower playing politics. the yellow were devoted to healing with the power. now, if i were them, i'd send a handful of yellow sisters in every major city in the world to actually heal people. you can build a lot of goodwill towards the white tower, and you can screen the people passing in your hospital for potential novices. no, they also holed themselves up in their tower. i suppose they were healing the people of tar valon, at least. the grey were diplomats. they may have done some good, but it doesn't take the power to do that. they may as well have put someone else to the task. the blue were politicians, even more so than the other ajahs. that also doesn't take the power, so they may have put someone else to the task. the white were philosophers. again, no need for the power. the brown were scientists. doesn't take the power, though extended lifetime may help you get more experience in the field. and in fact, the moment some channelers actually trained in battle showed up - be them damane or asha'men - most aes sedai crumpled like wet tissue paper. even the so-called battle ajah. exceptions are women like moiraine or cadsuane that went adventuring and got some actual combat experience. additionally, the whole way of training is extremely toxic; i couldn't think of any better way to prepare potential recruits for the black ajah than tearing your girls away from their families, putting them in a harsh unfamiliar place, stripping them of friendships and having ambition and climbing the hierarchies as the only thing that matters. no wonder 20%+ of them turned to the shadow. yes, the whole organization of the tower sucked mightily. it had lost its purpose. most aes sedai had no use for the power, those that did use the power did so poorly. that's the actual books, and the show is being faithful to them. well, ok, most book black ajah were equally poor at battle than their counterparts. anyway, your complains about the white tower are perfectly legitimate, but they aren't legitimate attacks on the tv show, because the books portrays the tower so. it sucks because robert jordan wanted it to suck.