DigificWriter

Not in light of the presence of Whitecloaks and Hunters of the Horn. Also, The Two Rivers wasn't as isolated and insular - even in Season 1 - as Emond's Field was shown to be.

At the risk of pendatry, Emond's Field doesn't exist in the show (the village bears the name of the region in which it's located, The Two Rivers), but if you need an explanation for why the presence of two Aiel wouldn't cause fear, I've got two: 1) its been 20 years 2) the impact of the Aiel War likely didn't reach as far as The Two Rivers

Characterization and underlying Lore, mostly. The degendering of souls legitimizes the initial plausibility of Logain's conviction that he's hearing the voices - both male and female - of previous Dragons Reborn because there actually could have been female Dragons Reborn (although we later learn that he's just mad and isn't the actual Dragon Reborn, the initial legitimate possibility that he could have been - which doesn't exist in the same form without the degendering of souls -deepens his characterization). The degendering of souls also allows for the addition of a detail like Egwene's love of the Travels of Jain Farstrider being fueled by literally imagining herself as Jain reborn, and for Mat's 'tea-induced hallucinations' of his mother to literally be manifestations of himself in a previous life.

Yes. It impacted things, but it didn't ultimately change things.

@Sabio I said this earlier, but according to Jon from WoT Up, it isn't Amazon that's holding up an S4 renewal, it's Sony Pictures Television.

Lews sealed away the Forsaken before The Dark One corrupted Saidin, and Latra gave the Sakarnen to Rhodric during the Breaking of the World.

The Tuathuan thing wasn't an Easter Egg.

Not really. As I noted, the scene of the Tuathauan linking arms and resisting Valda and his Questioners serves the narrative function of demonstrating their resolve and their commitment to the Way of the Leaf, which is important in and of itself; it does not need to have any significance beyond that simple function. Adding a retroactive 'callback' to it would have just unnecessarily made an already complicated story even more complicated.

Because the point of depicting that action wasn't setup for anything; it was to illustrate the resolve of the Tuathuan and their commitment to peaceful resistance.

And, as,I noted, deepen characterization and Lore.

Yes, and he is most likely Asmodean.

@Mirefox Things that the degendering of souls does: 1) Allows for the deepening of characterization (i.e. Logain being driven mad by both male and female voices, Egwene being able to literally imagine herself as Jain Farstrider, Mat's 'tea-induced hallucinations' of his mother being literal manifestations of his own past) 2) Both deepens and simultaneously simplifies the metaphysics of the societal belief in Reincarnation 3) Complicates the modern White Tower's stated mission of "controlling and caging the Dragon Reborn" (although Siuan does say that things would be easier if Rand were a girl, I think we've subsequently learned enough to write that off as her being snarky)

This is untrue because there was never any intention on Rafe's part to actually change the identity of the Dragon Reborn.

I have brought this up in the past almost to the point of "flogging a dead horse", but Rafe Judkins explicitly stated that, for the purposes of the TV show, souls were degendered, turning the potentiality of the Dragon Reborn being either male or female from an erroneous in-universe belief caused by "legend fading to myth" into an actual possible reality.

I'll concede that agreeing to only follow the rules conditionally comes close to being outright defiant, but Siuan acceding to Egwene's condition wasn't the only option available to her for resolving the situation, which is why I don't see what Egwene did as actually raising to the level of defiance.

No.

I wanted to mention something here that I just talked about in a comment on LezbiNerdy's most recent video breaking down this episode: Although they both go unnamed onscreen, the WoT Show Fandom Wiki found at wheeloftime.fandom.com (not to be confused with the WoT Book Fandom Wiki found at wot.fandom.com) identifies the last two 'Randcestors' that we see as Rhodric (the one to whom Latra entrusts the Sakarnen and the one who swears the oath that the Aiel will always follow the Way of the Leaf) and Charn (the one who talks with the woman who will become Lanfear), which means that whlist the events that Rand experiences are from the books, the identities of some of the individuals who originally lived those events have been altered for the show.

Your speculation is really only going to work if the show doesn't make Moiraine's book fate permanent, which now seems more of a possibility to me than it had previously.

Confusion aside, I really did like the presentation of what they showed us, both with Rand and Moiraine's parallel yet different experiences. I'm still not entirely sure how what we learned about the Aiel and the Tuathaon either justifies or explains the current attitudes of the former towards the latter or why Rhuarc calls the latter "the Lost Ones", though. I didn't really talk about this anywhere, but after Episode 3, I started to think that the orb that we saw Moiraine channeling through in the Trailers - which LezbiNerdy had been calling the "Choden Ball" - might end up being the Sakarnen, so having this episode confirm that private theory was nice. Even though both Moiraine and Rand were told not to speak about what they experienced, spoken words from the Trailers indicates that the former isn't going to heed that admonition, and it'll be interesting to see what the fallout is. I also can't wait to find out the actual context of the abovementioned scenes of Moiraine using the Sakarnen.

No, it didn't, because what Egwene did had nothing to do with Siuan's authority as the Amrylin.

Egwyne found the loophole in the rule that Siuan was trying to enforce, which shows how smart and savvy she is. There's also not a whole lot, realistically, that Siuan could've done at that point to counter Egwyne's exploitation of said loophole.

Which is something that the show should have clarified and didn't... hence the confusion. The explanations that you and others have provided have helped lessen that confusion a bit, so thank you.

There shouldn't be a difference based on the broad way the Metaphysics of Reincarnation were explained.

Thanks for the explanations, everybody. What really confused me, if I get right down to it, was the furthest-back thing with the woman who would become Lanfear because at that point, Rand's visions should be of Lews Therin, not an Aiel (unless my understanding of the Metaphysics of Reincarnation is completely wrong, in which case the story has failed the coherency test).

Jon from WoT Up was given indications that any holdups in a Season 4 renewal are on Sony Pictures Television's end, not Amazon's.