Egwene's nose steals every scene it's in. I can't help it. It's like the mole in Austin Powers.
Anyway. A plucky barmaid gets the better of our heroes, huh?
Anyway. A plucky barmaid gets the better of our heroes, huh?
The Wheel of Time
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oh, well I figured as they said they had Games of Thronesed it up a bit and there was talk of "well there's as many scenes showing male nudity as female" I figured they might have added in more sex and violence rather than stayed faithful to the novels but who knows.
I swear that mole is why they shoot her from the right side so much.
No really if you rewatch them or as you watch the next episodes look how often the shoot her or have her facing with the mole facing away from the camera.
Erm .... no it isn't. It's organic, but it's not alive once it's a chair any more than a dead body is alive once it's 6 feet under.
Pretty sure there were some pieces of wood on top of the BOX OF DOOM dude was fucking around with and caused the darkness monsters to spawn.
Caught up on the series so far and I'm not really feeling it. I don't know why but I feel like I'm still waiting for the story to get interesting, and the fact I have other shows I'm far more interested in(not to mention video games) is not boding well for me making to the end of the season.
Maybe I should just read the plot summary on the wiki.
I think maybe it's just fundamentally not very good. I'll watch it for this series I guess, as much as anything because it's there and I spend more time looking for something to watch than watching these days.
Watched Episode 6:
Spoiler free thoughts: Jesus at over 1 hour I felt like it came and went in 30 minutes because of how fast the plot seemed to move this week compared to previous weeks as in the a rather dedicated focus on the main characters for this season and pushing those plots forward.
Spoiler free thoughts: Jesus at over 1 hour I felt like it came and went in 30 minutes because of how fast the plot seemed to move this week compared to previous weeks as in the a rather dedicated focus on the main characters for this season and pushing those plots forward.
I quite like the political machinations and the idea of the old orders of the tower breaking down as such. Also the revelation that the blonde Aes Sedai woman actually hasn't forsaken men and actually secretly goes to see some guy who lives near the I think Northern docks. Also somewhat surprised to see Moiraine revealed as Bi or Lesbian I'm not sure because I thought her and Lan were sort of something but I dunno maybe not. Solving Matt's affliction felt like that moved thing along quickly also they're really pushing the mystery of who the Dragon will turn out to be seemingly but also for people paying attention also really sort of leaving a big clue considering who has literally nothing going on with them so far. Also the most PG-13 rated nude bathhouse scene I think I've ever seen pulled off ever, again so much for going full Game of Thrones as it was being pushed as.
Watched Episode 7:
Spoiler free thoughts: From the mines of Moria to the desert fortress of people getting hornier basically can describe this episodes plot. It really felt uneven and poorly done. I get they were trying to do the whole "Introduce to with past event, show how it relates to the present" thing but the whole episode felt like it was a moodly teenager who was being told they had to do something before they're allowed to hang out with their BF / GF and while in the most technically correct sense it did do plot stuff, it didn't do it very well and rushed it to get to the shipping and romance stuff which is also a letdown because it's PG-13 and still refusing to go any more extreme or any steps closer to Game of Throne than PG-13 fade to black implied sex happened scenes. Also a lot of elaborate sets we likely won't see used again to eat up that budget.
Spoiler free thoughts: From the mines of Moria to the desert fortress of people getting hornier basically can describe this episodes plot. It really felt uneven and poorly done. I get they were trying to do the whole "Introduce to with past event, show how it relates to the present" thing but the whole episode felt like it was a moodly teenager who was being told they had to do something before they're allowed to hang out with their BF / GF and while in the most technically correct sense it did do plot stuff, it didn't do it very well and rushed it to get to the shipping and romance stuff which is also a letdown because it's PG-13 and still refusing to go any more extreme or any steps closer to Game of Throne than PG-13 fade to black implied sex happened scenes. Also a lot of elaborate sets we likely won't see used again to eat up that budget.
Boy this episode was a mess. It felt like nothing was explained. Why was the desert warrior woman fighting the imperial forces again? I'm guessing the warrior woman was part of that warrior tribe we got told about earlier in the series and saw 1 dead member of the tribe but we didn't get introduced to them or have much explained about them it just threw everyone right in and didn't feel the need to explain stuff. Same with "The Way" it didn't really explain that, what happened to it? It used to be a lush landscape but now it's bottomless pits, how? Was it something to do with the breaking of the world by the previous Dragon? What is the Black wind and why is it attracted to people using the one power? It doesn't explain. No time to explain what the blight is either. Apparently though we have close to 30 minutes to play with for interpersonal drama and implied love interests and shipping stuff. The stuff with Lan would probably have hit better if we had any clue wha the Blight was because again not explained.
Also like the last 15 minutes of the episode suddenly Rand is going "Yeh I might be the Dragon". That really felt rushed and should have been built up far more throughout the episode maybe starting with the black wind telling him it from the start. It felt dumb leaving out that bit until the en of the episode cutting back to it. Like the Black wind is meant to tell people stuff somewhat to crew with them and a "was it lying to me was it not" thing throughout the episode would have worked far better than a 15 minute end reveal.
Also like the last 15 minutes of the episode suddenly Rand is going "Yeh I might be the Dragon". That really felt rushed and should have been built up far more throughout the episode maybe starting with the black wind telling him it from the start. It felt dumb leaving out that bit until the en of the episode cutting back to it. Like the Black wind is meant to tell people stuff somewhat to crew with them and a "was it lying to me was it not" thing throughout the episode would have worked far better than a 15 minute end reveal.
What's confusing me is the direction they are going with it. You're right, they aren't establishing several concepts well enough for someone who isn't already familiar with the material. And that means they are catering more to those who have read the series? That's a terrible idea. A: That's not a large enough viewership pool to justify the cost. And B: fandoms traditionally (and sci-fi/fantasy fanboys in particular) are the whiney-est about adaptations. I'll say this to your specific problems with the episode, should they get another season (a big if, I've already speculated) there will be plenty more about the Aiel (desert warriors) and the Ways and Machin Shin the Black Wind and Lan's Malkier and the Blight. They are headed very quickly downhill towards wrapping up things from book 1... but that's barely a dent in the story overall. Little spoiler here,
More specifically, I thought they played a little fast and loose with the fight on Dragonmount and Rand's birth. The last time we saw Tam Al Thor was several episodes ago, and I wondered how many would not have recognized a younger Tam was the last fighter that helped the Aiel woman in childbirth.
***Addendum*** I actually read an article on WoT today after I replied. According to that source, Amazon's head of TV says the numbers are good and they already love the first couple of episodes of season 2. Maybe they will get a couple of seasons after all. Still, that's an expensive series... I just can't see that level of expense going for very long before someone shuts it down.
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Watched Episode 8: The Battles of Helms Derp (I dunno what the episode is actually called and don't care enough to look it up)
mostly non spoiler thoughts:
So how much is Sony paying to rend JJ Abrams mystery box? As far as the show goes I'm shocked at the fact the ending felt lower budget and worse than the first episode, as far as season finales go I watched BBC America's adaptation of Terry Prattchet's "The City Watch" and somehow that actually have a better finale than The Wheel of Time a show touting $10 Million an episode budget. Amazon studios should just have bought the rights to and put on and then kept making more Shannara Chronicles because no way would it have cost as much to do and delivered such a lackluster series even the 2nd season of The Shannara Chronicles was better than this.
Oh and on Sony's diverse casting choices I've got to say something but it's going to have to be under another spoiler tag.
*Note I actually have been on the gin and was while watching the episode so I'm far more snarky but also normally alcohol helps smooth over series I find fairly rough to be more tolerable.
mostly non spoiler thoughts:
So how much is Sony paying to rend JJ Abrams mystery box? As far as the show goes I'm shocked at the fact the ending felt lower budget and worse than the first episode, as far as season finales go I watched BBC America's adaptation of Terry Prattchet's "The City Watch" and somehow that actually have a better finale than The Wheel of Time a show touting $10 Million an episode budget. Amazon studios should just have bought the rights to and put on and then kept making more Shannara Chronicles because no way would it have cost as much to do and delivered such a lackluster series even the 2nd season of The Shannara Chronicles was better than this.
Ok so you know how I complained they didn't explain much before and rushed through it?
Well they did it again and I don't think it was the 2 Gin and Tonics I'd had that made me miss something. We barely got an explanation of what the Blight is beyond it spreading from the dark ones prison. There was no explanation of how an army of Trolliks somehow came through the blight and went right past Rand and Moraine without either seeing the other, does the blight just breed the creatures or something?
No real explanation of how the prison works to keep the Dark One in
Something about special people and 5 being all found in Two Rivers all at once in one cycle and that being rare but no explanation about what the term used meant or what was implied by it.
Suddenly Aes Seda can form magic Voltron? How does that work?
So since when could you channel the one power to create objects and create a One power battery?
Why did the Dark One react how he did to the Heron sword?
So what exactly was the plan of the previous Dragon again? Oh right it didn't fully explain how that was meant to work or how the Dark One corrupted stuff due to it.
The Battle of the Gap fortress was over damn fast and all we got was it crumbling in the background and then Voltron Aes Seda powers killing them all
What was all that about Rand needing the Magic horn to summon Earth's mightiest warriors or he'd stand no chance?
It felt like we got not real conclusion and no real explanations as to why it was only the first battle not the last.
Well they did it again and I don't think it was the 2 Gin and Tonics I'd had that made me miss something. We barely got an explanation of what the Blight is beyond it spreading from the dark ones prison. There was no explanation of how an army of Trolliks somehow came through the blight and went right past Rand and Moraine without either seeing the other, does the blight just breed the creatures or something?
No real explanation of how the prison works to keep the Dark One in
Something about special people and 5 being all found in Two Rivers all at once in one cycle and that being rare but no explanation about what the term used meant or what was implied by it.
Suddenly Aes Seda can form magic Voltron? How does that work?
So since when could you channel the one power to create objects and create a One power battery?
Why did the Dark One react how he did to the Heron sword?
So what exactly was the plan of the previous Dragon again? Oh right it didn't fully explain how that was meant to work or how the Dark One corrupted stuff due to it.
The Battle of the Gap fortress was over damn fast and all we got was it crumbling in the background and then Voltron Aes Seda powers killing them all
What was all that about Rand needing the Magic horn to summon Earth's mightiest warriors or he'd stand no chance?
It felt like we got not real conclusion and no real explanations as to why it was only the first battle not the last.
Oh and on Sony's diverse casting choices I've got to say something but it's going to have to be under another spoiler tag.
Dear Sony, if you're going to make sure you have a diverse cast you should probably at some point have a white guy as a villain.
Look I know SOME people on this forum seem to want to portray my position as hating all POC and wanting them gone from media but that isn't true. My objection is to often thoughtless casting or race swapping for the sake of diversity where a property is worse for it either in terms of message or event actively coming off as more racist.
In The Wheel of Time's case the rather obvious diversification of the cast seemed a little weird but I could go with it, whatever but it also does make me prone to noticing and wake up that little part of my brain that analyses this stuff and I'm shocked the casting choices got past any diversity and inclusion department checks let alone ones for both Sony and Amazon (though admittedly Sony's aren't very good given Alex Rider and their black woman Nazi character).
The Head interrogator who had killed tons of Aes Sedai? Black guy
The False Dragon? POC
The Dark one? POC
The female tarvern maid who was a servant of the dark one? Black woman
The other servant of The Dark One? A Black guy
The Dragon who previously was egotistical and screwed up breaking the world? Black Guy
Hell even the comment about Perrin being tempted down the path of the Dark just piles onto this.
Did no-one look at the casting and go "Ok maybe we should make one of these people a white guy because it's coming off a little bit like we're presenting it so that POC are all inherently linked to the dark powers and especially black guys are either easily tempted to the dark or overconfident but not competent enough to follow through thus a danger to the world due to that or they're just inherently evil guys who work for the dark.
This wouldn't have seemed so bad and tone deaf if they'd thrown in a white villain or two but they just didn't. At best the closest to white person villains were the lackies of the white cloak interrogator or the Red Aes Sedai who was only truly in conflict with Moraine who is white seemingly.
Look I know SOME people on this forum seem to want to portray my position as hating all POC and wanting them gone from media but that isn't true. My objection is to often thoughtless casting or race swapping for the sake of diversity where a property is worse for it either in terms of message or event actively coming off as more racist.
In The Wheel of Time's case the rather obvious diversification of the cast seemed a little weird but I could go with it, whatever but it also does make me prone to noticing and wake up that little part of my brain that analyses this stuff and I'm shocked the casting choices got past any diversity and inclusion department checks let alone ones for both Sony and Amazon (though admittedly Sony's aren't very good given Alex Rider and their black woman Nazi character).
The Head interrogator who had killed tons of Aes Sedai? Black guy
The False Dragon? POC
The Dark one? POC
The female tarvern maid who was a servant of the dark one? Black woman
The other servant of The Dark One? A Black guy
The Dragon who previously was egotistical and screwed up breaking the world? Black Guy
Hell even the comment about Perrin being tempted down the path of the Dark just piles onto this.
Did no-one look at the casting and go "Ok maybe we should make one of these people a white guy because it's coming off a little bit like we're presenting it so that POC are all inherently linked to the dark powers and especially black guys are either easily tempted to the dark or overconfident but not competent enough to follow through thus a danger to the world due to that or they're just inherently evil guys who work for the dark.
This wouldn't have seemed so bad and tone deaf if they'd thrown in a white villain or two but they just didn't. At best the closest to white person villains were the lackies of the white cloak interrogator or the Red Aes Sedai who was only truly in conflict with Moraine who is white seemingly.
*Note I actually have been on the gin and was while watching the episode so I'm far more snarky but also normally alcohol helps smooth over series I find fairly rough to be more tolerable.
They sure didn't. They throw a massive ton of stuff at you, and hope you pick it up. Here's Jordan extensive (i.e. tediously overblown) worldbuilding works against the TV show. We dash through a load of stuff which is sort of half-explained and no real idea whether it's important. I can't remember much of the stuff - I read the book nearly 30 years ago. If someone chucks that much information at you on top of drama and character development, you just don't take it in. It's like there's a village, a cursed ruin, a tower of women mages and a city defending a mountain pass, some indeterminate bits of land between them, and you never get to know or care about any of them. Not least because they're also burying you with stuff about history and this people / faction and that people / faction and how magic works and... pfft. Then some ships turn up at the end. Oh, great. More shit to have to think about.
I can try and take a stab at explaining some of this, but it sounds like they're changing enough stuff that some of it might be different.
The blight is like the land getting corrupt, weird shit happens there (not sure if it was in the show, but in the book when they go trough it there's all kind of strange creature/vegetation and stuff. Can't recall exactly where the trollock come from but I think they're made by the dark one in the blight. The trollick can use the portal to travel really fast across the land (I'm assuming the group of character still uses that to reach the blightland). BTW if you care about how people/army get from A to B, I'd drop the story now. Soon enough everyone and everything will be able to teleport anywhere at will.
The prison is something that's there for a really long time (beginning of time?). Essentially God just locked Satan in, but human accidentally broke part of the prison so he can use his power to corrupt the world/make the blight.
The world works on cycle and essentially "fate" will make sure all cycle go more or less the same. The dragon reborn existence completely mess up fate and just by existing in the village it alter events around him to make sure everything go as planned. It's rare in the sense that they shouldn't all be close to each others, but its also inevitable because fate. This is more or less a writing clutch, where everytime something happen they just go "and the wheel of time go on spinning" or w/e.
Not sure what the magic voltron is, they can cast spell together.
One power object are just a thing that exist, there's a bunch of them trough the series that can do w/e the plot need them to do at any one point (another writer clutch). Dunno if they started talking about it, but the most important one is the sword the dragon is supposed to use, think of them as standard video game loot that boost magic power when used. Eventually they'll start making them too and the plot kinda goes crazy.
No idea why he's react to the heron sword, its a sword given to really good swordsman but he shouldn't really care about that, probably cause he can use it as a clue for who the dragon reborn is.
So the previous Dragon got all the male caster together and stop the black one from leaving his prison by patching it up, but the black one was able to corrupt the male source of power so all the male magic caster slowly go batshit insane, which include the dragon.
Again not quite sure what the large scale battle is, there weren't any in the first book so I'm guessing they're using something else, was it during the flashback to Rand parent? That's from a prequel book that I didn't read.
So the magic horn literally just resurrect all the important people and can also force them to do the wielder bidding. Imagine if all the hero from any tales (Arthur, Gilgamesh, Achilles, etc.) could just be summoned for the final showdown, think Valhalla. They'll slowly be introduce across the series. The horn will be really important during the next book/season.
So at the end the dark one isn't defeated, it's more like the dragon just slapped it back down and killed a few of his underlings. The rest of the series will be the dragon gathering allies, nations and magic artifact while dispatching low level mook until the final showdown.
The prison is something that's there for a really long time (beginning of time?). Essentially God just locked Satan in, but human accidentally broke part of the prison so he can use his power to corrupt the world/make the blight.
The world works on cycle and essentially "fate" will make sure all cycle go more or less the same. The dragon reborn existence completely mess up fate and just by existing in the village it alter events around him to make sure everything go as planned. It's rare in the sense that they shouldn't all be close to each others, but its also inevitable because fate. This is more or less a writing clutch, where everytime something happen they just go "and the wheel of time go on spinning" or w/e.
Not sure what the magic voltron is, they can cast spell together.
One power object are just a thing that exist, there's a bunch of them trough the series that can do w/e the plot need them to do at any one point (another writer clutch). Dunno if they started talking about it, but the most important one is the sword the dragon is supposed to use, think of them as standard video game loot that boost magic power when used. Eventually they'll start making them too and the plot kinda goes crazy.
No idea why he's react to the heron sword, its a sword given to really good swordsman but he shouldn't really care about that, probably cause he can use it as a clue for who the dragon reborn is.
So the previous Dragon got all the male caster together and stop the black one from leaving his prison by patching it up, but the black one was able to corrupt the male source of power so all the male magic caster slowly go batshit insane, which include the dragon.
Again not quite sure what the large scale battle is, there weren't any in the first book so I'm guessing they're using something else, was it during the flashback to Rand parent? That's from a prequel book that I didn't read.
So the magic horn literally just resurrect all the important people and can also force them to do the wielder bidding. Imagine if all the hero from any tales (Arthur, Gilgamesh, Achilles, etc.) could just be summoned for the final showdown, think Valhalla. They'll slowly be introduce across the series. The horn will be really important during the next book/season.
So at the end the dark one isn't defeated, it's more like the dragon just slapped it back down and killed a few of his underlings. The rest of the series will be the dragon gathering allies, nations and magic artifact while dispatching low level mook until the final showdown.
Thanks, that's actually pretty helpful.
So I'll go through what we got in the show sort of to help give you an idea why I was confused.
In the show the blightland is like a sort of swamp but the plants as sort of like giant dead starfish tangled together. The only risk we got to see from it was the idea of people going into the lands and getting lost or resting there and the plants rapidly growing over them if they rested too long trapping and killing them.
Rand and Moraine went to the eye of the world through the blightlands from the gap but part way through there they turned back and said words to the effect of "Oh there's suddenly an army behind us moving away from us towards the gap fortress" and that baffled me a bit because surely they'd have seen the army or it would have seen them moving through that bit of the blightlands.
They did use the portal to get to the fortress town near the gap but then they told the town to brick it up and it was shown or implied it did get bricked up. and it was implied to be the other side of the gap fortress while the forces attacked from the blightland side.
The special people thing (Rand's friends with powers) it was sort of said or implied there's only 2-3 at most per cycle normally while in this case the wheel had somehow spit all 5 of them out at once in a single cycle close to one another if that makes any kind of sense.
Magic Voltron wasn't a joint spell so much as the one women (who had trained but didn't make it as an Aes Sedai to be clear) was able to draw power from 4 others to power up her own channelling as such it wasn't so much all 5 of them casting a spell as 1 casting the spell drawing power from the other 4. We've seen implied joint spell casting before but this was more like she was in charge of the power and the others existed just as power sources connected to her.
Ah ok magic item MacGuffin, got it for items made by the one power.
The Dark One was sort of shocked to see a Heron sword as though it meant something more. It was strongly implied he already recognised the Dragon and knew something of who he was but the Heron sword really seemed to shake / shock him in a sort of "Why do you have that you shouldn't have that" kind of way.
All the show gave us with the Dragon was he was going to get the male casters together and expose the One power to channel some kind of thing to beat the dark one permanently. We didn't get anything more than that. Also does that mean Rand is going to go mad now??
Well the big-ish battle was the fall of the gap fortress. Moraine claimed Rand blasting the Dark one with the One power object was but some first battle but never explained why cause well he blasted the guy and he vanished it seems
Ah good to know about the horn then
Rand and Moraine went to the eye of the world through the blightlands from the gap but part way through there they turned back and said words to the effect of "Oh there's suddenly an army behind us moving away from us towards the gap fortress" and that baffled me a bit because surely they'd have seen the army or it would have seen them moving through that bit of the blightlands.
They did use the portal to get to the fortress town near the gap but then they told the town to brick it up and it was shown or implied it did get bricked up. and it was implied to be the other side of the gap fortress while the forces attacked from the blightland side.
The special people thing (Rand's friends with powers) it was sort of said or implied there's only 2-3 at most per cycle normally while in this case the wheel had somehow spit all 5 of them out at once in a single cycle close to one another if that makes any kind of sense.
Magic Voltron wasn't a joint spell so much as the one women (who had trained but didn't make it as an Aes Sedai to be clear) was able to draw power from 4 others to power up her own channelling as such it wasn't so much all 5 of them casting a spell as 1 casting the spell drawing power from the other 4. We've seen implied joint spell casting before but this was more like she was in charge of the power and the others existed just as power sources connected to her.
Ah ok magic item MacGuffin, got it for items made by the one power.
The Dark One was sort of shocked to see a Heron sword as though it meant something more. It was strongly implied he already recognised the Dragon and knew something of who he was but the Heron sword really seemed to shake / shock him in a sort of "Why do you have that you shouldn't have that" kind of way.
All the show gave us with the Dragon was he was going to get the male casters together and expose the One power to channel some kind of thing to beat the dark one permanently. We didn't get anything more than that. Also does that mean Rand is going to go mad now??
Well the big-ish battle was the fall of the gap fortress. Moraine claimed Rand blasting the Dark one with the One power object was but some first battle but never explained why cause well he blasted the guy and he vanished it seems
Ah good to know about the horn then
I can help answer a few more questions. Mind you, this is all book info.
In the books, pretty much all life in the Blight got mutated and warped into something deadly, poisonous and fleshy abominations, including the trees. Pretty much a death world from Warhammer 40k, like Catachan, if you're familiar with that. Tho in the show it kind of falls flat, because they never actually show any of that.
Got nothing for this one. Tho there are more portals into the Ways, but I'm guessing it's the writers getting cheap and lazy, and solving a problems with the "Euron's Teleporting Fleet" technique.
The appearance of Ta'veren people is a sort of automated self-correction mechanic of the Pattern (since the Wheel is not actually sentient), something that happens by itself whenever fate needs to be course corrected. Normally it's only 1 or 2 per century or such, but since the Dark One is a "end of the world" threat, the Wheel went all out. Tho in the books Egwene and Nynaeve are not Ta'veren.
Ok, sothe ways the Power works is that, while the amount differs from person to person, there is a limit to how much Power a single Channeler can draw safely i.e. without burning themself out (which they've chosen to depict as literally burning up in the show). There are two ways to overcome this limitation. One is to Link with other channelers into a Circle, up to a max of 13 women, with the channeler in charge of the Circle gaining access to a portion of the power the other women can draw. (The other way to increase the limit is with Angreal, or Sa'angreal (same thing, just way more powerful). Back in that episode where that group of Aes Sedai are confronting Logain Ablar, they actually also Linked, way at the end when they Gentled him (cut his connection to the Power), tho it wasn't given explanation at that point.
The Heron sword is the mark of a master swordsman. It's more or less impossible for someone of Rand's age to have earned one legit, hence why the 'Dark One' asked where he got it. Tho the other probably reason is that the previous incarnation of the Dragon, Lews Theron Telamon, also owned a Heron sword, tho he got his legit. I've been putting the 'Dark One' in parentheses, because unless they're changing a LOT, that wasn't really the big bad, but Ishamael, one of the Forsaken. And because I don't remember the show explaining Forsaken either: they're the 13 most powerful Aes Sadai who joined the shadow back in the Age of Legend, with Ishamael as strongest and nominal leader (and not a little bit obsessed with Lews Therin Telamon). They're actually extremely important characters in the overall story, and it's kind of baffling the show has basically not mentioned them yet.
Ok, this will take some explaining. Back in the Age of Legend someone had discovered a new, seemingly infinite energy source, but it was behind some kind of barrier. So the Aes Sedai, then still male and female, started boring into that barrier with the power. Problem was, that barrier was the 'Dark One's' prison from a previous cycle. They drill through, shit hits the fan, big ass war happens between the good Aes Sedai and those that turned to the shadow (and then created Shadowspawn). And the good guys were losing. Badly. So the most powerful male Aes Sedai, Lews Therin Telamon, aka the Dragon, came up with a desperate last gambit plan to take a bunch of Aes Sedai to the place where they opened a hole in the prison, and combine their power to plug it. Telamon intended it to be a joint male/female effort, but the leader of the female Aes Sedai, the Tamyrlin Seat, refused. So Telamon took the 100 strongest male Aes Sedai, his 100 Companions, and they barely managed to lock the Dark One (and the 13 Forsaken) away again using seven seals made from a material called cuendillar/heartstone, which is supposedly indestructible, even with the Power. That big white marble-like disc Moraine and Rand were on at the Eye of the World, that got cracked when Rand vaporized the 'Dark One'? That's one of those seals, tho they're much larger here (in the book they're only the size of a hand).
But, because there were only male channelers, the seal was flawed, and this allowed the Dark One a final 'fuck you', and he tainted the male side of the One Power with his evil. Which is why male channelers now slowly go insane. Telamon and his 100 strongest buddies went bat shit instantly tho, and started fucking up the world, using the power to cause natural disasters on a global scale i.e. the Breaking of the World. That imperfect seal also allowed a little of the Dark One's influence to leak out, causing the land surrounding his prison to become rotten and corrupted i.e. the Blight (or if you will, this franchise's version of Mordor)
Well, in the books the fight at the Eye of the World involves 3 of the Forsaken, and Moraine immediately recognizes the broken heartstone seal, and that Rand had only defeated Ishamael (and not even permanently). Leading to the conclusion that the seals on the Dark One's prison are failing, enough to let out the Forsaken, who of course want to find the rest of the seals and destroy them. Hence, more battles. So the next books focus on gathering allies and getting Rand all he needs to fight the Forsaken and the Dark One, while also searching for the seals.
Also, it's actually Rand who destroys the Trolloc army after the confrontation at the Eye of the World. By himself. It's his first real display of power, showing how much more powerful he is than anyone else so far (save for Ishamael), and also kickstarting the world at large coming to the realization that the Dragon has been reborn and the Last Battle is approaching.
I understand why they're cutting out so much of the backstory cause otherwise, like chimps said, it would be 75% exposition. But at the same time its really the best part of the show so cutting it out leaves you with just generic fantasy and if they didn't realize that maybe they don't understand the propety so well and they just picked it because they asked for "something like games of thrones".
To add a few details:
To add a few details:
So the army from the blightland was being distracted by the knight from the fortress in essentially a suicidal action to let the Rand sneak in, think LOTR with the army fight just being a cover for Frodo to destroy the ring. It's important that Rand destroyed it because everyone in the army saw him and so its more or less like they saw Jesus personally save their butts.
Rand is definetly slowly going crazy... sorta. This is another point that's used for plot convenience, sometime he seems like he's already insane (which a good actor could make some nice performance), but other time he's just normal, and its very inconsistent. For most of book 3 he's practically a raving lunatic but after that he's just fine. This is an idea that I quite liked, with every new power he'd gain people would simultaneously go "Yay, now he can help us stop the bad one" and "Fuck, now if he go crazy where all extra dead", but the execution wasn't all that great. It's strange they don't put much emphasis on the "breaking of the world", that's how the first book start and is often referred to. It's why all the male magic caster are hunted to extinction by the female magic caster.
Rand is definetly slowly going crazy... sorta. This is another point that's used for plot convenience, sometime he seems like he's already insane (which a good actor could make some nice performance), but other time he's just normal, and its very inconsistent. For most of book 3 he's practically a raving lunatic but after that he's just fine. This is an idea that I quite liked, with every new power he'd gain people would simultaneously go "Yay, now he can help us stop the bad one" and "Fuck, now if he go crazy where all extra dead", but the execution wasn't all that great. It's strange they don't put much emphasis on the "breaking of the world", that's how the first book start and is often referred to. It's why all the male magic caster are hunted to extinction by the female magic caster.
Oh man, really that happened in the books?
There was none of that stuff going on with Rand. He and Moraine just snuck out early in the morning and were let through the gap fortress because Aes Sedai. There was no distraction. The army from the Blightland were being distracted they just attacked the Gap fortress because seemingly in essence "Screw the people there" and in the chaos they could have dark friends invade the city and steal the horn
So the Wheel of Time turned out to be pretty bad in the end. Too much focus on Moraine and the other Aes Sedai and not enough on the characters from the Two Rivers. I don't think there was a scene in the entire season where those five characters were actually together at the same time.
Reading this thread has made me not want to watch this. I was somewhat curious, it is one of the most famous fantasy properties of all time after all. And after attempting to read the books close to a decade ago I had a faint hope that this adaptation could be an opportunity to introduce this story properly through a visual medium. No such luck it seems. Oh well, at least Arcane kicked ass, and Legend of Vox Machina is just around the corner, so there's no shortage of fantasy shows in the near future.
Well, the thing is I guess, is that they've got a cast of lesser known actors and splashed out on a major league one, they need to give her some serious screen time.
My wife, who hasn't read the books, predicted that Moiraine will not last very long simply because Rosamund Pike isn't going to want to be pinned down for 13 books worth of TV fantasy potboiler. One might note the example already set by Snowpiercer in this regard.