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The Wheel of Time TV Show 3: Fan expectations are heavier than a mountain, success is lighter than a feather [BOOK SPOILERS]


Corvinus85

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thankfully Thom's casting was finally announced, all the worrying among fans whether he'd be cast was getting tiresome.

I don't mind a younger Thom, some of his athletic feats were pretty hard to believe given his apparent age in the books. And him being able to get Moiraine at the end despite being something like 65 years old really stretched plausibility for me.

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2 hours ago, David Selig said:

And him being able to get Moiraine at the end despite being something like 65 years old really stretched plausibility for me.

There's less than a 20 year difference between them. Nyn and Lan have a larger age difference.

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11 hours ago, Corvinus said:

The important thing is can he sing? I remember the actor from his small role in The Last Kingdom, and he can easily look like Thom with makeup. To me, he looks a bit older than his 46 years.

I searched around and couldn't find him singing anywhere, so ... no idea.


ETA: Nevermind. He's Danish, so I knew to search for Danish articles, and yes, he sings. He played Donkey in a Danish musical version of Shrek, and in an interview concerning that he noted he's sung as a member of rock bands (presumably garage band type deals<) and in cartoons he's voiced, but Donkey would be the first time he'd sung for theater.

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On 12/4/2019 at 4:19 PM, Ran said:

More casting news.

Alexandre Willaum is way too young to play Thom Merillin. Some ageist casting, I'll tell you.

He can age up pretty easily as well (as he did in the second season of The Last Kingdom, when he had to play 20 years older than he did in the first season).

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And him being able to get Moiraine at the end despite being something like 65 years old really stretched plausibility for me.

Thom's age is never given in the books. This idea that he's in his sixties is a bit odd, and not really supported by the evidence. He had an affair with Morgase (who is 41 in the first book) at least 13 years before the books began and served for a time as a journeyman bard before that. It's interesting that he apparently avoided the Aiel War, and seems to have been too young to have gotten involved in anything before that. 

The only evidence pointing to him being "old" is his white hair, but people can start getting white hair in their thirties or forties. Thom is also handsome enough to attract multiple younger women, including Moiraine and Morgase (both of whom seem to have quite good taste, at least when not under Forsaken compulsion), and he's also extremely fit for his age. He engages in combat proficiently - including taking on a Myrddraal hand-to-hand which even Lan never risks - and engages in tumbling tricks, runs like a lunatic when needed and makes multiple cross-continental trips with the various kids and keeps up with them. The evidence I think supports Thom being around 50 to 55 at the high upper end, maybe even late forties at the lower end, although there is a limit on that as I think it is said at one point he looks older than Lan, who is 44 in the first book.

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Boo, no Sam Elliott

Elliott is 75, so this was never going to happen. If they'd made the show twenty years ago, maybe.

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5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The only evidence pointing to him being "old" is his white hair

It's noted somewhere in the books he was twice Morgase's age when he had his affair with her, and a search online claims that this isn't quite right -- RJ's notes for Andor allegedly stated he was in fact 18-19 years older than Morgase, per this. There's definitely an "Andor notes" document at the College of Charleston's archive of RJ's papers.

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9 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's noted somewhere in the books he was twice Morgase's age when he had his affair with her, and a search online claims that this isn't quite right -- RJ's notes for Andor allegedly stated he was in fact 18-19 years older than Morgase, per this. There's definitely an "Andor notes" document at the College of Charleston's archive of RJ's papers.

I believe RJ was wary of pinning down Thom's age, so created several competing ideas, hence the conflict you mention (he did this a lot, especially between early books in the series and the later ones; he only started keeping the voluminous backstory notes around the time of writing Book 7 or 8). He also likely considered making Thom younger, because Thom doing the shit he does at 62 is not hugely credible (he was also having a relationship with Dena in Book 2, and she was in her twenties). The big giveaway here is that Team Jordan did not integrate the Thom information from the Andor notes into The Wheel of Time Companion (thus formally canonising them), which they did for most things where there was no concern or conflict, so they were not confident enough in the notes on Thom to canonise them.

Also worth noting that RJ says that Thom was "in his prime" during his relationship with Morgase, which makes sense for someone in their thirties or maybe early forties but is a bit of a strech for someone in their fifties at the time.

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Found the quote. From TFoH:

 

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Thomdril Merrilin, House bard and then Court bard, had been a joy at first, intelligent and witty, a laughing man who used the tricks of the Game of Houses to aid her to the throne and help strengthen Andor once she had it. He had been twice her age then, yet she might have married him -- marriages with commoners were not unheard of in Andor -- but he vanished without a word

While one can take "twice her age" as a bit of license -- she was 26-27 at the time in question, which would mean at the start of EotW he would be approaching 70 if we take it literally rather than figuratively -- I don't think one can really argue that it can mean he was just a few years older. RJ's 18-19 is probably fairly spot on, and we're just to take Thom as very fit for his age, and give some license for RJ coming up with feats that may not be realistic (like Mat's impossible juggling) in that context.

 

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21 hours ago, Ran said:

Found the quote. From TFoH:

 

While one can take "twice her age" as a bit of license -- she was 26-27 at the time in question, which would mean at the start of EotW he would be approaching 70 if we take it literally rather than figuratively -- I don't think one can really argue that it can mean he was just a few years older. RJ's 18-19 is probably fairly spot on, and we're just to take Thom as very fit for his age, and give some license for RJ coming up with feats that may not be realistic (like Mat's impossible juggling) in that context.

 

Morgase was not 26-27 at the time of her ascension. She's a year younger than Moiraine, was born in 957 NE, and at the end of the Aiel War, she was just 21. 

Taringail was killed some years after that, after which time she became Thom's lover. And Thome went to save Owain soon after that.

Depending on what Morgase means by "then" in your quote, Thom can range anywhere from 36 years old at the start of the Andoran war of Succession, to about 45-50 when he disappeared. I think 36-40 at the time she's talking of makes the most sense.

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Right, forgot that she was already on the throne when she had her affair with Thom. RJ's 18-19 note makes much more sense in that context -- she was ~16-17 or so, wasn't she, when the Succession War ended? So if he was helping her then and was 35-36 in 972, then he's 61-62 at the start of EotW. 

I did some Googling and there's some remarkably spry 60+ year old gymnasts out there.

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15 minutes ago, Ran said:

Right, forgot that she was already on the throne when she had her affair with Thom. RJ's 18-19 note makes much more sense in that context -- she was ~16-17 or so, wasn't she, when the Succession War ended? So if he was helping her then and was 35-36 in 972, then he's 61-62 at the start of EotW. 

I did some Googling and there's some remarkably spry 60+ year old gymnasts out there.

Right. And I know 60 year old's who don't look all that more worn than Willaum. 

What's really going to matter is how well he carries off a moustache, and whether they'll make him white haired or not.

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On 12/4/2019 at 11:19 AM, Ran said:

More casting news.

Alexandre Willaum is way too young to play Thom Merillin. Some ageist casting, I'll tell you.

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“The Wheel of Time” is a series of 14 novels that began with “The Eye of the Universe” in 1990

Is that a translation snafu somehow?  

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On 12/4/2019 at 10:19 AM, Ran said:

More casting news.

Alexandre Willaum is way too young to play Thom Merillin. Some ageist casting, I'll tell you.

Yeah, he's younger than I expected, but I always felt Thom was portrayed too old in the books. It never sat right with me that all the women in his life seemed significantly younger than him - it gave him a slight predatory feel that I never quite shook (as much as I liked the character) Maybe predatory is too strong a word, but definitely well into the male fantasy realm and a bit ick.

I guess I'd prefer him a *bit* older than what was cast, but it really just depends on how they do the make-up. I just want him to have a lived-in look.

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