The Wheel of Time: Jane Farstrider Herself (Book Spoilers)

[Gertrude]

As for Lan being a mentor for Rand - most of that happens at Fal Dara when Lan begins training him in earnest, What Rand has seen of Lan so far is the typical strong, silent type. We've seen behind his mask a bit, as did Nyneave (which helps sooooo much) but none of the other kids have any reason to think he's anything but a highly competent, single-minded warrior. I'm also thinking that when Lan and Rand are interacting the most, Lan is struggling with his feelings for Nyneave. There might be a conversation where Lan tells Rand the best thing for anyone you love is to send them away because it will only hurt them. That's easy enough to misinterpret.

Or it could be a dozen other things we're not thinking about. Talking about the relationship between Rand and Lan as damaged at this point is premature IMO. So far in the books, Lan has had a bath and a few quick weapons lessons with them on the road and that's all we've missed.

[Rippounet]

52 minutes ago, john said:

It’s blowing my mind that non readers aren’t getting it’s Rand. It’s clearly a guy because they devoted a huge chunk to the notion that the Dragon goes crazy if it’s a guy. Mat and Perrin have their own powers/storylines and, what seems to make it obvious, Rand is the only one they’ve shown doing an apparently impossible act, with no other explanation.

But what Rand did really wasn't obvious. As I said before, the darkfriend could have lied about the door, which didn't look as if it was made of iron (why the fuck was that door so strong in the first place anyway?). Or the door could have had an unknown weakness (it doesn't break, the hinges do).
Point is, it was a subtle clue. One could have read it as Rand being particularly stubborn and determined. Or lucky.
They've also muddied the waters, because it's not clear what the dragon reborn's powers are supposed to be. If you haven't read the books, Perrin and Nynaeve have the most extraordinary powers right now. Super-strength was never mentioned. And Rand never used weaves or had glowing dreamy/weird eyes, which the viewer will have associated with power by now. Nor does he break the door easily, as one might expect if he is in fact the most powerful channeler that ever lived.
It's only in the last two episodes that two far more obvious clues have been dropped. First, Loial immediately identifying Rand as Aiel (Moiraine did say that she expected the dragon to have been brought to the Two-Rivers rather than born there). And second, Rand recognizing Dragonmount, even though he's never seen it before (a subtle nod to Tom's song about the dragon being a man who "can't forget").
The only way one might assume it's Rand is precisely because they went too far in showing the others' powers. It's a classic Agatha Christie move (as I like to call it) to keep the actual culprit in the background for the first half of the story. That, and the fact that so far Rand has behaved like a "classic" hero (rather selfless, brave, and empathic), while all the other candidates have obvious flaws (Perrin has guilt, Mat is a scoundrel, Egwene is ambitious... and where do we even begin with Nynaeve?).  In fact, I've seen it said that Rand is "boring" or "vanilla." Non-book readers have little means of knowing just how bad the psychological torture that awaits the dragon reborn will be: there's Tom's song, but how could they know that the song was 100% accurate (in fact, would they have even paid attention to the lyrics?) ? How could they know that the reason why Rand is so vanilla at the beginning of the story is precisely because his personality (and moods) will later prove central to the story? If you think about it, there's no reason to assume the dragon is even a good guy, not with him having "broken" the world before, and so many people being terrified of him. The lore as has been presented suggests the dragon to be a "tortured" soul, possibly as mad as Logain (or the other guy who gets caught by Liandrin), and Perrin and Mat fit that far more than Rand.
The most important clue, that the dragon's memories of his past life (/lives?) will only progressively come back to haunt him, has still not been clearly given. Nor did they ever explain what it means to be ta'veren, so the viewer doesn't necessarily know that the Fab5 all have super-powers.

Tl;dr: they were rather subtle about it, methinks.

[SpaceChampion]

I'm pretty sure there are no Warder philosophy classes in the wonders of Stoicism.  WOT has some philosophy in it, so putting actual Stoicism in it might be interesting and totally appropriate, but do the actual philosophy, not whatever it is this stereotype of emotionlessness.

Got trauma?  REPRESS HARDDDURRRR  RRARGH is not a good lesson.

Oh, and Warders are not universally the same mindset anyway, because exactly zero groups are.

 

[karaddin]

I agree with Rip on the hints towards Rand being subtle and I'll add on that the show hasn't given any retrospective weight to it, or drawn attention to it in any way after it happened. Which is actually part of the most obvious hint it's him - he's the only one the show isn't making obvious hints about, so the hint is the negative space lol.

I think the door was "ironwood" rather than metal, so it's just a really strong wood in the world. I don't remember anything along those lines from the book in either direction to know if it's there as well.

[Poobah]

As much as, as a book reader I feel frustrated with the misdirection I also think that based on the reactions and engagement it's generated amongst non book readers it's pretty clear that mystery around who the dragon is wasn't a poor choice. I do wish Rand had a bit more development but I guess that's changing next week so we'll see.

[Corvinus85]

18 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I think the door was "ironwood" rather than metal, so it's just a really strong wood in the world. I don't remember anything along those lines from the book in either direction to know if it's there as well.

From what I recall, the scene involved a Darkfriend dude who corned Rand in an inn, during a storm, and Rand ended up frying the guy with lightning. He then got sick. The show decided not to do the sickness part of first time channelers.

[fionwe1987]

15 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

From what I recall, the scene involved a Darkfriend dude who corned Rand in an inn, during a storm, and Rand ended up frying the guy with lightning. He then got sick. The show decided not to do the sickness part of first time channelers.

Yeah I'm not sure why they skipped that. Between Nynaeve and Egwene and Rand and Mat, they had plenty of confusion to throw around with the sickness thing. Probably cost them too much time. 

[karaddin]

16 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

From what I recall, the scene involved a Darkfriend dude who corned Rand in an inn, during a storm, and Rand ended up frying the guy with lightning. He then got sick. The show decided not to do the sickness part of first time channelers.

Or indeed the frying a guy part lol

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Yeah I'm not sure why they skipped that. Between Nynaeve and Egwene and Rand and Mat, they had plenty of confusion to throw around with the sickness thing. Probably cost them too much time. 

It also hasn't shown Nynaeve or Egwene being sick after their "first" time either, although in both those cases it could just be that it wasnt actually their first. Maybe they decided having that alongside Mat getting sick from the dagger at the same time would be too confusing at the pace they're racing through it.

[Scott_N]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Slightly odd to see calls for Lan to be a toxic masculine cliche (he was, a bit, in the books until Nynaeve kind of snapped him out of it, but I guess they decided they didn't want him to spend half the show's runtime as an emotionless rock).

What did Lan do in the books that made him toxic? Being/seeming emotionless may not be endearing but it's not toxic, surely.

[karaddin]

13 minutes ago, Scott_N said:

What did Lan do in the books that made him toxic? Being/seeming emotionless may not be endearing but it's not toxic, surely.

Toxic masculinity doesn't necessarily mean that its harmful to other people, but also that its unhealthy to the person attempting to live by it. And I'd certainly say that Lan's world view is harming him at times and Rand takes the worst possible interpretation of his lessons and makes it much more toxic for himself.

[fionwe1987]

Yes, and the books are clear that his "one man" quest is unhealthy, though RJ's "solutions" to this, having Moiraine forcibly transfer their bond to Myrelle, and later, Nynaeve using an Aes Sedai answer into tricking Lan into leading an army, aren't exactly thrilling ways to solve this, especially the former. 

[Gertrude]

Just had a thought about the show using the mystery of the dragon and how people are upset about hinting that it could be a multi-headed dragon. This is only going to be reinforced by some book material they may throw in next episode. Min's vision of the fireflies pushing back the darkness and being stronger when they are all together. And really, this group of ta'veren are the dragon entourage, so it's not as completely ass-pull as it may seem on first glance.

[fionwe1987]

It's pretty clear there's a group around the Dragon Reborn that's there to help him, guide him, support him. And I'd say they all play important enough roles that he wouldn't succeed without them.

[Ran]

Thought I'd share the Google Trends for those trying to get a real gauge on engagement versus other programs. Some notes:

The Expanse is heading into its final season but if you were to expand that search to a year back, you'll see it's actually got quite massive online engagement -- superior even to Hawkeye.

Hawkeye, of course, is an MCU show and everyone knows who Hawkeye is, so it has a big legup on The Wheel of Time.

Arcane is an adaptation of the League of Legends milieu created by Riot Games, and has a huge global fanbase built in. Combine that with Netflix's greater reach as well as the absolutely stellar reviews for the animated series, and its monster results are not surprising.

Of all the shows compared to WoT, Foundation is the most similar -- expensive and uneven adaptations of well-known genre staples -- and they have rather similar trjaectories.

ETA: Corrected link issue. Should now properly point to the trend chart.

[fionwe1987]

I saw Arcane, with no knowledge (even now) of League of Legends. It was a pretty good show, and a sign that short episode count doesn't mean you can't do cohesive storytelling, though they aren't hamstrung by having to adapt a doorstopper novel, of course!

[Jace, Extat]

I'm not really sure why the length of EotW is supposed to be some kind of excuse for this sloppy, helter-skelter mess. They had almost three times the run time as Fellowship of the Ring had available. 

 

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

I'm not really sure why the length of EotW is supposed to be some kind of excuse for this sloppy, helter-skelter mess. They had almost three times the run time as Fellowship of the Ring had available. 

 

Same word count as AGoT, too, which was very faithfully adapted in just two more hours and with a larger cast of main characters from the get-go.

To be fair, AGoT is about as easy to adapt to the screen as a graphic novel would be -- it's the scope and expense of it that's daunting, not the actual plot and character mechanics because George brought a lot of lessons from his time in Hollywood and applied it to the structure. TEotW largely lacks that kind of plotting, so it meanders more... but then, meandering = lots you can chop to retain core action, core interactions, etc. It's a perfect candidate for compression. But they made their challenge greater still not just by compressing but by reconfiguring the focus of the narrative -- bringing Moiraine and Lan forward as more prominent characters, giving all the TR kids equal time now --  which means more stuff has to be discarded to make room for new stuff (Logain, the White Tower, etc.)

Once the season is done I'm sure fans will count up how much screen time characters get and so on.

[wolverine]

22 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Ran mentioned Siuan was powerful, but there is something down the line that reduces her power. Moiraine seemed to be using a ter'angreal to visit Siuan, Siuan had a matching picture in her room. We don't konw the specifics of how it works, where it goes, or the limitations of it.

I thought even before stilling she wasn't particularly powerful, but I could be misremembering. 

 

Yes, ter'angreal makes sense.  Can't take away Rand's re-discoveries!

[wolverine]

17 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

 

As for the depiction of Lan:

I know I'm not that far into this series, but so far Lan doesn't have much of a character in the books - be it emotional or not emotional. He never gets into a situation where anybody would care about how he feels, nor has he any reason to get emotional himself.

That's about right for quite a way into the series from my recall. His emotional advice seems to be: be tough and get over it.