The Wheel of Time: The Wheel Weaves as Jeff Bezos Wills (Book Spoilers)

[jurble]

Unrelated, but I saw this response from Rafe linked in a Reddit comment. I interpret it as either an 'open relationship' or that either Aviendha or Elayne, or both, are going to be turned into men.  But three years ago is a long time.

[Scott_N]

I am bit confused about the power scaling so far. Rand needed a figurine to kill(?) Ishamael and he is supposed to be orders of magnitude more powerful than any other channeler if I've understood it correctly. Yet 5 Aes Sedai nukes an entire trolloc army in a few seconds. Completely obliterates it. I grant that Egwene and Nynaeve are very powerful too but this is godlike powers. It seems too much. And Rand's seem too little.

I'm not quite sure why armies or soldiers even exist if any little band of Aes Sedai can take them out wholesale. Why don't the Aes Sedai rule the world completely?

[Slurktan]

7 hours ago, karaddin said:

Well consider me the outlier again, I thought there was a ton that was great here - especially the way Ishy completely played Rand. I like the change from the books resulting in it being an unconditional defeat for Rand, his only action breaks the first seal and sets the rest in motion meaning a clear win for Ishy/DO. However Ishy also teaches Rand the first part of how to consciously channel and sets his own eventual defeat in motion, winning the battle doesn't mean winning the war.

I also thought Moiraine was shielded with it tied off, not stilled, and took it as an indication that the current AS don't even know proper shielding - they do 3/4 of it but don't set it properly within the persons brain/soul which blocks them doing anything with the power but does not block them from touching it. This would have the obvious flaw of exactly what happened with Logain and Stepin. Sanderson seeing an earlier version of the script with it as stilling may indicate this is wrong, or simply that they changed their mind on where to take it.

No energy to argue with people that interpret every single thing in the worst possible light, so I'll bow out of the discussion and maybe you should consider dropping out of the show before the next season if it drives you crazy. As others have said, the books are still there and the show has made me want to read them again for the first time in years.

I hope you don't bow out of the discussion and you aren't as much of an outlier as you may think. This place is an echo chamber at times with negativity.

As for Moiraine I thought she was severed and it was pretty clear to me by what Lan said. We actually do not see how severing affects the bond from the warder perspective in the books. But we do see that Siuan is not affected in the regular way until she regains the ability to channel so perhaps they are making it like that.

[jurble]

4 minutes ago, Scott_N said:

I am bit confused about the power scaling so far. Rand needed a figurine to kill(?) Ishamael and he is supposed to be orders of magnitude more powerful than any other channeler if I've understood it correctly. Yet 5 Aes Sedai nukes an entire trolloc army in a few seconds. Completely obliterates it. I grant that Egwene and Nynaeve are very powerful too but this is godlike powers. It seems too much. And Rand's seem too little.

I'm not quite sure why armies or soldiers even exist if any little band of Aes Sedai can take them out wholesale. Why don't the Aes Sedai rule the world completely?

The Three Oaths.  They did rule the world during the Age of Legends.  As to why they nerf themselves with the Oaths, I believe it was introduced by the Black Ajah to intentionally nerf them?

[Ran]

Yeah, I think the idea is that in the AoL they had no idea that LTT was a Hero destined to reborn in the next age. Ditto with their having forgotten about the Dark One.

And yeah, @jurble, they seemed to make the situation one where there really hadn't been a war with the Dark One that they were losing badly and that what LTT did was a desperate last ditch effort to avert disaster. Instead it seems that it's a Utopia and LTT wants to take a huge risk to make it slightly more Utopic. Which is dumb and makes him dumb.

[Corvinus85]

15 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

As for Moiraine I thought she was severed and it was pretty clear to me by what Lan said. We actually do not see how severing affects the bond from the warder perspective in the books. But we do see that Siuan is not affected in the regular way until she regains the ability to channel so perhaps they are making it like that.

There's conflicting visual and dialogue cues there. The visuals indicate a shield, followed immediately by what may appear as severing, but less in magnitude compared to how Logain's was done. Then Ishamael says what does it feel to sense the Source but be unable to touch it, which indicates the shield again; in the case of severing, people feel something missing, they no longer feel the Source. But then at the end, Moraine at least believes she was stilled.

[Ran]

I don't think she believes she's stilled. She knows the Oaths still apply. She just think to since that she can't break the shield for whatever reason.

[Slurktan]

9 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

There's conflicting visual and dialogue cues there. The visuals indicate a shield, followed immediately by what may appear as severing, but less in magnitude compared to how Logain's was done. Then Ishamael says what does it feel to sense the Source but be unable to touch it, which indicates the shield again; in the case of severing, people feel something missing, they no longer feel the Source. But then at the end, Moraine at least believes she was stilled.

If you are using book knowledge then it's simple, a shield does not remove the bond.  The bond with Lan has been removed.  Its stilling.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, UnplayableChar said:

Do you have a source on that? It was my understanding that the "Dragon" was his personal nickname, and that it was used as a shorthand for the champion of the light in the books, I can't imagine the name having any real significance to the pattern, and he was known this way even before anyone in the Age of Legends even knew the Dark One existed, no?

Well, time is a wheel in the books, so as Rand is a reincarnation of Lews Therin and has access to his memories, Lews Therin is a reincarnation of Rand and theoretically also has access to his memories (though Rand's access is eased by the madness).

[fionwe1987]

33 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

There's conflicting visual and dialogue cues there. The visuals indicate a shield, followed immediately by what may appear as severing, but less in magnitude compared to how Logain's was done. Then Ishamael says what does it feel to sense the Source but be unable to touch it, which indicates the shield again; in the case of severing, people feel something missing, they no longer feel the Source. But then at the end, Moraine at least believes she was stilled.

When you're severed, you do still feel the Source. That's the constant torture of it. But it's why Nynaeve insists there's still something left to Heal.

I don't believe we know that severing breaks the Warder bond, but it's a plausible thing. The breaking of the bond not affecting Lan, however, especially after we got an entire episode about the effects, is just hot trash.

[jurble]

13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Well, time is a wheel in the books, so as Rand is a reincarnation of Lews Therin and has access to his memories, Lews Therin is a reincarnation of Rand and theoretically also has access to his memories (though Rand's access is eased by the madness).

The turnings of the Wheel aren't 1:1 per RJ, prior to Lews Therin there would've been a Rand-figure in the previous Third Age, but not Rand himself.  

[Ran]

To me, the idea that Ishamael tied off the shield has to do with that unique little gesture he does toward the end -- a little "Knot" of one power in his hand and he does something and she reacts. 

So I'm still on the side that she has a tied-off (and maybe inverted?) shield that she can't see and doesn't know what to do about.

[Corvinus85]

42 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

If you are using book knowledge then it's simple, a shield does not remove the bond.  The bond with Lan has been removed.  Its stilling.

Lan asks Moiraine to unmask the bond, and she says she can't, which makes sense if she doesn't have access to the OP. It's not clear that the bond was fully removed. 

[Maltaran]

20 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

When you're severed, you do still feel the Source. That's the constant torture of it. But it's why Nynaeve insists there's still something left to Heal.

I don't believe we know that severing breaks the Warder bond, but it's a plausible thing. The breaking of the bond not affecting Lan, however, especially after we got an entire episode about the effects, is just hot trash.

I think it does break the bond, IIRC some of the warders at Dumai’s Wells died or went crazy when Rand stilled the three Aes Sedai who were shielding him

[IFR]

Yes, after this discussion I'm persuaded that Moiraine was merely shielded. Which of course makes Ishamael a bit of an idiot, but I guess the writers wanted Moiraine to be in the next season, wanted to provide Egwene and Nynaeve potentially with more material to demonstrate how inherently amazing they are by removing the shield, and the writers couldn't figure out how to set all this up in any kind of clever fashion, so they just allowed Ishamael to be dumb.

Also, who knows if Nynaeve was dead or not. It's a bit moot. Either way, Egwene went from untrained and hardly able to channel to doing miraculous healing (either resurrection or healing someone who was burned out and on the cusp of death). I don't see how she could be drawing power from Nynaeve either, because again, at the very least Nynaeve was burned out. Or maybe the writers changed the rules there? They are so free about changing every detail, maybe burning out doesn't mean you can't channel any more?

[Lin Meili]

I rather enjoyed the last episode! I wasn't expecting to, but I did. One thing that the show has lacked is a charismatic/interesting villain and this episode gave us 2.

I look forward to the next season.

About the entire season, here are some of my thoughts.

Best bits:

• Moiraine - top tier for me
• Lan, Nyn - excellent
• Mat - his actor is noticeably better than the other Wonder Boys
• Isshy-poo, Padan Fain, Logain
• Siuan's clothes!

Okay bits:

• Egwene, Siuan, Tinkers
• Overall production quality. It was okay but not more than that.

I would like more of:

• Thom, definitely. I wanna put him up there at the top but, alas, he simply didn't have enough screen time
• Min. She seems good.

Not a fan of:

• Costuming in general. Some of the clothes are excellent like Moiraine's clothes, Siuan's, Rand's shearling coat, but most are like "meh" which is a shame because I would have liked more colorful and awesome clothes. Also, there was a distinct lack of details in many of the Aes Sedai costumes which made them look poor. Sorry, I lack the vocabulary but I mean stuff like embroidery, lace, little details like that. I'm guessing Covid took a toll on that since these are all labor-intensive things.

Please no more of:

• Abel and other extra stuff that takes up way too much time. I mean, okay it was done well, but there aren't that many episodes in a season and I would have preferred it if they spent more time on the main cast. It just took too long.

Looking forward to:

• Elayne and Gaul.
• Female Forsaken. I'm guessing since Rand will be off on his own, it would be a good time to for Lanfear to make an appearance?

Waiting (probably in vain) for:

• More humor. With Mat becoming darker than book Mat for now,  I don't know how they can lighten the mood. *sigh*

[Corvinus85]

I think the most annoying writing for me was Nynaeve telling Lan that Moiraine has a 'tell' and that's how she originally tracked them. What? Moiraine rode from the Two Rivers and just before Shadar Logoth it stopped being her decision where the party was going. And now she walked through the Blight. What kind of 'tell' would a person give off to be tracked? And if it has to do with the OP how does that help Lan? 

This was extremely lazy writing and another move to nerf Lan, who should have been familiar with the Blight more than anyone else, have amazing tracking skills himself and thus be able to track Moiraine on his own. They could have bothered to tell the audience what this tell was. 

[Ran]

49 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

 

This was extremely lazy writing and another move to nerf Lan, who should have been familiar with the Blight more than anyone else, have amazing tracking skills himself and thus be able to track Moiraine on his own. They could have bothered to tell the audience what this tell was. 

I was going to say you exactly echoed something I said in an earlier post, but I removed it before submitting it to try and soften my criticism.  But yes, I found it simply insulting to the intelligence of viewers to come up with this "tell" nonsense. It makes zero sense, and was done solely as another subordination of Lan to Nynaeve.

[Trebla]

Okay finale, some good some bad. I was genuinely pleased with Ishmael, and his untucked shirt should be a dead giveaway that he's not the Dark One. The Dark One tucks his shirt!

Not making Lews Therin the Tamrylin Seat was...odd. Only thing I can think of was that they needed to show that he was really breaking the rules by taking the One Hundred companions to Shayol Ghul (I almost typed Mount Doom  ) without the Amyrilin Seat's blessing.

It seems the reason why the show is making all 5 Two Rivers folk ta'veren is to be able to keep deus ex machina on all 5. Nyneave should have been completely burnt out but her own sheer power and ta'veren protected her. How Mat got to Fal Dara is anyone's guess. Perrin was spared by Fain specifically because of this: as ta'veren they want all 5 dark.

Lastly, what happened to Agelmar's sister is a nice preview to what happens to one certain character in the Last Battle. Just please don't introduce Cadsuane. Please. Give that final spot to Moirane without de-powering her.

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, Trebla said:

I was genuinely pleased with Ishmael, and his untucked shirt should be a dead giveaway that he's not the Dark One. The Dark One tucks his shirt!