3d ago

Wheel of Time Season 3 - Episode 8 Discussion Thread

The eights and final episode of this season "He Who Comes With The Dawn" is published.

6 comments

I just watched and really enjoyed it!
I hope these spoilers tags work:

I've watched it just now an in generaly liked it once again. Would have wished for more of a closer for some archs but apart from that good final for the season.
Will post some more thoughts later.

I reiterate my statement from last week, this is a distinct turning of the wheel where everyone has been sniffing paint. So many frustrating events as a book reader. I gritted my teeth through this whole season. I don't imagine this will run for too much longer, but if it does I wonder how they will manage the huge divergance from the source material to what this thing is.
::: spoiler spoiler
We just forgot about Asmodean, Sammael killed by Moghedien for some stupid reason about wanting to know how to kill Chosen, it's not like this would be a mystery for her, she has almost certainly killed or caused to be killed Dreadlords and Forsaken before. Moiraine and Lanfear not unwilling guests of the Eelfinn. Siuan killed off, a POV character who only gets a bit less page time than Aviendha across the whole series. Min has a story arc that is nothing like her book incarnation. Melindhra, effectively just reusing an existing name for a newly invented and insanely dumb character.
:::
I could almost forgive this in a world where the Lord of the Rings didn't exist, or the Expanse. But this just seems to me like the writers and showrunners were so excited about getting the rights that they didn't realise they just weren't up to delivering on an adaptation that was true to the narrative and spirit of the books. Put simply they are not capable of creating a series that makes sense, let alone one that could be considered a good faith adaptation of the source.
My favourite part of this show is explaining to my wife all the things they excised/changed/ stuffed up at the end of each episode / series, I think I almost have her convinced to give the books a go.
- You should probably just stop watching, no? Consolidating Forsaken, killing off less important POVs to trim from a large cast that Jordan could only barely manage across 14 books and 4 million words - these are things that fundamentally make sense to do when you have, at most, 64 hours to adapt 4.4 million words.
  To be clear, season 1 and 2 changes really irked me, but at the end of season 3 I am starting to feel like they're making something that will approximate Wheel of Time in vibe and characterization. It's not the 1:1 series of my dreams (imagine something animated in the style of Avatar: The Last Airbender!), but I think they've come around to doing a reasonably good job given the restrictions of time. Rand is Rand, Mat is Mat, etc.
  If you aren't willing to just go with it, why torture yourself?
  
  Morbid curiousity in part. Also let's face it genre tv is dying, if it doesn't get at least some views then it will get worse. I just wish they would outright state, we are making a series inspired by the plot and setting of insert ip here. Instead of mangling the story of the books.
  Without meaning to start another round of complaints, do you not feel that an element of innocence and wonder from the two rivers crowd is missing in this adaptation? I feel like Queen Tylin will look more the fool than the cougar if she ends up even in the story? The Aes Sedai are emotional messes, not the image of serenity and cunning I always viewed them as through the book. I know the budget likely wouldn't stretch to it but I feel that the Aes Sedai agelessness could be well depicted with current de-aging processes and would have allowed for a visceral demonstration of the effects of stilling... Although looks like that won't be a plot point anyway.
  I could go on. But this whole thing reminds me of the Altered Carbon series, first season digressed from the books, but I could find a lot to appreciate in Kinnamans performance, by season 2 the digressions were becoming silly. If they got season 3 that would have been wacky. I feel like if you can't do the source, don't try to do the source and make that clear, that way your writers get to write their own thing in universe as opposed to constantly grabbing the interesting bits and trying to stick them together like a skin suit to wear over their own creativity.
  Anyway there's a coinflip that Amazon will shut it down rather than greenlight another series and I doubt Sony would be able to sell it to anyone else at this stage, so I might not have anything more to complain about going forward. Guess we will see.
- My wife damn near banned me from talking all the way back in season one because I was constantly getting annoyed with it. We watched like 3 episodes of two and called it quits

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