re: The Wheel of Time -- Season 2 coming in September -- Wise Ones Thread (Book Spoilers)

30 years ago, I found The Eye of the World and absolutely fell in love with the characters. I have read the full series and the sequel through several times and listen to the audio books every couple of years now. So I am heavily invested in the novels and the character, and the central story that unfolds. So everything I see in the tv series is colored by my love of the novels.

I have no issues with the casting at all, race if the cast or any of that, even though few of the cast appear as I imagined.

The changes thus far: most of the changes make no sense and only distract from the story. From the onset Mat was a great character. Turning his parents into terrible people and making him a loser and thief is an abomination. It’s unforgivable.

Emonds Field. Why remove Emonds Field. The place where Aemon died is central to the entire backstory and the history of the entire series.

No Bela. Nothing more to say about that.

The magic system. Change everything else, but change the magic system and you have changed the very heart of what makes the Wheel of Time the Wheel of Time. Saidin and Saidar, the male and female halves of the One Power are what drive the wheel.

Now in this series it’s just one thing, one power. All the same for men or women. No explanation why touching Saidin drives men insane, and why that is what caused the Breaking of the World.

Robert Jordan was progressive in his thinking and gave women a prominent role in his novels. Rafe Judkins has taken Jordan’s story and turned into into his own personal fan fiction as if he could tell it better through his woke lens. I hate him.

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No Bela. Nothing more to say about that.

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She said the name, and hell in the "Bonus Content" section on the Amazon site / xray stuff there is an entire little page on Bela in the "creatures" section

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Now in this series it’s just one thing, one power. All the same for men or women

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I really think (hope) that people are reading too deep into Liandrin's little speech at the beginning. She's a red (black really) so not only is she capable of lying but she also vehemently hates men. I'll agree that IF they are totally going to do away with the split between saidar and saidin that would be a huge mistake.

Could she not have been referring to the feeling of the taint when they were gentling him? I may be not remembering correctly but I thought they could feel the "wrongness" of it even though they can't directly see or interact with the male side.

I think that they'll get into saidin/saidar. The slaughtered sheep that Lan finds in Ep1 were in the shape of one half of a yin/yang, so that indicates that they're playing with the dichotomy.

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The changes thus far: most of the changes make no sense and only distract from the story. From the onset Mat was a great character. Turning his parents into terrible people and making him a loser and thief is an abomination. It’s unforgivable.

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Not telling you you're wrong because you're your own person and this is just your opinion, but, I will say, most people agree that Mat is the weakest of the main 5 for the longest in the series. He really doesn't become the awesome Mat that people love until the middle of the series. He is a weak character in the first two books IMO.

I think they're just trying to make the characters more interesting and modern from a psychological perspective.

Perrin's killing his wife (assuming she wasn't a darkfriend) foreshadows his berserker nature and will also provide him a conflicted or guilty conscience as he discovers what he's capable of. He'll remember how he killed his wife and try to fight against his wolfbrother nature.

Mat is supposed to be a sneaky rogueish type. This provides him with the background for it. The rogue with heart of gold who might have resentment toward the rich/highborn and complications from it is more interesting than just a mischievous, immature trickster.

I don't know... I think the changes make sense for the screen. Some things that work in a fantasy novel with fantasy audiences need to be made more complex when you're dealing with broader television audiences, imo.

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He really doesn't become the awesome Mat that people love until the middle of the series

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I was quite surprised at the response people had to Matt, I had similar memories as you and DestrehanTiger are saying, Matt was the fun troublemaker until the dagger, then he's just a sickly prick until he's healed... and then he isn't REALLY the full Matt until after the Eelfin/Aelfin visits.

We have decades and thousands of pages of memories about these characters, nothing they could in 3 hours could possibly flesh them out properly, gonna need more time.

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I thought they absolutely nailed Thom Merrilin.

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Ditto.

I really don’t get a lot of the complaints. I’m enjoying the heck out of it.

Not just the producers, Bela is specifically named by Egwene herself. I think its the scene where they are getting to Shadar Logoth and the horses all rear up and stop. Egwene says something like, "Bela, Come on."

Of course Bela is running loose in the world right now so no idea how they reunite her with the others.

Also, the Perrin wife thing has weirdly become the most interesting talking point of the series. Was she a darkfriend? Was she pregnant? Did she have a miscarriage and thats why shes so standoffish early on? As someone who knows what happens for the most part, I like that there are going to be some changes that allow for these types of questions and speculation.

I’m gonna respond to some of your gripes and hopefully change your mind a little bit.

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Lan and Moraine just announcing who and what they are to the town, rather than it being hidden

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This was done due to the episodes being condensed. The story had to be seriously changed given an 8 episode format. I wish it would have been 10 episodes, but at least it appears to be slowing down dramatically in episode 3.

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- diverse town. It's supposed to be a sheltered place where everyone is of a similar background, and closely related. They did this just to be PC

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I dont think this was done to be PC. I think that changing (certain) characters skin tone doesn’t effect the story. Really the only character who had to be white was Rand due to his red hair and connection to the Aiel. Two rivers is essentially a bunch of refugees from Manatheren and other displaced people from the trolloc wars, correct? So i dont think its that crazy for there to be different skin tones present here.

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Like Tuon is supposed to be unique. Rand's physique as an Aeil is supposed to be unique.

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Tuon is not unique because she’s very dark lol. She’s unique because she’s a bald empress from a far off land with a very different culture. They meet tons of sea folk (who are also all black, I think?) before they even meet Tuon.

Rand’s physique is still unique. Were there other redheads I missed? I think you could argue it makes him more unique because of the new skin tones (for better or worse)

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Saying that the Dragon Reborn could be a boy or a girl. (No need for that, Moraine wanted Egwene for the White Tower, that's it)

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I fricking hate the opening scene and the only awkwardness with egwene being considered to be the dragon came from that. Supposed to help with making it less obvious that Rand is the dragon (dont think they did a great job with that anyway)

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Saying Egwene was in the Womens Circle, and inventing some ritual

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Needed to provide some character development quickly, and I think they were killing 2 birds with 1 stone to introduce the women’s circle and help with worldbuilding while also helping beef up her character. Personally really liked this scene and also probably one of the best shot/prettiest scenes in first 3 episodes.

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Perrin married. Jeezus

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Same as egwene. Not a huge fan of creating her character just to immediately kill her lol. BUT I think there may be some more backstory brought in later on due to their weird dialogue from earlier in the episode as well as them hinting at her being pregnant. Really helps establish perrin’s hesitancy to the axe and violence in general.

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Mat's father some cheating bastard who is dirt poor

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I am of the opinion that abell was a pretty flat character (more or less a watered down tam) and this change significantly improves a very weak character from book 1 (mat). I really dont think they’re sacrificing much to improve mat’s meh arc from book 1.

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Trollocs weren't done well

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Yea cant really argue with you here. I liked them but that’s my opinion.

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Nynaeve gets kidnapped by a trolloc

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This was a necessary change due to the episodes being highly condensed. They had to get rid of her because the EF 4 were no longer sneaking off in the night. If they didnt do this then they would have had to significantly change the story. Cause there’s no way in hell nynaeve would have let moraine leave the two rivers with EF 4. This small change allowed them to stay faithful to the series and have nynaeve meet up with lan and moraine at shadar logoth

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There was no mystery to this. It's all low-brow, on-the-nose. No mystery, no suspense, nothing.

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I think some of yall need to reread EotW. This is by far the worst aspect of this book. The changes they’ve made significantly improve this. BUT I agree with you it’s still pretty obvious. Maybe this will get better in future episodes where they make it seem more likely that other characters could be the dragon.