Wheel of Time Season 3, Episode 7: Goldeneyes

[primeideal]

• • Previously on Wheel of Time: "Goldeneyes will have to lead his people to war." Cut to...Perrin sharpening his axe, while Maksim, Alanna, Bain, and Chiad teach people how to do everything in the montage. I understand how "and then the villagers learned how to fight" montage transition hits differently in TV versus books, but still, lol.
  • "We bury our dead and move on." Great callback to 3.4 :(
  • "If they wanted the best general, they'd follow Alanna, if they wanted the best warrior, they'd follow the Aiel. They follow you because you're one of them. If you can fight monsters, so can they." Huh, Faile responding pretty well to my first bullet point.
  • Perrin's conversation with Dain--for someone who's not going to become an actual pacifist, he's learned a lot from Ila!
  • "Nobody can run like a Tuatha'an" *cut to Bain and Chiad looking snide* I love all the callbacks to the lore infodump we got (especially because none of these characters actually know it).
  • Okay, I understand the in-universe function of Perrin singing "weep for Manetheren" and rallying the troops, and Faile's reaction. As a scene, that is a good scene to advance these characterizations. Ditto its appearance in season 1? But as a song? Lyrics? Musicality? It is not...actually good? IDK, Robert Jordan has plenty of lyrics which didn't wow me but actually rhyme. I feel like it would not be hard to do better than that!
  • So now the Whitecloaks are inside the walls and some of them are decent and mean well but also Fain brought the Trollocs, Loial is inside the Waygate trying to destroy it and Bain and Chiad are just...standing around? It's not particularly complicated but it felt like it was hard to track what was going on visually here.
  • Dain is actually showing some character development and it's only season 3??! "I didn't know about Fain" "You should have!" I think this was supposed to hit harder but...it fell flat? Could he really have known?
  • I should say that the Perrin/Faile shippiness in the corresponding book chapters is great and very different. I don't dislike this, it's also good, but I miss that dynamic too.
  • Perhaps related: I think part of why I'm able to be like "okay it's not the books but it's still good, just differently good" is because I don't watch very much TV, period. Occasionally I see fights like "people are calling this (and 3.4) one of the best episodes of fantasy television ever, but it's not even close," and like...maybe if I had a bunch of other shows competing for my attention I would be pickier about it, but I'm not, it's fine.
  • Who is Aram talking to in the end, is that Marin?
  • HUH that ending. I did not expect that! But I am intrigued! And the whole "stop calling me Lord"/"yes, Lord Perrin" is much more powerful in this context. Hmmm!
  • Edit to add: Forgot to mention this but another part I appreciated is when Perrin asks Faile why she's fighting for the Two Rivers, this isn't her war, and she gives several tongue-in-cheek answers including "your friend beat me to the Horn, I have to do something." To the rest of the Westlands, who aren't necessarily clued into the whole Dragon Reborn thing, the Horn of Valere is still a big deal! It's this ancient, long-lost relic that is supposed to be very valuable, and then our protagonists just kind of...stumbled upon it and used it in only season/book two. In the books in particular there's a lot of power creep, where it's like, long-lost secrets are rediscovered, we thought the main characters were super unique and powerful, but then it turns out that actually the world is really big and there are a lot of other people who can do that. Sometimes it's anticlimactic, sometimes it's "why are we focusing on this minor character, I want to go back to the people I care about." So getting a sense of that in TV, where Perrin and the others are mostly moving on but Faile (and probably most normal people) are like "wait, what?" even a couple episodes down the line, is nice.

Comments

[landofnowhere]

I like the Weep for Manetheren song and its folkiness but I do not have sophisticated tastes :-)

I also don't watch much in the way of fantasy TV, so I feel the same way. And the fact that I like but don't love the books helps me here -- I like the way things went down in this episode better.