Wheel of Time Season 3, Episode 8: He Who Comes With The Dawn

[primeideal]

• • Alviarin with the backstab in the cold open, love it. The way Elaida's all like "I made a deal with the supernatural powers from other worlds so it's guaranteed" and then that being her undoing is very free-will versus determinism.
  • Nynaeve just showing off her chopsticks and happening to notice Liandrin walk by is classic Wheel of Time coincidences/ta'veren luck.
  • "You liked me because I was the only one who didn't bow." Parallels with Egwene here?
  • Rand and Rhuarc's conversation about "well I'll just tell them"--no, it hits harder if the reveal comes out of nowhere.
  • "Your fate is yours to make." Obviously the showverse is already somewhat different from the bookverse as far as shipping is concerned, but especially for bookverse people, please consider Egwene/Aviendha! Free will is good!
  • Lord Gaebril...yes, called it!
  • The aesthetics of the Eelfinn realm is great. The weird triangle patterns on the floor! The creature's creepy face and disturbing leather-ish "clothing"! Nailed it.
  • Mat wants the extra memories missing but now he doesn't know how he got there? (But he does know who Min is?) This could be a slight reverse of the book plot in some ways, curious to see what happens with him.
  • Melindhra: "I swore the Dark Oaths for Malkier...but I realize this isn't going to work." Show!Melindhra and Ingtar should hang out OH WAIT show!Ingtar got his climactic reveals cut and his plotline is just kind of a waste because of it. TOO SOON.
  • Uggggh "if you betray the dark side you get killed forever, not just dead, because killing people off is too low-stakes if time is a wheel and everyone gets reborn, so you have to be worse than dead." No! Do not want! This didn't work in fucking Pendragon Adventure and I don't like it here. Down with this sort of thing.
  • Okay on the other hand I will give credit where credit is due. The "Moiraine and Rand talk bluntly about their situation" scene is not direct from the books. But it is very true to canon. Moiraine coming to terms with the stuff she saw in the rings and having to realize "my time may be brief, I have to stop trying to manipulate Rand and start letting him do his own thing," her trying to communicate that to him, and him acknowledging it and being grateful for it, because they both know that winning the Last Battle comes above all else even before personal survival...this is a mashup of things in book 4 and 5 that, again, don't happen in dialogue in just this way, but feels true to the books. So changes like Melindhra's permadeath are bad, changes like this are good.
  • "We're doing our duty...by keeping you out of the Tower so you can't stop the quota." Yeah kind of saw that. Well played, Elaida.

Comments

SPOILER

[princessofgeeks]

On the whole I agreed with where they went with all this, but honestly I couldn't tell if Moiraine was dead or not? Surely not?

I think they are managing all the plot lines fairly well but they are doing sooo much pruning.

Re: SPOILER

[primeideal]

I don't think she's meant to be dead, just segueing into voiceover mode? But yeah, it wasn't entirely clear :/