The Wheel of Time - S02E08 - What Was Meant to Be

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for the Lorehounds.

[00:00:35] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:00:59] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:33] Welcome to the Wheel of Time podcast, where the Lorehounds are your guides to Rand Land. I'm David. I'm John, and this is our coverage of the Amazon Prime fantasy series, The Wheel of Time.

[00:01:43] In this podcast, we're going to do a scene-by-scene breakdown of season two, episode eight, what was meant to be the season finale, in fact. Mm-hmm. Be sure to stick around to the end of the podcast for programming notes about our September podcasting schedule. September.

[00:01:59] I guess October. October podcasting schedule. Spooktober. Spooktober. Yeah, we're here. Followed by our White Tower segment where Alicia Sedai and I dive deep into the lore of the books.

[00:02:09] This is the last White Tower segment, by the way, but Alicia's going to join me for – join us and then mostly me for the season wrap-up podcast. I'll have a few things to say on the season wrap-up podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:02:20] But I'm looking forward to getting on the mic with the three of us and chewing it over a little bit. We're going to have a good time. I think so. For early access, ad-free episodes, and exclusive content, visit us at patreon.com slash lorehounds.

[00:02:35] They just did a big refresh of the Patreon brand. They made the logo into this weird little amoeba blob thing. I was like, okay, how much money did you spend on that redesign?

[00:02:45] Anyway, we'd also like to ask if you're enjoying what we do, consider leaving us a rating and review. The podcast is a great place to do it as it helps raise our profile even as far as the Aiel Waste.

[00:02:59] Yeah, so we just got a nice review on the Wheel of Time feed. Oh, good. Thank you for that.

[00:03:03] Yeah, thanks. Special for the Wheel of Time, we do have a separate feed which just got a review and that is set up just to have Wheel of Time episodes.

[00:03:11] If you're only interested in that content, you can just stay subscribed to that channel, but we've got a ton of stuff going on on our main feed. So make sure you search for the Lorehounds. Books, we got movies, we got all kinds of stuff.

[00:03:23] Search for the Lorehounds wherever you get your podcasts, even YouTube and Spotify. We're going to be diving back into the Silmarillion and the Earthsea Cycle, so there's plenty of Wheel of Time-ish stuff going on, even if we're not doing the Wheel of Time itself.

[00:03:37] Right. And we'd love to respond to your questions, thoughts, theories on air, so send us feedback. We're going to do a season wrap-up podcast, and that should drop in about a week.

[00:03:49] So after I believe – well, it's going to be tonight's episode relative to the time we're recording, but as soon as you see the episode, make sure to send us in some feedback or head over to our website and you can leave a voicemail or use the contact form over there.

[00:04:06] John, what's the email address again? WOT at thelorehounds.com or thelorehounds.com for the contact form. You can also post a message in our Discord server, and you can head to the show notes for links to all that. The Discord was hopping the last couple of days.

[00:04:21] It sure was, especially in the Ahsoka channel, but I think tonight the Wheel of Time channel is about to light up because the episode's going to drop. Indeed. I think folks are excited. Yeah. It's a big season finale. It's a big week for season finales.

[00:04:38] Yeah, we had Foundation, Ahsoka, and now – Foundation's old news now. It is. It really does. It's last year. It feels like forever ago. Yeah, but this was Wheel of Time and Ahsoka in the same week. Yeah. Big week. Big week. And you've got Loki starting tonight, right?

[00:04:56] Oh, gosh. Yes, that's right. I do have to go watch that episode as well. Yeah, John and Alicia and I are going to be doing full coverage of Loki, so check that out. Very exciting. Well, David, let's block out all the other fandoms for now. Sounds good.

[00:05:11] What did you think of the Wheel of Time finale? Baller. Yeah? It was great. I had a blast. I have been pretty meh about the season so far. Was it like episode three or four?

[00:05:25] I was even questioning, like, oh, can I stick this one out? This is going to be tough. I've got to really dig deep. Okay. Find my positivity and get into the story and let it go. And this episode was my favorite by far of the season.

[00:05:45] I think you had been hinting at this before, that what Robert Jordan does is puts a lot of pieces out on the board and then brings it all together at the end of a book or whatever. Yes.

[00:05:58] I really felt that way in this episode. I mean, all the two rivers kids are back together. My rain and land are back together. We've got great twists.

[00:06:07] The action, some of the production stuff in this season is a bit, a little bit here and there. It's all been fine, but it's- Just didn't wow you?

[00:06:19] Yeah, it didn't blow me away. There was nothing... There are parts of it that are not spectacular and then there are parts that are.

[00:06:26] And I thought that even the parts where I was like, oh, that's just one of those little cannons that they hide behind some fake crates and they send a big bluish of fire and air and stuff.

[00:06:37] Even that stuff didn't really bug me that much this time around. And some of the action scenes were pretty cool. The whole thing with Matt and his dagger and Moiraine and her torpedoes that she sent at the ships. So it was good. I had a really good time.

[00:06:58] And the other thing I was going to say was this episode was so D&D for me. This was complete Dungeons and Dragons with fighters getting up there, archers shooting, spell casters popping off. A lot of areas of effect happening.

[00:07:15] Yeah. Big time, big time. So as a non-book reader, I had a great time and it all was seamless for me. That's great.

[00:07:26] That's where I'm at. And I'm thumbs up on the season. I'm like, okay, cool. Everything paid off. Everything made sense. They set up limits in the world.

[00:07:35] They set up rules for how certain things work and they stuck to those rules so that nothing was cheap or nothing sort of became everything means everything or whatever. You know what I mean by that? Nobody jumped the gap in this show.

[00:07:50] Exactly. Nobody jumped any gaps in this show. That is for sure. If you're not listening to Ahsoka, you won't know what that means. But it's jump the shark just in a different context.

[00:08:02] It's Fonzie in a leather jacket and it's Henry Linker in a leather jacket and a really weird looking flotation device. Anyway, yeah. So I was happy. I was overjoyed. What about you? Book reader wise, you've got probably a lot to process here, I'm guessing?

[00:08:18] You know, the first time I watched it, I was not thrilled. Right. And you said so on our little private channels. It was because there was a particular book scene that was very character focused and meaningful for me. Okay.

[00:08:38] That they hinted at was going to happen all season and I feel robbed of it because they just didn't do it. And they could have done it without any budget. It could have been a 10 second further conversation in an alleyway.

[00:08:52] And I was I was genuinely upset that they took it out because it was one of the moments that first wowed me in the time that really got me like in on the characters.

[00:09:01] I think this is something different from Tolkien. This is something different from a lot of the fantasy soup we live in. And I was I was upset that it was taken out and I'll get to it. It has to do with Ingtar.

[00:09:13] I'll get to it when we get there. But on second watch, going in, knowing that that was going to happen, I really, really liked the episode. I thought, oh, good. Oh, cool. It's still OK. It's still on the lower end of what I liked in this season.

[00:09:26] But that being said, I thought this was a great season. So this this is me calling it a very good finale. You know, it was very good. It was shy of great, but it was very, very good.

[00:09:40] And I really enjoyed it. It was a great time. They did a lot of things from the books really well. They made some smart changes. They made some changes that I wouldn't have made. And that's just what an adaptation is going to do for me. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:53] I think that you alluded to this, but it's something that Robert Jordan does in the books really well, which is load all the bases and last five chapters. He looks over his shoulder from the bat and he goes, watch this shit.

[00:10:05] Right. He just throws a heater. Yeah. He's like, because I can't tell you how many Wheel of Time books I'm reading, especially the early books. They do. He does this better in the early books and then he kind of starts to meander a little bit for a while.

[00:10:20] But in the early books, you're you're six chapters from the end and you're like, how the hell is he going to tie this up? And then he's like, I got this. There's a plan. And it's and it always blew me away when that happened.

[00:10:34] So I'm glad that they were able to capture that, especially for a non book reader. Right. Is is that they they capture that energy for you?

[00:10:43] That's interesting, too, because I know you've talked we've talked about and you've had some some opinions about the idea of sitting down, writing your outlines and then writing your book, as opposed to other writers who will sit down and they'll go, hmm, here's character whomever in whatever situation.

[00:11:02] What winded up what happens? You're you know, they kind of go on a journey of discovery and gardening versus. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess as I understand it, Jordan was an outliner and that I guess is a strength.

[00:11:14] Well, he actually there's a strength. He was more of a gardener. He was more of a gardener, but he was he was kind of a mix because I think he had he had his plot points.

[00:11:24] He had Rand is a dragon. Matt's going to blow the horn of Belier, you know, all these like major beats together. And then he would say, but let me meander while I get there. Let me take a long walk through the woods while I get there.

[00:11:36] And so that is that's his sort of hybrid method. I think he's somewhere between Martin and Sanderson. Right. Cool. Well, I mean, it the showrunners were able to recreate that effect in this episode.

[00:11:51] None of the coming backs together felt forced or, you know, I didn't see the hand of the writer in in really much of any of this.

[00:12:04] The only thing maybe was like, how did Landfear know to get more rain and land to the right place at the right time?

[00:12:12] But hey, that's Landfear. So, you know, it's all good. Yeah, it felt it felt natural and it felt like a appropriate coming back together in this moment.

[00:12:24] Yeah, I think that was one of my major nitpicks, which is I still think that the reason I don't like that Rosamund Pike was cast as Moraine is that it seems like sometimes the writers feel the need to have the plot serve her instead of the story.

[00:12:43] And it's not her fault. This is not Rosamund Pike's fault. But I think that when you have a big budget actor, when you have a big name actor, you're going to want her to do something in the season finale when she really wasn't there in the book.

[00:12:55] And quite honestly, you take her out of this. You could have given that role to anybody else. You could have had Elaine channel into the into the or a queen rather channel into the shanshan boat.

[00:13:07] Right. And on shield brand. Right. You could have had anybody do. I mean, it would have been a cool display of power for Rand to do the dragon symbol. Right. You know, there's all these things in the books of is he going to remember how to do things from his past lives?

[00:13:21] Right. Bring that in, have him remember how to make the dragon symbol in the sky. I think I think Rand his his powers have been a little bit nerfed in the show in favor of having a more ensemble cast.

[00:13:37] And in a way, I like that. Like, I like that we're developing the Emmons field five a lot more. And I like that we've brought in Elaine and developed her really early and avienda. But I still think that we're making a mistake here by putting so much attention on Moraine.

[00:13:54] I still think that the and I want to say this for a season wrap more, but I still think that the whole stealing fake stealing pot line was a disservice to the show. I think it dragged and it didn't actually give you anything. Okay. So I think that's my that's my biggest macro criticism of the show right now.

[00:14:14] I think we definitely have to save that for the season wrap conversation because there's there's I can see reasons why as a writer, a writer would want to do that. But I also did suffer under the never ending and then there's a couple of other characters where you're just like, Oh, dear Lord, get over yourself and get on with it. So and whether that's writing or that's really what the character is supposed to be, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes.

[00:14:37] Right. Cool. Yeah, I'm I'm good to go if you want to get into stuff. Let's do it. So our quick production notes. You probably know this if you're here by now, but you've never read the books. I have read the books. We have screeners, so we are recording this at a time. You'll be getting this the day the episode comes out. We're not going to spoil ahead with the books. We will make comparisons with things that already happened. I will definitely be making comparisons on this episode because there were a couple changes that I was not cool with and there were some changes that I thought were smart.

[00:15:07] So we'll talk about both sides of it. Cool. And then stick around at the end of the podcast after the music plays, we will talk spoilers with Alicia. So don't worry, we will give you very a ton of warning before we do book spoilers. All right, David. Yes. Let's get into the episode. Let's do it.

[00:15:25] Three thousand years ago, the dragon lose their Intelliman seals Ishmael in an attempt to break the cycle of the wheel. He tells Ishmael he sealed the rest of the forsaken to Ishmael pleads for freedom, but lose there and completes the ritual.

[00:15:39] So this was interesting from the fact that we're getting this ancient history, right? I'm trying to remember. I apologize. Season one, they did like a flash. They did the same thing in the season finale. They did it. Okay. And was it like a cold open? Mm-hmm.

[00:16:00] Oh, hey, can I ask you- This seems to be a style. Quick question for you. This I'm just a quite a quick segue. Well, it's kind of after this scene. Have we just not been watching the opening? No, they didn't do it until this episode. That's crazy. Yeah.

[00:16:16] So even on air- That's why I made this a full bullet point in our outline. Okay. Oh, I see. There it is in the outline. Full title sequence. Okay. So let's save it for a second. We'll jump forward there. We'll get to that when we're ready.

[00:16:27] Yeah. So I thought it was interesting to give us this timey-wimey. It's not timey-wimey. It's just this broader picture that, hey, this is not just- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's the last time this happened.

[00:16:38] Yeah. And I think it has weight. It carries the right kind of weight for this ending when all of these plot threads are coming together. So it gives what happens in this episode a little extra context, a little extra gravity, a little extra velocity. And it seemed interesting.

[00:16:55] And Alicia talked at length. Alicia and I talked at length about is Ran different from Luz Theron when we look at the full series. Okay, cool. So yeah, stick around for the White Tower if you want that.

[00:17:05] And the diction and the language that they were speaking didn't feel forced or fake. Sometimes you can stumble. It's really hard sometimes to make a- I'm guessing this is a made up language or you know what- It's the old tongue. Yep. It's some-

[00:17:19] And how much is that documented within the- It's not like Elvish. It's more like Dothraki in Game of Thrones where they probably hired somebody to develop this, right?

[00:17:28] Right. There's like a core but yeah. So it sounded really natural and convincing. So I like that. It can be really hard to pull that stuff off.

[00:17:40] Yeah, it was good. Honestly, when I watched my second thing, I forgot that they were speaking in the old tongue the first time because I was into it the first time. I thought they were speaking English the first time. Very cool.

[00:17:50] Yeah, but I like this. I think that it sets up one, the relationship between Luce Theron and Ishmael which is sort of mirrored later when Ishmael has Rand up in a corner. Yep.

[00:18:03] And then it also leads into Meereen saying, yeah, they were besties. It was cool. It was cool. I liked it a lot. I noticed too that all of the channels that were standing around, they all appeared to be male.

[00:18:17] Yes, I think that's true. So Luce Theron led only male channelers to defeat the dark one because the women said this is stupid. This is a dumb idea. Okay. And that's why only the male half of the source was tainted. Mm-hmm. Okay.

[00:18:33] Is that when the dark one was being sealed away, reached out and was like, all right, I'm gonna touch the force that's sealing me. Mm-hmm. And that's why it's tainted. So the female side of the force, the force of the one power.

[00:18:47] Yeah, you can tell we've been watching Ahsoka. Yeah, of the one power, SIDAR was just not there and that's why the dark one wasn't able to taint it. Got it. Okay. So anyway. Good way to start the episode. So yeah, so title sequence. What's up with this?

[00:19:00] Title sequence. I literally went, is this the full title sequence? When that happened? Because we've just been getting this like sting at the beginning of every episode, not, you know, between the cold open and the main episode.

[00:19:13] Now all of a sudden it's the full sequence, which is our theme song. Like I wrote this theme song from season one. I think the reason is, I was thinking about this, it seems to be the forsaken in the intro now.

[00:19:28] Like that they seem to be showing the forsaken as part of the images of the intro. So maybe they were like, we don't want to make two intros and we don't want to reveal the forsaken early. So let's just do this at the finale.

[00:19:39] Okay. That's interesting. So, so even on air, cause with our screeners, we don't always know what's complete, what's completed the post-production, what's getting, what's locked for air. Yeah. With subtitles and title cards and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:19:52] So I just assumed in this time they had to, there were some changes in the screener delivery and I thought, oh, well maybe this is just because they had to switch up some platform issues. No, I think this is the first time for real. Wow.

[00:20:06] The whole season, which is kind of insane. It is insane. But then again, I'd rather them use the budget for the actual show than the title sequence. Fair enough. You know, okay. Don't make a second title sequence. That's fine with me.

[00:20:17] So title sequences go, this is so in genre with Westworld, The Crown. Rings of Power. Rings of Power, totally. Foundation. Yeah. There's just this class of this animated, beautiful woven and there's all kinds of clues.

[00:20:43] And to be honest, I had to watch the episode today. So I didn't really get a long chance to watch it and I had to break up my watch a little bit. And I was so taken by it. I was like, oh my God.

[00:20:56] But then didn't have to go back a chance to actually analyze what's in the thing. So I don't know. Yeah. That's maybe we'll save it for the season wrap up. We can do a little breakdown on that.

[00:21:08] I mean, yeah, it's the wheel weaving the pattern, right? Like that's the opener, which is great. I think that's super on brand for the show. I do really like the sequence.

[00:21:18] Yeah. Let's talk about it more on the season wrap when we have a chance to dig into a little bit. Cool. Dane Bornhold looks towards Falm from afar. His father, Jefram, plans to attack against the Shanchun.

[00:21:32] Dane questions his father who reaffirms his decision, but denies the prophecy of the dragon reborn. So there's a few parts of this show, this episode that confused me about the sequence and some action stuff.

[00:21:49] Nothing broke me out of story and I didn't ever have a problem getting back into story when a question popped up.

[00:21:56] But this was again, a big question. I just have this ongoing question with these white cloaks and how are they just sort of floating around these various kingdoms doing all this stuff?

[00:22:06] And what some call went out for help and they're the only ones who showed up. Okay, fine, fine, fine. I thought it's a really interesting twist to have kind of rooting for the white cloaks. I know. Yeah, yeah. That's good, right? To fight against the Shanchun, you know?

[00:22:22] Yeah, same thing happens in the books. You're like, oh, but I want the people I hate to win and it's tough. And that's the cool parts about The Wheel of Time is when it makes you see things from different points of view like that. Right, right.

[00:22:34] And Bornhold, Jefram, I should call him. I don't know if it's Jefram or Jofram, but Jefram, Daddy Bornhold, he's right. He's largely right about all this stuff. He's like, they're slavers, they're evil.

[00:22:49] And if no one else is going to deal with this, we need to. We have a moral imperative to do this. Because out of the mouth of a guy who'd be more than happy to string up an Aes Sedai and live their dogma.

[00:23:03] Well, but Jefram, if you recall, was kind to – he's a moderate. And really it's the questioners who – which are like Valda, who are really, really radical in this universe. What do we call the – the zealots of the organization – of the order?

[00:23:25] I don't know what to call them. I don't know how to appropriately – They're the children of the light. Okay, fair enough. So it was – yeah, I think we had some conversation in the Discord earlier in the week too where folks were examining the Sanshin.

[00:23:42] And we were talking about moral relativism and how societies – how we gauge societies and how we judge them. And when things are wrong, they're wrong. And so to have a white cloak say, the Sanshin are wrong and we're going to fight them.

[00:23:59] But yo, dude, you're the same dude doing some other stuff. Ah, what do I do here? Right. It was great. It was really good. I think the Sanshin are more formidable and so we root for the underdog in this situation to wipe out the more formidable one.

[00:24:14] Plus they're an external – they're an external force as opposed to an internal thing, right? Yeah, I think – so they haven't really gone into the politics of it and I don't know if they will. But basically the white cloaks have always been there for a really long time.

[00:24:30] There's like a white cloak bible that was written basically by somebody and it started the whole tradition. And they've kind of been really annoying to all the kingdoms around them. Yeah, I can see why. But they've kept their nose out of trouble enough that people mostly tolerate them.

[00:24:50] And it's only when they go nuts that people kick them out and then they don't kick the whole people out. They kick like the factions that have problems. And recently I think they've gained more influence for certain reasons in where – in their home.

[00:25:12] They do have like a home base and they've gained a little bit more influence there which has allowed them to pop up more often. Got it. OK. Yep, and we will see if they develop the white cloaks any further.

[00:25:25] There is more development in the books. That's why I want to – Sure, of course. I'm going to tease that without telling you anything about it. I don't doubt that we're going to get more white cloaks. They're a useful plot device if I can say that.

[00:25:42] I could see them weaving – I don't know whether we get fully into them and have a POV from them or they're this element that's out there that keeps adding random bits of drama. Yeah, I can see them. The wheel weaves. There you go. The wheel weaves.

[00:26:01] Lanfear, speaking of wheels weaving, Lanfear leads the group through the ways and tells Moraine to raise the banner when the time comes before pushing her and Lan through a door a distance from Thalm. Lanfear tries to win Ran's trust and transports them away from Maachin Shin.

[00:26:19] I am liking this version of Lanfear. I wasn't so much into the S&M headdress Lanfear, but I love the suave big – I don't know what you call those sort of tuxedo coats with the big lapels and everything.

[00:26:35] She's just looking great and she's taking charge and knocking Moraine around. It was really – and dispensing wisdom, telling truth. But telling truth from her point of view and from her motivations, but damn if it's not compelling and damn if she doesn't roll high on her charisma checks.

[00:26:56] We have a hard time. Yeah. She does like Ran.

[00:27:00] I mean you can see she's kind of – she's starting to tip her head a little bit to something that I've wanted to say all season but it was really hard is that she's sort of suggesting to Ran maybe there's a third way here, right? Yeah.

[00:27:13] Maybe there's a way between the like – Something very reasonable. Between the light and the dark, right? And I think that that is a dangerous thing for Ran to hear. Right, right, right. Because – And we can't trust any of the Forsaken.

[00:27:28] Sure and Ishmael is like, hey, join the dark. And he's like, of course I'm not going to join the dark. But when Lanfear goes, join the gray, I don't know. She's looking pretty good in that outfit, right, Ran? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:27:41] She just rolling nat 20 on her charisma checks. Well, it's not just that. It's like she's making some good points of you've been used by all these people. Aren't you tired of it? Aren't you tired of that? I'm the only one who actually cares about you.

[00:27:55] Not about the dragon, not about all this other stuff but about you, Rand – whatever. What's Rand's full title? Rand Althor. Rand Althor, thank you. Yep. Which is Arthur. Althor. Okay, got it. But yeah, it's tricky. It's tricky and I really like Lanfear. She's a big schemer.

[00:28:15] She is kind of a wild card because you don't know what she's going to do next whereas a lot of the other Forsaken, they scheme but they're so much more pure evil most of them that it's just kind of – Lanfear is such a great character that I love her.

[00:28:34] They cast her so well too. Yeah, gray in her demeanor I would say. Yeah, I'm digging this version of Lanfear for sure. Did you like how she was like, why are you whining about the black wind? It only almost killed you last time. Right.

[00:28:52] She's so – she's just sort of – she's so – she has such a – she's so powerful and when she sort of looks down at mundane people and their little petty little problems. Right. It's just – but she's also understanding in a way weirdly. So I don't know. I love it.

[00:29:11] It's all good. Yep. All right. Perrin, Avienda, Bane and Shiad travel toward Tholme and Perrin tells Hopper to stay behind. Right. Yep. Just kind of set up. Yeah. This scene, this whole episode was really hard to break down because there were so many like – Right.

[00:29:29] And here's where these people are. So sometimes I combined it. Sometimes I was like, eh, not enough happens in between. So anyway. Okay. Fair enough. Yep. Let's just move on to Landfear who tells Ishmael she brought Rand to Tholme to which he says they're not ready.

[00:29:44] Landfear says Ishmael is just stalling and it's time to get things moving but Ishmael says Rand won't choose them. Landfear says she's going to help Rand kill Ishmael to earn his trust.

[00:29:56] So it was interesting to finally see a little bit – learn a little bit more about Ishmael's actual plot and what this – and starting to see the shape of it. It's like, okay, why is he bringing all the kids together and what is he trying to do?

[00:30:13] And he's trying to win Rand on the merits but in a devious kind of way. He's trying to – He's trying to beat him into submission, right? By showing him the futility of it all. Right. He's trying to turn him into a nihilist. Right.

[00:30:32] Say what you want but at least – well, I was going to pull a big Lebowski quote but I can't quite pull it off. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's all right. Well, anyway. Yeah.

[00:30:44] Ishmael is very into like, I'm just tired guys and I want to convince Rand that he's also tired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to shut it all down. Power off the PC.

[00:30:54] And yeah, so it was nice to bring all of that together and then to see this setting up for the double fake out, double cross between Lanfear and Ishmael.

[00:31:11] That I think what happens here plays out nicely for the end of the episode when we realize that there are games within games between these – between the Forsaken. Yes, absolutely.

[00:31:24] And I mean you actually – they settled a point of contention from our Discord at the beginning of this episode which was people were asking – I guess not contention but point of confusion.

[00:31:37] Which was people were saying, well, if the wheel stops, does time become linear or does everyone die? And I said, I think that they have already said this in the show so everyone dies. Like to my understanding, everyone dies. The world – the existence ceases. Right, right.

[00:31:55] There is no more reality. And when Luz is there in a ceiling Ishmael, he goes, you know, all our friends are going to die. Everyone we care about is going to die. And he's like, yeah, that's the point, buddy. Like that's what I want here.

[00:32:07] We all need to stop suffering. Right, yeah. So yeah, I mean it's a dark and also understandable motivation of Ishmael which makes him a cool villain.

[00:32:19] Yeah, it's that weird Thanosian thing where I am so motivated by this point of view that I had that I'm going to carry this out no matter the cost. And it's for the good of everyone.

[00:32:36] And it's like, well, but we didn't get a chance to actually have a conversation about this. We don't know that this is necessarily good for us. Right. But Ishmael's soul – like he is destined to constantly be the adversary every single time. Right, right. And he hates it.

[00:32:53] He's so done with it. Sure. Especially because he seems to be able to remember it. Right. Which is crazy. Yeah. All right. Let's go to the White Cloaks. Attack the Shanchun. Nynaeve dresses her Sultan best while Rena prepares Egwene for battle and explains the harsh consequences of disobedience.

[00:33:15] So this foggy charge thing, this is again where one of the places where I was like, wait, what? Am I supposed to know what's going on here? And then I was just like, ah, whatever.

[00:33:27] It's the Dothraki running around at night and you know the final thing of throne. Well, I think it was also supposed to mirror the confusion of the Shanchun, right? Like what's that? We're not getting attacked, are we? Nobody's coming. Right.

[00:33:40] Is it some desert wind, some Sirocco or something? Right. And is it these little boys with I forget what those little incense swinger things are called. Those things have a name. Or is it because the horses are running or what? Whatever. I don't know. Probably the horses.

[00:33:58] I mean, it's pretty dusty over there. I think it's pretty easy to kick it up. A little bit of both. But anyway, their surprise attack worked fine. I'm good with it. Yep. Yep. All good.

[00:34:09] I mean, I think it's a good thing that they're trying to get Jemani out right away. Right. Exactly. Speaking of Jemani, we've got a couple of situations to deal with here. I saw you getting into Nainiv in her Suldan best.

[00:34:21] I mean, the torture scene comes later, so you could save that. Okay. But she is certainly right away like, ooh, I look good, don't I? Well, and Elaine gives her a little smoky eye touch up there. Yeah. You gotta look the part. Yeah.

[00:34:38] And boy, I apologize, the actress who plays Nainiv, she just- Zoe Robbins, I believe. Thank you. Zoe Robbins. That's right. Zoe Robbins just plays that wounded, like I'm so uncomfortable in my own skin vibe so well, but yet so angry and so ready to Hulk smash everything. Yes.

[00:35:02] Right. I feel uncomfortable, but put me before my enemies so I can smash them. I heard that the actor actually method acted and didn't unclench her knuckles since they started filming. What? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I was like, what? All right.

[00:35:20] And there's some great setup for the whole Adam mechanics, right? So they're laying out different mechanical bits and we have a rule set and they stick to the rule set. I never felt like, okay, these things are magic, but they're not magic that, hey, the

[00:35:39] writer, we can do anything. We can make anything happen. Exactly. Exactly. There's rules. Yes. You need limits. It doesn't need to be hard rules. In this world, I think it does need to be hard rules because it's just what they've trained you to have.

[00:35:50] And there are hard rules about everything in the Wheel of Time. But in Ahsoka, that's one of the things that frustrated us was we felt like there were no limits on a lot of these things. Right. And then nothing means anything.

[00:36:03] So, and the beginning of this scene though with Egwene, the whole Egwene storyline up until, well, even all the way through is so fricking uncomfortable and so disturbing and they carry it. And this is what I mean. There's parts of the show that when it hits, it's great.

[00:36:26] And then there's other parts where it's a little mushy here or what have you. Then this whole Egwene, Sol-Dom thing, Damane thing was so well played out and so well acted and so well constructed. It was just so damn disturbing. Yeah. I mean, it's true horror.

[00:36:45] When that happened in the book, I couldn't believe it because I couldn't believe that you would make a POV character into a slave that's being tortured. Right. And it's shocking and it continues to be shocking through the whole time.

[00:36:57] And I think through the end of this episode, it's still shocking. Yeah. And then her having her cut her hair like that, that was a great little twist and sort of a, I'm going to demoralize you.

[00:37:13] I'm not ready yet to physically punish you, but I'm going to psychologically demoralize you. And for Egwene, that hair was very meaningful. That was her last ride to the two rivers, right? Exactly. That was her braid she got when she became a woman. Exactly.

[00:37:27] And this whole thing with the dagger and the mouth, it was just really, really filmed beautifully and convincingly. So yeah, kudos. Real bad stuff. Real bad stuff. That we like. Real bad stuff that we enjoy watching. Oh, what's wrong with us? Yeah.

[00:37:42] I'm going to do a combined scene here. Ishamel tells Pat and Fane they need to push Rand's friends to the dark and Fane tempts Matt with the dagger from Shadar-le-Goth. Fane is certain that Matt will take the dagger and tries to convince him to embrace the darkness

[00:37:57] within him. When Fane leaves, Matt stares at the dagger uncomfortably. So fun to see Pat and Fane back again. Yeah, he's so much more unhinged in the books and I hope we get there with him. But right now he's kind of just a normal baddie. Right.

[00:38:14] And he runs away, doesn't he? So he's still in play. Yeah, he's still in play. Okay, cool. Yeah, I couldn't remember. He's well cast and this Matt is settling in, I think, nicely. I think there's the different emotional vibe that he has in the book.

[00:38:33] There's a different emotional vibe that he has of dealing with this dagger and this way of being, you know, there's an addiction that he's dealing with. And this actor plays it a little bit differently than the other one. And I think it's working for me.

[00:38:48] So I'm into this Matt actor. I'm good. Yeah, I'm warming up to him. He's not fully there yet for me, I think. Again, he didn't have enough to do this season. He had a little bit here and there. He had a big scene this episode. Sure, yeah.

[00:39:01] And I think he did well in that scene, in the horn scene especially. But I just want to see him kind of just live in life a little bit more because that's where Matt shines is when he's in the pub with a friend goofing around.

[00:39:15] And I think that's exactly what this actor doesn't have is that puckish character to him. Yeah, well, we'll see. We'll see. He hasn't had too much of an opportunity yet. He hasn't missed, I'll say. He hasn't broken it for me.

[00:39:33] So in the next scene, it was a pretty quick one. But Nynaeve essentially tortures the location of Gwaine out of the Sul'dam. She likes it a little bit too much and Elaine kind of notices, right? I think Elaine is like, oh, Nynaeve, let's not. Yeah.

[00:39:53] And again, more setting of the rules and getting us into what this horrific device is. It's really kind of horrible. But yeah, Nynaeve. Nynaeve, one small complaint for this season.

[00:40:13] There's two characters that I just didn't feel like they had good arcs, if they had any arcs at all. And that's Nynaeve and Perrin. They just were really flat for me. And I didn't see growth where Gwaine goes through something, Matt goes through something, Rand goes through something.

[00:40:34] Well, Nynaeve had her moment early in the season, right? She had that whole- Oh, that's true with the arches. The whole Teron Grial thing. I think that was plenty for her arc. Yeah, I suppose so. But she just still has the brooding-

[00:40:46] She didn't come out of the brooding shell. And she just brings that same energy into this scene. Yeah, I agree with you.

[00:40:59] I think Perrin you have a more full criticism of because he really did not have a lot this season other than meeting Elias and the Aiel, which it's bringing characters in, but it's not really changing Perrin fundamentally. Right.

[00:41:18] All right, so let's move on to Moraine and Lan finally talking about their feelings. And Moraine says she knew he was always her better. Moraine gives Lan the bond back. Right. Can I ask you something? Because Alicia and I were debating this.

[00:41:32] Do you think that the bond was severed at some point and that she was rebonding him, or do you think that this was her unmasking it? That's a good question. Not being as versed in the lore, it's hard for me.

[00:41:50] I want to be very careful to say that this is a very uninformed opinion. It's just that, an opinion. But it really did feel like she rebonded, didn't she? With the whole magic thing. The visuals all seem to say that. Yeah, it felt like a re-reconnection.

[00:42:09] So, did the bond get cut because the shield that she had put on her? Shields definitely don't break the bond. Which is why I think. But a forsaken shield versus. It should operate the same.

[00:42:24] There's nothing from the book lore at least that would suggest that the bond would have been broken by that. Okay. But we know that she had him masked beforehand, so maybe this is just a fancy way to unmask. Right. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:42:37] They had to have their moment on the beach. Yeah. We had to add some visual effects. They were definitely about to make out. I said this with Alicia too. They were very close to each other's faces there. But yeah, it was good.

[00:42:49] I thought this was a nice little cute scene with them. And it worked on me. I had feels. Before the magic started happening, just the actual two characters. You know, before the magic. I got some good feels.

[00:43:03] And I guess, yeah, actually hearing her say that you were always my better because she can't lie. And so if you don't constantly keep that in mind that the Aes Sedai are constantly choosing their words very carefully. Yep. That her saying, you know, you were never my equal.

[00:43:26] Yeah, on surface. Oh, that stings. That really hurts. But that's not what she said. Right? Like the meaning and the words don't match up. And you've got to always keep that in mind when you're watching Aes Sedai or listening to Aes Sedai.

[00:43:42] So for her to then say, you're my better. And it was just they acted the hell out of the scene. And I was pretty satisfied with it. For the record, I did say that they were going to backtrack that later in the season when they did it.

[00:43:57] I said they were going to do that. That was something I called early. Okay, well, here's your Internet points. Here's your box of cereal. Again, I still hate the plot line of Marine Skilled and Cranky. I'm not going to relitigate it now. Let's just move on from it.

[00:44:13] This was a pretty good scene standalone, I think. And I liked them being out in this big wasteland with the drone shot flying around them and giving us some close-ups. So kudos on the camera work. Kudos. It looks like they're on location.

[00:44:27] I don't know if they're on location or not. It feels very location-y. Yeah, the Lost remake is looking pretty good. Yeah, there was an AMA with Rafe Judkins, the showrunner, where he said they shot on location.

[00:44:43] I don't remember the actual location, but it's a very specific location that is very rarely shot at. And so it felt unique and they wanted it to feel unique. Yeah, I mean to get this kind of beach scene with this kind of light and this—

[00:44:59] You have to be so careful with your timing and daylight and catching the tide and the day time. A lot of planning involved in there, assuming that they're on location. So yeah, kudos. Yeah, definitely. I think it's time to go to Perrin.

[00:45:17] And Perrin finds— Perrin and friends, sorry. This is the Perrin crew. Perrin and friends find Ingtar and Loyal who have retrieved the Horn of Valyr. Ingtar urges the group to escape with the horn, but Loyal tells them it's time to act like the heroes of another ages legend.

[00:45:37] Did you cringe at this line? No. I did. Okay. I thought that this was the worst dialogue in the season. I'm not going to argue with you there, but I'm also not going to say that it knocked me out.

[00:45:53] I think at some point right around here is when the D&D of it all got to me and I was like, okay, here we go. Let's go. And the heroes are reunited and we've got badasses all around. Let's go fight.

[00:46:09] And they just meet each other on a random street in this big town when there's a big white cloak attack. It's all preposterous, but you know what? Well— Poured out a bowl of cereal and just went along for the ride.

[00:46:25] It's preposterous except the pattern wills it to be, right? Sure. There is a force pushing important players together, these Tavira together to do what they need to do to solve the problems of the end of this age. Okay.

[00:46:44] So you got to remember like every time there's a convenient plot point, you could actually pretty handily hand wave it away. Right. And say, well, the wheel wills it, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. Fair enough.

[00:46:57] And, you know, from the action of this scene, it's like, oh, we're just walking down the thing. It was all—there was something so campy about this whole scene that I think my brain flicked into, oh, okay, campy fantasy. This is groovy.

[00:47:13] You know, three badass women with like spears sticking out of their backs and, you know, guys who have clearly—because there's a whole bunch of stuff. How did they get the horn? Many people will wake from the dream tonight. Yes, exactly. Time to act like heroes.

[00:47:27] How the hell did they get the horn? Are there scenes that just didn't make it out? Well, Turok died. From editing? I guess that happens in the next scene. Later. Yeah. A couple scenes from now. But yeah, he's distracted at least, right? There's chaos in the city.

[00:47:43] I think they have probably an opportunity to sneak in there. Yeah, but they didn't tell us that story at all. They're just like, oh, three dudes walking down the thing. So that's what I'm saying.

[00:47:52] There was no proper setup for this, and because of all of the campy stuff, it was just like, okay, cool. Let's go. You know, fun. I get you. Roll some dice. Roll initiative. Fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:48:07] The Sul'dam bring their daemone to the top of the tower and rain fire on the White Cloaks. And much like Nainiv, Egwene likes this a little too much. I really loved the Sul'dam makeup, the way that they paint half their head blue.

[00:48:24] The whole look that they've given the San'Chan is great. Yeah, the shots are really cool. When Nainiv lets one go, you can see she's really like, oh yeah, that felt good. I don't like killing innocent people, but it does feel good.

[00:48:43] Well, don't forget the White Cloaks held her prisoner and tried to torture her friend last season. True. That's true. So she has a vendetta against the White Cloaks. Yeah, she sees the White Cloaks. That's when she's like, yeah, all right, I'll throw a fireball at you.

[00:48:56] It's only later when she sees civilians that she's like, oh, maybe this isn't a good idea. This isn't so great. Yeah, and some of this action was just kind of like, eh, you know, there's a little CGI stuff mixed in and different scenes and whatnot.

[00:49:11] It was just it was fine. It was all OK. There was nothing, but nothing was exceptional or stellar for me about the action in this episode. Yeah, I liked the bombardment. I thought that was cool. And I like that unlike in Star Wars, the shots are hitting.

[00:49:26] They're landing on people. Yes, they actually can aim and hit their targets. Yep, absolutely. Rand then approaches Turok who challenges Rand to a duel. Rand has no time for that and uses weaves of fire to kill everyone but the servant of Turok who immediately commits suicide.

[00:49:47] This was this caught me so off guard. And again, I got into camp. I was properly prepped for camp mode. So when he just lights them up and they're all just dead, I was like, OK, we really are doing this. This is what's happening. Let's go.

[00:50:06] You know, it's funny because there's a big duel in the book. Turok challenges Rand. He's like he says the same thing. Let's see how you earn the Heron Mark on this side of the of the Arathosian. And Rand has a duel with him and that's Rand defeats him.

[00:50:22] And that's how Rand becomes like Master Swordsman. Like that's how he earns his Heron Mark sword. OK, he defeats the other Master Swordsman. This friend's like bullshit. I don't have time for that. This very Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

[00:50:37] You know, there's the whole scene where guy comes out with the big sword and Indiana Jones is like, oh, I don't have time for this and shoots him with a pistol. So, yeah, it had that same sort of comedy of big build up.

[00:50:52] And then, you know, simple his kind of just so simple that the energy levels between these two things are equalized in this wacky way. I don't know how to describe it.

[00:51:07] So but you also have the tragedy that the slave of Turok feels the need to kill himself to, you know, to honor the blood that he served. Right? Yep. He wasn't going to stick around much longer. So what's the deal with the Heron swords?

[00:51:27] The Heron sword signifies a blade master. OK, that's like if you have a Heron Heron Mark sword, you are a blade master. You are Master Swordsman. Rand got that sword from his dad. So his dad's a Master Swordsman. Right, right. OK, cool.

[00:51:43] And then he gets the Heron burned into his hand later. Mm hmm. That means a lot, but you don't know yet. So it's clear that they may, you know, they made sure that we saw that there's more prophecies to come. Don't worry. Of course there is.

[00:51:58] There's how many? Fourteen books. Of course, there's more. Every book has like an inscription in the front with the prophecies that will be relevant in that book. OK, which I think is cool. But yeah, it's it's there. It's there. Heron marks are going to play a part. Cool.

[00:52:15] All right, let's go to Perrin and friends again who are ambushed and Inktar sacrifices himself to buy them time for escape. This is the scene that made me angry. OK, I will say that I thought that Inktar's sacrifice didn't make sense.

[00:52:35] I'll throw that into the mix, but let's hear what you've got. Do you want to know why it doesn't make sense? Because you were missing half the scene. OK, there you go. The other half of the scene is that Inktar was secretly a dark friend the whole time.

[00:52:49] And he decided to sacrifice himself to save the horn because he wanted to return to the light and he wanted to save. He wanted to serve the dragon reborn. Interesting. OK, so Rand is the only one who finds this out in the book. He Inktar holds the alleys.

[00:53:05] He says the same thing like, oh, one man could hold it against 50 here. Right. And then he's like, I told you, one man could hold it against 50. You go, you go save the world and I'm going to do my best to return to the light.

[00:53:17] He basically says, you know, I did it to protect Shinar. I did it because I wanted to see my people not be attacked anymore. But which is all that that was wrong with a lot of dark friends.

[00:53:28] That's how Ishamel has gotten them right is is that there's some sort of reasonable request. Maureen's sister, Maureen's nephew, I'm blanking his name. He did it. Yeah. But he wanted to protect his family as well. Right.

[00:53:44] So there's everybody's got reasons and Ishamel is good at finding out what those reasons are. Ming, right? She's like, oh, I got to get rid of this terrible. Yeah. I wouldn't I wouldn't call Min a dark friend, but she. No, she got used, though.

[00:53:57] She allowed herself to be used. For sure. For sure. So, yeah, you're missing that part of the entire story. You could have had an extra minute with Perrin in an alleyway where he tells him this. Now it's a meaningful death. Right? Yeah. No, otherwise it is.

[00:54:14] It's there is no there's no meaning in his death because he is such a good fighter and they have a whole bunch of people with them. And they fight even more later. So, yeah, it just didn't on balance. It didn't make sense.

[00:54:25] So it brings in this whole interesting question of if you sell your soul to the dark, can you come back to the light? Right, right. And I think that that's a fascinating question to ask.

[00:54:35] It's a really great character to see in Tar who tries to who really tries to heal the wounds that he's inflicted. Right. And no, we liked it. Just yeah. Yeah. It's really a big shame that they that they took that out because that's that was a scene

[00:54:51] that was really meaningful for me in the book. And it shocked me in a good way in the show, in the in the book. And I'm a little upset that they took it out because I think that, you know, again, it's not a budget thing.

[00:55:02] They could have done this with a conversation in the alleyway. So it would have been interesting if if there were if if news about like did they film that? And then cut it for some reason or yeah, I don't know. Was it never part of the story?

[00:55:15] Yeah, we just don't know. It'd be interesting to hear what especially because they hinted at it earlier in the season because they had in Tar going to Perrin. Well, you never know the people's reasons for going to the dark, you know, you know,

[00:55:26] he probably had his own reasons. And I was like, okay, they're setting it up. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember I asked you, I was like, what do you think about in Tar? And you're like, Oh, I think he's very mature and balanced.

[00:55:36] And I'm thinking in my head, he's a dark friend. Can't wait for that. And nope, they just they just cut out of that reveal. Okay. All right. Bummer. Yep. Yep. So that is that was my main beef with the episode.

[00:55:53] But once I accepted that that was happening, right? I liked the episode a lot better. You can move on. All right. Moraine and Lan discuss Lanfear Ishmael and lose Theron's friendship before the war of power.

[00:56:05] Lan points out that it's similar to the Emmons Field Five and Moraine finally recognizes Falm. Yeah. I didn't have a lot of takeaway from this. This was just some more set up. And I guess, yeah.

[00:56:23] What is what is the correlation between the Emmons Field Five and, you know, this other deeper history stuff? Yeah, it seems like they're just saying, you know, his best friends turned to the dark in his last life. Are they going to turn to the dark in this life?

[00:56:42] Although his best friends turned to the dark and didn't drag him down with them. Right. In his last life. Okay. So I don't know. I don't know what the point is. Okay.

[00:56:52] But yeah, I think there's certainly a strategy here of Ishmael trying to make Rand feel alone within the light. Right.

[00:57:01] Speaking of Forsaken, though, Lanfear meets with Bael Domen and hires him to take the rest of the seals of the Forsaken and dump them in the deepest part of the ocean. We also learn here that Lanfear had sold her own Quendiar, her own heartstone. Right. To Bael Domen.

[00:57:22] Right. To give to Moraine. Right. Yep. Yep. So it was nice. It tied off nicely there and gives us some more clues to what's going to happen later. Why did Lanfear bait Moraine in if she doesn't like her? Good question.

[00:57:44] She's got to know because she was in the thing and then she's got to come out of the thing and then she's trying, but she found Rand before him.

[00:57:54] But if Lanfear wants Rand to fulfill his prophecy and to declare himself at Falm, she knows that she probably needs somebody like Moraine. But also releasing Moraine messes with Ishamel. So I don't know. It seems it seems like it works on both sides there. I don't know.

[00:58:25] Didn't didn't quite line up for me of why you would want to bring Moraine in. But I think because to me before I saw this, I'm like, OK, she's using Moraine for the banner thing.

[00:58:35] Again, I still have issues with are we just shoehorning Moraine into plotlines where she doesn't belong? But yeah, I don't know. I don't really understand why she baited Moraine back in with the Quendiar. Right.

[00:58:50] But it's also it also sets some space for what happens with the rest of those those big stone things that are well, and we'll talk about later. Yes, the seals. So so isn't this guy one of your bailed Doman? Is he a favorite of yours?

[00:59:08] I remember you talking about him. He's I think he's a favorite of Alijah's. I like him. He's not like my favorite ever, but he's he's a fun character. He's got this silly accent and he shows up from time to time. Do his nonsense.

[00:59:20] His hat doesn't quite fit well in this. And this. No, I think that's on purpose. I think he's supposed to look a little bit unkempt. Right. Fair enough. Cool. Yep. All right. One more plot point before we take a break.

[00:59:36] Surath tells Ishamel Turok is dead and the horse and the horse that a horn is taken. Ishamel tells that Lanfear is working against them. He tells Surath to take our strongest Amani out to sea and await his orders. He asks if they know how to gentle a man.

[00:59:54] Yeah, she's like, bum, bum, bum, silly boy. Of course they do. Right. That was a good look. And I loved how Ishamel told the voice just like, just stop talking. You are so out of your league right now. You just need to be quiet. Yep. Yep. Yep.

[01:00:15] Why did he. He was pretty good at shutting her down. But yeah. Why did he dust his hands? What was the dust from his hands when he. Maybe from the seals since he freed all the other forsaken in this episode. Oh, so maybe he did it right then.

[01:00:27] That's when he did it. Okay. That would make sense. I think that. Yeah, I think that would make a lot of sense if he had just gotten back from smashing a bunch of rocks. Right. Right. Okay. That works. All right.

[01:00:40] Well, David, let's take a quick break when we get back. We'll resume the episode and we're back. Let's resume the episode. Matt MacGyver is a spear with a dagger at its head.

[01:01:11] He uses it to cut out of his room and kill a shancheng guard on the way out. Did you like the way he kind of sidestepped touching it? Yeah, I did. I thought it was very clever. He looked like he was playing pool at a couple of times.

[01:01:25] I've seen pool players walk around with their stick like that, sizing up what they're going to do. It was pretty funny. Now, again, I was in camp mode.

[01:01:36] My camp mode switch was flipped and the idea that you could just wrap some cloth around the tip of a blade on a stick and use it as an actual fighting device. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it made no sense. Way far fetched.

[01:01:50] But again, it was like, nope, this is D&D. We're going for it. That's why I said he MacGyvered it. He rolled 20 on dexterity and that was that. Exactly. It was good. And yeah, clever. Clever way to use the knife. And Pat Fane is just like, I'm out.

[01:02:08] I'm not having any of this. Yeah, it's that TikTok sound. Oh shit, oh shit. He's not having it. He's going to run away now. Which means that we get to have him later. So right. We're all aboard the the faint train. Yep. Yeah.

[01:02:28] A guine sees the civilian suffering from the attacks and refuses to weave another when another soul Dom tells Rena she's lost control of her demonic Rena prepares to punish a guine. Yep. Spits out the gag thing and she's just not having it. So more set up. Yeah.

[01:02:50] Yeah, it's I did enjoy her spitting out the gag and be like, no, it was very palpitating. No, no, no, no, no. The yeah.

[01:03:01] And again, just, you know, the intensity, the vibe between these two actors, they just acted the hell out of this whole sequence between the two of them. I hope they're good friends. Yeah, right.

[01:03:14] Because they really did get into the depravity of their either good friends or they hate each other. It's one of the other. Yeah. Nine Eve and Elaine March of the soul Dom through foam just as a guine is about to be struck by Rena.

[01:03:31] The white cloaks bombard the tower. The soul Dom is killed by an arrow and Elaine is hidden the leg. Egwene then wakes up in the chaos of the tower with almost everyone around her dead and a spare item on the ground.

[01:03:45] Yeah, I had to I had to combine people a little bit for this one. Right. There was a lot of him back and forth here. A lot going on here. So I don't know you. You want to talk about the each individual little elements of this? Yeah.

[01:04:02] Let's talk about the. Well, let's just put it into. Right. Let's just talk about an uneven Elaine with the soul. Dom, you know, Elaine gets shot. Yep. The soul Dom gets killed and you see that nine Eve feels it right.

[01:04:15] She sees she feels that you can see it on her face that that her demonic just died. Right? And then Elaine gets shot. Yeah. So and then oh the and doesn't it come off at that point to the the what's the arm guard? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:04:35] And so that again good set up for the rules and clearly it gives us the space for what happens later with a grain because if we didn't see that happening, we'd be like, oh, well, that's a little, you know, little too convenient for it to just come off.

[01:04:55] We got rules set up ahead of time. Mm hmm. Yeah. So the we know that the you know, we know from run out later that the soul Dom can take off the demonic is color. Right? Yes. Which is somebody can that was really interesting to learn. So right.

[01:05:09] Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, I knew that but first, that was a mystery. That was a mystery of the of the season was like when who where how can that happen? Because we've got to get a grain out of that. So right. Right.

[01:05:24] So you don't it's not just upon death that it disintegrates. You can also take it off. Right? Yep. Then we also have the grain part where she wakes up and we saw Megan, the blue Azure. Yes. Right. She's dead because we saw her her color fall off.

[01:05:44] And it's very subtle. I missed it on the on the first watch. But as a grain is crawling up, you can see the Adam retracting and then turning into the color.

[01:05:55] And then that's because when I saw it the first time, it was like, oh, she picks up a color. And I didn't I didn't get that. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. They did. There's a whole little sequence there. Yep. Yeah. I liked it a lot.

[01:06:08] Sad that we won't see Megan again. I think I thought she was going to be involved in another later plot line. And she will not be because she's very good. She seems to be confirmed dead. This is not a we didn't see them die thing.

[01:06:22] This is the magical object told us that she is dead. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. It only comes off because of that. So fair enough. Right. Yeah. The whole bombardment of the tower to that got a little confusing.

[01:06:34] I was like suddenly like, oh, what they've got catapults or trebuchets. They didn't really show us that. So there's a lot of missing pieces for this attack. And then they're just sort of calmly marching through the streets at another point.

[01:06:47] But again, you know I just went with it. Yeah. It's tricky. It's tricky. Anyway, let's go on to a combined scene, which is again, tricky. Perrin and friends meet Matt in the fog of war and fight against the shanty

[01:07:03] and together Matt cuts open the horns box with the dagger and is sent to off by Perrin. Yeah. Again, pretty straightforward using using the dagger in a really interesting way. Not I didn't expect that either. I didn't think, oh gosh, yeah, me either.

[01:07:23] Actually, that's not how they get it open in the book. It's right. It's in a box that they knew how to open in the book. So they just had this extra layer of it's locked. Yeah. And yeah, so it worked.

[01:07:32] I did really enjoy Matt's like hold my beer. I got this. Yeah, nice for him to have a confident moment. Yeah. Oh, you need it open. I gotcha. Yeah, Matt's got it. Matt's the party guy, right? He's got that.

[01:07:46] He's he's the guy who can like open a bottle with their, you know, wristwatch and or so. Yeah, yeah. That's funny. He's got all these parlor tricks. Rena blames a Gwaine for the attack on the tower.

[01:07:59] She begins to torture her but a Gwaine successfully colors her Rena says the item only works on women who can channel but a Gwaine says she's realized that sold on can channel and are just weaker than Damani a Gwaine hangs Rena up by

[01:08:14] the collar and tells her to free her Rena does so and a Gwaine watches her die Rand arrives great twist with a Gwaine collaring Rena. That was so good. And yeah, I unexpected and clever.

[01:08:33] Yeah, every way to get it out and then to have this resolve this way to actually have her convince her to release a Gwaine that was just totally unexpected and thoroughly enjoyable. Exactly. Yeah. So the way that they explained in the books, which is a little bit different

[01:08:59] is that Damani are people. So there's two kinds of people who can channel in Ramblin. There are people who will naturally start channeling like a Gwaine because they're so powerful in it and there's people who can learn to channel. But they need to be taught.

[01:09:16] They need to be like goaded into channeling. They don't practice it kind of like certain characters in Star Wars. Right. I was thinking very Star Wars, but so those are the two levels and what a Gwaine

[01:09:28] figures out through her time as a Damani is while the soul Dom because not everybody can be a soul Dom either. Right? So it's a talent. Why? Why are only some women able to do this?

[01:09:40] Oh, those are the ones who can learn to channel because they wouldn't be able to see the weaves if they couldn't channel. So all of that was there in the story in just very subtle ways. They didn't play it up too much.

[01:09:55] No, they wanted that twist to happen. Right? Which is a Gwaine figures out you can see the weave. Oh, you can channel. You can channel. Right. And so when they do the reveal, it doesn't feel like they were cheating. Does it?

[01:10:09] Because you're like, oh yeah, that feels inevitable. Now it feels inevitable and it's consistent with the rules, which we on a SoCo we had some problems with this very same conundrum was like, wait,

[01:10:21] did they explain are the rules set up clear enough so that when we do get the reveal, as you say, it's inevitable. It feels like a natural outcome. Right now. This has the power to shake the Empire to its core, doesn't it?

[01:10:36] The idea that they're enslaving people and the slavers could be enslaved just the same, right? If you follow through with your ethos. Yeah, you're you're enslaving the wrong people. But if you follow through with your ethos, you have nobody to control

[01:10:50] them because only somebody who's channel can control them. Right, right. So who controls the controlling controllers? Right. So you're now stuck here. So that is, is now something in motion that we will see if that will play out within the Shanshan. Okay.

[01:11:06] What happens when you when the thing that you believed is proven fundamentally untrue? Yes, yes. It's not an easy process to go through. Right. The slave is the same as he enslaved. Right? Yeah. I'm just avoiding that whole conversation because it's going to get there's a lot there.

[01:11:30] I know. I know we've been chatting on the discord. I know John has a lot of takes about the Shanshan. He's not a fan. One might say no, no, I don't think any of us are fans of Shanshan.

[01:11:41] It's a, it's more of a question of like what happens to this empire when you can prove that their whole, their whole shtick is false. It's demonstrably false. Right, right. And you can show them. Right. But just because you can show somebody something doesn't mean that

[01:11:58] they're going to believe it. We kind of lived through that just recently. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, it's a, it's an interesting thing to put into play, I think. So, uh, Rand shows up, he's finally here.

[01:12:11] Uh, and this is, I guess, um, uh, kind of a big moment, isn't it? Sure is. Uh, Rand finally arrives. It is a big moment. And, uh, yeah, I guess he arrives just at the right moment to save right. Right. Yeah. But a queen doesn't need saving. Right.

[01:12:31] Well, right. And I really liked that and it's the same. She freed herself. Right. She didn't need a man to do it for her. And I appreciate the fact that, uh, female characters in this aren't, uh, devices to activate the men's storylines.

[01:12:47] All of their storylines are their own storylines for their own sakes. I don't remember who on colors her, but it's not like, I think nine even colors her in the book. Okay. So they had her save herself in this. I think that's great. I think that works.

[01:13:00] That's a good change. That is good for the character to have gotten herself out of it, to have really outsmarted her soul bomb. And that puts her on the board in a way that not only is she a very powerful Chandler, she is now, um, you know,

[01:13:15] the education of a Gwaine, so to speak, she's now starting to learn to not be, uh, a kid from two rivers. She's now in the game. She knows she has the beginnings of, of playing. The great game, right? Yes, exactly.

[01:13:32] Is this like Sansa learning finally, you know, uh, being, um, letting go of her Baylish. All right. Letting letting go of her childhood fantasies. So about what Nino nights and being married and all of that kind of stuff. Right? Well, I'm proud of a Gwaine. Yes.

[01:13:52] A hundred percent. All right, let's move on to ran telling a Gwaine. He came to save her and apologizes for faking his death. When he tries to lead her away, Ishmael appears and attacks both of them. He signals the Demonte who shield Rand. He's so powerful.

[01:14:10] He just sort of flicks a Gwaine's like, oh yeah, buddy. And he's like, uh, no, it's a small, sorry, child. Yeah. Um, and she's super powerful for this time, but he's not of this time. Right. And he, she's not expecting his power either.

[01:14:26] So, and then we got this great cut scene back to, to the end of season one where the, uh, Sanjan show up, um, and we're like, what the hell is going on here? They kind of did almost a shot for shot scene there of,

[01:14:39] of the Demonte standing on the prow of the ship. Um, so, uh, that was, that was good. And then you're like, oh, okay. They're going to shield him. Yep. Yeah. I really liked, I really liked how they had him shield.

[01:14:53] They had them a little bit nerf for a minute. They made you think that something terrible could happen here. Yeah. Especially when he's talking about gentling in the last scene he's in. And he does a good job. The acting on this is,

[01:15:04] is pretty good where he's sort of cowered over with a sickly feeling and he's trying to hold back, you know, hold himself upright. So yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's good. Yep. Are you going to miss Ferris Ferris in the end? Yes. He's a good bad guy.

[01:15:23] Um, interesting motivations and, um, you're talking about the actor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now he's got a lot of charisma, carries a lot of weight on the screen. So yeah. Sorry to see him go. Well, you've got plenty of villains coming because now everybody's free. That's right. All right.

[01:15:41] Let's go to Elaine trying to help nine Eve channel unsuccessfully to heal her nine Eve then treats the wound as she would as a wisdom. Elaine walks it off. Something that we've been talking about is why did she put, push the fletching through?

[01:16:00] Why did she puts the back of the arrow through? So the, that's kind of a, not like I'm speaking from experience or anything like that, but that's kind of something that you see that or, or people break it, I guess. But yeah. You put the front through. Sure.

[01:16:20] You got to go through with the front cause you can't pull it backwards though. You've got to go backwards, but break it. Right. And then pull it through, pull the rest of it through. Right. Whatever. It didn't seem like it hurt a lot more than it needed to.

[01:16:32] Well, and I'm over here. I was, um, I was really pissed actually that in this moment she couldn't still channel and we're still dealing with a nine Eve and her, you know, whatever. Yeah. And, and it was just kind of, uh, you know,

[01:16:52] I'm a little tired of the storyline. I want to see this character grow. This was one of my favorite characters out of season one and I'm not seeing the growth that I want. I'm going to be honest with you.

[01:17:00] It took a while on the books to do that and it might take a while on the show. All right. I'm just gonna have to deal with it. She's, she's going to have to Hulk out for a while. Okay. Yeah. Um, Elaine walking it off.

[01:17:13] I'm like, yeah, all right. She's just walking fine after she got shot in the leg. Yeah. It's, you know, it's D and D. Yeah. Perrin and loyal. This is a combined scene by the way. Perrin and loyal fight the Shanshan alongside Dane Bornhold who recognizes Perrin.

[01:17:29] Perrin is choked out by Volta, but Hopper comes to the rescue. Joff from Bar Bornhold kills chopper sending Perrin into a murderous range. Uh, did I say chopper? Yeah, you did. It's a good one though. I'm a good chopper. Uh, sending parent into a murderous rage.

[01:17:46] Perrin kills Jofr. Great acting on this, part of this dog and it's death scene. Yes, it really gave this like final look in his eye and I was like, dang, that's actually a really good job.

[01:18:01] Um, I don't know how they, they got the performance out of that dog. But yeah, this was all live. Yeah. This was not CGI at all. Yeah. Good. Great job, Chopper. I mean, Hopper. Chopper. I am surprised that they cut Hopper loose so soon. I figured that Hopper...

[01:18:24] That really surprised me. OK. So I didn't... The wheelies. OK. Fair enough. And I was expecting, you know, when Perrin and Bornhol meet, and they're like, oh, I thought great. We're going to have like, you know, there's going to be this weird buddy up situation

[01:18:49] between the White Cloaks who are, you know, nobody else's friends really. But then they turn that on its head really quickly with Perrin killing his dad. Yeah. So Perrin has an enemy now. Yeah, for real. He got knocked out by a shield. He's not dead. Yeah.

[01:19:07] And his fellows dragged him off, I think. Yeah. So he is a player out there now who hates Perrin. So are you saying that Hopper is going to be a force ghost for Perrin? I never said that. I will neither confirm nor deny that because it's incorrect. OK.

[01:19:29] But yeah, let's save that for season three. Yes. All right. Matt is cornered by a Shanshan patrol and blows the horn of Valyr. The horn causes a bad slow motion montage and summons the heroes of the horn.

[01:19:47] Matt remembers he's a hero of the horn and fights alongside the others, which includes Uno. Pretty cool. Fun. Totally campy. Heroes of the horn, all of these different cultures and peoples represented. You know, it totally badass fantasy thing going down.

[01:20:11] And then the whole, yeah, I remember I'm one of you. And it's like, OK, cool. Let's fight. I am really surprised that the heroes of the horn didn't dispatch this Shanshan patrol so much faster. But they like these were just regular troop troops.

[01:20:26] And you've got this huge phalanx of warriors. They should have come through and like butter. But yeah, what have you? So yeah. So can I just say, yes, there's a piece of dialogue in the books and it's not from this

[01:20:40] part of the books, but it's in the book somewhere where Matt goes to the heroes of the horn and says, wait, am I one of you? And they go, I knew you were going to ask that. That's so funny.

[01:20:50] I wish that we had that here instead of like making him explicitly a hero of the horn. He's not explicitly a hero of the horn in the books. They added that confirmation, but he I just love that line. Like I knew you were going to ask that buddy.

[01:21:02] Cute. It's funny. But Matt has his I don't know what language he's speaking there. Speak in the old tongue. Yeah. You know, charge. So is the horn gone now because that one of the heroes, she took it back from him and

[01:21:16] I think she was holding it for him later. OK. And are they but don't they disappear or are they around still? They disappear. The horn stays around in the books. So I don't know if they're going to change that on the show, but it's still they have

[01:21:31] it at the end of book two in the books. So pretty convenient thing to have against like great, great fantasy, you know, role playing game kind of thing. You've got this cool device that, you know, you can use, you know, once once per whatever

[01:21:49] round, you know, day or what have you. And then it's got a recharge and you get these great heroes. Did you did you know what Matt said? Speaking of D&D set, what Matt said in the old tongue?

[01:22:02] No, he said it's time to roll the dice in the seriously. That's literally what he said in the old tongue. This is his like catchphrase in battle. This is his war cry in battle in the books. And he finally got to use it.

[01:22:14] It's time to roll the dice and we got Uno back. So how do you become a hero of the horn? Like what's the criteria? It's not even spelled out in the books. It's just big. You're a hero.

[01:22:26] And we've basically they're bound to the wheel to remain as themselves in in wherever I can't even say where they are, but wherever heroes of the horn souls reside while they're waiting in the halls of Mando's. Yeah, and they get reincarnated as different people.

[01:22:44] It's not like they get reincarnated as themselves every time. But Matt is apparently a hero of the horn and he remembers upon blowing it. Oh yeah, I'm one of these guys. Cool. Yep. It was good. Good. Can't be fun. Had a great time with it. Cool.

[01:23:00] Did you like Uno being part of the heroes of the horn? Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. That's not in the books. Yeah, no, that that that was cool. That was a fun. And again, just goes into the whole thing.

[01:23:09] And then he gives Uno gives him the shield, gives Perrin the shield, which comes into play later. Yeah, I think Uno survives the whole series or at least last till the last book in the book.

[01:23:22] So we were all shocked when he died and we were all shocked when he came back. Right. So. I'm a fecking hero of the horn. He was pretty funny with all this. Dane sees Perrin kill his father and attacks him.

[01:23:39] Perrin is saved by Uno, who mocks them for doubting that he's a hero of the horn and knocks Dane out. Right. And then gives him this shield, which Perrin uses later. So I'm guessing that that shield is going to be some sort of artifact that he keeps

[01:23:53] going forward. He didn't have a shield in the book. I don't think. I don't think he had it. So maybe they're adding something for the show, which is fine. Yeah, definitely. Ishamel asks Ran one more time if he'll serve the Dark One.

[01:24:06] Ran says he never has and he never will. And Matt throws the spear at Ishamel, but Ishamel was an illusion and the dagger hits Ran. So there you got Min's prophecy.

[01:24:18] So she saw, you know, not in the same way that she saw it, but still the same effect. She was taking it out, right? That was the deal. He was taking out the dagger. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good point. Good point.

[01:24:29] That's probably what was going on. And that's a nasty wound. Was he stabbed by a morgul blade? No, not good. This wound was given to him by Ishamel in the book. So they changed this. This was a surprise for show watchers too, for book readers too. Okay.

[01:24:44] So good choices here and then with Egwene showing up to protect the Min. I like that. It's the wound that just won't heal. Like Alain heals him and it stays because it's just some kind of darkness in it.

[01:24:58] It was not inflicted by the Shadar Logoth dagger in the books either. This was by some kind of weapon of Ishamel that's never really given any kind of lore behind it. Okay. So I actually really like this change.

[01:25:11] I like that they explained it with, okay, this is this dagger of darkness who killed all these other people, but you're the dragon reborn. You're this beacon of light. It's going to almost kill you, but with some healing you can manage with it.

[01:25:25] And now he has this disgusting festering thing. And now it brings the Matt storyline back into line and sort of fixes that breach. So I think they pulled that off really well actually, given all things considered. Yeah, I liked it. I liked it.

[01:25:41] I like that Matt tried to save Rand and ended up giving him the wound that will never heal. Okay, cool. Yep. Egwene shields Rand and Matt against Ishamel. I said that weird when I wrote that because shielding is a thing. Shielding is different than.

[01:25:59] She shields against Ishamel to protect Rand and Matt. That's how I should say that. While Rand is still shielded. Okay. Moraine sees the shielding from a distance and sends flames under the water towards the Demone ship, risking them being civilians. Land gives the Shanchun a lesson in swordplay.

[01:26:21] Yeah. So like I mentioned just a second ago, love Egwene stepping in for the save and visually it was awesome watching Ishamel just firing bolt after bolt after bolt. It was, I was so, I was almost squealing. I was so excited with this whole scene.

[01:26:41] I was like, okay, cool. Let's go. Let's go. The visual effects were awesome. Yeah. In Ishamel's head he's got all the time in the world. Right. Because he's got Rand shielded. These people are all weaklings to him. He'll just push them off the tower if he needs to.

[01:26:57] And yeah, he's like, I'll just keep throwing stuff at you. This isn't exhausting me. It's only exhausting you. Yeah. Yeah. He has no idea that Moraine is in play out there to take out his Demone on the ship. And great. Egwene just, you know, ooh, yeah. Great.

[01:27:19] She throws her dress back a little bit when she takes her stance and yeah, it was awesome. It was so badass. Yeah. So yeah. Super, super fun. We stan Egwene. Big time. And the, the torpedoes that Moraine sends out into the water, that was fun.

[01:27:38] And seeing Len, you know, getting in a little bit of the action. So yeah, every, everything was just coming into play. Yep. Yep. I like this. Len getting to finally, you know, use all that practicing from earlier in the season was really great.

[01:27:54] And Elaine, well, are we there yet to the next scene? It's all kind of blurring together. We can go there. We can go there. I mean, there's not much to talk. This is just action, right?

[01:28:05] We can just keep saying, oh, I like this, but then I like that. Yeah. Elaine and Naineeb arrive at the tower and Elaine heals Rand while he has a meet cute with her. Big time. Rand does not fully heal and is very ugly.

[01:28:17] Moraine successfully disrupts the shield, freeing Rand. Rand channels into his sword and stabs Ishamel, branding his own hand in the process. Ishamel says he sees nothing as he turns to ash. A lot here. Total. I was like, wait, Rand and Elaine?

[01:28:35] I didn't see that coming because they set up the shot with her with the sun behind her head and. Oh, Rand. I did the whole sort of, you know, Vaseline on the lens, you know, and what better to

[01:28:48] be healed by a beautiful woman in a time of great need. So, you know, it's all there. It's all there. But what was so funny to me was Rand's like, who are you? And Elaine's like, I'm Elaine. You know, shut up. I'm trying to heal you.

[01:29:05] She was so like not in this meet cute with him, you know? And she's part of the crew now, right? She's fully in. This was her coming together with the rest of them and actually contributing meaningfully in a time of need. The Wonder Girls are all together. Yep.

[01:29:24] Yep. Cool stuff. The stabbing of Ishamel, he loses his blade. His blade just, I guess, burns away there. That was kind of interesting. And I was not expecting Ishamel to go down like that.

[01:29:44] And, you know, looking, it's all there in the plot, you know, the way that they opened up the scene. I suppose if I thought about it a little bit more, I could have seen it coming. But it played nicely. The end mirrored the beginning.

[01:29:59] So good, good plot construction. And you know, as he's looking up into the sky, he sees like two seagulls flying, you know, so sort of symbolizing their friendship. And yeah, it all worked. And then he did the dust out, you know, just like we had in Avengers.

[01:30:19] Yeah, he was too little time with Ishamel, huh? Too little time with Ishii. Yeah, not a lot. So the question is, is he dead permanently? Dead, dead, right. We know that the Dark One gave immortality, but he seemed to really die there, right? He's like, I see nothing.

[01:30:40] I'm going, I'm crumbling. And you know, it's not like Lanfear who just immediately reanimated. We don't have Nightsister magic here. Yeah, no, he seems to be at peace, which is what he'd been seeking for. So of course, until next time, right? Until he's reincarnated for the next dragon.

[01:30:57] Right. How did was it was Rand just I don't was even channeling in his blade or. He was, he was. They OK, so it's different from the book. And I mean, they kind of combined book two and three here with the endings because Rand

[01:31:18] fully defeats Ishamel at the end of book three. But yeah, they they just moved it up to book two here. They didn't do some things that happen in book three, so I won't talk about what else

[01:31:31] happens at the end of book three, but they did move up Ishamel's defeat. OK. And yeah, I think I know what they did with the channeling there, but I can't say because it's a lower piece that you don't know yet. OK, fair enough. Yep. Yep.

[01:31:49] But I think it's safe to say he channeled him into oblivion. And then stabbed him with the sword. OK, cool. Yep. And then Moraine realizes it's time to proclaim the dragon reborn and creates a fiery dragon above the tower.

[01:32:03] The people cheer for the dragon reborns liberation of their city. Avienda calls Rand the Karakarn and Landfear looks on approvingly. Huzzah! This dragon looked a little dorky. Yes, it did. It did. I didn't love it.

[01:32:19] I thought they were just going to do fireworks and, you know, do like a Gandalfian dragon, you know, swooping down like the Peter Jackson movies. But whatever, it's fine. The the who are the three warrior women? The Aiel, yeah. Yeah. From the Aiel.

[01:32:40] They had this cute little scene there where they're all three standing looking and they pull their little masks down in unison and, you know, the the ghosts, the heroes of the horn. Well, remember, they were looking for somebody. Mm hmm. Came over. OK.

[01:32:56] And she just said, Karakarn, what's that? Right. OK. Is the dragon reborn the only prophecy that Rand's going to fulfill? Interesting. Interesting. Mm hmm. Yeah. You're totally right. She totally does say that there. Cool. OK. Awesome. All right.

[01:33:15] And my question to you is, why couldn't Lanfear just make the weave herself? Mm hmm. Make the weave. She's much more powerful than Moraine. Oh, right. You mean for the banner? She can just put the dragon in the sky herself. Right. Right.

[01:33:29] You know, from the shadows, isn't there a whole thing about being in the shadows, moving in the shadows? So I guess. But yeah, the Demone are dead anyway. Just I think she's fine to just do it. I don't know.

[01:33:42] I think that was a little bit of shoehorning Rosamund Pike into this plotline. But sure. Yeah, it is what it is. It is what it is. Last seen here. Lanfear looks triumphant after a good day overall. She goes to retrieve the other seals of the forsaken.

[01:33:57] I think that's what I'm assuming here. But then she finds she was going to take him out to the boat to have him dropped. Right. But she finds Magidion who tells her Ishmael freed all of them because he thought she would betray him. Rightfully so.

[01:34:12] Apparently Magidion tangles Lanfear in her webs and says that the other forsaken are not weakened by closeness to the dragon. Magidion warns Lanfear to stay away from Rand. Lanfear closes out the season by saying, Light help you, Randalthor.

[01:34:29] So I think I win some Internet points here because I've been saying all along that these big stone plinth things were. I think you're right. I'm here to award them to you. The Grammys mailed them to me. The Emmys. I just want to redeem it all in cereal.

[01:34:47] That's what I need. Just lots and lots of cereal. For the other shows, right? Yes, exactly. So that I can steal myself when we run into other issues. So this Mogidon. Mogidion. Mogidion, she's a creepy little creepster. She's the spider. You know, that's her vibe.

[01:35:09] She is spooky, scary. And she's got Lanfear beat, which is saying something because Lanfear is super powerful. Well, I'll say Lanfear's power level is above her. But she didn't expect to find her there and she caught her in the webs.

[01:35:27] And that's Mogidion's strength is she like she said, I don't miss when I finally strike. Like I might bide my time in the shadows a little bit, but I don't miss. Right. Cool. So next up for next season, we've got all these forsaken like six.

[01:35:42] We got six more forsaken. So we got seven total now. Right. We would have had eight, but she's dead. Right. A lot of villains running around. Season two. Here we go. Yep. Yep. All right, David, do we have some feedback for today?

[01:35:58] We have a ton of feedback, in fact. Oh boy. So let's get into it. First up, we've got Sadie on the discord. I pulled this one because I thought it was an important question. Okay. Sadie says, I feel like I'm really missing something with the whole Demone thing.

[01:36:19] So they capture channelers then turn them into weapons, I guess. But how are their powers less or more than they would be on their own? And how does the caller control them exactly? So I think we definitely got some answers in this episode for that.

[01:36:33] Do you want to talk a little bit? What more can you talk about? Yeah. Well, they don't it doesn't make them more or less powerful. Right. The thing is that the Suldan, because they're slavers and they don't really care if these

[01:36:44] people live or die other than like resource management, they will push them harder than they would be pushed in the White Tower. And so they may access more of their power than they normally would because they're being pushed so hard.

[01:36:57] But they're risking burning out because they're being pushed so hard. Right. And how do they control them? Well, now, you know, it's actually a channeler controlling another channeler and linking with them and with a mechanical device that augments the relationship. Right. That forces them to.

[01:37:13] Well, rather than augment, I think forces one to be able to control the other. OK, interesting, because Naineev says something about the presence that she feels. Yeah, she feels she feels the other person's like bundle of emotions, basically. Right.

[01:37:29] Which is how water bonds are described in the books. So you can feel a bundle of emotion in your mind from the water. So there's a consistency there. And then this is just a mechanical device that made by another Isidai. Right. It's a Terrangriel, just like the arches.

[01:37:44] It's a magical device, which, by the way, the Isidai were pretty convinced you can't make Terrangriel anymore. Well, the Shanchinar. Right. Which is a thing now. Right. Now we've got to deal with that as well. Right. Can anyone else do them? Can anyone else make a different kind?

[01:38:00] You know, it's a lot of questions here. Yeah, I mean, I think I've got a lot of questions. So I'll just let you know. I think I've got a lot of questions. I'm going to let you know. All right.

[01:38:06] I hope that helps, Sadie and obviously, you know, reach out on the discord more if you if you get more questions. John, do you remember our old friend Marta in Italy? Marta, I do. Helped us out with the great Intel from when we were doing White Lotus.

[01:38:21] The White Lotus Sicily. Season 2. Wow. That seems like so long ago. I know. A lifetime. Anyway, Marta wrote in and it's so great to hear from you, Marta. She says, Hello, guys. Remember me? I'm the listener from Italy. Yes, of course we remember you.

[01:38:33] I want to tell you how much I've been enjoying your listening to your Wheel of Time recaps and analysis. Well, glad that they have been enjoyable at least. She continues, I watched season one without knowing anything about this world, and it

[01:38:48] interested me enough that I went and started reading the books. John, you converted another book reader. Indubitably. I'm glad. Very good. Because I love the books. Although I like fantasy, I haven't read much apart from Lord of the Rings and Song of Ice and Fire.

[01:39:05] Well, those are pretty big. You've covered a lot of bases there. But the world Jordan created is so rich and interesting that it has quickly become a comfort read and I enjoy losing myself in it.

[01:39:18] I just started book 10 and I'm a bit worried after what John said on the podcast. It's the slog book. It really is. If there is any book that is a slog, it is that book because it's mostly characters reacting to the climax of book nine.

[01:39:35] I'm not even kidding. That's the majority of the book. It's just, hey, remember when that happened? It's not great. It's not great writing. Well, Marta is determined to power through it. Yeah, I mean, book 11 is amazing. Book 11 is my favorite book of the series. So power through.

[01:39:53] I've heard this several times that people talk about it being a comfort read, that it's just it's comfy. It's like hanging out with your friends. Because you get so close with the Edmonds Field Five and Elaine and whoever else joins the

[01:40:07] crew can't spoil anything, that you just feel like you're hanging out with your butts. How would you describe the writing style? Because it's very accessible. Okay. Very not talking. I think Tolkien is a lot harder to read.

[01:40:24] I think Tolkien feels a little bit archaic in the language sometimes. Jordan is very conversational. He's not using a ton of huge vocabulary. He's not trying to sound very high fantasy. He puts a lot of pieces on the board, but he's also really good at reminding you.

[01:40:41] Some people say too good at reminding you, like he'll spend a lot of time recapping things. But he'll really onboard you every book, which is great. He keeps you remembering what happened in the last book and what tools were set up. He reminds you of the mechanics often.

[01:40:55] It's really accessible, I think. As much as it's long, it's a really easy read. Cool. Cool. Well, that's why if Marta is saying that it's a comfort read, that really indicates that. That the reading, the writing style has to be such that you can just slip right into

[01:41:13] it and you don't have to do a lot of work. Okay. Marta continues, I'm enjoying the season a lot, but I'm a bit worried that it's not doing a good job to make this world understandable to non-book readers. What are your thoughts on this?

[01:41:26] For example, wouldn't it be better to have a map like we do in the books? I think it's important to have a clear understanding of the land moving forward with the adaptation of the books. Look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Also have a request.

[01:41:40] What other fantasy series would you recommend? Thanks. Keep up the good work. So about this non-book reader thing. Yeah, man, at the beginning of this series, I was having a hard time. I'm not going to lie. I was like, oof, I don't know if I can do this.

[01:41:59] There's a lot of effort here. There's a lot of places and names and can I keep it all straight in my head? And I think just going along for the ride and finishing off this last episode, it all paid off.

[01:42:13] So maybe that's part of why I enjoyed the episode so much was, hey, this is a bunch of goofy fun, big fantasy trope things are paying off. It's all consistent. I don't feel like I've been played any tricks or dealt any dirty hands.

[01:42:28] And so I think that's part of the reason why I felt good about this episode. So yeah, but I will agree, Marta, that some maps would help. I don't know, a podcast or two possibly? I'll say on the map thing, you've already seen teleportation this season and Marta,

[01:42:45] you're reading the books and you're on book 10. Teleportation is a thing in this universe. You're going to have to accept it like we're going to go far places away and very quickly and we're going to you're going to have to get used to it. It's not jetpacking.

[01:43:00] It's canon. It's actual. It's real. Actual. Yeah, teleportation. And as more characters get more powerful, you're probably going to have to expect more of them to be able to jetpack, right? Yeah. So some maps helped me. I don't know.

[01:43:15] I guess for some people, the way we think the having a visual representation is really helpful in that regard. It's just to just to be able to to relate to and keep in proportion, not proportion, but just have a space.

[01:43:29] The spatial recognition in some way translates back into I can hold this in my head, whereas something that occurs for me is abstract, then becomes ephemeral and I lose it. But grounding it in geography helps me retain the information. Yeah.

[01:43:48] So maybe that's what Marta's maybe her thoughts are working in the same way. Anyway, the question of fantasy series. I mean, that's so huge. I don't know. Do you have a lot of fantasy? Oh, I don't know, David. Have you ever heard of the Earthsea cycle?

[01:44:04] Oh, I guess I would say that's a pretty good transition from Wheel of Time. It's a lot shorter about that, too. Yeah, it's a lot shorter. We're doing a podcast on it. We've done the first three books. We're about to do the fourth book. It's very accessible.

[01:44:18] It's very good. I would definitely recommend that if you want something that is that has something similar to the Forsaken in it, the Black Company. However, that's a little harder to access because it's I don't know.

[01:44:33] I think it's an easy read, but it's it's I would the warning I was going to give is there is some sexual violence in it. So if that is something that makes you uncomfortable, that takes you out of it. Avoid it. But there's no world.

[01:44:44] There's no set up. You're straight into this character's point of view and you have no idea what's going on in the world and you just got to go. Yeah. Yeah. It's a challenge in that regard. I like it that way, but it's a very unique writing style. Very.

[01:44:57] It's very good. It's very good. comfort read Discworld. Go pick up Discworld. Look up the chart of Discworld reading order. You can start at various points. Pick one of the starter novels. I recommend Guards Guards. It's very funny. Great comfort read for fantasy.

[01:45:14] And we've got a whole book channel set up on the discord. So if you want to pop in and chat with some folks and yeah, people get good recommendations. Yeah. Our community takes care of folks. So Marta, really good to hear from you. Thanks for writing in.

[01:45:28] We hope you're doing well. We hope you're doing well. And I'm sorry that we don't have any Italian based shows again. I think the White Lotus was lucky that we were there. I heard it's Thailand, but I don't know. I don't know if that's true.

[01:45:42] It's supposed to be Asia somewhere. So anyway, thanks Marta and look forward to hearing from you again before too long. Doove 71 Loremaster, friend of the pod, regular contributor. He says, hi John. Hi David.

[01:45:59] Lots of observations on this episode referring to episode seven as I have to agree with David's comment on how dense the episode really was. As per usual, the Sunday dog walk is powered by the pod and it really helps hearing you

[01:46:13] guys get the brain chewing over what I saw a day or so previously. Well, glad we could virtually be with you on your walk. Doove. Apparently this may take on the prominence of the plinths with the ying yang symbols on them.

[01:46:31] Perhaps these are portal stones, which may explain some of the jet packing, but could also set up some future uses in upcoming seasons. Well, we do. We know exactly what these are now Doove. So question answered.

[01:46:47] Interesting to hear the feedback on this episode about the San Chen and their motivations not being related to the shadow. I recall John alluding to the San Chen being from the continent of North America, the way they would leave the small folk alone.

[01:47:01] Well here, let's just pause there. Is that, that's um, this North America, this sort of geography of this world. Right? Yeah. So geographically there from there, I just want to be clear. You saw 3000 years ago in this episode and you're still in this very magical land with

[01:47:20] very different people. And I want to be very clear, we are very far removed in time from our current time. So I don't want anyone to think that these are like Americans come back to, you know, it's not, it's not a very different peoples.

[01:47:34] It just happened geographically there from there. And perhaps Jordan was trying to say something with American imperialism there. Doove continues the way they leave the small folk alone and their belief in the primacy in the world could be seen as an expression of American individualism with small government

[01:47:54] and perhaps an extreme representation of exceptionalism and manifest destiny. They certainly have a manifest destiny vibe about them that I'll tell you. Yeah. I always think Roman empire with these people because that's how the Romans went, right? They would go to different areas.

[01:48:10] They would let them keep a lot of their cultures, but then, you know, as long as you pay tax to Caesar, you're all good. Right. You are still under our domain. You can keep worshiping whatever God you want to worship.

[01:48:21] He continues liked David's reflection on the way Isidae and Swan are in a mirror of the Sanchan in their treatment of the Domani and Rand. Shielding Rand isn't as brutal and dehumanizing as the Sanchan's treatment of the Domani, but a velvet cage is still a cage. Yep. Yep.

[01:48:45] Yep. It's, um, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. The, uh, I don't want to say anything cause there's more coming. Your pause. Yes. You had a very, you had a very thoughtful pause there. I could hear your wheels. What can I say? What can I not say?

[01:49:00] There's a lot I can't say here. I think that the treatment of Rand is something that you're going to have to just keep an eye on Duve. Uh, continuing really enjoyed the demonstration of a Gwaine's power, but have noted this has

[01:49:14] upset some of the book cloaks as Naineev uses her power a lot more at this stage in the story in the books. However, I'm liking it as Naineev is a thousand times more powerful.

[01:49:25] If a Gwaine is the first atomic bomb, Naineev is a hundred megaton, megaton hydrogen bomb. So when we see Naineev unleash her powers, we will have had a foretaste via a Gwaine. Okay. Interesting. So sort of setting scale.

[01:49:43] I'm getting used to seeing somebody who's really powerful above the average, but then when Naineev goes off, we're going to have a sense of, of how powerful she is. Okay. That's cool. That works. Yeah.

[01:49:58] I think in the books right now, Elaine, uh, sorry, Naineev, a lot of names here. Naineev is able to Hulk out more often. You know, she's able to on command and be like, you wouldn't want to see me when I'm angry. I'm in channel, you know?

[01:50:11] So, uh, but it's, and all the guys today around her are like, can you stop doing that? That's not healthy. Don't do it that way. Do it the right way. And she's just like, nah, I got a whole gal. Okay. Continuing really good.

[01:50:25] Jax position of Ishmael and the dark ones goal of breaking the wheel in end times versus land fears, reveling in the scheming power domination that aligning herself with the dark gives her all motivated by her undying love for Luis Theron. There's an extra guy at the beginning. Okay.

[01:50:47] In the Luz Theron. Yeah. Got it. Perfect. And he was the dude that we saw in the cold open of this. Yep. Yep. He's, he's old Rand. He's like, he's, you know, will the real Rand Althor please stand up?

[01:50:59] And that's who land fear is still in love with. Even though Rand is in this, in is the in the incarnation of his spirit. She's warming up to rent. She's warm. Oh, I think she's already warmed. Yeah. She's like, Hey, you know what?

[01:51:13] I think he might be the same guy actually. Okay. Now the question is, is Rand quite as arrogant as Luz Theron? I'd say there's some arrogance there. He's still a young pup. He's got a ways. Sure is.

[01:51:26] He's 19 years old and learns that he's going to be the savior of the world. I think a lot of people would be. Don't worship children, right? Do not worship children. We learned that in foundation. Yep. Continuing.

[01:51:38] It's good to have the show deviate in some aspects as it means the weekly experience of watching the show is still fresh while still having enough grounding for me to not get lost.

[01:51:50] So just to pre to remind everyone that doves just started reading the books, he got hooked up just the same. Yeah. Interesting point about running parallel with the show and reading the books so that both are fresh there. Yep.

[01:52:07] Continuing with a Aiel, it seems to be very clan based, which made me think of how Scottish clans were grouped in medieval times. You had your familial clans, but you could also be part of a larger clan usually called a confederation. For example, clan Davidson, my clan.

[01:52:25] Now I'm doves clan, not my clan. We're part of clan Chaton. I believe I'm pronouncing that right. Aiel culture also seems to pull from some Norse for spear maidens, sea and shield maidens. So yeah, there are 13 clans. I had to look this up because I couldn't remember.

[01:52:44] There are 13 clans of the Aiel. And there are steps within the clans. There are a lot of subdivisions here. And then there's also, there's societies like the Fardar Asmae, the maidens of the spear that Avient is part of.

[01:53:06] So in Livingston's book, he goes into a lot of our primary world history for the sources of inspiration and not just inspiration, but actual detail. Because you've read all of Livingston's book. I did.

[01:53:26] I haven't read it recently just because I really wanted to dig into it more this season, but just we had so much going on with the shows. I just could not as much as I wanted to. I'm going to look that up for the season wrap. All right.

[01:53:37] That's going to be my homework for the season wrap. Sounds good. Dove concludes, as ever, you guys are putting up some big shifts on the show. I see social media blowing up over the wheel of time with its hot takes and memes, but

[01:53:50] having the time, reflection and analysis from the lore hounds definitely gives a much deeper insight on the story and the show. So thanks again. Wandering the ways with land fear. That's a dangerous game, Dove. It is. Careful in there. Thanks Dove.

[01:54:05] Glad you have been enjoying it and glad that we can have a, be a kind of, we're not a sizzling hot spot of social media and hot takes and arguing over- Except on the Ahsoka podcast. Yeah, but that was vigorous. That was vigorous and it will-

[01:54:22] It was a little spicy. Dove tweeted at us, you know, the Bill Hader meme when he's Stefani goes, spicy. He tweeted that about our Ahsoka coverage. Funny. I think, yeah, there was some other comments today too on the, on it. So anyway, thanks Dove.

[01:54:40] I'm glad you enjoyed it and look forward to hearing some thoughts for the season wrap. Maddie writes in, says, Hey, Lorehounds. Hey, Maddie. I'm a huge fan of the Wheel of Time show. I haven't read the books, but my husband has.

[01:54:54] So we have a fun dynamic when watching the show similar to the two of you. He's keeping track of all of my theories. My favorites of which is predicting Nynaeve's next meltdown. Fair enough. My question for you is about Elaine's red hair.

[01:55:13] I feel that it is a well-established, it's well established in the show that although not 100% of the time, red hair is a trait associated with the Aiel. I really enjoy her as an actress and I like Elaine's character, but I wonder why they didn't change her hair color.

[01:55:29] I can't stop wondering if she has some association with the Aiel. As you've commented, the costuming for the show seems intentional all around. So to me, her red hair seems like an oversight unless it means something.

[01:55:43] Do you have thoughts on this to share or do I have to wait to find out? It doesn't really mean something, I'm going to be honest with you. She's described as having reddish gold hair in the books. I think it's just character description.

[01:55:59] The like really red hair that Rand has, that's a very Aiel thing. Although now they've had Avienda come in with not really that hair. So I think part of it is just like adapting the hair color inconsistently. It's hard to get actors.

[01:56:19] Because I think Avienda would look goofy with that hair, right? And so would most of the Aiel probably. Most people would look goofy with certain hairstyles with bright red hair, especially when it's dyed, right? It's not natural. And so it's tough. It's tough.

[01:56:38] Elaine, I'm just going to tell you, Elaine's not Aiel. She's just not Aiel. Put that one down. Yeah, you just put that one to bed. I don't blame you for putting this theory together, Manny. I'm just going to tell you, look no further.

[01:56:51] I'm going to tell you, Markley is not important. I was just going to call out Markley. Yeah, totally. Don't look for... Sometimes shadows are just shadows in these shows. So we're trained to look for these things. And that's why we have feedback.

[01:57:04] So you can write in and do the exact thing. I don't think that's a big spoiler to say she's not Aiel. No, I think it's fine. I think it'll be fine. Manny, thank you for writing in.

[01:57:13] It's good to hear from you and we hope to hear from you again. And if you've got some fun theories that you want to throw in for the season wrap, we would love to hear them. So send in your emails. Yep.

[01:57:27] All right, last up is Renee M. Says, hi guys. Thanks for your episode breakdowns. They make viewing more enjoyable. I've not read the books, but they're on my list to do so. John, you have been a book...

[01:57:43] You have probably converted more people to the books on this podcast that we're never going to get any revenue from the publishers from. I'm an arangelist. Oh, it's been a while since you've... An arangelist. I like that. That's very good. All right. We didn't get a Rand song.

[01:58:01] We still need a Rand song. Because the one I thought of... I know. I thought it was a Rand song. I thought it was a Rand song. And I thought, well, Simon's going to sue me. You can't get it. And you can't get around it.

[01:58:09] It's stuck in your head. So... Yeah, it's just there. It's not happening. Okay. Well, yeah, we're all waiting for your next song. We've got to have that. We've got to put out the... You got one for Ahsoka. For some reason, the Star Wars songs become musical for me.

[01:58:20] That'll be a fun swag merch thing in the future. The Lore Hounds greatest hits. After a couple of years. A CD of 10 seconds clips. Yeah, exactly. That'd be perfect. All right, Renee continues, your podcast for season two, episode seven is the first one

[01:58:39] I listened to having found you a bit late. So forgive me if this has already been asked and answered. Was there a discussion or statement as to how the adaptation of 15 books would be adapted? As it seems that so far they're equal to one book per season.

[01:58:59] Is it truly intended to have 14 or 15 seasons? Definitely not. Renee M. from Yosemite. Renee, thanks for writing in. It's great to hear from new listeners. Welcome. Thank you for taking the time for writing in and definitely write in some more.

[01:59:13] John, how the hell are they going to adapt 15 books into a reasonable television season? Yeah, it's a good question. The early books are set up much more discreetly with like this is the beginning, middle and end of it. And so I think they need to combine.

[01:59:32] I think they need to mostly do one to one with the first couple of seasons. However, they've given us all we need from the first three books now, even though they mostly did book to this season.

[01:59:43] There is something big that they didn't do in this season from book three, but they can absolutely move it to later and that would be totally fine. They are. They said that they're going to do a straight adaptation of book four for season three.

[01:59:56] So they are and book four is a lot of people like general consensus is it's the best book. I disagree. Actually, I like I like book 11 better and books six better. But yeah, I really like book four.

[02:00:09] I think book four is my number three out of the series. And anyway, so they are I believe they plan to do eight seasons. The other thing I'll say is there's a lot you can cut in the middle books from books like seven to 10.

[02:00:21] There's a lot you can cut without losing much. So it's great reading. Like I really enjoy the plot lines, but some the things that affect the main plot, I think you could sum up in a season from all those books.

[02:00:35] You could do like four books in one season and it would be fine. And we don't have any specific news from Rafe Judkins or the studio. They started filming season three a while ago. I don't know what happened with the strikes and all that. Right.

[02:00:48] But it's not like Goyer with Foundation who's like clear, like I want eight and I've got off ramps here and here. So they haven't come out and said explicitly how many they're going to aim for. I don't know how you could have off ramps in the show.

[02:01:00] I think that, you know, David Goyer, because he's doing a lot more of a loose adaptation is able to do that. Inspiration versus adaptation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do have here. I just Googled it. Rafe Judkins has said he intends to do eight seasons.

[02:01:14] So the showrunner said I want to do eight seasons. Okay. Fresh off the internet. There is a source for it. It's not just made up. Okay. Excellent. So if they are doing a season every other year, that's a problem.

[02:01:25] So they really need to speed up the production on this. You're not going to lock down these actors for 16 years. No, it's going to be hard. It's going to be a that's that's hard on actors is to be locked into these because these are

[02:01:36] right, especially locations and the time that's involved in all that kind of stuff. So if they're leapfrogging forward, if they're already like, say, season three is already in the can and into post-production by now, that's awesome because they can keep that pace running forward.

[02:01:52] So, yeah, I really hope we get a season three in 2024 with the strikes. I'm not sure. Right. We just have to see. Hopefully, hopefully we'll see what they do. Okay. Well, that's it for feedback again. Thanks Renee for writing in. Thanks for Maddie.

[02:02:12] Great to hear new listeners writing in again. We're going to have a season wrap up podcast. John, Alicia and I are all going to get together and talk non-spoilery, non-book spoilery stuff. We're just going to cover a few things in the season.

[02:02:29] Then I'm going to duck out and then John and Alicia are going to go hard hammering tongs into all the deep bookie stuff. So we got you covered there. Send in your feedback, WOT at the lorehounds.com. Head over to our Discord. Join the conversation there.

[02:02:47] There should be a lot of great chatter happening once the episode is aired. John, we just finished up with a huge schedule. We're like, I think taking a breath right now. I know.

[02:03:02] But we've got Loki starting up and Alicia and Jean and I are going to be covering that. We've got what Star Wars Film Festival is back on the table. It is. We're doing Revenge of the Sith.

[02:03:17] If you are a Patreon member, you can do a live watch on, what day is that going to be? Saturday the 8th? Yeah, Saturday the 10th. Well, no, it's not the 10th. It's Saturday the 7th. I'm sorry. I can't keep track of the days. Right.

[02:03:30] So check Patreon for that. What else have we got? Bear McCreary, the musician and composer who did the theme song for Rose Power. Rings of Power and Foundation. Yep. He did all the soundtracking for both shows, I think. Yeah.

[02:03:47] We have, he's graciously agreed to come onto the pod. So we're going to be interviewing him and that is going to happen later in the month. What else do we have? We've got our Book Nook series covering Earthsea.

[02:04:05] We're going to be reading the first six chapters of Tehanu, which is the fourth book in the Earthsea series. And I don't know. What else do we got? The Creator, John and Alicia and I are going to do a one shot for that movie.

[02:04:21] And then John, you're going to do something with Fall of the House of Usher? Yeah, I think we're going to do something. Alicia and I are probably going to do something. We'll see. We got to work out some details, but something's going to happen around that show. Right.

[02:04:34] Cool. So there's a lot on the boil. We're going to be getting back to Silmarillion stories and you're going to do a Shireside chat for our patrons. Sure. I vote a Shireside chat and I'm going to do at least one this month. Awesome.

[02:04:49] So lots cooking on over here for our affiliates. Properly Howard Movie Review. Those guys are cooking with gas over there. They are having a lot of fun. Anthony, who is an academic, and Steve, who's a stand up comic. They review movies.

[02:05:09] And for their current season, they picked a slate of remakes. They just released a podcast on the 1991 version of Cape Fear. Next coming up is The Thing, a 1982 version of it. A couple of weeks ago, they did The Departed. They also covered The Wicker Man. Those were hilarious.

[02:05:33] Have you listened to the Cape Fear episode? I haven't yet. Okay. Had a busy week, but yeah. Really good conversation. It's always a great time listening to them, even if you haven't watched the movie. Yeah. The Cape Fear conversation was really interesting.

[02:05:46] They got some interesting filmmaking stuff, but they're also very funny. So yeah, it's good stuff. Alicia is retooling some Wolveshift dust programming. They've had some sheds. There's some things been happening over on her side, but the book club is going to get going again.

[02:06:04] And because Dune, the second part of the Villeneuve movie got pushed to 2024, she's had to readjust her programming there, but that's coming. And then there's another, I think she talked about this the other day, right? There's another show, Beacon 21? What was it called?

[02:06:20] I don't recall the exact name, but she's going to be covering something soon on her feed. And it was on MGM Plus or something. Yes. Something I hadn't even heard of. They'll probably give you like seven months free because it's a new service, right?

[02:06:36] Beacon 23, which is apparently written by Hugh Howie, who is the fellow who wrote the Silo Wolfshift dust books, which were turned into the Silo TV show on Apple Plus. So I think she's going to go full into that one. So that should be good.

[02:06:54] I mean, if Alicia is on it, I'm sure it's going to be good content. All right. Very cool. And then should we give a shout out to our patrons? We should. Our Patreon Loremasters are our top tier patrons, and we give them a shout out every single episode.

[02:07:11] They are Samartian, Cyrus, Mark H., Michael G., Michelle E., David W., Brian P., Nick W., SC, Peter O.H., Bettina W., Adam S., Nancy M., Lavinia T., Dove 71, Brian 8063, Frederick H., Sarah L., Gareth C., Eric F., Matthew M., Sarah M., DJ Miwa, Andra B., Kwong U.,

[02:07:34] Laura G., Dead Eye Jedi Bob, Nathan T., Alex V., Aaron T., Sub Zero, and Adrian. Thank you all so much. I mean, this is the weave behind the power. The water that turns the wheel. The water that turns... You are the water that turns the wheel itself.

[02:07:56] Honestly, I thought that was a good line. Yeah. If a little bit cheesy, but... Fair enough. Yeah. Thank you all so much. It really does help us keep things moving and... Helps us take care of our co-hosts and keep the lights on. A couple of notes too.

[02:08:10] You can now get seven day free trial memberships, so you can check us out if you want. You can also do annual... Yeah, a lot of people are doing that lately. Yeah. You can also do annual subscriptions if that works better for your budgeting.

[02:08:21] And if being a Patreon subscriber doesn't work for you, but you're still curious as to some of the things that are going on, there's a way that you can follow us on Patreon.

[02:08:31] They don't make it very easy to find it, but there's a little menu and you can actually choose to follow. And they're going to be turning that into what they call free memberships, where you can hear previews of podcasts and you can see some snippets of our posts.

[02:08:46] So if that works for you just to stay connected, feel free to give us a follow or... Patreon is just going through a big brand remodel or something. And so hopefully they're going to make that a little bit easier, but yeah. All right, David. Yes.

[02:09:04] It is two hours and 11 minutes into this recording. Time to turn it off. And I'm not talking about Patreon remodels anymore. John, it's been a pleasure talking about this season with you. I think it's time to say... Agreed. It's time to say good night. Yep. All right.

[02:09:19] Well, you're going to head out now and I'm going to welcome Alicia. I'm going to go watch a movie. Okay. Hello, Alicia. Welcome to the pre-spoiler White Tower segment. What'd you think of the episode? Yeah, I think it was an absolutely packed finale.

[02:09:30] There was no time for L'Oreal to even properly greet anyone. Yeah, I think it's good that they left the Carrie Ann plots for season three and just concentrated on foam. I am bracing myself for how controversial some of the changes are going to be, but after

[02:09:47] watching it a second time, I am almost 100% on board. I'm very happy with it. It makes me feel pumped and excited in general, and definitely for season three. What about you? Cool. Yeah, I mean, everyone by now has heard my thoughts on it because I've just done probably

[02:10:04] an hour and a half podcast, but I was less hot on it than you, but I didn't not like it. I thought it was good. I thought it was a good finale. I didn't think it was operating at the same level as the rest of the season.

[02:10:16] I thought that most of the season was better than this. I think that it was generally good. I think book readers will like this less than non-book readers. Yeah, but I think it depends what they find most important because they definitely nailed some iconic book moments.

[02:10:33] How impressive by the way is the dog who plays Hopper, Carlos Pica? A female dog, by the way. Apparently, there was no CGI. That's just all dog acting. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, they did nail some moments.

[02:10:47] I think that there were mind boggling changes for me at some points, especially the Inktar stuff which we'll talk about in the spoiler section. That was a mind boggling change to me because I think they could have done it with another 10 seconds of screen time.

[02:11:07] I'm just not sure why they would skimp on that. It feels like almost deliberately sidestepping an iconic scene. I understand that feeling and that is actually the thing that I'm most scared about seeing the reaction to.

[02:11:22] But I am glad that in general, they didn't force some things to happen, that they didn't have time to build up the whole no jumping the gap, to put it in Ahsoka speak with Red's swordsmanship. Yeah, compared to Star Wars.

[02:11:36] Compared to Ahsoka, I'm over the moon with this episode. I'm glad there was no magical resolution of Nineeves' block. I'm ultimately okay with Inktar only getting a nod to his book arc, but I know that I'm much less invested in that character than some other people.

[02:11:52] So that's the one I'm like, we'll see. What did you think about the dragon banner twist? It was decent. I still think that we are shoehorning Moraine into places she doesn't need to be. I get it to a certain extent.

[02:12:09] But also I was thinking, this is actually way more impressive and easier to see than some cloth banner in this area. In some ways. I thought that the existence of the dragon banner was cool or the dragon flame was cool.

[02:12:26] But I don't know if Moraine was the one to do it. Her power level seems all over the place. That seems like something that only someone as powerful as Rand Ishmael, Lanfear should be able to do. I don't know, but it's just an illusion.

[02:12:41] It's just an illusion though. Not even as detailed as one as Ishmael did this episode where he tricked Matt. Right. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I'm curious about the reaction.

[02:12:55] I'm not sure how I feel, but I guess it makes more sense that I can imagine if they're trying to wave a piece of cloth in the air, that's just not going to look very impressive on screen. Right. Yeah, I hear you.

[02:13:07] No, I'm fine with how it looked. I think my only issue would be that who did it, but it didn't take me out of it either. It was fine. I just, I think that in general, you know my complaint of we cast such a big name for

[02:13:19] Moraine that we have to shoehorn her into everything even when she doesn't belong there for the story. I mean- Sometimes it feels like it's more for the service of the actor than the story. Okay, but I don't think it's more for the service of the actor per se.

[02:13:33] Of course it's there that she's an executive producer and a big name, but I think it's also from the audience's perspective that they want to see these characters they've been getting to know.

[02:13:43] They want to see them continue to play a big role, especially with such a big cast. You know, it's an overwhelming size of cast for a lot of new people, especially. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I like the ensemble cast.

[02:13:55] I think that it's good to have more of a focus on characters other than Rand earlier on. I don't know if I agree with all of their choices on who to focus on at what time. I think, and it's a preference thing. It's a judgment call thing.

[02:14:09] I don't think I could do better, honestly. I just don't know if I like it either. No, okay. Okay, that's fair. But hey, I'm very excited about the tease for next season because we got my favorite

[02:14:19] of the Forsaken showing up and we got confirmation that it was everything that everybody hoped. Leia Costa is Mogadishu. I thought of you as soon as I saw her. I was like, okay, at least she'll be happy. I might have like jumped up and cheered at the screen.

[02:14:35] Yeah. Well, that's good. That's great. Yeah. And it's exciting that they're all out, all six. We know one is Samael and we still have three left to confirm. Yep. Yep. And yeah, I'm glad that they confirmed Samael, which I don't know.

[02:14:52] Again, he's not that big of a character in the book. So I wonder if they're going to have to combine him with Robin or something. Yeah, I think so. Although my only question, well, okay, we'll save that for book spoilers. Yeah. Yeah, we got to be careful here.

[02:15:07] So yeah. All right. Let's let's head on to the book spoiler section. Before we do that, I just want to mention you will be on the full season wrap up with us. So people will get a lot more of your thoughts, including spoiler free thoughts on that.

[02:15:22] So if you are enjoying Alicia, come back for the season wrap up, which will be out in about a week. All right, Alicia, time for a quick break when you when we get back, we're going to talk full book spoilers and we're back.

[02:15:54] Alicia, we are going to talk full book spoilers now down to the end of the series at the end of Book 14. So if you don't want those begun with you and come back for the season wrap. Alicia, what are your spoilery thoughts on this episode?

[02:16:12] Okay, well, Hopper finally died. Not happy about it, but the bandaid's been ripped off. Do you think they should have given us the wolf dream tease to soothe animal loving souls this season? No, no. You think it's good to leave it like that? Lots of feelable loss.

[02:16:29] All right. It just seems like I think the only problem is that the first season finale, which we acknowledge, you know, got beaten with the covid stick as I've seen it put that that had too many fake out deaths.

[02:16:41] And obviously this is a canon one and this is exactly as it should be. But I just wonder if it won't if people will be annoyed after all the stuff like Loyal and Uno and stuff last season. I don't I don't think so.

[02:16:56] I don't consider this a fake out death because Hopper did die. Yeah. Hopper will just introduce a new plane. That's true. I know that's not that's not a fake out. That's a new piece of lore that we've already had teased anyway this season. Right, right.

[02:17:10] OK, no, that's that's fair. And I'm very I guess maybe I'm just like as much as we can get all the dreaming stuff, the sooner the better. That's just my general philosophy. Yeah, the dreaming stuff is certainly one of the most unique parts of the Wheel of Time

[02:17:24] and something that I think is the strongest part of it. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It makes it stand out. Yeah, and we got also another thing that makes it stand out as an Age of Legends.

[02:17:36] And we didn't get to see any joke cards this time, but we got to see some Sympathy for the Devil, lose I'm sorry, lose locking up Ishamael, let Lily lick lollipops and lose locking up. Yeah, that was cool. It did.

[02:17:54] They really leaned into the whole these people were friends. I think that's actually an aspect that's not that emphasized in the books. But I think I do think it's a strong one. You know, they talk about later.

[02:18:06] Did lose end up turning his friends to the dark with his behavior? And they do make him look like a bit of a jerk in this scene. You know, yeah, yeah.

[02:18:14] I guess on the one hand, he doesn't he thinks that if he kills if he locks, he just arrogant. Yeah. And I guess we know that he's arrogant. And he thinks that he can keep him locked up forever.

[02:18:26] And that's better than taking the risk of what Ishamael will be in his next life, right? He thinks he can make it the last last battle. Right. And he just can't and I and I think what what Rand has over lose in the end is that he submits

[02:18:42] to his role, right in the wheel. And and he understands that he this will happen again. But for now, it's enough to solve the problem for today. It does make me wonder if maybe that's, you know, it's a blessing that he wasn't raised. Rand wasn't raised IEL.

[02:19:01] He wasn't raised in the palace. He ended up being adopted and raised in a small backwater town. And maybe that made him more humble. Right. And by a really kind man, right? Yes. By a man who taught him balance and kindness and humility. Yeah, like you said. Yeah.

[02:19:20] It's funny that Lou said that this seal not even I will be able to break and then, you know, cut to last season finale ran breaking that very seal. I guess Luz himself didn't break it, but it's basically the same. Yeah, that's yes.

[02:19:36] He's a nice guy after all. Yep. Yep. He is. Yeah. And so we also got speaking of Forsaken, we got some more teases of Lanfears talents. We got a more direct look at traveling. And it seems she's one of the ones.

[02:19:52] It's a talent in this universe to be able to detect that a woman has power without her channeling. Yeah. So so can I ask you, Rafe was on. I see people dissecting Rafe's comments right on Twitter, how he's saying, oh, there was

[02:20:07] a really important weave in episode seven. What was that traveling? Is that what you were saying? That's what I thought. OK, I think that's right. I think that that Lanfear knows how to travel.

[02:20:19] Yeah, well, we saw her, you know, she's she calls she channels in the ways and rants like, watch out, you're going to call out Moshin Chin and she's Moshin whatever, however you say it. And she's like, well, actually, I have a better way to travel.

[02:20:35] I just can't carry this extra dead weight and then they disappear. So. Right. Right. Yeah. So why did she drop them off just outside FOMLO? Yeah, I mean, it does. I do have like some minor quibbles with that.

[02:20:51] It goes back to your whole question of like, why did it have to be Moraine? I don't know, because it's best for the audience and someone they know. And that, yeah, that was just a convenient plot point.

[02:21:01] Like, let's see, how did she know that Moraine needed to be X amount of distance from FOMLO so that she could, you know, raise that dragon at the right time? Right. Yeah, I mean, I could understand not wanting it to be Rand because you want him to still

[02:21:16] be hesitant to be the dragon. Right. But wouldn't it have been cool to have it be like a Gwaine? You know, somebody who knows him and is starting to accept. But a Gwaine was busy. A Gwaine was busy. Yeah. Yeah. She was tied up. Yeah.

[02:21:30] But yeah, we also got as far as book changes, book foreshadowing, book direct adaptation. I don't know. We got an Ashandarai tease where I thought that was clever, where Matt, you know, tied the dagger to a pole. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[02:21:52] But it is interesting that Fane seems to be able to just handle the dagger freely. So I guess this must be telling us that the corruption is deep in his soul because we see this dagger just absolutely sliced through everything else and corrupts, like send that

[02:22:06] black goo all over the horn box later. Yeah, yeah. I was a little bit peeved by Fane seemingly having no effect from the dagger. I mean, I have to. That was so pointed. It has to be on purpose. Yeah, the Ashandarai. How are you saying it?

[02:22:26] Because I heard Ashandarai in the audiobooks. Honestly, that's probably correct. You have the audio. We'll find out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We'll find out because they've also changed things from the audiobooks too. So who knows?

[02:22:41] But yeah, I thought it was a cool way to sort of bring that in earlier, but also have it linked to the dagger. Right. I kind of like how Matt gave him the wound. I think that was cool. Yeah, that was an ugly wound.

[02:22:58] I mean, that was uglier than I pictured it in the books, which honestly is good. I mean, you know, bad, but right. It looks evil. Right. Yeah. It's ugly. Like that's going to hurt him forever.

[02:23:11] Yeah, I think that they did a really good job portraying that and portraying that, you know, he was healed, but he wasn't. And that's that's going to be a recurring thing.

[02:23:22] And I think they should keep in where, you know, like a lot of a lot of bonds him and goes, how do you live with that pain? You know, how do you live with that on a daily basis? Right. Right. And I believe that looking at that wound.

[02:23:34] Yeah. So to assuage the fears of book fans, do you still think we're getting the full dagger healed? The fight with the track and brothers and the fins? OK, the fins, yes. OK, because you need the tower of midnight or.

[02:23:54] Yeah, I mean, that would be a silly thing to skip. Yeah. The the Gowan fight. I hope I hope and I think there's a possibility there because we haven't even met the characters yet. Yeah, I think start of season three would be perfect. They have to do stuff.

[02:24:12] What was the third thing that you asked me about? Oh, it's going to be fully influenced by the dagger. Oh, healed by it. Just like, yeah, I get that. Get out of here. Um.

[02:24:22] I don't know if they're going to heal him again, because I think that they should make that triumph meaningful, his resistance to it. OK, but I think that the I said I should lock it up. I think that dagger needs to go away a little bit. Yeah.

[02:24:34] And then, yeah, I think that they need to resolve why pain didn't react to it. But I have to assume that's being set up because they made it so clear like this dagger is poisoned to everything and everyone except this man. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:24:48] And I think does have it long term in the book, doesn't he? He gets it back from the I said I somebody. And we haven't even seen him start to really go nuts. Yeah. Yeah. I love unhinged fame.

[02:24:59] I think actually, I think he's underused in the last few books. Yeah. And I mean, I like the idea that he was being set up to be the next dark one, which is the theory I subscribe to. OK.

[02:25:12] Like if Rand kills the dark one, right, then fame would become the dark one. Interesting. Yeah. But other than that, I think he was kind of wasted in the last few books. So hopefully they do something more interesting with him in the show. Yeah.

[02:25:24] And I've seen this actor play unhinged in other shows and he's really up for it. So. OK. Yeah. Nice. Speaking of unhinged, we saw a little bit more sadism in Nineveh and Egwene that we have in the books or previously. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:25:41] Nineveh especially was just so dark and torturing. And yeah, you know, in the book, she's so uncomfortable with being a Sulam and in the show she's like, she's like more power. Yeah, exactly. Power. Yeah.

[02:25:54] The Egwene thing that made sense to me because, you know, where do we see her unleash? We see her unleash in the white cloaks who tortured her in Perrin and we see her unleash on the Sulam for obvious reasons. So absolutely. Yeah. But Nineveh I was surprised by.

[02:26:07] I don't know that I didn't dislike it. I just, you know, I was like, OK, going dark. Yeah, I think that first of all, I've said that I I like the idea of Nineveh flirting with the darkness as an easy way past her block.

[02:26:23] And I think that this might be a hint towards that or at least hinting that there's some kind of darkness within her, which I think there is even in the books. I think that she has an anger that doesn't lend itself to the light.

[02:26:33] You know, she you know, even even when she knows for a fact that Moraine is on their side, she just wants some weird revenge against her. Yeah. Until like until basically she's presumed dead. I personally did not see that in the books.

[02:26:48] But since you had said that previously, I did think about you when I saw that. I was like, well, yeah, this is definitely showing that. Yeah, that's obviously more there in the books because, you know, the the people who are

[02:27:02] writing this, you know, Sarah and Rafe, they see that too, obviously. Right. Yeah. Right. So I'm all for that change. I think you do not need Rana. Just kill her. Fine. You know, she shows up later a little bit, but it's not very meaningful.

[02:27:17] Yeah, show only fans, I think, are going to love that she goes out because she's obviously earned a lot of hatred. But the only thing is it it means that it's not necessarily exposed to Seuroth that that the Soldams can actually channel.

[02:27:37] Yeah, I do like that they did that. I wonder who's going to know, though, because everyone's dead, right? Exactly. So it becomes a secret. But then also, like the one who finds them is Alwyn, and she uses that as blackmail to become Seuroth's voice.

[02:27:54] But she's already Seuroth's voice in the show. So I yeah, I can see the streamlining. But that makes me wonder if that's going to be a card that they play later to reveal that. Yeah.

[02:28:06] Well, because you have the mat with Tuan too, where he's like, hey, you can channel, dude, you got to stop with this slavery thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I like that Egwene saved herself. You and I talked about that previously privately.

[02:28:21] But I yeah, I think the breakup next season is going to be so awkward, especially with we find we saw the Randall Lane meet cute here. What did you think of that? Guardian Angel. Yeah, that was it was fine. It was fine.

[02:28:37] It was kind of cheesy, but it was fun. I really like he's like, who are you? And she goes, Elaine, like, like, why are you even asking right now? Like, I'm trying to save your life, buddy. I'm the person who can heal. Yeah, right. Right.

[02:28:49] She seemed almost like offended that he asked. Yeah. Yeah, she was really coming off as the nice girl in comparison to the others this episode. But what was up with the Okay, so she got shot in the leg with the arrow.

[02:29:03] And I understand you don't want to pull the tip of the arrow out. But why was naive pushing the feather fletching through her leg as well? Because whoever wrote that scene didn't have first aid training.

[02:29:14] I have to say, my mom and I were disagreeing about what naive said after that, because you know, we don't have subtitles and the sound mixing isn't the greatest on the screeners. And so we had to rewatch that pushing the fletching through the leg several times as

[02:29:28] we tried to rewind and figure out what she was saying after that. Like, no. Fair enough. Yeah, it was. I think it was fine to have her, you know, have this injury. It was it was slowing them down. And yeah, yeah. Added to the dramatic tension. Yeah, yeah.

[02:29:44] Fair, fair. Yeah, we finally got the full makeup between Maureen and Len. Now the unmasking ceremony was lovely. Very elaborate, though. And it made me wonder, you know, are Alana and Maxim doing this every time before they fight or have sex? Was that unmasking or was that rebonding?

[02:30:04] Was the bond like severed for some reason at some point? I don't. Could it have been severed? I don't know. I don't know. I it seemed to me like it was bonding again. OK, but I don't know. I don't know. You're right.

[02:30:18] I don't have any reason to be like it's. Yeah. Also, they were absolutely going to make out like in 10 more seconds of being together. A lot of a lot of tension there. Yeah.

[02:30:27] We didn't get a nine eve makeup, but actually I didn't even think about it until like I was halfway through the second watch. We got that nice land you've seen earlier in the season and I'm happy to wait for season three for more. Yep.

[02:30:41] Yeah, I think it was a slow burn in the book. Leave it a slow burn. Yeah. So speaking of the masking thing, though, did you have you heard this whole Maxim is a dark friend theory going around now? I am not.

[02:30:53] In season three, while they're all like in the courtyard of the palace in Kyrie and Maxim is leaning and he is fiddling with a hand and he sticks his thumb through his two fingers, four fingers. And in the books, that's a dark friend sign.

[02:31:09] And I went back and watched it today. And two people clocked that he's doing that and kind of like make a half eye contact with him. And those two people are Viren and Joya. So I'm yeah, to me, this is this theory is gaining traction. Yeah.

[02:31:26] And is Maxim going to die now at some point? And was he the border that died for a lot of? Yeah, I mean, it was a different name. They called him Owen. But yeah. All right. It's basically this or a wine, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah.

[02:31:43] And also another question about the bond. They seem to indeed be able to almost read each other's minds because Moraine says you're thinking about land fear. Yeah. And I think that's a mistake to make it that deep because it cheapens who is a dark friend.

[02:32:02] Yeah, but maybe that's why Maxim's been actually hiding the bond with Alana the whole time. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. And but yeah, I wish they left that for, you know, the twist of, oh, if they bond each

[02:32:15] other, then they could read each other's minds. Right. Right. That's true. That would have added an extra layer. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. I mean, I think that's something something that I always liked about the Wheel of Time's

[02:32:25] magic system is that it gets built upon throughout the series in a very natural way. And that was a very natural evolution for me. Right. Right. No, that makes sense. But I do like how they set up a parallel between, you know, having these besties back in the

[02:32:43] day land fear, Shamaya, Luz and having the modern these just like these kids today, as the timeline says, and the implication that Luz turned his old friends to the dark side. I don't know.

[02:32:57] Yeah, I mean, I think that's just a shaman's interpretation, but I like that tension that creates. Yeah, I agree. I agree. What do you so we kind of talked about it offline, but what did you think of the Turok duel?

[02:33:13] The fact that it was it wasn't even really a duel? Yeah, I think it was fine. I think it was fine. You said this on Discord, but basically Rand is not as practiced in the show on sword fighting.

[02:33:24] It would have been kind of silly for him to win a fight against a true master swordsman. Right? Yeah, I'm glad they didn't kind of fake it. But yeah, and the only survivors, Aki Kutabe, who, by the way, is also Diogo Obvious in solo silo.

[02:33:39] And he sort of committed a dagger seppuku, which looked horrible. Yeah. And that's something from the books, too, right? Yeah, it just shows how brainwashed they are. Yeah. But I know you were you were less happy about Ingtar you were saying. Ingtar just made me mad.

[02:33:58] Like you could have just had him, you know, explain to Perrin for like 10 seconds because they set it up earlier where he's like, oh, you don't know why. Why this person? Yeah. I thought that was such a nice setup. Yeah. You had. Yeah, it was completely set up.

[02:34:14] You needed a 10 to 20 second conversation with Perrin and then it was done. But then they gave us the opening instead, which, to be honest, it was nice to see the opening. But if we could have had that minute more of time, if that's what it comes down to,

[02:34:25] then I would have taken that. You're not on cable. We could have made it another minute long. I don't understand. There's no excuse for that. It's not even like something that requires a budget. Right. It's not an expensive piece.

[02:34:36] It's a piece of dialogue that you could do in the alleyway. Right. Right. And I mean, I wonder it feels like they probably cut stuff out. Like we know that we know that they cut out that Min vision.

[02:34:49] So we have we got a spoiler in the do not spoil section for Episode seven. But let's not even say because they're going to people actually, no, because it's not going to happen again. Right. Well, no, because now it's already the right thing.

[02:35:04] Min had a vision of Ishamael dying. Right. Right. Right. So and now that's happened. So you're right. OK, let's let's let's say it. Yeah. I mean, I can see that Rafe Judkins, the showrunner, made an allusion to there being a deleted scene having to do with Min's vision.

[02:35:20] So I'm assuming it's that. So but yeah, I just I wonder if they cut things out of this episode, too. Yeah. Yeah, I think probably. And I understand the need to do that. These are long episodes, but yeah, I also I think that people are too sensitive about

[02:35:40] that. I mean, like look at Stranger Things. I'm not saying the fact that some episodes were less than an hour. Some episodes were 90 minutes. It's people want the story to be told the way it wants to be told. Right. And and the last of us, same thing.

[02:35:53] You got a 45 minute finale. You had a 90 minute opening episode. Right. I don't in the era of streaming, you do not need to be as cautious as you needed to be on network television.

[02:36:02] And I don't understand why we're still playing these kinds of games of, oh, we got to cut this here. If it is dragging, if it's dragging, if it feels too long, fine. But I don't understand how something like Inktar needs to get cut.

[02:36:18] You know, that's something that that's fascinating, I think. And that that adds a whole like people we love and people we trust could be dark friends. And also the other question of if you pledge yourself from the dark, is there a way back?

[02:36:31] But yeah, I do find that that interesting and is good to in the books that we got his redemption arc. But I am wondering, like every episode has pretty much been an hour and six minutes. Exactly.

[02:36:44] So that makes me wonder, is there a certain limit put on it from? I don't even know what. From a CEO entrepreneur born in 1964. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway. So we also but we did find time to get another glimpse of Bail Dumont.

[02:37:01] So I'm excited about that, obviously. And we find out that Celine sold him the Coin DR from her own broken seal. She was like either setting him up or setting Moraine up. Yeah. And that's that's a great question, too. Like why if she wants Moraine dead?

[02:37:18] Why does she beat her back in? Yeah. Yeah. She she seems to like to toy with Moraine. Maybe it's like a cat toying with the mouse, but I don't know. Yeah. And it's funny that when she finds Bail, he seems to be like looting from some vendors

[02:37:36] while the battle's going on. He's just like quietly taking some stuff and putting it in his bag. Yeah. Bail's sliminess has always been fun. Yeah. And I guess he's still just like waiting on the boat instead of for the Wonder Girls. He's waiting for Lanfear.

[02:37:51] So I'm guessing next season they just have to pick up same day. Maybe, maybe. They definitely could. And I would be fine with that. Yeah, I'll be happy. And I just want to shout out Lanfear was wearing a really cool piece of jewelry, like a dragon

[02:38:09] wrapped around her ear. I don't know if that has any more symbolic meaning other than obviously her attachment to the dragon. But I have a similar piece of jewelry and I like it. That's funny. Cool. Yeah. For Surroth.

[02:38:25] Now, Ishamael said to her that she needed to get her strongest channelers, her strongest Suldom and Damani out to the ships. And obviously that was to shield Rand. But it did make me realize that we still don't know her motivation for joining the dark side.

[02:38:49] So I'm very curious what that's going to be. Yeah, I love that Matt shows up. And first of all, I think he should have recognized Loyal because they did meet before he didn't go through the gateway. But and obviously, you know, gear is memorable.

[02:39:07] But I was personally quite happy with the whole horn sequence. What did you think? Yeah, I thought it was good. At first I was like, why are they solid? But then when they were doing the effect of, you know, the blurred motion, I thought that was cool.

[02:39:21] It was a cool way to do it. It was, you know, it wasn't just standard ghostly fixtures or whatever. I like that they slow mode everything else to like give it a breather, give a moment. You like the slow mo? My mom didn't, but I like it.

[02:39:32] I hated the slow mo. I thought that I thought that it just overused slow mo is like one of my pet peeves. And that might just be a me problem. But it just like makes you go, all right, can we get to the next thing? All right.

[02:39:45] This was literally like a mystical effect of it. This wasn't just doing it for visual effect. This was an actual thing happening in the world where Matt and the heroes were moving

[02:39:53] in real time, but everything else slowed down so that we had a moment to register what was happening and interact with these new faces. I still hated it. Yeah, fair. I mean, it didn't ruin it for me. I'm just like, I just don't like the effect. Okay.

[02:40:08] No, fair. Um, I love the variety of the heroes looks though. We definitely saw Amarasu and Arthur and what looked like Brigitte or Brigitte. I, I don't know. I did not love her look, but I think it was just a bad wig that they would hopefully fix.

[02:40:27] And next to her was Uno. And since he's next to her, I'm wondering if that he genuinely could be a reincarnation of God. Okay. Yeah, I think that that's very possible. He is pretty ugly. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

[02:40:41] But no, I think he fits the description. He's rough enough. Yeah. Right. Yeah. He's gruff. I agree. Yeah. Because that's a nice thing. And we find out that Matt himself is a hero of the horn, which makes sense to me because

[02:40:54] yeah, that's why he has these, this old tongue in his head and everything. Man, but I, I, I kind of don't like it. That's, that's one change. It didn't like, I didn't hate it, but it kind of bothered me because one of my favorite

[02:41:09] humorous moments, like what some of the best humor in it is in the last battle when Matt's like, am I one of you? one of them goes, I knew it. I knew you were gonna ask. And it just like left ambiguous and I love it.

[02:41:21] Okay. Yeah, I actually that would have I since you brought that up previously, that would have been a great interaction to have with Dr. Hawking. Yeah. Right. That would have been great in this episode even. Yeah,

[02:41:31] yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And we got that cheesy speech from loyal, which, you know, I kind of have to giggle at warmly where he's like, we are all heroes of another age.

[02:41:42] Yeah, yeah. A little cringe. A little bit. Yeah. But I guess it's, I mean, I guess it's explaining like the uno Matt thing, but I hope they just really do lean into it. I don't

[02:41:52] know. I think Matt needed his his thing and being not just the one who happened to blow the horn, but being tied to it in some way, I think is a nice touch. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:42:10] Now, yeah, about the we also got a reference to there's a prophecy above the watchers shall the dragon be proclaimed bannered across the sky and fire. So that was nice that it was actually literal fire. But and I liked how Joffrey or sorry, what's his name? Jofram?

[02:42:29] How do you say his name? Jofram. Jofram. Yeah. Anyway, Daddy Bornhold. May he rest in peace. Don't have to worry about him anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I love that whole sequence, by the way, with Hopper. And then, you know, I was cheering

[02:42:46] Peranon to kill him after that. And then you understand his son sees it and that just sets everything up perfectly. But we also got even though he was a nicer one, he's still talking

[02:42:55] about prophecies are just the lies of long dead witches. So he's just as biased as everyone else. But he says something else interesting. He talks about how they got a please to come and help from

[02:43:07] the watchers on the waves, which in the book is called the watchers over the waves. And maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I was wondering if like the fact that they're on the waves could

[02:43:18] mean that in this turning, that'll be like a special function of the Seafolk. Maybe. Yeah, that's a good call. And we also got I missed it the first watch, but on the second watch, Avienda did say did proclaim the Karakhan because of the dragon banner.

[02:43:36] No, I noticed that right away. That's pretty fun. Yeah, that's pretty fun. We got the name drop. Although do you think she got convinced too quickly? I mean, it was I missed it the first time. So that was really like came and went

[02:43:49] really quickly. I think a lot of people miss it, especially if you're not, you know, attuned to knowing what that word is. Yeah, I think. Oh, no, I mean, do you think that she got convinced

[02:43:58] too quickly? That is a car. Yeah. Although maybe maybe you can say she's not convinced. She's just like, I finally found the sign I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah. I think she was looking for

[02:44:08] specific things. And if they're laid out for her, I'm fine with that. No sense. Do you know? Do you know David got spoiled for him? He said this on our podcast that Avienda is a lover of Rand.

[02:44:18] Oh, no. How did he find out? He Googled her and I told him, Oh, right. Yeah. Don't do that. Don't do that. Yeah. Oh, and yeah, I hope the land stands who have been complaining this season are happy to

[02:44:33] see him go full ward or this episode. He was he was pretty badass. He fought off the entire, you know, platoon of death troopers. Yeah. Yeah. And then they left us with the setup for next

[02:44:46] season is all the forsaken are loose, Moggy and all. Do you think who do you think we'll see next? We've had Grandel and Samuel both name dropped. I think that some male with I think we'll see

[02:45:00] some male because we still have to see Gowan and Gillad. And I think that it would be a good way to introduce them like they're coming and mother's been hanging out with this new guy. And yeah,

[02:45:11] I think that would be I think they'll put some male in Robin's spot. OK, OK. Yeah, I could see them totally merging them. Yeah. And I still wonder if we're going

[02:45:21] to get some marriage or if we do get some male and Robin. Yeah, I kind of hope that they merge them because like I don't know, I don't need Robin and Samal. Robin's barely in it. Samal

[02:45:34] is kind of boring. Yeah. All right. And how long do you think until we get more than and do you think it'll be far as far as or a different actor? I hope it's a different actor. Not that I

[02:45:46] don't like Ferris Ferris, but it should be different. It should be a different vibe. And what I'm looking for. I always thought it was like young, sarcastic man, whereas Ishamel is always like older, wiser, forsaken.

[02:46:02] OK. OK. Yeah, I mean, this is definitely, you know, he was ready to die. He was depressed a little tongue in cheek. I hope, yeah, Moradin should have a new verve for life. But yeah,

[02:46:20] I wouldn't mind if it was Ishamel or if it was Ferris Ferris with like a different hairdo. Ferris Ferris and a wig. Yeah, yeah. Make him blonde. I don't care. No, I like how because Moradin like helps Rand a little bit. He's not as like, you know,

[02:46:34] he's very long game rather than rather than Ishamel, who's very right. Let's just get right out of the picture right now. Right. Right. Let's just end this all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All

[02:46:46] right. Yeah. I mean, overall, I guess you don't seem that unhappy, if not as ecstatic as me. Yeah. No, I liked the episode and I'll make that clear in the main episode. We haven't recorded

[02:46:59] it yet, but I did enjoy the episode. I think that I would have made some decisions differently, but overall it did the job and overall it wrapped things up nicely. Again, I don't think it was

[02:47:11] quite as good as the last few episodes, but it was it was still very good. Yeah. Okay. No, that's fair. That's fair. I can't wait to see what happens when this comes out tonight.

[02:47:23] Yeah. And finales are hard. So I have sympathy for the writers. You got to tie up everything nicely, but without tipping your hand too early, it's hard and it's not something I know how to do.

[02:47:32] So I'm here in my office chair just complaining. So yeah. And I liked it a lot. You know, this season is better than last year. Yes, this season is an accomplishment, especially after last season. So, yeah, you and I will be talking at length on the season wrap.

[02:47:49] I think it's mostly going to be you and me. David's just going to come in for a brief bit. Okay. So let's save our season thoughts for then we can break the wheel then. For now. Yeah. Let's let's leave the wheel running for one more week.

[02:48:02] Let Rand be the one who turns the wheel. All right. See you, Alicia. See you. Good night. The Lore Hounds podcast is produced and published by the Lore Hounds. You can send questions, feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad free access to all our

[02:48:19] episodes at patreon.com slash the lore house. Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side green or black.

[02:48:43] John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting. I thought this is where HBO wanted us to pick sides and fight and stuff.

[02:48:57] Don't worry. I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore. It was made

[02:49:07] for the Lore Hounds. And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the dance of the dragons. And with the season pass option in

[02:49:17] Supercast, listeners can get early ad free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lore Hounds podcast feed each week for our dragon fire hot, but probably positive

[02:49:32] takes. The Lore Hounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heart in conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin.

[02:49:42] Dragon seeds may experience burning.