The Wheel of Time - Season 2 Wrap-up

[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 1, 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.

[00:01:00] 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. We're the Lorehounds, your guides to Randland. I'm David. I'm John, and this is our coverage of the Amazon Prime fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. In this podcast, we're going to discuss the entirety of Season 2 and our hopes for Season 3.

[00:01:51] Be sure to stick around to the end of the podcast for programming notes about our October podcasting schedule, followed by the White Tower segment where Alicia, Sadiah, and I dive a little deeper into the lore of the books.

[00:02:03] For early access, ad-free episodes and exclusive content, visit us at patreon.com slash the lorehounds. Also, if you are enjoying what we're doing, we would like to ask you to consider leaving us a rating and review.

[00:02:19] Apple Podcasts is the best place as it helps us raise our profile even as far away as the Aiel Wastes. John, this is the last time I get to say that for this season. There you go. There you go. Well, you've mastered it now.

[00:02:33] I haven't mastered the weave, but I've mastered the pronunciation of Aiel. There you go. Specifically for The Wheel of Time, we have a special feed set up for it. Just Wheel of Time content, so if you're only interested in that content, you can subscribe to that channel.

[00:02:48] But we may be away for a while, so make sure to check out our main feed, The Lorehounds, which you can find on YouTube, Spotify, or any podcasting platform.

[00:02:57] As well, feedback. We'll keep the WOT email address active, so if you've got any final thoughts you want to send in, feel free to do so, and then we'll keep that available for season three.

[00:03:11] But we've got a Discord, and there's a good place to chat about the show ongoingly there. Yeah, Alicia has recruited Twitter of Time to our Discord. We have quite a lot of discourse on Discord. I'm doing the lights work. There you go.

[00:03:33] All right. Send emails to WOT at the lorehounds.com as David mentioned, or you can head to our website and either use the voicemail feature or the contact form. You can also post a message on our Discord server, and we are chatting away over there.

[00:03:48] Seems like hot. I couldn't even keep up with what was going on this weekend. Yeah, it's crazy stuff.

[00:03:53] And with us today is Elisa Sedai, co-host of the White Tower segment, who's going to be here for the full episode to help us break down the season and answer a little fan feedback. Welcome back, Alicia. Thanks so much for all that you did this season.

[00:04:10] I hope you guys had fun in the White Tower running around the hallways and maybe running through a few arches and whatnot. I hope no arches. I'm a little afraid of the arches. What are those? Tangriel? Tarangriel. Tarangriel. I got close. Yeah, playing with some Tarangriel artifacts.

[00:04:26] It's not Tang. We're not going to space with orange juice. Mmm, delicious. Maybe that's season five. Well, it is. Isn't there a timey-wimey aspect to this body of work?

[00:04:40] It's more cyclical than timey-wimey. It's not like we're going back and forth in time. There's more just like, this has happened before and will happen again. Could you say it's a wheel?

[00:04:51] Oh, yes. We did get a taste of the mirror world. So that's more like, it's not really a multiverse like you're going to see in Marvel or DC. But it's a multiversal aspect that will be further explained in future seasons.

[00:05:06] Mirror world. There's dreams and there's ways. There's future and past. Yes. Okay, I'm just going to buckle up. At least I got Loki to help me. All these things shall weave together. They will at some point.

[00:05:20] Yep. Yep. All right. I think it's time for some general thoughts on the season. How about we start with our guest, Alicia? Yeah, I mean, I'm very enthusiastic about the show in general. It's my favorite story and I love the adaptation. It's my favorite show.

[00:05:37] So I just love all of the layers of everything. I have a brain that craves complexity and the show delivers. We have a lot of political nuance and complex characters and just a really nice balance between politics, drama and spectacle.

[00:05:56] Yeah, I think it's a great one for puzzle lovers. And if they say that a story is only as good as its villain, this has some of the best, most iconic and original villains on television.

[00:06:09] And the action scenes, yeah, for me, that's not usually my favorite part. I get bored during action scenes if I'm not emotionally invested. But they managed to do that and it makes it fun for me to watch and actually rewatch them, which is something I rarely do.

[00:06:25] Yeah, I love the musical score, John. I know you disagree. We got feedback on it. Yeah, I mean, I love Lorne Balfe in general and I think what he's done here, it is a mix of, you know, it blends into Tchaikovsky in my head.

[00:06:44] Yeah, sometimes you can hear it clearly in your head. It just doesn't come out of the mouth hole.

[00:06:48] No, I have Swan Lake in my head all the time and it starts to blend together with the theme of a Gawain in my brain. And it works so well together.

[00:06:58] And I think that's perfect for The Wheel of Time because it is about, as David was saying, this cyclical past and future coming together and how it's not our past, it's not our future, it's both.

[00:07:11] Yeah, and of course, I have to say the costumes have also been just extremely superlative, original. Sharon Gillum deserves so many Emmys. I will say though that the show needs maps. I wish that they would just borrow from Rings of Power on that. Just do the map transitions.

[00:07:32] Yeah, that was good. That was good when they did that. They just panned the camera over the map. Yeah, it definitely needs geography. I got really lost several times in the season.

[00:07:41] Yeah, and I completely get that. And that's one of the great things about the books, you know, is I'm always flipping back to... I even have like a permanent tab open on my phone that's like the map of this world. And you're a hardcore reader, right?

[00:07:55] Yeah, exactly. So I can picture it, but I understand when people complain that they can't. And yeah, this is just the beginning. Like, you know, just like the books, this is just getting going.

[00:08:05] And season three, I think is guaranteed to be even better. Just knowing the source material and just seeing how they've moved all the pieces into place so far. So very enthusiastic. Not saying it's perfect. I have my quibbles, but for me, it's my favorite show for sure.

[00:08:21] I was just going to add that I'm currently listening to the audio book of book four, because I'm excited for season three. And I honestly forgot how packed that book is. Yeah.

[00:08:33] There is a ton in there. And they basically said, Ralph Juskin said, we're going to do a faithful adaptation of book four in season three. So I'm really excited to see how he does this. Because there's like three interwoven big storylines in that book. Yeah.

[00:08:49] And three big climaxes. Like you could have three finales, and I would be happy. It's interesting that you say, did he say adaptation? Because isn't he the guy who said inspiration versus adaptation is a thing? No, that was Brandon Sanderson who wrote the...

[00:09:04] I keep forgetting that. I can never remember. Yeah, he wrote the last three books. That's right. That's right. Yeah. No, Rafe did say, we want to do a pretty straight adaptation of book four for season three. Interesting. Yeah. Wow. That's setting some expectations. Yeah. For folks.

[00:09:21] Yeah, definitely. And it is very... Like I said, there are three huge big set pieces that I think you could devote an episode to each and it would be awesome. Or you could interweave them.

[00:09:31] I think they're going to start in the same location that they start in the books and just combine because they didn't do the end of three. So I think they're going to combine that with the start of the season. And yeah. Well, we haven't even been there, right?

[00:09:45] Well, kind of. We've seen it in the background. Yeah. Alicia, what have you heard? Are you tracking behind the scenes information about production? We understand that they did start or maybe even finish season three filming.

[00:10:01] They are very far into it. I think there was some press recently that suggested that they're going for an early 2025 release date for the next season. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

[00:10:14] I know that they were very far into it when the writer strike started and the writing and acting strike kind of stopped them in their tracks. So they're getting back into it. I don't know how far they are now.

[00:10:26] Yeah. Well, I know there's been some releases of like, you know, we know now that certain actors are on set so we can discuss that in the spoiler section. Yeah. Well, anyway, David, give us your general thoughts.

[00:10:40] Well, I'm not going to lie. I definitely struggled at the beginning of the season. There was just so much. And I'm, you know, I'm fantasy literate. I'm sci-fi literate. I consider myself a genre fan.

[00:10:57] And it was hard for me to really pick up the world. I could recognize faces, but then trying to what city are they in and who is this new character person and who are they referencing?

[00:11:14] There was just a lot to uptake. That said, by the end of the season, I was pretty happy. I was entertained. It really, they really landed. I think the finale, there's some nits to pick in the finale.

[00:11:31] But I think overall, yeah, I was satisfied with the season. I was entertained. The question of whether I would have stuck through this show had I not been podcasting about it? That's an open question. I'm not really sure where I would have landed.

[00:11:53] If I had gotten to episode, I probably would have tried it out and I would have gotten a few episodes in. And unless I had a good friend, trusted source, somebody really dragging me into it saying, no, no, no, stick with it, stick with it, stick with it. It's going to pay off.

[00:12:08] I might've abandoned the season a little bit of the ways in just because of that wall of information and character and geography that just felt like pretty average fantasy soup. And that is somebody who's, again, I'm not a book reader. I was very unaware of the series.

[00:12:32] And I'm not trying to be critical of performance or anything like that. It was just a level of impenetrability unless you stuck with it. So from what I gather of fans, everybody's really happy. And so I'm not saying anything about the inspiration or adaptation of the work. I'm just saying coming into it, it was quite a lot.

[00:12:56] That said, there are times in the season where the quality of the writing and the acting were really superb. And I don't know that I would maybe have those peaks as high as an HBO top quality show, but pretty close, pretty close. I'm trying not to take offense.

[00:13:20] Yeah, and I don't want to be offensive. I'm not at all trying to be offensive. I'm just trying to be an honest reaction, my honest reaction to just coming really fresh into this world. There are other times where there was a couple of plot lines and a couple of scenes where, ooh, this wasn't really great. And so for me, the show was very uneven in that way, along with the VFX.

[00:13:47] There were times when the VFX were amazing, the magic and the weave. They put a lot of effort and money behind that. That looked great. And then there's other action scenes that were just mundane. They were just pretty basic. It's a character walking down a medieval fantasy road with some air cannons and some pyrotechnics. And it was pretty flat.

[00:14:10] You think that the HBO, for instance, House of the Dragon, you think that the special effects are more consistent and it doesn't often look like they're on the volume?

[00:14:21] Yeah, I would say that the VFX. So, okay, well, let's talk practical effects versus VFX, I should say. Like I said, the weave looked great and there were some beautiful drone shots. Well, that drone shots are practical. That's a whole other thing. So that was fine. But then there were other, there were scenes early on, maybe episode two, I think, where Rand was fighting the, I don't know, the dragon.

[00:14:51] Apologies, the name of the creature. The Mirdral.

[00:14:53] Yeah, the Mirdral, where it just looked off to me. The backdrop just looked off. And now, granted, I was watching screeners, so I could have, that could be that. But then there was another scene where they were standing on a cliff and I was just like, oh, there's something off there. And then some practical, the fight scenes all seemed pretty good. We didn't get that many overall.

[00:15:17] But the choreography was great. But then, like, Lanfear walking down the town street and just sort of air cannons and pyrotechnics. It wasn't bad. Which is funny because that's one of my top moments of the season. I loved that. Are you serious? I loved it too.

[00:15:34] And I thought it was amazing. And I noticed no problems with it, honestly. Yeah. I'm not saying that there was a problem with her walking down the street and the air cannons fire. It's fine. You can be the role of the cranky old man.

[00:15:42] I'm not being cranky. I'm not trying to be cranky. I'm just trying to be an honest, my honest assessment. I was just like, oh, it was mundane. I'm not criticizing that scene. I'm just saying it was mundane. It was average. It wasn't extraordinary. I guess I just-

[00:15:56] Whereas seeing Rand weave the magic, that was extraordinary. That was beautiful. Anytime anybody used weave, it was beautiful. And I loved it. I loved the way they mixed the colors. I love the way that it wove around them.

[00:16:09] Physically acting and actually when Rosamund Pike was sending off her torpedoes, the way that she was holding her poses. If you didn't have the weave, it would just look ridiculous. Just somebody standing there doing these weird contorted poses.

[00:16:26] Which is funny because none of the people who can't channel, actually I should say none of the women who can't channel and none of the men at all can see those weaves. Right. So if you're in that world, you can't see anything. Right.

[00:16:39] You just see Marine squatting on the beach. Yeah, yeah. So and again, I don't want to sound like I'm, I don't want to harsh anybody's vibe. I don't want to yuck anybody's yum. No, it's just-

[00:16:50] I'm just talking about my impersonal response to the show. And for me, it was uneven. There were times it was amazing. And then there were times where I was just like, eh, okay, that's fine. It meets expectations.

[00:17:02] My only objection was to saying that HBO is better because I think that HBO has exactly the same sorts of sins where, you know, like- Fair enough. You know, so that's, that was my only objection.

[00:17:14] Well, let me rephrase what I was trying to say was when we look at something like A Last of Us or even Game of Thrones or House of the Dragons where-

[00:17:27] I can think of so many, so many moments like that, like on the beach with Witch's Face, the crab face, suddenly forgetting his name. Sure. Uh-huh.

[00:17:36] You know, I loved the scene on the bridge where, you know, Rhaenyra comes and, you know, and shows up everyone. But that was clearly filmed in the volume. And, but I forgive it for its writing.

[00:17:51] I think the point is, if the story has you, you will not notice these things. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It's true. If the story does not have you, you will notice these things. And that's what happened to me in Ahsoka, the finale. Remember, I was talking about the volume.

[00:18:04] You know, I was watching Loki season one. I binged it over the last couple days and it was a great story. So I forgave that when we're on that one planet that's blowing up- Right.

[00:18:15] You can absolutely tell that there is a green screen behind them. But, you know, it doesn't matter because it's a good story. So it may be, David, that you're just not gripped by the story at those points. And so you start inspecting for nits.

[00:18:27] Yeah. And you are definitely aware of, I find myself this case, yeah, that I'm aware of faults where I'm not wrapped up in story. And I'm not like, especially as a book reader where you're really got a lot of anticipation and interest.

[00:18:45] How are they going to do this? How is that? So your attention might be focused elsewhere. My attention is, yeah, is this particular episode getting me through all of the things that it wants to? And then when there's uneven parts and plot lines that sag, right, then you pick up on those even more so.

[00:19:07] And I just really noticed that unevenness. Sure, sure.

[00:19:12] So, you know, and I don't, because I don't have the same kind of, yeah, I just don't, I didn't read the books. And so it's not as beloved for me. Now, you know, if we got into a dune thing or something like that, you know, maybe, you know, there would be a different vibe I would bring to it. But, and I think for me, the measure as well is that the show is already starting to fade in my memory.

[00:19:34] Okay.

[00:19:37] And so while I was entertained and I'm glad I watched it and I'm glad I got to participate and I'm looking forward to season three, I'm also not eager. You know, I don't have eager anticipation for it the way that, you know, somebody else who's vested in the world as much. Every time that it was season one when John, when you and I watched it, because we thought that season two was going to come out.

[00:20:01] It was imminent.

[00:20:02] Imminent. Any day now. The middle episodes of season one really interested me. There were some great, interesting story concepts and they were flipping some stuff around. And then there are, you know, the front and the back of it where you're just like, oh, okay, this is just pretty average.

[00:20:17] But also if I could add some of the sloppiest VFX are in the middle of season one because you have those weaves that I think the season one weaves look terrible. Now that they're gone, we can just say it. Okay. Season one weaves didn't look good.

[00:20:29] I mean, for me they were fine, but they're definitely much better now. Right. They took me out of it. I thought that they looked silly. Yeah, I don't even remember the weaves from season one to be honest.

[00:20:39] They were like clear and the male weaves were black instead of... So they did a really cool thing in season two where they had like a string of black symbolizing the teeth in the male weaves rather than making you think that, you know, Side In and Side R look different.

[00:20:55] Well, I didn't because... And then everybody would see them, you know?

[00:20:58] I didn't see it that way. When we saw Logain channel in season one, his weaves were just much more corrupted. So we did see like the white come out first and then black creep over it. But there's just a lot more of it because he was further gone, deeper into channeling.

[00:21:14] Fair enough.

[00:21:16] Well, the weaves were beautiful this season. The color shifts, you know, the different eye-to-eye weaving and what they were doing. And then maybe it was a little brown or it was a little yellow. Not saying that that correspond directly to their auja, but whatever it was that they were doing, there was subtle coloration. It all looked great. So they really put a lot of care into that and it showed.

[00:21:41] And when we get to our sort of favorite moments, you know, I'll talk about some of the things that really compelled me this season, just like it really compelled me last season. And yet those were not as frequent for me, you know, in terms of what was really amazing and what really blew me away.

[00:22:02] So I was happy, I was entertained. I was happy to participate in the community and share my honest thoughts and get into the world. And I'm really glad that there's a podcast out there that I could connect to. And I'm excited for season three. I maybe just don't have the same eager anticipation that other folks do.

[00:22:24] Fair enough. Okay.

[00:22:26] We've gotten your gist, David. And now I'm going to make this a compliment sandwich. I loved season two. I thought it was really excellent. I think that where it's working for me and it might not be working for you, David, is that I feel like the world is the world I want to live in.

[00:22:43] Like the not that I want to actually live in it, but like the world I want to spend time in with my mind. Sure. I want I want to get to know these side characters. I want to see how these politics work. I want to see what the magic system is. And they are really capturing that intrigue for me. I think that if I were not a book reader, I'd be and I see this on our discourse over a lot of people asking questions about how the magic system works.

[00:23:06] And that's exactly where you want to be. You want people to be hungry for more. And I think that the show is doing its job with that. I do agree with you. They are throwing a lot at you as the books do in the books have 1000 pages to do it. This has eight episodes. And, you know, I think again, I want to add to the end of the year discussion of our, you know, our top 10 list. Are we too married to the eight episode season?

[00:23:30] I agree to marry too, because I think that this show would do very well to have 10 episodes at least.

[00:23:37] I could totally see a 10 episode, you know, plus or minus season for sure. There was a lot that was compressed and compacted in. And that's I always feel too when you've got a big show like this. Give it the space in the room that it needs. Why? Yeah, I don't understand sometimes the programming decisions, but that's why I'm not a programming executive.

[00:24:03] I don't blame Rafe and I don't blame anybody in production for that because I don't think it's their choice. Well, he wants more episodes, right? Yeah. No, he fought for more. Yeah. And we got at least we got longer episodes this season.

[00:24:16] And I think part of it is we saw in the writer's strike and their demands that the eight seasons, the eight episode season seems to have been pushed as a way to pay writers for fewer time for less time.

[00:24:27] And it's been sold to consumers as this quality over quantity thing. And I think going from 22 to 12 or 10 was was a quality over quantity thing. That makes sense. I don't think it makes sense to go down eight.

[00:25:11] I don't care how many episodes it is, as long as you I feel that you are telling me the story that you want to tell. And I think they did. I think season two delivered on the story that they wanted to tell. I feel good about that part of this season. Absolutely. I feel like season two contained what it needed to contain.

[00:25:30] Could it have gone a couple of episodes longer to let some character storylines breathe a little bit more? I think I would agree with that if that's what you were saying. Just one episode entirely of land training Rand on the sword. That's all we asked.

[00:25:44] That would have been dope. I would have been down for that. Keep a bottle episode, have a fly run around the world. Great drone shots of them standing on a cliff, doing katas and whatnot. Wait, I think we've seen that before.

[00:25:58] I think that in general, in this world you've seen, to borrow from the Aiel and a wink to book readers, a fifth of a fifth of this world.

[00:26:07] I think that you will start to feel more comfortable as the show goes. I think even as an early book reader, you're a little bit lost in the soup of it because there are so many roles that Jordan is going to reinforce over time.

[00:26:22] He's going to remind you, okay, this is how channeling works in this situation. This is how it works here. Here are the limitations. Then he builds on it slowly. The show has to do that in less time, but I think they can do it.

[00:26:35] I really loved the season. I was not bothered by any visual issues this season. I really thought it looked great pretty much from start to finish. There were a couple of silly things like, yeah, no, you can't put a dagger on a spear and make it into a…

[00:26:51] I was fine with that actually. That one actually didn't bother me that much. I saw somebody tweeted at us like, why are you not ranting about this when you were ranting about jumping the gaps?

[00:27:00] I was like, because this didn't… First of all, this didn't affect character motivations and affect a character's arc. Second, I was into the story in this. You notice things more when you're not into the story, when you're not sold by the plot.

[00:27:15] Someone had good headcanon for that. They were like, well, if the knife is just obliterating everything in its path, then it faces no friction, so it'll just stay like that. That's good. That's good headcanon. I like that. That's pretty funny.

[00:27:28] I would also just put, I kind of headcanoned it that Matt, growing up in a village where you're improvising things all the time and fixing things in that way, that he had some degree of skill and knowledge to do that.

[00:27:44] And then maybe combined with Alicia, your point there that that worked right in tandem. Anyway. Sure. Sure. But yeah, I mean, I think that they did everybody's arcs justice. I think that they moved the characters along in their development largely.

[00:27:59] I'll talk about my favorite moments in a minute, but I just wanted to say, great job in this season. I thought it was 10 times better than season one. I thought that it was significantly better than The Rings of Power.

[00:28:10] I thought that this was just a better done show, and I hope that Rings of Power can learn some lessons by the way that here's what I think that this season did right compared to Rings of Power and compared to season one of the show.

[00:28:25] Instead of making a deliberate effort to make this a new thing, they added things where they needed to, but they captured iconic book moments that made people fall in love with the series in the first place.

[00:28:36] Because there's a reason people love The Wheel of Time, and a lot of those reasons are the big set pieces.

[00:28:42] And this show in season one seemed to make a point, and I know Alicia's going to disagree with me on this because she likes season one a lot, but I thought that season one felt like it made a point to sidestep a lot of them, you know, replace all the dialogue with their own thing and just really avoid paying homage to the books in a way that felt almost like dismissive of the books.

[00:29:01] I disagree. You're right, I disagree because there are a lot of iconic conversations and moments. But anyway.

[00:29:08] Well, anyway, I thought that season two did a much better job at taking those big set pieces and making them happen. See the finale, you know, and it did the Jordan thing. And I said this in the in the season eight, the episode eight recap, but Jordan does this thing where he lines up, he, you know, he loads the bases, and you're 50 pages to the end, you go, he's not gonna be able to finish this up in time.

[00:29:30] And he goes, Watch this. And then he just knocks it out of the park. And everything just happens all at once. And it's amazing. And you get this adrenaline rush. And it's just so satisfying. And the show did that in this finale. And in a way that I was worried after the season one finale. And after I think I think I saw this before I saw a Soka.

[00:29:54] But the you know, the Soka finale felt like it was set up for a great finale. And it didn't it didn't execute well for me. But this show felt like it did really execute well. And I'm really happy that it did. I'm very excited for season three, if you can't tell.

[00:30:09] For sure. Yeah, episode eight. It was entertaining. It had pace it had stakes. You know, it brought everybody together in ways that didn't feel I didn't feel the hand of the writer it everybody got to the same place in a way that made sense. And yeah, it packed a lot of energy and was very, very entertaining. So

[00:30:34] Well, cool. I think that we can move on to our favorite plot lines or moments. I snaked the the order here. So I will start with my favorite moment so that I can just keep on my train of thought. I thought that my number one plot line was nine eaves are arches. I thought that that was done incredibly well in tandem with Leandra and I thought that they did an amazing job.

[00:31:02] Bringing Leandra into life and making her a lot more in depth than the books. I think that they developed her really well. They added some interesting motivations. This is an example I I think of in Game of Thrones, the best thing that D&D did that was not in the books was the Aria Tywin conversations. And this was that for me, right? It was adding all this interesting dialogue that feels like it's in the lived in part of the world, but is not from the books themselves.

[00:31:28] Like Leandrin barely talks to nine, even the books. But they added this whole complexity that plays with sort of the the anger within nine eave like let the hate flow through you, but also but also gives Leandra and some death and inhumanizes her in a little bit so that she's not the cartoon villain. She is in the books.

[00:31:49] So I would say Leandrin and nine eave were my two favorite plot lines in the show. How about you, David? Alicia, isn't Leandrin one of your favorite characters or at least one of your favorite actors this season? I mean, I know you have a lot of favorites.

[00:32:05] I wouldn't call her a favorite character. Well, she's probably she gets the biggest like glow up from the books. She becomes much more interesting in the TV show than she is in the books. And I think that Kate Fleetwood plays her masterfully. Makes her much more interesting to watch. It makes me much more excited about her storylines.

[00:32:28] I have to agree, John. That story plot line was really good in that conversation. Again, was one of those moments of brilliance in the show in terms of learning having these great character moments. I was a little left confused. Not confused. I shouldn't say that as I was thinking about our podcast today. What happened to her? Where is she? What's going on? Right? They it was one of the storylines that they didn't wrap up.

[00:32:56] She'll be back. She was last seen in Kyrie and so she's still there.

[00:33:00] Yeah, I think again, this is a slow burn story. You gotta give people a chance to do their thing and come back. People will disappear for books at a time and then come back with the relevant.

[00:33:12] And I didn't miss her. I was just thinking about it now. Yeah, what did happen to her? Mm hmm. But yeah, I agree. She's cooler in the show than in the books. I'm honestly excited to see what they do with her in the show.

[00:33:23] Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad that they didn't kill her off yet, which is a weird thing to say about, you know, a villain.

[00:33:30] Well, I think that's one thing that the show is doing well in general is that they're treating all especially all the dark friend social folks. There's reasons why people choose to do this. It's not just to twirl their mustaches. Mm hmm.

[00:33:46] And I think that's an interesting aspect of the show. All right, David, what was your favorite plot line or moment in the season? Or you can give a couple if you want.

[00:33:54] Yeah, I did a lot of thinking about this when you sent the outline and we started planning for this. And I think on reflection, the two, I guess they're very related.

[00:34:10] And you can even throw in a third, which would have been the conversation with with Naineev and Leandrin. All three, I guess my favorite moments are these one on one character conversations where we learn about the characters.

[00:34:30] They have these great moments where they're telling us not only about the world, but about themselves and as well as giving us some real depth to what it is that we're watching. That takes it to take that story to the next level for me to be a little cliche about it.

[00:34:54] So the first one that really interested me overall was anything to do, everything to do with Lorraine and her sister Anvir. I thought Lindsey Duncan brought so much sophistication and class and a different vibe to the show.

[00:35:16] And every time we went into House Damodred and the costuming and the visuals, the way that they set up shots, it felt like they really took a lot of care with that storyline. The conversations between Moraine and Anvir really were illuminating and told me a lot that I needed to understand about Moraine.

[00:35:39] Even though a bunch of it didn't pay off in this season, I am expecting it for future development of Moraine. The whole big sister, little sister thing was a really great setup. And the fact that little sister was actually a power player in their area was a lot of fun.

[00:36:01] The plot for that subplot had no magic in it. Even with the nephew, he was a dark friend. He was at dark friend social or whatever, but he wasn't doing anything. It was all very mundane. There was no weaving. There was no fate of the world is in the balance type of stuff.

[00:36:23] So for me, it served as a nice break. I could settle down for a minute and just watch characters having interaction, all of that family drama woven in. You get a mini episode of Downton Abbey. Totally. It's great.

[00:36:37] 100%, which I'm not averse to. I'm open to that kind of stuff. Sure. Sure. Cool. So I've got another one which we can talk about, but if you want to weave us around our multiple points.

[00:36:50] Let's talk about that quick because I think Alicia has suggested that they may be giving another character's plot line to Anver later because she's a show creation. Right.

[00:37:01] But I think there's a lot more you could do with her and it would be a waste to not bring her back.

[00:37:05] Right. I mean, she was named in the new spring. Maureen has two sisters. One of them is named Anver. But yeah, she was not featured like this and I think that they're slotting her into another character's role.

[00:37:20] Which I think is interesting because in season one, the stuff that really got me the most interested in the world and in the story was off book stuff. What happens when a warder dies or-

[00:37:35] But that's not off book. That's an intrinsic part of the world that they just had to condense to explain in this way. Yeah. They took it from later in the books, right? Oh, interesting. I was laboring under the impression that that whole funerary thing... And sorry, it's not-

[00:37:52] The funeral was made up. Yeah, that was the stuff that was interesting and then how that affected the warder. Well, that's from the book. How it affects the warder is an important thing you need to understand. The depressive stuff.

[00:38:04] Okay. Well, it felt the most rich to me and I guess I was under the impression that that was off book.

[00:38:13] Yeah. I think that that plot line, like the names of the characters who die, this and that, that's made up but that's because they took it from... Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Alicia. No, they were characters in New Spring in the prequel. I don't know what New Spring is.

[00:38:30] I forgot about that. It's the prequel. Okay. Was that Sanderson or Jordan? Jordan. Jordan. Jordan would have written more prequels. He had planned to write one about Tam Randstad and he just died before he could do it. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:45] Should I talk about my other favorite moment or do you want to... Go ahead. Go ahead. The conversation between Lan and Evo was, I think, my absolute favorite moment, which is really interesting for a fantasy show with action and magic and intrigue and all of this stuff.

[00:39:06] Just two characters sitting down and having a conversation that not only illuminated for me deep motivations of the characters, but also illuminated... It told me something about our primary world and how to think differently about the people that I meet in my real world.

[00:39:32] I'm a double Gemini with a Virgo rising. So I'm a chatty person, right? I'm all about being out in the world and interacting with folks.

[00:39:42] And so when I encounter somebody like a Lan or an Evo who are quiet and more considered in their thoughts and aren't as surface engaging maybe, it's confusing. It confuses me because I'm like, oh, where is this person? What are they thinking? What's going on in there?

[00:40:02] And that conversation explained to me so much what might be going on for other people. And it illuminated that little interesting aspect of life where, yeah, there's probably a lot of conversation happening in that head and then that person's wrestling with things and working on stuff just because they're being quiet doesn't mean anything.

[00:40:25] I shouldn't assume anything about what's going on in the other side there. And so that conversation moved plot, it moved character and it gave me something real in my world that I could take away.

[00:40:37] And that when the show was doing that, regardless of if it was Anver and Maureen or Leandrin and Naineev or in this conversation or Elaine and Egwene, when we had those quiet moments one-on-one, and this is a failing of so many other shows because they're trying to move plot, right?

[00:40:59] And there's big motion going on and we've got to get to these set pieces. Taking a minute to put me in one-on-one with the characters to have that kind of conversation is so satisfying on so many levels. And so I really applaud the show for hitting all of those. And then this particular conversation sort of really is the cherry of the bunch of them.

[00:41:29] Well, cool. I'm glad. Yeah, I agree with you that the failing of a lot of big fantasy shows is that they are more concerned with the big flashy set pieces than they are with the intimate moments.

[00:41:42] It was something that Game of Thrones showed us in the earlier seasons how to do right and then in the later seasons it kind of forgot how to do it. And that was the issue with the last season I think.

[00:41:53] I can't remember a single little moment like that we had. Maybe a little bit with Jamie and Brienne, but most of the last season was really just, here's a big battle. Here's another big battle. Here's a big battle where we forgot to turn the lights on. And it's just a lot of stuff like that.

[00:42:09] Jon's talking to his uncle, right? A really important character moment, but it's wrapped around by this life or death circumstance. Right.

[00:42:20] You've got to carry on. You've got to move forward. And then there was some weird thing where he's now this ghostwriter person, what have you, half dead, half whatever. There was a lot packed in there and yet it just served as a little fulcrum to get us from one point to the other.

[00:42:37] In this show, they stopped the world around us. And I didn't feel like the world had stopped, but that's kind of what happened in the storylines. They zoomed in, quieted everything else out and then two characters had a compelling conversation that gave me a lot of depth and richness as to what the original author and what the show runners and the actors are all trying to do.

[00:43:04] Taking all of this complex stuff and putting it in and that really humanized the show for me. In a show that is overblown with magic, not in a bad way, but I'm just saying there's so much magical stuff going on here. That just to ground me for a moment that, yeah, these are real people.

[00:43:22] No, they're not real people. They're real people, whatever. You know what I mean? Well done. I don't know who's disagreeing about Matt. I'm not. Well, I know that John prefers the previous casting.

[00:44:36] Yeah, I mean, I prefer Barney, but I think we're never going to get him. So I'm here. I'm not going to go compare him to Barney in season three. I just figured this one season where he's brand new, he's going to get a little bit comparison.

[00:44:48] That's fair. That's how you feel. And I didn't like Barney. And so for me, Matt is like, yes, finally we got it. Interesting.

[00:44:57] But just the whole Heroes of the Horn thing, obviously it could have been bigger and more. And I do hope that Rings of Power shares more of their budget. That's a fair point.

[00:45:08] It just gives me such a high whenever I watch that scene. The only downside was like, I don't know, that doesn't seem like Brigitte to me, but it's been confirmed that was only a stand in. So we'll get a real casting later.

[00:45:21] It's the Bond Archer, David, just so you know. Yeah. Her name's Brigitte.

[00:45:25] Yeah. And which makes me wonder, of course, can you just look like any of your lives in there? Because Uno looks obviously like his most recent life, even though he's someone who I think is somebody else, as you know, John.

[00:45:39] I think he's a Hero of the Horn from the books. And I just think that that arc for Uno also just really worked for me. So that came together in that moment.

[00:45:49] It's just a good way to include a really beloved character who, you know, there's just not enough space to develop all the characters the way that we would like.

[00:45:58] And, you know, Ingtar, for instance, got the short shrift on it. And Uno, this is a way to give him a significant role, but without with limited screen time.

[00:46:09] Quick side note on the Ingtar thing. After John filled me in about his character arc and the piece that was missing, that makes me a little bit more sad even because I thought that actor nailed that role.

[00:46:25] He had the right kind of energy for what was being described on screen for me. And I would have really loved to see that turn or to have had that knowledge and then to have that turn. I thought that would have been a great additional counterpoint.

[00:46:43] So it is a little sad that for whatever reasons, I didn't make it up.

[00:46:49] They set it up so perfectly. So I was just really surprised. I have to think that they cut something out of the finale, which I just wonder why couldn't the finale have 10 extra minutes? I don't understand. Yeah, exactly.

[00:47:02] I just think like if you were going to cut it, which is fine. Like, you know what? You don't absolutely need it. If you need to cut it, fine. But then why did you do the line of I can hold 50 men to one? Why do it half-assed? Don't do it at all.

[00:47:18] That I don't mind. Don't half-ass two things. Hold last one. Ron Swanson, right? I just thought they were setting it up so beautifully at the beginning of the season when they're talking about burying the dark friend and you don't know. Totally.

[00:47:31] Yeah, so that would have just been such a beautiful conclusion. And I do think I love the finale. I have so much fun with it. It makes me like fist pump. But I do think it felt choppier than especially the early episodes. Yeah.

[00:47:46] And it does make me wonder if indeed things got chopped. Yeah, it feels like it, doesn't it?

[00:47:52] Which, you know what's weird to me though is that that's the only episode that had the full theme. So you added like two minutes of theme time. I would keep your theme away and give me Inktar. Yeah, exactly.

[00:48:07] That's all you would have needed too. You didn't need that much work on it. He's a side character. Right, right. You just needed the one or two scenes where we get a little this or that and then great little humor. Just like a good conversation before, you know.

[00:48:19] Yeah. And on that missing pieces thing, the fact that we didn't get any story about how the horn was actually delivered. Well, we got feedback on that. We did get information. We just missed it. Yeah, but then... Yeah, I know when it was, but...

[00:48:39] It's a huge missing. I mean, I rolled with it. It's fine. Yeah, fine. There's a line by a character, but man, a whole piece missing of how that actually transpired and how... You wanted a heist episode, huh?

[00:48:55] A couple of scenes. And I think this goes back into why eight, why not nine episodes? Could they have stretched or why not a supersized final finale? Yeah. Why couldn't it be a feature length finale? Shrug your mind. I mean, plenty of shows have done it now.

[00:49:09] It happened. Yeah. I'm very confused when streaming shows don't do supersized finales when they need to, right? Like Stranger Things, all over the place on episode length and it worked. Right? I think it worked.

[00:49:21] You know, The Last of Us, completely same thing, all over the place on episode length. We spent a bunch of podcasting time too going, oh, well this episode was this long and that episode was that long. What does it mean?

[00:49:31] It doesn't mean anything. It means that the story writers are doing what the story writers want to do to tell you the story that they want to tell. I'm going to posit up conspiracy theory here. Prime is apparently adding ads to their service starting next year.

[00:49:45] Yes, they are. And you're going to have to pay two bucks a month or three bucks a month, something like that, to get ad free still. Interesting conversation.

[00:49:54] I wonder if they want to make it uniform on episode length so that they could sell it in blocks easier to advertisers. That will be, yeah, that'll be what it is. I don't know how.

[00:50:08] So we'll see if it's all like just over and because this was an hour and six minutes for the screeners.

[00:50:14] And then I noticed it was like an hour and 12, sorry, an hour and nine minutes for the final that had like the extra credits at the end with the translation. Right. Right.

[00:50:22] I just wonder if it's going to be like, OK, we have hour long episodes. You get three or four ad blocks.

[00:50:27] We could sell them to you in this amount. Yeah, it's easier to do that than say, well, this episode gets two ad blocks in this episode gets five.

[00:50:35] There was just an interesting podcast out the other day. The Town, which is one of the ringer titles with Matt Bellany. They talked about in depth about this new model that is being pushed out.

[00:50:47] You know, everybody is raising prices and to get ad free to have an ad free tier with a higher price and then having the lower tier price with ads. And it turns out they make more money on the lower tier with ads than the higher non ad tier.

[00:51:07] It's cable. It's cable guys. We're cable. We're paying on both ends.

[00:51:11] We're back. And then everybody's like, oh, gosh, what's what's the tolerance? Well, my tolerance for unsubscribing is when everybody is whacking me and I'm paying a thousand dollars a year, you know, versus, you know, six or seven that I was paying before.

[00:51:26] And even that's eye popping. Right. I'm going to start unsubscribing. You know, I'm going to start churning. Right.

[00:51:33] Right. Anyway, that's a different podcast. I just canceled a couple subscription services myself because I was like, I'm not watching anything on this and it's just going to start to be that.

[00:51:45] And I don't know. The problem is you can't even go back to cable because cable is now accessible of content. There's nothing left. It's just nothing left. And so and it's or if you tune in, you drop in on a channel.

[00:51:56] It's more than likely you're going to be right in the middle of the ad block. Right? Yeah. I mean, I think that the problem is that streaming successfully killed cable, killed premium cable content. And now we are stuck with our just desserts. It's killing itself. It's an ouroboros.

[00:52:14] Well, anyway, you know, there's going to find new ways to make money and it's going to be to the detriment of content and audience, you know, enjoyment. So what's the rule in Las Vegas? The house always wins. Well, this is a cheery podcast. Yeah. Right.

[00:52:32] Another thing I liked softly, softly from the shadows. I was so excited that my favorite forsaken showed up. Oh, the spider forsaken. Yeah.

[00:52:45] Yeah. Yeah. Mo Gedeon, Moggy for short. And yeah, this is I'm definitely thinking a lot about the finale still. But I just think this is an excellent example of, you know, we've seen the most unique villain so far. And once we get the rest of the forsaken, it's going to be such a shit show in the best possible way.

[00:53:07] Just I'm just imagining their meetings together and I just can't wait for it. And yeah, Mo Gedeon, she's you can already see she's she's a different sort of creature. She's approaching things from a different way. And she gets some of the most interesting storylines.

[00:53:21] The bestie villains are gone. The the loose, they're the bestie villains. Well, just one of them. Yeah. Yeah. We are getting a different breed. Go ahead, David. Yeah, I was gonna ask Alicia, are there power rankings for the forsaken or are they all pretty much in a band?

[00:53:39] No, I mean, Shamaya was like the leader of the forsaken. So there's a power vacuum there now. And they definitely have different like strengths in the power and also some of them are more assertive than others.

[00:53:55] I think if you look at strict book lore, Rand Ishmael and Lanfear are about equal in the one power. Okay. Is that right, Alicia?

[00:54:08] I actually think Lanfear is slightly less than we think of, but I don't know for the show that it necessarily matters. I think we're just going to see more like the forsaken or just super powerful because I would be surprised if Mo Gedeon could capture Lanfear like she did in the finale. Quite like that. Quite so easily.

[00:54:30] Well, but you have the element of surprise, right? Exactly. I think that's the point is Mo Gedeon is less powerful, but she uses her assets really well. Softly, softly from the shadows is Alicia pointing out. Exactly. She doesn't miss when she strikes, like she said.

[00:54:45] Right. Yeah. So and I think we're going to see more of, you know, that it's your sheer power level isn't the most important thing. It's how you play the game to quote the Game of Houses. Lots of games going on. Yeah. Well, yeah.

[00:55:02] Cool. I'm really excited to see more of the forsaken. I know we have feedback on the forsaken, so we'll get to that then. For now, I want to bring it down a little bit since we already complained about a lot of stuff. Really quickly, let's not dwell on this part. What are some things we think could use improvement from this season that we hope that they'll learn from for season three?

[00:55:22] Okay, well, I'll go first and just piggyback off of what David was saying before is that I think that the season one was better in looking at certain pieces of what looks to be background information, but it's actually important world building lore.

[00:55:40] Like I was just rewatching, I did like a quick rewatch of the both seasons with a lot of it on fast forward. But one of the things I absolutely paused for was the Menethran song and then Moraine's story on horseback. And it just, it sets you so deeply in this world and tells you so much about this world and about where these people came from.

[00:56:02] And it also is important for the future, you know, as we're learning more about, well, not spoilers, but yeah, as we learn more about the past and the past lives of characters. And I think that this season, they, it seems like they were pulled away from doing that. Like we didn't have any in-universe songs like we did, which was a big bummer. We better get them next season when Tom's back.

[00:56:26] Yeah, no gleam in this season. Exactly. Yeah. No emo gleam in. Yeah.

[00:56:32] We only got like, like the horn of Valyr. We should have gotten a whole, maybe like a cold open dedicated to the story to seeing like a gleam and actually acted out. Instead, we just got a gleam in, you know, telling the story in the background while Rand and Lanfear were talking. So almost no one was listening to that.

[00:56:48] So yeah, that's, that's my criticism. I hope that next season they're given more space to lean into that and those important pieces of world building lore that really just immerse you in like the storytelling and yes, music please. All right. Agreed. David?

[00:57:07] I was disappointed with the Perrin storyline. I thought that it was a very surface level treatment for the character. I don't know. And again, I can't speak to the books, but I just felt that the importance of the plot line was not there.

[00:57:34] And I felt that the time and development of the character was not there. And there was just something missing for me about what they were doing with him. He's going from the wolf pack to the Aiel. And so that's a big change. Hopper, you know, pour one out.

[00:57:58] But maybe, you know, not everybody who's dead is dead. I don't know. I just didn't feel like they knew what they were doing with his character. And on screen, what translated for me was a thinness, a lack of development, a lack of importance to the storyline.

[00:58:23] I think that you could have taken out the whole storyline and I don't know how much effect it would have had on the main plot, which is disappointing. Because if you're going to cast that actor and you're going to put the time and effort into a storyline, like you said, John, don't half-ass two things. Right?

[00:58:45] It's a character from the book, so you're including it. Okay, great. Give it its due that you need for everybody else. Naineev, Egwene, Matt. Even Matt maybe had less screen time, but his story was consequential and it meant something as he went through it. Whereas with Perrin, I didn't ever feel that he was consequential to the story. I don't know if you guys have a similar thought or...

[00:59:15] What's interesting is that that's a similar critique that Perrin gets in the book sometimes. Yeah. Is that he's not consequential enough, his story seems to meander a bit. But next season... It's an issue with the character in general. Okay.

[00:59:28] Yeah. No spoilers about next season, but Perrin will definitely come into his own in the way we saw Matt come into his own. Okay. Yes, I think that Perrin's second or third best moment is going to happen next season.

[00:59:40] Okay. Let's hope for support for that actor and for the writers writing that storyline because it really felt like he got a short trip from his career. I know they're filming that storyline. I'm very excited about it. Okay. Excellent. All right.

[00:59:55] That's good to hear. That makes me happy. Okay. And John, what about you? Yeah, I'm going to complain now. No. Yeah, I think that it's probably predictable what I'm going to say. I don't want this to be the Rosamund Pike show. I think she's fine.

[01:00:11] I know that I have my issues with her performance of her portrayal of Moraine. I don't think that it speaks to me like the book Moraine spoke to me, but she's fine when she's on screen.

[01:00:22] I think that this story on screen sometimes weaves its way to bend around giving Moraine more screen time, and I don't agree with that because it's not Moraine's story. She is the wise mentor. She's the Gandalf, and guess what?

[01:00:39] Gandalf's not prominent in most of The Lord of the Rings. It's not his story, and it's not Moraine's story here. While I understand we love Rosamund Pike and we want to see her shine, I want her used sparingly like she is in the books.

[01:00:53] When she is a highlight in the books, she's great, but it's not her story.

[01:00:59] When I have a full season of her being fake-stilled and then she's just mean for a whole season, it was so meandering and it was so exhausting, and I just did not like that storyline at all. I got to ask, what did that do for the character?

[01:01:17] What did that show us about the universe? What did it show us about the character? I thought that it was completely pointless from beginning to end. Then the dragon banner at the end, too, kind of bothered me. I thought, why would Lanfear?

[01:01:32] It makes zero sense for Lanfear to bring Moraine, somebody who she has threatened to kill multiple times, to bring Moraine just outside the city so that she at the perfect moment could put a banner in the sky. It makes zero sense to me.

[01:01:46] Alicia, you were going to say something? Yeah. No, I have thoughts, obviously, because Moraine is one of my favorite characters from the books.

[01:01:52] She remains an even more favorite character in the show, and I think part of that is also just I used to be an Egwene, and now I've been maturing into a Moraine.

[01:02:01] I do feel like the whole shielding plotline dragged on a bit longer than I would have liked.

[01:02:09] I do think that it did important things for the character in terms of setting things up with things falling apart with Swan and the way things are going to fall apart for her in general.

[01:02:24] Just showing what kind of person she is, but also I think on a more serious note from the standpoint of someone who's gone through serious depression, I think that I definitely connected with a lot of aspects of that storyline.

[01:02:41] You see her and you're frustrated with her, but it is realistic, and maybe it's important for people to see what frustrating behavior it is and how much you just want people to communicate more. I do see that they were setting it up in season one when I rewatched.

[01:02:58] About the banner, I completely disagree with you on that. Just on the front face of, okay, so on the Lanfear side, no.

[01:03:06] I don't know why Lanfear wanted Moraine to do it that was a little glossed over too quickly, but to me, it had to be Moraine doing it because in the books, she's the one who's constantly trying to push the banner on Rand.

[01:03:20] For me, it would have not made sense if anyone else raised the banner but her. I love that they made it an actual magical illusion thing or whatever, but yeah, I agree that I don't understand why Lanfear would want that. Yeah. All right.

[01:03:37] I certainly take your points well on portraying depression on screen, and I think that is important. I think that you also alluded to this too.

[01:03:47] You're right that this did drag on too long and that if you were going to just restore the character to full power, it's kind of cheap to spend a season on it, right? Mm-hmm.

[01:03:58] And that, again, I just don't need to see a million examples of her being kind of mean to Lan. But yeah, I mean, and the banner, I guess I see what you're saying.

[01:04:12] I mean, there's a scene in the books that I wish we got in the show that Moraine has Rand's clothes thrown out, and she gives him only lordly clothes that have the dragon symbol on it. Right. Which I love. Yeah, she's just pressuring him into the role.

[01:04:29] Right, that's how he gets the red coat in the books instead of from Lanfear. But yeah, I just, again, I think the Lanfear thing is what takes me out of it, right? Is like how did he even, why is she even there? Why is she there? Yeah, okay.

[01:04:44] Why does she have that opportunity? It just felt very, like that was the most egregious example to me of Moraine being in a place that didn't make sense. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess like what, was Lanfear going to do it herself? Probably not. Why not?

[01:04:57] She's too good, she's too cool for that. I mean, you could have had Egwene do it too. No, Egwene was busy and it wouldn't have made sense. I think it had to be Moraine from the character point, but yeah. All right. I'll just headcanon why Lanfear wanted it.

[01:05:15] Agree to disagree, I guess. And then Ingtar, I think we've talked over, I think that was my only other complaint, but again, I don't want to dwell on it because I've complained enough about it. All right, enough complaining. Let's talk about hope. Hopes for season three.

[01:05:30] David, you're the non-reader, so this is your space for your hopes and Alicia and I will give our hopes in the spoiler section. So we already talked about Perrin, so I can scratch that from my list here. I think I want more Lanfear and more Forsaken.

[01:05:47] Obviously, I think we're going to be getting those. I thought late season Lanfear was far more interesting for me than early season. And so my hope is that they'll continue to build on that. I love her suave, smooth, powerful, confident way about her.

[01:06:09] And then when she is caught by another Forsaken, that was great. I was like, oh, wait, how is this happening? I want to see more of that, and it sounds like we're going to get it. I have a question mark about the Dark One.

[01:06:23] Are we going to meet the Dark One anytime soon? And will it be next season? I'm sure they've got a lot in store for us with having all the Forsaken released. So my hopes is to see how the Forsaken are going to operate and interoperate.

[01:06:41] Just to set your expectations with that, I don't think it's too spoilery to say. The Dark One is not a person. The Dark One is kind of a vibe. An entity. It's a divine entity, right? That speaks through the Forsaken.

[01:06:58] So I would not expect to see a personification of the Dark One. In the way like we had with Ishimel or something. Right, because he was a person. He was pretending to be. Yeah, he was pretending to be him, but yeah, he's a person.

[01:07:13] I'm hoping that Nynaeve is going to get out of her head a little bit. And even if the way she needs to access her powers is to Hulk out, then to be okay with hulking out and just do it. I'm really frustrated with seeing her stuck like that.

[01:07:33] In the best way, saying that I want something more for her character. Coming out of season one, she was my favorite character. So I really hope that I get to see more of her development in season three. I want to see her flex.

[01:07:48] I want to see her grow and be comfortable with what she's got. And learn how to be herself. Understanding that she's a channeler of some kind. It lasted a long time in the books. Yeah, you keep saying that. A long, long time.

[01:08:04] Yeah, I do hope they cut back on it. In a galaxy far, far away. Yeah, I hope they cut back on it. I do like, and I know this is a controversial opinion with a lot of Nineve fans.

[01:08:13] But I like that they didn't give her the big standout moment in the finale. Fair enough. Just because it shows that there are consequences to the things she went through. And that it's not just like, oh, Nineve has a block.

[01:08:28] But any time it matters, she'll be able to fix it. No, they're setting this expectation she's fallible to. You mean like she'd be able to reach out with the Force and grab a lightsaber? Yes, or push someone across a gap. Or push somebody across a big gap.

[01:08:42] That's right. So yeah, I just, I really want to see Nineve's growth. I don't feel, there was important stuff that happened this season. But I didn't feel like there was quote unquote growth. And growth can be a lot of different ways.

[01:08:58] I'm not looking for a rainbows and unicorn thing for her. But I want to see movement in a direction. And I don't feel like I got to see that movement. Like we did with Egwene or with Matt. So yeah, I'm really hopeful to see more of her storyline.

[01:09:16] And then we touched on this at the beginning of the pod, which is geography and movement. What city is this? Where did we go? How did, who got there? Okay, granted there's teleportation and there's dream world stuff and what have you. Fine.

[01:09:32] But I also felt that the signaling for me as a viewer was at times unclear. And that left me confused. So I didn't know, wait, was this a dream or was this reality? When Ishmael was glitching, okay,

[01:09:48] that clearly visually communicated to me that there's a dream thing going on. Or there's something weird going on here. As opposed to other times when it was a dream, but it didn't seem like a dream. So geography and movement, I guess I would say.

[01:10:04] I'm really hopeful that they're going to hear what folks are saying, especially on the geography front and apply that. More maps. More maps. And action. Like I get it. They're coming out of, boy, it's been a tough go for a lot of shows, right?

[01:10:21] So the pandemic and then coming out and then writer strike and writer and actor strike. And so, you know, that really messes with productions. And so I don't know if that, how that affected him this season,

[01:10:36] but I would hope that some of the action sequences are going to be a little bit better in my opinion. The choreography was great, but then there were some other stuff that I was like, so I'm hopeful for improvements in those areas. All right. Very cool.

[01:10:54] I think we need to take a quick break. When we get back, we will head into listener feedback. So we don't have to ramble anymore. And we're back. All right, let's bring in some listener feedback again.

[01:11:25] We will not be doing another podcast this season for the wheel of time, but you can always write to us at WT at the lower hounds.com or by heading to our website, the lower hounds.com and sending in a contact form entry or a voicemail.

[01:11:37] And of course we have a channel on our discord that won't be going away on the wheel of time. So check the show notes for those links. First up, we've got Ken L. Ken L says, gentlemen and lady, I'm going to add,

[01:11:50] thanks so much for your podcast and your format. I love the interaction between you as it makes the material so much more accessible to me. I would not have begun to read this particular set of books or have watched

[01:12:02] this series as deeply as I did without your podcast. And I am the better for it. Thank you so much. Well, thanks. I appreciate that Ken and I hope you enjoy the books. Two questions and comments. One, I had a disconnect with the iguana scape.

[01:12:16] Her collar would not let her touch anything that would act as a weapon against her master, such as the pitcher. If this was true, then she would never have been able to touch the extra collar she tricked into her master. If the rules were clear, as often as,

[01:12:31] as you often said, this would not work. Alicia, I know the answer to this, but I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you the floor to answer this. I just want to interject that that's actually a good question. I hadn't thought about that.

[01:12:43] So thanks for, for pointing that out, Ken and yes, please, Alicia. Yeah. So we talked about this a bit on the discord, but basically the idea is that it has to be a weapon within a Gwaine's mind. And one of the key things of this to,

[01:13:00] to angry all is what the collar is, is that it also wants to be healed by being around a woman. So it's a confluence of a couple of things where it Gwaine, she's like, I'm not going to hit her with it.

[01:13:13] So it's a mental factor and also the factor that the terrain grill wants to cooperate with this and doesn't see it as doing harm is my, would you add anything? John? I would say that. And we discussed this on the discord,

[01:13:26] which is the interesting thing about that is that so, so first of all, I will clarify. I believe that the way they phrase it in the show is that Renna said she cannot touch anything. She believes to be a weapon.

[01:13:39] So if she can convince herself that it's not a weapon, then she can touch it. And the most interesting thing about this is that this means that Renna's indoctrination of a Gwaine helped collar her because Renna was able to convince a Gwaine a little bit.

[01:13:58] A Gwaine was at least able to convince herself for a moment that women who can channel should be leashed, that this is helping the person she's collaring. It's not hurting them. And so she's been convinced by the indoctrination of Renna that she's helping

[01:14:15] Renna by putting the collar on her and that it's not a weapon and that this is the way it should be. And that is such justice, you know, of the indoctrination being the thing that brought Renna down. So as a non book reader,

[01:14:33] a lot of that didn't actually translate to me off, off the screen. I didn't actually think about the whole weapon, not weapon thing and the way that that the collar was actually applied didn't

[01:14:52] feel like an attack so much as I put my hand out there and you know, and I wasn't attacking, I wasn't going to hit you. I was going to brain you with it. I'm just sticking it out there. And so, but this idea of the,

[01:15:06] the inner mind workings of this, none of that really came, came off to me. But you didn't question it anyway. So I guess it works on a couple levels then. Yeah, that's, that's right. It didn't, I did, it didn't question,

[01:15:19] I didn't question it in the end. And so that's fine as well. I mean, I'm glad Ken noted it and wrote in. But yeah, so it didn't, it did not work, but there was obvious, there's obviously more there that didn't make it to me. Right. So I mean,

[01:15:35] I would say that it is in line still because you have that whole thing where she can't pick up the pitcher even when she's not going to attack her cause she knows it's pointless because in her mind she feels that it's a weapon.

[01:15:49] She believes it's a weapon in her mind and that's, she's indoctrinated. Yeah, right, right, right, right, right. And so she was broken earlier in the season. So now she can look at the eye Dom and say, okay, that's not a weapon.

[01:16:00] Even if she wasn't going to hit her with it, if she believes that's a harmful object, if she believes that's an object she's going to hurt, she could hurt somebody with, even if it's a possibility, she can't touch it.

[01:16:09] So that means that Renna successfully convinced her at least in sub kind of some kind of subconscious of her mind enough that she's able to hit her mind enough for Gwaine to be able to touch it. Chilling. Yes, very chilling. It's cool stuff.

[01:16:28] We got another question from Ken as just a starter in the books. I'm lost as to the eight different forsaken. Can you list them all for me? Are they the dark friends or something more else?

[01:16:39] I pulled up the Wikipedia article cause I can never do these by memory. So in the books there are 13 forsaken, not eight. They've cut them down for the show. So here's the book ones, Ishamel, Balthamel and Agenor, Lanfear and Osmodian, Belal, Raven, Samal, Semiraj, Masana, Grendal and Mogidion.

[01:17:03] And Demondred, sorry I left him out. So in the show we definitely had Ishamel, we have Lanfear, we have Mogidion we've seen, we had, who do we have named dropped? Samal, we had... And Grendal. Grendal was named dropped. So that brings us up to five.

[01:17:24] Yeah, so three left. We think that it might be just male ones, right? Left because of the way that they phrased them earlier. I don't know. Yeah. If you look at the statues that Steppen was looking at in season one, four of them like look so unmistakably female.

[01:17:41] So I made a joke that one of the statues that has like a sort of nun, what do you call it? The thing on the head, the wimple? A habit? A habit, yeah. That's actually Linny, who's a character servant in the Camelyn Palace we'll meet in season three.

[01:18:00] And it's Robin in disguise. But no, I don't know. Like I have to wonder if one of them is still Semiraj and some people are like, well, maybe Lanfear just didn't mention her because Lanfear and Semiraj hate each other. I don't know.

[01:18:13] Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. So we'll see. We have five named so far. There's another three on the table. Again, don't Google this stuff, but you have the list that I just said. Do not Google.

[01:18:24] I was doing a little bit of internet searching today to try to, you know, remember some details about the scenes that I had picked out. And boy, it's everywhere. You cannot pull up the list.

[01:18:38] You cannot pull up a search of any kind without getting some hints or snippets of future information. Did you get spoiled? Yeah, I'm not even kidding. If you type Igwean into a Google search bar, you will get spoiled for a major, major plot point in the autocomplete.

[01:18:52] Like you don't even have to hit enter and you'll get spoiled. Yeah, no, I didn't get spoiled today. I was savvy enough to skip around and just not let my mind, you know, just keep my mind being a butterfly and not rest any too long on any

[01:19:06] sentence or phrase that it permeated. So I feel safe. And this other question, are they dark friends or something more slash else? They are something more. They are leaders of the dark one. You know, they are, they are the chief lieutenants, left tenants as they like to say.

[01:19:25] Right. And they can all channel. That's a good point too. So they are the opposite of the Justice League. What is the opposite of the Justice League? I don't know. Suicide squad? No, no, no. In the old comics, in the old DC comics, right?

[01:19:38] We had the Justice League and then they had their, their foes. Their villains? Oh, I should, I'm a huge Harley Quinn animated series fan. What is it called? They have the Legion of Doom. Legion of Doom. That's what it was. Legion of Doom.

[01:19:54] That's what it was in the old cartoons. Or Hugo Scott Pilgrim, the League of Evil Exes. There you go. All right. Next up is Loremaster and Friend of the Pod, Doof71. We have an email saying,

[01:20:06] hi guys, writing this the morning after the live watch of Revenge of the Sith. So feeling a bit punchy, but probably in a good headspace to be in for some reflection as I also watched the season finale of The Wheel of Time the same evening.

[01:20:18] Just a note for folks to say that out for one of our Patreon benefits is to, we have some live watches and one of the things that we're doing right now is a Star Wars film festival. We're doing all the films in chronological order.

[01:20:30] So next up is what? Solo, I believe. Right? Yep. We're going to do solo next. All right. As previously said, this show is a favorite of Mrs. Doof, Shelley, and due to family stuff, we couldn't watch it Friday night.

[01:20:42] So we settled down to some satisfying fantasy TV and we were not disappointed. I'll do a quick episode eight feedback then into the season. Basically really enjoyed episode eight, gave a satisfying conclusion to the season's arc. As David mentioned,

[01:20:56] it didn't feel forced in getting the team all together in the same place. And that is definitely the showrunners getting the absence of Robert Jordan's, uh, the essence, sorry, of Robert Jordan's storytelling. Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's right.

[01:21:10] The action was good. The changes they made from the books made sense, but Ingtar, Ingtar, Ingtar, sigh. As a new book reader, I really get invested into the story via book two and I can remember where I

[01:21:23] was when I listened to the part where Ingtar reveals he was a dark friend. This was a massive revelation and a real shock as Ingtar had been kind of the Boromir character, noble mission oriented, uh,

[01:21:35] and to get from his own mouth that he was in league with the shadow. Just wow. This was followed up by the fact that he was seeking redemption and saw the alley as a means to reach that redemption was just the killer one, two punch.

[01:21:49] He got his Boromir slash Duncan Idaho holding fast moment and it propelled me to finish the rest of the book. I just couldn't stop after that. In the show, Ingtar had been a real side player next to no character development. So when the moment came,

[01:22:03] the payoff just wasn't there and therefore a key book moment just gets swept past. What do we think about Ingtar here? I think we talked about it a little bit before and yeah, I, I agree. Now that I know more than I know, it is disappointing.

[01:22:18] I think if you don't know, I, it's just a, Oh, you know, he sacrificed himself and maybe that was a questionable decision to sacrifice yourself in that moment. And under those circumstances, I think that's what I felt before knowing his, his arc.

[01:22:34] Yeah. Cause he didn't actually succeed in blocking. No. Whereas in the book, he actually does give the group a chance to run away. Yeah, it was a bit of a throwaway and, and it was a head scratcher, but you know, sometimes you let those things go by. So

[01:22:47] Alicia, you're a book reader and you know, I, I've talked about before that. I loved this character moment. It was one of the character moments that got me invested in the early books. Can you speak to your feelings on this whole thing?

[01:23:01] I mean, I, I found it disappointing and baffling. Like I said, just because they didn't, just because they seem to be setting it up so well. And so it was like kind of like, wah, wah. Whereas, you know,

[01:23:14] the other big moment in the finale that was just made me burst out laughing was when Rand shows up and, and what's it, what's his face says, Turok says the line to him about the Heron Mark sword. Let's see what it means on this side of the ocean.

[01:23:30] And then just thwap it's over. And I just burst out laughing. I'm like, you know what? I don't mind that at all. Yeah. That was fine. That was fine. Because they didn't half-ass it. They just kind of swept past it. They said, we don't need this right now.

[01:23:40] That's fine. I mean, I've seen people argue they, they didn't have time to build the payoff for the entire moment. And to be honest, I don't, I don't feel hugely strongly about that one as like an adaptation decision. It just, like I said, it feels like,

[01:23:54] it feels like they probably did have it and then cut it out for a run time. And that annoys me. All right. Well, do continues. I'm no book cloak, but I thought the Gwyn and Rena arc, just wasn't as satisfying as in the books.

[01:24:09] What we got from the show was the easy option. I mean that in the storytelling sense, not in the character sense, Rena dies. Okay. The books having the dirty secret that the school bomb are weak channelers and leaving Rena to be colored was so much more complicated

[01:24:22] and satisfying. It was a revenge is a dish best serve cold moment, rather than the heat and fire of battle that leads a Gwyn to kill her. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and wrap up this episode.

[01:24:34] This is something that we haven't really talked about much is in the books, Rena is left colored. I think along with another school bomb. And that becomes a plot point of, with the one who got shot in earlier in that episode, she was just like,

[01:24:49] it was like, Oh, whoops. Okay. They're not going to play this the same way. Are they? So I guess the point is in the show, we have no evidence that anyone in the Shanshan know that Sulaam can channel. But the question is also in, in the books,

[01:25:04] it was Sura author found out and she, they seem to be implying that she could be dead, but I think she's as dead as Volta is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that they are both still around, but yeah, I think that there,

[01:25:17] there was this whole thing of like characters having this knowledge within Shanshan that, that could destroy the empire. Right. It's a complete, Turning on its head of something central to their power. I agree. And I have to think that they're doing this, a just, you know,

[01:25:33] to clear out characters because they don't have enough screen time to give them. But I have to think that they are going to address this. Now the audience knows this, this secret. And I have to think that it's going to come back in another way. Yeah. I mean,

[01:25:46] I'll say if they were just doing it to clear out characters, they would be doing it to clear out the empire. But I think that they're doing it to clear out the empire. Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll say if they were just doing it to clear out

[01:25:56] characters, I think they could have left the nameless. Sool Dom chained up somewhere, you know, have, have her still be colored somewhere. They didn't have to kill her. The 90 of Sulaam. Yeah. I think her name is yeah. Okay. One thing that could be interesting,

[01:26:14] they could be setting up is now our heroes have this knowledge, but people within the Shanshan do not. Maybe that gives them an advantage later. Okay. All right. Fair enough. We have more feedback from duve. Now these are just knits. So go onto season feedback. Here we are.

[01:26:32] I went into season two after a non ideal way to consume season one, which was on two long haul flights of the states and back. Not so I wasn't super invested in the show or the books.

[01:26:42] I credit both John and Alicia for persuading me to give the books ago and a big thanks for convincing me. My wife had watched season one and had really enjoyed it. And so it was looking forward to season two. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying them.

[01:26:53] Do I want to know, have you guys been notching all of your quote unquote conquests or the number of people who said that you've converted them? Cause I think we're selling books for the Jordan estate. You should be, you should both y'all should be.

[01:27:06] So with that in mind, I have had a great time watching this show. It's been appointment viewing on Friday night and has given me as much to chew over and want to discuss as foundation and silo my top two genre shows in 2023.

[01:27:20] When a show makes me want to sit down thoughts, theories and feedback via an email, then that's Testament to the quality of what they're putting on screen. Changes made from the books have been interesting and helped to make me want to watch,

[01:27:35] want to see what they come up with next. However, I think there is a curse of eight episodes seasons developing. We've seen it in a Soka and I think season two of the wheel of time, eight episodes just doesn't give enough time to develop rich and dense stories.

[01:27:50] So we kind of skim over big chunks or have to ditch whole storylines. The shortening of storytelling then feeds into creative decisions, which can shortchange characters and key plot points. I recognize that it costs so much to get these stories on screen,

[01:28:04] but maybe with two more EPS of recent shows, we would have had a more satisfying meal. Again, a nitpick the wheel of time is not a Mackey D happy meal. It's nutritious. But not Michelin star fair. I think that's kind of in line with what you've been saying,

[01:28:20] David. Yep. Yep. That's a very much. I, the, that's a good comparison in as much as like HBO is not without its flaws. So, you know, I didn't want him, sure. I didn't want to set the bar. I was just trying to find that analogy, right. That,

[01:28:40] you know, of, of quality and that's it. I don't know. I don't know. Well, they got a lot to work on, you know, before they can get there. Right. They've got their issues too. You know, they never called the freezer repair man. What was the restaurant that,

[01:28:54] that cousin worked at that? Yeah. I don't remember the name of it. Do you remember Alicia? No, no. The fancy five star one. No. Yeah. With, with, yeah. I don't know what's her name. Yeah. With Olivia Coleman. Yeah. I don't know. Well, anyway, it's not that,

[01:29:16] but we're getting there. We're getting there. I think. All right. Do you have his closing out here? I'm really stoked for season three and hoping that as principal photography was completed already that we get the next part of the story earlier in 2024. Then we got season, season two,

[01:29:30] season two. Yeah, this is probably a small hope with the actor still on strike. Stay strong. Sugg after a, I loved your coverage and it constantly needs to be stated the depth of quality when you have had to cover three premium shows and foundation, a Soka,

[01:29:46] and this should not be understated. Kudos, gents. Well, thanks, do you always, always love the feedback so much more that I could say, but I can imagine there'll be a ton of feedback on the show. Thanks again, guys. See you in season three.

[01:29:58] Do 71 stew somewhere in the aisle waste. All right. Tom V writes in says, Hey gang, new listener and enjoying the journey with you. Welcome to the whole thing about not being able to sink the ferry with the one power. This is a book thing,

[01:30:14] but it would have already happened. So we're good. Uh, how do you reckon they square Marines torpedoes with the no use as a weapon? Oh, all right. Good question. This is a good question. I had the same thought when I was watching it,

[01:30:27] but I didn't bring it up on the pod because I had enough complaints. And what do you think, Alicia? Cause you're, you're an expert on the one power. Um, I mean, I guess again, it comes down to mind games, you know, it comes down to,

[01:30:42] does she see them as a threat? And I guess if they are threatening the dragon, then that is, you know, a threat to the human race at large. What would you, what would you say? What if we had a white cloak? I said, I,

[01:30:57] and they just thought everybody was a dark friend spewing out channeling. Yeah, I think that's right. It's probably, you know, she's convinced that it's dark friends who else would be shielding Rand, but it is, it is a little sticky there. I think,

[01:31:11] I think they pushed that to its limit there. Yeah. Absolutely. Loremaster Adrian writes in, Hey John and David, knowing that there are 14 books in the wheel of time series, something that has precluded me from reading. Do you think we'll ever see the end of the series on screen?

[01:31:29] From what I gather, it seems as if the show runners have been combining material from a few books into seasons. And still I can't imagine them going through all the books before someone at Amazon pulls the plug. I don't know what could be worse,

[01:31:42] a show stopping mid arc or a rest of the finish all a game of Thrones. On another note, if the show does end well, I'm sorry, if the show does end, I will gladly up my Patreon pledge to see both of you, uh, Alicia and John, uh,

[01:31:58] finish out the series with shadow puppets. All right, dude, that's pretty, that's a funny thought. Um, yeah. So the, the, the rumor, I mean, the idea that was floated, we don't know if it'll come to fruition or what is eight C's eight seasons in total. So that means,

[01:32:19] uh, they roughly covered like four books. If you include new spring, the next one is supposed to be pretty much one to one with the fourth book in the series. And then that would leave about two books per season left to cover to make that eight seasons.

[01:32:34] I can imagine some books, you know, uh, 10 can be collapsed quite heavily. You could do, I think you could do books eight through 10 in one season. Yeah. That, yeah. There are some big set pieces in them, but I don't think that they take all season to do. Yeah.

[01:32:53] I remember if like it's its own season, I guess. Yeah. I remember when we were talking with David Goyer, who's the showrunner for foundation when we had him on for an interview, he talked about having off ramps. He's already got off ramps planned. So if he gets cut,

[01:33:07] he knows, okay, this is how I can wrap us up here and I can wrap us up there. And I can only hope that Rafe has those backup plans in his pocket to think of, uh, if, if that happens. And it's a very, he's not guaranteed for eight,

[01:33:24] but there is no way Amazon doesn't feel like it cuts early. Like Netflix does. I feel like Amazon lets things run a little bit longer, although the city, the expanse got plenty of coverage. Well, they took on the expanse. Yeah. I know,

[01:33:42] but they also ended it after season six when it had three more books. Yeah. I mean, no, no, that was a showrunners. The showrunners wanted that ended. Oh, okay. I didn't even realize that. Yep. They were done. They,

[01:33:56] they thought about the story and they're on record for all of this. So they, they looked at the storyline and they looked at the last three books and that inflection point of what they would have needed to do to get there. And they're like, now we're good here.

[01:34:04] Uh, and you know, maybe we'll come back later with a movie or, you know, a miniseries. There's a big time jump between book six and seven. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And, and it makes me feel better. They were just tired.

[01:34:18] We've got other things that we want to do and all the actors and the crew, everybody has just been on it for a while. And that's a, that's a fair thing as well. You know,

[01:34:28] you go eight years of your life just in terms of seasonality year to year, not to mention the interstitial stuff. And the fact that both of the seasons have taken two years, exactly two years. So it's actually like 16 years if they keep this pace. Yeah. Well, yeah.

[01:34:47] Hopefully the industry in general gets a little bit back to normal more, but um, but I do take it to like, okay, so Amazon, Amazon is going to be a little bit more of a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

[01:35:10] a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a. Finder writes in says, thank you for the wheel of time podcast.

[01:36:13] One comment on the recent episode you mentioned. You're not sure how loyal and company got the horn land. Fear gave it to them in the episode in car says we had help from a lady from Kyrian. I love to hear some discussion about the soundtrack for this season.

[01:36:27] I recall John saying something about it briefly in the White Tower segment, but I'd be curious to hear more like John. I found it to be discordant to the point of jarring sometimes with electric guitars, modern and clean sounding instruments and just all too noticeable.

[01:36:41] At times, it gives the whole show a cheap CW feel. Thanks for the show. Alicia, say some nice things first. I mean, I said at the beginning, it's one of my highlights that I think Lauren Balfe, he encapsulates the drama of this show,

[01:36:59] but also the richness that we're talking about something that's both past and future at the same time. And so it makes perfect sense to me that you have this blend of instruments. And I also just love how they how he played with it

[01:37:14] throughout the different scenes, like, for instance, I talked about before in the episode where a Gwaine is being broken. Her theme is being broken down as this goes on to show her progression. And they've done this masterfully.

[01:37:28] Well, so I for me, the score is one of the highlights. And now you're going to say something not nice. Well, sorry, I was actually responding to Adrian on our discord who said

[01:37:43] I sent you an email about the Wheel of Time and hope it can make the season wrap. And I was like, we just recorded. Yeah. Well done. Yeah. I mean, I think that it just takes me out of it.

[01:37:54] Maybe I've been trained by Peter Jackson and and Howard Shore to expect a certain kind of music from fantasy, but I am trained that way. And so it doesn't feel like fantasy to me. It's just it's not it's not my taste, but that's fine.

[01:38:08] That's fine. If it's working for you, Alicia, I'm very glad. Yeah, I like that. It's different. I consider that a feature, not a bug. Yeah. David, any thoughts? Nope. I didn't notice the music didn't didn't have a vibe one way or the other. All right. Well, very cool.

[01:38:23] I think that's it for our feedback here. Why don't we do some very quick show notes before sending David on his way and doing the White Tower talking full books, whether so really quickly. We've got our affiliates. We've got properly Howard movie review. They just did the thing.

[01:38:39] I listened to the whole thing. It was really funny. I really like their review. It makes me want to watch it. And I probably will now because it's October and we're trying to be spooky about it. Classic. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:49] I've never seen it. So yeah, I just watched it the other night and actually did a comp to something happening in Loki season two. Right there. So. OK. Yeah. Good movies. All right, Alicia, you have your wool shift dust feed.

[01:39:02] I know you're doing something spooky on it this month. Yes, we're going to have some short coverage of the fall of the House of Usher, which is going to be on Netflix. And then starting next month, we're going to be covering Beacon 23,

[01:39:14] the new how Hugh Howie adaptation on MGM plus. Well, how Huey is going to be doing a great job with this series. Now, I'm glad I'm glad that you're back because we've been wanting to hear from you more and yeah, it'll be good to get the feedback going.

[01:39:28] And I think you and I are probably going to talk about the fall of the House of Usher on this feed at some point to do sort of a cross promo. Now, our programming notes were done with our triple covers. This is the last episode in it.

[01:39:42] We are you guys are doing Loki season two. I actually just caught up on it. So who knows if I'll scroll it up again? Yeah, my my my phone was blowing up with all your your messages the other day about getting into. So suddenly you're an MCU stand.

[01:39:56] I watched Captain America last night and I watched. I also watched the one shot of Agent Carter because I'm just so good. I'm following the Marvel playlist of chronological order. I recommend Agent Carter, the TV show, not official MCU, but like really good.

[01:40:14] Only two seasons. Really fun show. We'll see. We'll see. I'm going to start with the Disney stuff. We'll see where I go from there. But who knows? Maybe maybe you and John will will all convince me to put on a cape again.

[01:40:30] And so Loki season two will have a similar early in story this month. We'll have second breakfast for patrons. We've got plenty of stuff going on. Tejano we're doing in in Earthsea. We'll have a podcast on Revenge of the Sith.

[01:40:41] Plenty of stuff going on on our main feed. So definitely check it out if you are not already on there very quickly. I just want to shout out to our lore master patrons. This is our top tier subscribers. We've got some Martian Cyrus Mark H. Michael G.

[01:40:56] Michelle E. David W. Brian P. Nick W. S.C. Peter O.H. Bettina W. Adam S. Nancy M. Livinia T. Dove 71. Brian 80 63. Frederick H. Sarah L. Gareth C. Eric F. Matthew M. Sarah M. DJ Mewa. Andre B. Kwong U. Laura G. Dead Eye Jedi Bob. Nathan T.

[01:41:18] Alex V. Aaron T. Sub Zero and Adrian. All right. Thank you very much, everyone. Yeah, just maybe we'll do our shadow puppets. Quick note about Patreon, too. We've turned on the seven day free trial thing.

[01:41:31] So if you just want to check us out and see if that's something you want to do, you can do that. And you can also do annual memberships. Now we were able to convert our account to that.

[01:41:40] So if that works better for your budgeting, give that a try. OK, and of course, we have plenty of stuff on Patreon. I'm going to do a Shireside Chats exclusive for patrons this month, which is where I talk about the letters of J.R.R.

[01:41:52] Tolkien, and we're going to do second breakfast where we talk about we're going to watch The Witch. It finally the poll ended. Yes. So the witch, the horror movie. It's really, really, really good movie. David, I know you've got to head out.

[01:42:05] It's been a pleasure talking about this season with you. And I'm looking forward to talking about season three. And thank you, Alicia, for joining us on the White Tower. I'm sure you and John had a good time.

[01:42:17] And I was glad to have you in my head sometimes when I was watching the show. You know, curious. I was like, oh, gosh, I wonder what, you know, Alicia thinks about this or that or I can ask her this question.

[01:42:28] So I really appreciate you supporting the coverage for this show. Oh, I know I was going to ask you a question at the top and I forgot. Is is Wheel of Time, does that rank is in your power rankings for things?

[01:42:45] Is is Wheel of Time number one for you? As far as like TV this this year or no, no. In terms of yeah, in terms of all kinds of series is, you know, from, you know, everything from Dune to Star Wars.

[01:42:57] I mean, I would say the trifecta is Wheel of Time, Star Wars and Marvel. OK, got it. So no, no one. They're all equal at the top. Yeah, I think, you know, I go through different moments where I become more obsessed with one or the other.

[01:43:12] But these are three worlds that I've yeah, that I live in deeply. And I have to say, if I were to choose, like if I had to choose one world to visit, it would be the Wheel of Time world where there you go. OK, that answers my question.

[01:43:26] All right, guys, thanks very much. And everyone else come with me and we'll see you next season. All right, we're going to take a quick break so we can talk full spoilers and we're back and David just showed us his flarken before that sounded inappropriate. That sounds terrible.

[01:44:05] My flarken came to pay a visit. I did not show you. It's a name for a cat in the Marvel stuff if you're not in that world. Let's all calm down. It's fine. All right. All right. Goodbye, David, because it's time to talk full book spoilers

[01:44:21] with just the ice and I in the room. Alicia, what do you think of the the full adaptation this season? Yeah, I mean, I think I was guilty as ever, as I was in the first season of writing things in my head before going into episodes.

[01:44:36] But I think in the writers had earned my trust more or maybe they continue to earn it more this season. And I even though things were different, I still enjoyed them. Some things felt a little bit rushed. We've talked about that ad nauseum.

[01:44:51] But overall, I just think that this is an excellent adaptation and I just love seeing these characters on my screen and I need the whole story. Please. I know it would be such a shame if the show got canceled early,

[01:45:02] because I know David's talking about off ramps, and I think that works in a show like Foundation where it's a very loose adaptation. Right. But I don't see a lot of off ramps on the wheel of time.

[01:45:12] I mean, I guess if they had ended the season as they did now, I mean, hopefully they would have been given time to wrap up a few loose ends. But I guess it ends on a hero's notes or whatever. But still, no, come on.

[01:45:25] We need the final battle. Like we've been talking about the final battle since the first episode. The last. Yeah, yeah. It would be a real shame to end without the last battle, especially because, you know, you and I know that the last battle is not just a war.

[01:45:39] It is a battle of competing ideals about the world. Right, exactly. Yeah. And they've been building it up so much. And I you know, I've talked to a lot of new to the story people who haven't read the books, and a lot of them are loving it

[01:45:55] and just like completely sucked in and want to know more. And some people are, you know, more like David where they're like, that's a lot of information you're throwing at me. I'm not sure it's paying off.

[01:46:05] Right. And I just want we know from the books that this grows and grows. And a lot of us, I certainly was sucked in right away. Some people take longer, but the payoff is so worth it. Right. Yeah, I think that's right.

[01:46:21] I mean, I was hooked in right away, too. I really loved book one. I mean, I related to Rand a lot in the early seasons. You know, I felt like I knew that guy from when I was younger. And yeah, his POV sucked me in right away.

[01:46:35] But as the show, as the books grew, I honestly I cared less about Rand and more about other characters. And it just gets more interesting and it gets more, more. It gets more flavorful as you go through. Right. Right.

[01:46:50] Yeah. And I think the next season is going to be the season where it's going to make it or break it for anyone who's having doubts. And honestly, if you're not in after next season, then this isn't the story for you. But hopefully a large enough audience is.

[01:47:06] Yeah. I mean, I always say to people, if you if you don't like the books after book four, then you're probably not into the series. And that's yeah, that's fine. But yeah, I think I think book four is is a real threshold moment

[01:47:15] because you have that triple finale of, you know, fighting Mogadishu. You have, you know, Perrin fighting the White Cloaks and the Trollocs. You have Rand declaring himself to be the Karakarn. It's all and fighting Asmodian, too. It's also so good. It's just such a good climax. Yeah.

[01:47:38] Yeah. And I'm very excited, as you were saying, that that Rafe Judkins, the showrunner, said that it's going to be like a very exact adaptation of The Shadow Returns. And a lot of the filming news that I've seen coming out so far

[01:47:51] has been them filming on the Two Rivers set. And the Tinkers are there, including I was worried about Darrell McCormick arm coming back, but he's back. His yeah, I saw you tweet about that. Yeah, they recast Baron, right? That was the big news. Yeah, they recast Degwayne's mom.

[01:48:11] But I'm I think I'm fine with that. I'm assuming most people are going to be OK with that. Yeah. But then there's so many things that I want to see. Like, hopefully we're getting fail. We must be. I'm assuming we're getting real. I can't wait to meet her.

[01:48:24] And I'm wondering, I think we're going to get Lord Luke, too, because there is an actor that's been cast, but they won't say is what his name is, Luke Featherston, if you want to look him up. And he looks like he could be Rand's uncle. OK. All right.

[01:48:42] I wanted to bring in some feedback here because I think it's relevant here. Scott H. wrote in and this I saved for the White Tower. It's the only one that I sheltered from the spoiler free folks says,

[01:48:55] I'm not I'm typically not one of those fans who gets too caught up in book versus show differences, but I'm anxious about the show's long term plans for Rand. Central to his development is his relationship with Elaine Minin, Avienda, as well as their relationships with each other.

[01:49:09] I'm worried that character economy and modern social political sensibilities will cause a departure from the book series. At this point in the show, Rand has little to no relationship with any of the three women. And some of these plots seem to be getting incorporated

[01:49:24] into Matt and Perrin story arcs, which will potentially have significant knock on effects. What are your thoughts and opinions on what direction the show will take? Rand and his three loves from the book, Alicia Min promised him rainbows and carnivals and three beautiful women.

[01:49:42] So I think I think they're setting it up. I think that it's too soon to just like suddenly dive into it, especially, you know, with everything. They're still wrapping up the Aguain thing and Landfier now in the books.

[01:49:55] Now we've seen him meet Elaine and we got the lovey dovey perspective. Yeah, that was the moment where I thought, OK, we're definitely doing the three people. Yeah. And and in the books, you know, it would be the start of season three where a Gwaine basically gives Elaine

[01:50:12] and Rand the blessing to be together. You know, Gwaine's like, yeah, what a weird scene. And I mean, hopefully they'll handle a little bit better because they approached this relationship as being more mature from the get go.

[01:50:25] Man, Robert Jordan, I love him so much, but he could not write romance. Just couldn't do it. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I think so. And then Min, we've met Min, obviously, Rand's met Min. She becomes a more significant romantic figure later in his life.

[01:50:41] And I think we're going to get him spending significant time in the waste with Avienda. So. Right, right. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. I'm not worried, Scott, and neither is Alicia. So fare thee well. It'll be OK. Thanks for writing in, though.

[01:50:59] OK, so let's let's move on to things that we hope to see that we need to see in season three from the book, from from the Shadow Rising. Let's just focus on that since we since we know that it's going to be a pretty straight adaptation. Yeah.

[01:51:15] Yeah. I mean, I'm still hoping that they might sneak in some things that we didn't get to see yet, like the Flicker Flicker and the stick fight. Yeah. Maybe they'll do Flicker Flicker within the Terran Real in Rayne, Raydeon. Boy, I can never say that. Right?

[01:51:33] Yeah, I think the thing I need the most that I'm most nervous about, but I honestly believe they've been foreshadowing this heavily is the fins. Like, I don't know. People are just freaking me out because people are saying, oh, they're replacing the fins. And I don't think so.

[01:51:48] I think they're just that would be such a mistake to cut. Yeah, it's a very unique part of it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's deeply tied to, you know, Matt to Moraine. It's yeah, it's an important it's an important like world.

[01:52:00] And I am interested to see how they bring this all together with all of the the mirror worlds and the dreaming stuff. And I think they could weave it together in a nice, neat way and neater way than the books.

[01:52:15] Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably right for me. I mean, we know two rivers is happening. I need the history of the aisle that Rance used to be in there. I nailed because that is something that is.

[01:52:30] I mean, one of the jaw dropping moments of that book for me is learning how the aisle became the aisle. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And especially with the tinkers coming back. So yeah, yeah. I really love how much they hate the tinkerers when they were tinkers.

[01:52:45] Well, that's the thing you do hate the most similar to yourself, right? Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good stuff. And then Perrin in the dream world has to be cool because Perrin, as David pointed out, and I think that's right.

[01:52:59] They haven't been doing a lot with him this season. And I hope that they I hope hoppers back. I'm sure he will be. Yeah, I'm sure. And I hope that we will get more development on Perrin's dreamy powers.

[01:53:12] Yeah, that's why I'm excited about a potential Lord Luke sighting. You know, I want the the slayer aspect to come. And yeah, I want I want also I want to go into shine. You know, I want her to have her wise one training her dreamer training

[01:53:27] and set things up for I'm wondering if they might tease the tower break in the finale. OK, all right. I think that that would be cool because, yeah, don't they do that in the epilogue of book four? That's where that's where it's like ambushed.

[01:53:44] Right, exactly. So it'd be perfect if maybe that's what he means. Also, by like a nearly direct translation to screen. Yeah. Yeah. I hope that they do it well. And I think we're getting a lot of right. So we will have. Yes.

[01:54:01] Some kind of some kind of conflict here. Yeah. I'm wondering what's going to happen with Camelot. We're definitely that's a setting I'm guessing at the beginning. I'm thinking that Elida is going to be like you lost Elaine and then go storming to the tower with the boys,

[01:54:17] hopefully still waiting for that quarter staff fight. I'm wondering now one interesting casting announcement is they cast someone as Jack Lennart, who is a minor dark friend involved in the Camelot political plot line in the book. So I'm wondering if that means anything. Interesting.

[01:54:38] I think maybe we'll get a Robin or some male with more gaze at some point, maybe in the season after after her sons are gone. I think that would be a good way to do it. Right. Empty nest. Yeah. Are we ever going to get Gareth Bryn?

[01:54:54] Yeah, I'm hoping I was actually just fan casting. Well, not even a specific person, but just like thinking of what if they made that a female character? OK. And then, yeah, that could be interesting for later plot lines with Birgitta and also with Swan.

[01:55:12] Right. You know, it's funny, I I always pictured Gareth Bryn as the six fingered man from the Princess Bride. You killed. That's always been like the look in my mind. OK, fair. Yeah, definitely someone like dark haired like that. I don't know. I don't know.

[01:55:28] I guess they must describe him that way. Like I just want him to be like kind of menacing, but then like secretly sweet. Right. That that's the right way to portray him. Right. Yeah, I agree.

[01:55:40] Yeah. And what role do you think this Sean Chen will play next season? I kind of hope they're gone for a couple of seasons. Yeah, that's the way they are in the books. OK, I'm good with them being gone for a while, although they I guess they

[01:55:53] know they show back up along the coast and stuff. Yeah. Gunning shows up. Is that book for that she shows up? Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah, because that's that's where they meet her is in. Now I can't remember the name. Tenshiko. Yeah.

[01:56:08] So so then they they use her to get into the palace. Yeah, and the fact that they are palace, they left a cliffhanger with with Bale now in the books. Bale was supposed to throw something else into the ocean.

[01:56:25] I mean, you think they'll do the whole male Adam hotline, Adam, whatever we're calling it? I mean, that scene with Samaraj in book 11, I think it is or 12. That's one of the most chilling moments in the series for me. It was insane.

[01:56:41] So I hope that we get that later. And and it's it's interesting to have Rand access the true power there. I think you need something to make him do that. Right, right. Have to really make him panic, I guess. Yeah.

[01:56:53] Yeah. I'm wondering one of my big questions is what's going to happen with the Wonder Girls like they have their travel rings, presumably. So are they going to because two of them are not yet accepted? So are they going to go back and do that?

[01:57:05] Or is it just like straight to travel time? Because also what's going to happen with Leandrin, is she going to go back to the tower, which she can't do if the girls are there? Or is she just going to go off and get embroiled in other plots?

[01:57:20] Yeah, I think Leandrin will go back for a little bit. I think the girls will stay away for a little bit. I don't think you need to have the accepted test because they don't need the rings now.

[01:57:28] And you could still have the Gwaine Amaral and see plot line and say she was raised just the same way she was in the books. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'm wondering if they'll send Min back to the tower

[01:57:42] because we got to get Min back in the story somehow. And I guess that makes sense because she they still have the hold over her. And yeah, I guess my other big question is, is Matt going to remember

[01:57:56] his past lives in the old tongue now or is it going to be like holes in his memory? And maybe that's what makes him go seeking answers. Yeah, I hope that he still needs some answers because it would be nice

[01:58:08] or maybe you know how Brigitte forgets parts of her lives while she's outside of the, you know, the world between worlds. Tell her I'm right. I think that it may be the same with Matt, right?

[01:58:19] He remembers fully when he's in that moment and then he's like, oh, wait. But what happened? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot to hold in a human head. Yeah, no, it's true. And yeah, I know I think it's more interesting if he forgets some things

[01:58:33] and it's like that's like his little struggle. But I loved seeing him come to life and be the playful man. I want more of that. I want the black Aja hunt, especially. I do want Viren and her brown Aja team to be more involved in it.

[01:58:49] And this threat of them investigating Logain too. Want to see some of that? Tam to come back. Tom, I'm so excited for Tom. Please give us songs. I'm even excited to see more Fane. I want to see crazy Fane. Yeah, I really want on his fame.

[01:59:06] I don't know what they're doing with that. They really need to get him a little crazy already. Explain why he can just handle the dagger and nobody else can. Right. Because he's secretly insane. Yeah, sure. Whatever. Just just give me unhinged fame.

[01:59:19] And I need to know if Maxim's a dark friend because I've gotten very suspicious recently. Yeah, they did see that, right? Like I have to be away from her. She can't see my head unless we're in battle.

[01:59:29] And then I got to really concentrate just on the battle. Yep. And the hand gesture thing and him making eye contact with Varen and Joya. I don't know. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. And they're going to break our hearts with Dane, which they definitely don't do in the book.

[01:59:43] So I think they have a good track record of making me feel things for villains that I didn't in the books. Yeah, I think that's right. What about you? Anything else that you're looking forward to? I think I listed most of what I'm looking forward to.

[01:59:59] I think they need to bring in Calendor at a certain point, but I'm OK with them putting that off for another season or two. I think it'll be early. I think it'll be beginning of next season, but we'll see. You think? OK.

[02:00:10] Because of because they're begin the book in tear. So I think they might just do that. Sure. Yeah. OK. All right. And we do have to go east. Because we need to get to the IELB, but the Aiel Waste. Aiel. Yeah. Aiel.

[02:00:25] Yeah. Well, now we had a Avienda declaring him Karakarn, so that gives them good motive. Yes, I think that's right. She's going to be like, you're the Karakarn, he's going to be like, what? And they can move on from that.

[02:00:38] Yeah. And Marine will hear that and be like, oh, yeah, there are the prophecy. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go find out. Exactly. Buddy boy. Yeah. Maybe maybe Lanfear will transport him away to get him away from the other Forsaken. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:00:51] I'm wondering what's going to always quickly. I'm wondering what Lanfear is going to be up to, because they can't like she's with such a hit this season, it doesn't feel like they'll diminish. Yeah. Yeah. I think she'll still be around quite a bit.

[02:01:02] I think she's just going to be a little bit more cautious. Yeah. Fighting with Moggy in the background and what other other Forsaken show up. Right. All right. Well, this was a great podcast. I think we're at the two hour mark around.

[02:01:14] I don't know because we have to stop recording and start recording from a technical issue. But we had a full discussion and I'm glad we were able to talk book spoilers for a little while. Alicia, it's been a pleasure doing the White Tower segment with you all season,

[02:01:27] and I'm looking forward to next season. Yeah, I can't wait. January 2025. Make it so. All right. We'll see you then. The Lore Hounds podcast is produced and published by the Lore Hounds. You can send questions, feedback and voicemails at the lorehounds.com contact.

[02:01:44] Get early and ad free access to all our 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.

[02:02:05] OK, 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 pick sides and fight and stuff.

[02:02:24] 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 Lore Hounds.

[02:02:35] 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. And with the season pass option and super cast, listeners can get early ad free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive.

[02:02:49] 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 takes. The Lore Hounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green

[02:03:02] consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heart and conflict with itself and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.