#Wot book Spoilers

[aceofthegreenajah]

Yesterday's episode also involved a new badass thouple and a character going 'what, your culture demands people settle down with only one person? Oh, you poor things'

one way to tell if a tv show is good is if it features at least one implied throuple

[nandivina]

Ok guys, I think Siuan saying “I’ll find you” and Moiraine replying with “I’ll wait for you” is clear foreshadowing for the tower of Ghenjei and how we can expect things will unfold in the show and that makes me veeeery excited

[daughter-heir]

[moghedien]

Living for this dynamic

Elayne: *uses maiden hand talk, has red hair* haha, I just think your culture is interesting. Aviendha: You're so knowledgeable and understanding and you know, you have the look of an Aiel. You could easily be mistaken for you. You might not have any Aiel in you, but we can change that... **** Rand: My mother was Aiel Aviendha: kys

[asha-mage]

I know I've talked about this before, but I think something they've captured extremely effectively about Lanfear's character from the books is that she is always putting up a facade, even to herself.

Lanfear is obsessed with controlling the way others view her, but she very pointedly does not care if they view her in good or bad lights, only that their understanding is what she wants it to be. This is why she delights in disusing herself as Keille or Silvie as much as 'Selene', and why being transmigrated into Cyndane is such a punishment- because it takes away her control over how others view her, something Moridin clearly delights in reminding her as part of that punishment.

And that's because if Lanfear can present a sufficiently perfect front, she can convince everyone including herself, that the parts of herself she hates don't exist- Her envy, her rage, her desperate love for someone who can not love her back. All the terrible mundane human flaws that she buries beneath different fronts.

This is also why, in her pivotal final scene with Rand she can't bring herself to truly let him into her dream shard- because it would require letting him bare witness to all the unvarnished truth of her, and take away any chance she has of pretending to be this powerful ancient sorceress always in command and control that she wants him to see her as.

She can not willingly let herself be seen as human, because humanity is the thing she cast aside in exchange for becoming Forsaken- she has to scorn it, it has to be shameful and worth nothing, because if it's not that means admitting she made a mistake all those years ago in the Collam Daan, when she swore herself to the Shadow.

[geryrrs]

I have a theory: we know that Rand has a storyline where he tries to save a girl, but she still dies, and he attempts to bring her back to life. I think experiencing that trauma in the show will unlock Lews memories because of what happened to his children.

[cheeeerie]

I do really like the way season 3 is treating Faile and I understand why they have to condense the plot in a lot of places, but I am a little sad about the fact that we’re gonna miss Perrin’s exchange with Moraine after he meets Faile for the first time because it basically goes like:

Perrin: Moraine can you tell if that girl is a dark friend?

Moraine: No, why?

Perrin: She’s won’t stop looking at me.

Moraine: Maybe it’s because you’re jacked and she wants to tap that.

Perrin:

Moraine:

Perrin:

Moraine:

Perrin: …nah that’s not it.

[vorbarrsultana]

let this man be someone's father

[markantonys]

3x05 thoughts! (book spoilers)

i loved all the character & relationship moments in this episode! it was nice to take a breather and just spend time with the characters and get to see how much they mean to each other. wotshow continuing its trend of doing a great job balancing character work vs. action across the 8 episodes!

against all odds, randgwene clung on by a thread for yet another week lmao but the breakup is 100% coming next week, and surely it has to be just about the first thing to happen in the episode given the cliffhanger. i'm reaaaaally curious (and anxious) about how they'll frame it, because right from day 1 after the first trailer etc i said "i really hope they make it clear that randgwene's breakup is mutual because they just aren't right for each other, and don't frame it as the only reason they broke up is because rand is ~cheating~ with lanfear and egwene feels betrayed". it was my biggest point of worry with the whole rand-egwene-lanfear situation, and it seems like it might be coming true! but we haven't actually gotten to hear rand talk about the whole lanfear situation and his feelings on it, so hashing it out with egwene might give him a good opportunity to do that and maybe whatever he says will make it clear to the audience and egwene that he's been manipulated and it will help ease things a bit. i just really hope rand and egwene will be able to end everything on decent footing with each other; i know there has to be big tension between them at the end of the series, but imo that would be cheaper and more emotionally shallow if it's leftover tension from a bad breakup rather than the more platonic tension between two conflicting world leaders who used to have a close personal relationship and grew up together but now must both put their greater duties first. not to mention that we HAVE to get egwene's signoff on avirandlayne if we want the audience to accept that relationship, so she has to end the season in a decent place with rand!

as of now, we're obviously on the verge of high drama, but i have faith that maybe rand & egwene's conversation will end up going in a good direction that allows them to go "look, lanfear might be the catalyst for forcing us to talk about it, but we've both known for a long time that we just aren't right for each other and THAT is the real reason we need to end things" (plus, surely egwene will tell rand that lanfear's been behind her dream torture and rand will be horrified and take her side and turn firmly against lanfear, right? right??). it's also interesting to consider how much control rand had over his dream; in the past rand-lanfear dream convos, he's always seemed "conscious" (though asleep of course) and fully in control and aware of what he's doing, but in this sequence, egwene is entering the other friends' dreams and it's clear that it's just their subconscious minds coming up with scenarios and they aren't doing anything on purpose. is rand fully in control of himself in this dream? or is it a somewhat subconscious dream on his part with lanfear consciously influencing the direction? it IS interesting that the new location could, maybe, imply that this is rand's own natural dream, at least to start, vs. past randfear scenes that seemed like lanfear pulling rand somewhere to talk to him. but we really can't judge anything for sure until we've heard what rand has to say about it next week.

sticking to the waste plot, the avirand scene!! 10/10 no notes! rand learns about polyamory, avi tries to feel out whether wetlanders are down for it, and they bicker <3 and rand playing with the little girl, my HEART let him be a stay-at-home dad!!!!

as i suspected, rhuarc-bair-lian is yet another balanced triad where everybody is equally married to each other with no mention of any sibling-spouses. alanna-maksim-ihvon was the same, so it does really feel like they're setting up for the Main Character Polyship to be a balanced triad where everybody is equally romantically involved and there are no metamours, aka avirandlayne only and min not involved at all. further to this point, there was no particular min-elayne interaction in this episode beyond sharing a group conversation and they didn't react in a noteworthy way to each other, but i'll keep an eye on further developments there in the remaining episodes! if no focus is given to the min-elayne individual dynamic in tanchico, i'd say that's the final nail in the coffin for min being involved in the polycule because at that point they would have blown past MULTIPLE opportunities to tie her together with elayne or rand.

continuing on with polycule thoughts, i was glad to see an acknowledgment of avilayne in elayne's dream! one of my problems with the way it was done so far is that it was so extremely casual as to have no impact on either character outside of 3x01 itself, but i'd suspected that might change later in the season with some kind of Reminder That This Happened, and sure enough, we did get that here. this kind of small but notable acknowledgement is striking just the right balance for me: it's making sure to keep avilayne in the audience's thoughts and signaling to them that there's more to come here, but without emphasizing it as a monogamous romance so much that people will be blindsided or upset when rand joins in the future. we can see that elayne is still thinking about avi, but she's not pining and yearning for her every waking moment of the day (if she was doing that and then if avi started falling for rand more clearly before elayne rejoins them, the audience would feel indignant on elayne's behalf, so it's good that they're not going TOO hard on elayne's feelings for avi just yet; especially with avi's line this episode derisively saying "that's too much to ask of one person" implying that she doesn't have monogamous expectations with elayne, it's good that elayne doesn't strongly have those expectations either, so they're both more or less on the same page as of now).

my wishful thinking was that it would've been nice to have rand crop up in elayne's dream too sort of the way faile did in perrin's, nothing overtly romantic but a sign that he's lingering in her thoughts just like aviendha is. but of course, that couldn't happen in this context because egwene might feel weird or betrayed about seeing rand pop up in her BFF's dream because randgwene are still together. man, i don't want to be a hater but the extended randgwene is 100% to blame for the dynamics i DO want to see getting repeatedly punted off and put on the backburner! gawene didn't get to even meet, and the avirand stuff we've gotten has been perfect but it still kinda feels like they're being shafted in THEIR OWN ARC; this is the biggest time they spend alone together in the whole series but we can't even treat it as a notable focus of the season because we have to keep the focus on randgwene (and randfear) and don't want to risk tainting avirand with cheating implications by drawing the audience's attention to them too much before randgwene has broken up. and i don't know how likely it'll be for avirand to get a little moment during the cold rocks hold attack next week as i'd hoped they might, because the breakup has been dragged out yet another week so they'll be too busy giving the emotional focus to the randgwene fallout and it might STILL be too soon to let rand share any kind of little moment with avi (and in that BTS shot of sammael, he was alone with rand and egwene in a potential cold rocks hold-y set, so i wonder if rand will be sticking with egwene during the battle and avi will just have separate fight scenes).

but all i can do is wait and see how it goes down! it's obvious that avirandlayne IS coming, so i have to trust that rafe has a plan even if i can't quite see it yet haha my fear is that randgwene lasting so long in s3 will mean avirand & randlayne couldn't get as strong setup as they might have otherwise will mean them coming together in s4 will end up feeling rushed (and then gawene too which i've been looking forward to almost as much as avirandlayne, god knows what might even happen there since they are now so SO far past the date of their book meeting). why the show is choosing to fastburn the getting-togethers of endgame romances but slowburn the breakups of non-endgame ones is beyond me, but i will trust that rafe has a plan and that it will all make sense once i'm able to see the forest instead of just the trees!

returning to the dreams, i loved this sequence of egwene visiting her friends' dreams SO MUCH probably one of my favorites of the season so far!! she got so much joy out of seeing her friends happy 🥺🥺🥺 and it was such a beautiful way to show us a little bit of each friend's inner life; nynaeve's lost daughter is still weighing on her and she still dreams about a happy life with her, elayne takes such joy and wonder in learning new things and dreams of a carefree life following her heart outside the confines of duty, perrin's happy place is being at home with his forge and hopper (my heart!!) and he's starting to take faile into his heart too, and MAT!!!! mat's dream killed me dead!!! he has often been played for comic relief this season, so i was really thrilled to get this beautiful reminder of his layers and depth and the good, selfless heart he has underneath the bravado, and particularly glad to get this scene for donal!mat who hasn't had much chance to get the family stuff that barney!mat had so much of in s1 - it really helps keep up the consistency between the two versions and connect our present mat back to s1 mat. all he wants is to give his sisters a good life and hear his mom tell him she's proud of him!! which is such a gutpunch after her death in this episode!

can somebody PLEASE tell mat he's a good boy and they're proud of him!!! my Show!Mat Has A Praise Kink agenda grows stronger every day. man, between mat's dream and rand being so happy playing with the child, my s1 show-only observation that rand and mat would be each other's ideal partner in domestic family life remains spot-on. let them be dads!!

anyway, mat's mom! i was SO not expecting her to die, what a shock! and a good decision, it adds some stakes to the two rivers plotline and gives perrin even more of a reason to want to fight back instead of giving himself up and giving into the whitecloaks. and it seems we're getting the book arc of bode being able to channel! since the girls are twins in the show, i wonder if they can both channel or only one. and i also wonder how big or small of a plot point this might end up being; it's pretty small in the books, but the show has placed more emphasis on mat's family, so maybe they might do a little bit more with it? his sisters are still definitely tertiary characters, though, so i don't know. my biggest wish would be for a full wonderboy reunion in s4 so that perrin can tell mat about his mom and we can see mat react to her death (and i can get a cauthor hurt/comfort fic scenario out of it, priorities priorities haha), and ideally bode & eldrin traveled with perrin and mat can reunite with them at least for a moment. because we know that, if the books are followed, perrin and the cauthon girls will cross paths with rand soon after the two rivers arc (so likely s4), so if they can just get mat back in rand's plotline for s4 to do his TFOH dragon's general plotline, then we could get mat coming into contact with perrin and the girls as well. but as i've speculated before, this might depend on how many total seasons they anticipate getting and whether they have time to send mat back across the continent for a season or whether they need to jump into his west coast seanchan plotline immediately in s4.

good stuff in the two rivers plotline this episode! i loved perrin and faile's battle couple moment <3 and the perrin-dain face-to-face reunion was just as messy and delicious as i'd hoped! "i thought you were a good man" "i was, before you" okay okay

my one complaint about this plotline is, i have to embarrassedly put on my bookcloak hat, but i am really feeling the "alanna and her warders are getting too much time" complaints this season haha i didn't mind in the first 2 seasons, but now they're overstaying their welcome for me. it might not actually be true, but it feels like we've spent more time on alanna and maksim's relationship than perrin and faile's this season! however, i am almost certain that maksim will die in the two rivers battle, especially now that he and alanna had a mini arc of working out their problems and realizing that they're stronger when they stick together - surely that's GOT to mean maksim has to die in order for alanna to lose it enough that she does what she does in LOC next season. and if that happens, then i'll be fine with them getting so much time this season to build up to that death and make us understand why alanna loses it so badly. another thing where i'll have to reserve final judgment until i've seen the forest instead of only the trees!

speaking of people who may or may not be on Death Watch, moiraine and siuan! i really loved their scene together and thought it was so beautiful. as for predictions, i'm split 50/50 on whether them getting to mend fences and share a happy moment and a bittersweet goodbye means this is the final curtain call for their relationship and one or both of them will be dead-dead by the end of the season, or whether the "i'll find you in every lifetime" "and i'll wait for you every time" is foreshadowing of siuan going to find moiraine in finnworld at the end of the show. i just don't know!

i loved the lan and moiraine scene of them sharing a drink. perfect!

tower plotline: it was fine, got the job done

tanchico crew: bringing the comedy as always! i loved the opening scene with bickering matlayne and seasick nynaeve, absolutely impeccable vibes, and then min officially joins the gang (i loved the "raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by liandrin" moment between the four of them lmao). as somebody who's been starting to feel oversaturated with the mat-min dynamic, i was disappointed that he left elayne and nynaeve's scene so quickly to wind up hanging out alone with min yet again, but we did get some great stuff between the trio and the quartet nonetheless! still, at this point it's kinda feeling like mat was lifted out of the waste storyline purely to hang out with min for the second season in a row (and arguably to act as a support piece in HER storyline about learning how to find agency in her visions, more so than having his own storyline get focused on), but i'm sure in ep6 that will change and mat will get more time to shine and more chances to interact with non-min characters since tanchico is slated to be the A plot. i'm very excited to see this plotline lead an episode, it's been a long time coming!

we did finally get a reference to the s2 rand viewing and we learn that mat's takeaway is that min's viewings aren't even accurate because she said he would kill rand and he didn't. and then in the ep6 preview it showed mat trying to pump some tanchico citizens for info about the male a'dam collar, so i just might get a little cauthor crumb next week with mat being worried about rand getting collared and wanting to help protect him!

i think that's everything off the top of my head for this episode!

[black-ajah-hq]

god i love this show

[amemoryofwot]

So wait, if Sammael is going to be behind the Cold Rocks Hold attack, that could very likely mean Darkhounds, which could then mean …. Balefire??? Balefire next week Queen?? Balefire??

[butterflydm]

Wheel of Time 3x05 - Tel'aran'rhiod

Spoilers through 3x05 of the show and through roughly Winter's Heart in the books.

Holy shit, they straight-up killed Natti Cauthon! And Bode is confirmed to be able to channel. The Perrin stuff was intense this episode! He and Faile went through a massive bonding experience together, saving Mat's sisters. Alanna and Maksim's storyline was also really good.

I am kinda feeling some death knells because of how much Moiraine and Siuan got to reconcile in that scene together, but hopefully they are wrong and Siuan will not die. But that was a lot of closure.

Cockblocked on my Randgwene breakup for yet another week but surely it has to happen next week. Even Egwene can't brush off what she just saw and pretend everything is fine and chill with Rand.

Okay, so going back to the things that I enjoyed (because the continued Randgwene is basically my only frustration with the show because I am so done with them but the show keeps dragging the corpse of their relationship out for yet another week).

I did really enjoy pretty much everything else.

I called it that Rand is convinced He Can Fix Her after seeing Mierin Sedai in the columns, and I also feel like the show made it pretty obvious that this is their first kiss in the dreams.

Ugh, Rand is in a weird place where he obviously should have broken up with Egwene a long time ago but believes he owes it to Egwene to stick with her because of all she's done for him and suffered because of him and... yeah. Ugly situation. But hopefully it resolves next week.

Rand in Cold Rocks Hold was lovely. Rand learns about polyamory! Rand gets to spend time with a kid and smile and be happy among the Aiel! Cute cute cute!

The Sea Folk ship material was amazing. The weaves looked like the Northern Lights! So pretty! And we did get a tiny reminder of Elayne liking Aviendha in her dream (that Egwene popped into -- that is very book-canon behavior from Egwene).

Mat and Elayne had a very amusing dynamic (probably not helped by the close quarters for 14 days on a ship!), and I am definitely intrigued to see where it goes.

Min had pretty much zero reaction to seeing Elayne. She was pretty much 100% focused on Mat. So that was interesting.

Speaking of! Mat mentioned the Rand thing this episode! And, yeah, so it's made him think that Min's viewings are not all they are cracked up to be, because Rand didn't die. So that scene worked really well for me (and the glimpse of his dreams was so sweet and heartbreaking! All the dreams were very sweet. And then there was the Randfear dream that Egwene walked into, oops).

Aviendha double-checking with Rand that wetlanders definitely don't share lovers, yeah there's no ulterior motive there. She's so mad at the fact that she finds him attractive. She is so mad about it.

Bair continuing her "please just break up" campaign with Randgwene by separating them as much as possible which, yeah, my god, I am there with you, Bair.

Yeah, I should get to sleep soon, so those are my thoughts.

I really do hope that Randgwene can break up for good soon so that I can look back at their relationship with a more objective eye, where I'm not just constantly going, "Why are you still together! You broke up in 1x01!" at the screen.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

I love how the show has developed Alanna so incredibly well and made her so very likable so they can twist the knife and make it hurt even more next season with the forced bonding violation :)))))))))))))))

[daughter-heir]

i LOVED everything about Egwene visiting everyone's dreams I cried. like last episode i loved the otherwordly feel of the filming!!! like the crazy transitions were perfect. my ONE small critique is that I WISH Perrin had looked up and noticed Egwene in his dream to hint at his ability to walk the dream but YAY HOPPER!!!

[moghedien]

I also like to imagine Semirhage very genuinely trying to be like the Chosen’s doctor and absolutely having no ulterior motives in that task but everyone thinking that she does and being scared to death of the prospect of it. Like she’s sending them little reminders to come in for a check up and is just like “Why are none of them making appointments? Why are none of them coming see me, their physician, when they’re hurt? I can make the screaming people be quiet if it’s annoying them.”

[highladyluck]

Rafe, I’ve seen what you’ve done for show!Liandrin, show!Alanna, and show!Faile, and I want that for show!Tuon.