Book Reader Wheel of Time Recap and Reaction: Season Two, Episodes 7-8

Episodes 7 and 8 of season 1 sharply turned me against the show. The good news is that is not the case with episodes 7 and 8 of season 2. Part of that is my dim view of the show is already baked in, but in all fairness the show managed to avoid ending another season on a sour note. The bad news is that the show once again failed to end with a real pop. This stands in sharp contrast with both HBO’s Game of Thrones and the books themselves (and those are two comparisons the show cannot escape from).

SPOILERS abound below.  Mostly for the show, but there will be book spoilers sprinkled in as well.

Recap

Episode 7

Moiraine and Suian’s plans for their future are derailed when they witness Gitara’s Foretelling from the books. This is an economical approach, if over-focused on the odd decision to foreground Moiraine and Suian’s romantic relationship, but the performance of the actress playing Gitara is . . . not good.

We move from there back 20 years into the future. Lan fessed up to everything, because, wow, Rafe does really not like that character. Suian is angry Moiraine hid she had been stilled, but mostly she wants to meet Rand. Lan and Rand have a long chat ending in him teaching Rand Cat Crossing the Courtyard. Rand then walks in completely normally to see the Amyrlin. Suian telling him he is the water that drives the Wheel gets a fundamental thematic element of the story badly wrong. Suian imprisons Rand, because, seriously, Rafe hate every single character in this story.

Mat gets captured (who does he think he is, a Supergirl?). Lanfear wakes him up in Falme, but Ishamael is the next Forsaken who will talk to. Ishamael offers him a tea from the Age of Legends that will give him access to his prior lives. (I have thoughts.)

Photo Credit: Jan Thijs
Copyright: © 2023 Amazon Content Services LLC and Sony Pictures Television Inc.

Nynaeve and Elayne make plans to rescue Egwene. Nynaeve’s facial reaction to being ordered around by Elayne is everything. Lioal offers some intel. Nynaeve and Elayne capture a sul’dam.

Verin plots while Alanna watches her. Liandrin meets with Moiraine’s sister and Barthanes (who is, indeed, a Darkfriend). Lan asks Moiraine whether she ever thought about “ending it.” Later he talks to Logain, who reveals that, rather than being stilled, Moiraine got from Ishamael something like the Shield Lanfear gave Asmodean.

Egwene gets tested by the sul’dam with a group of other damane. Her expression of power is poorly juxtaposed with Rand’s lack thereof. If she can be immediately strong, why can’t Rand? She is, in fact, very strong. (This would have been a good time to threaten her with a ship back to Seanchan, but no.)

Aviendha and Perrin trek across a Toman Head that is straight up desert. A couple of Maidens beat up Aviendha. This has a reason: Rafe wants to shoehorn in some awkward exposition about ji’e’toh that gets ji’e’toh wrong.

Rand asks Lanfear to murder many people on his behalf. She starts a fire in the Foregate as a distraction. Verin uses the confusion to spring Rand and Moiraine. They get to the Waygate, and Rand unshields Moiraine, but Suian arrives and shields Rand and orders Moraine to close the Waygate. Then Lanfear arrives for a deus ex machina.

Episode 8

3000 years prior, Lews Therin imprisons Ishamael. This reiterates that Ishamael wants to die and that the Forsaken appear to be imprisoned in individual seals. Ishamael has those seals (which are quite a bit larger than in the books).

The White Cloaks prepare to attack Falme. Perrin and the Aiel are approaching Falme. Lanfear brings Rand to Falme while dumping Moiraine and Lan elsewhere. Without much else to do, Moiraine rebonds Lan. As it turns out, though, they are near enough to Falme to make it there eventually.

The fog that plays a prominent, very different role in the book is produced by the White Cloaks here, allowing them to easily force their way through the city gates. (We will see the original fog in a bit.)

Perrin and the Aiel (now sans Hopper), enter easily as well and quickly run into Ingtar, Lioal, and the Horn (a little too conveniently). Ingtar and Lioal are quickly convinced to turn around and try to save Egwene.

They tease the Heron-mark on Heron-mark swordfight from the books but have Rand kill everyone with the Power instead, Indiana Jones-style. Ingtar gets his last stand, but without the admission that gives it its emotional resonance in the books. His companions also do the stupid movie/TV show thing where they wait around to watch him die, which would defeat the entire purpose if anything mattered.

Photo Credit: Jan Thijs
Copyright: © 2023 Amazon Content Services LLC and Sony Pictures Television Inc.

Fain presents Mat with the temptation of the Dagger. Mat avoids touching it, tying it to the end of a staff, making a rudimentary spear, then uses the Dagger to melt the keyhole to his cell.

The White Cloaks do something clever, in using catapults to target the tower where the sul’dam and damane are positioned, although that relies on the sul’dam all gathering in one central location inside catapult range. They also send out archers, who kill the sul’dam Nynaeve and Elayne captured and injure Elayne. Nynaeve then spends basically the rest of the episode and the battle looking at the arrow. (The regular cuts back to Nynaeve staring at the arrow in Elayne’s thigh get comical after a while.)

The convenient deus ex machina of the catapult gives Egwene access to an a’dam she locks on her sul’dam. With each wearing both bracelet and collar, Egwene essentially wins a battle of wills with her sul’dam. Or maybe using her greater ability in the Power to overpower her. Either makes a certain amount of sense, at least to me, if not to a non-book reader. Having completed his very moderate quota of cool shit for two seasons, Rand just sort of dully walks up to Egwene. Ishamael immediately captures him.

Luckily for him, Mat uses the Dagger’s new lock-melting powers to uncover the Horn. Hopper, the goodest boy, saves Perrin from Eamon Valda but his killed by Geofram Bornhald in turn. Perrin kills Bornhald. Mat runs until cornered then blows the Horn.

The Heroes of the Horn appear behind Mat. Uno is one of them, although of course Mat has no idea who Uno is.

Mat sneaks up behind Ishamael and attempts to kill him with a throw of his makeshift spear, but the spear passes through the illusion of Ishamael and strikes Rand instead, fulfilling Min’s Vision of him stabbing Rand (and also playing the role of Ishamael’s staff from the books). Egwene is able to hold off Ishamael (can’t have Rand doing anything important). Rand and Elayne get their meet-cute when she tries to heal him. Finally, though, Moiraine kills the damane shielding Rand (Suroth helpfully watches her attack slowly approach but doesn’t warn her damane).

Now! Now, Rand is unshielded and can do something cool. Instead, he just stabs Ishamael, melting his power-wrought blade, picking up a heron brand, and apparently giving Ishamael the full, in not necessarily final, death he gets in book 3. Lan does get a very cool fight scene protecting Moiraine during all this, though. Aviendha, Masema, and Lanfear all watch Rand proclaimed the Dragon.

The epilogue reveals that the Seals are gone. Ishamael released the remaining Forsaken. Including Moghedien.

Reaction

“Is this a sex thing . . . or a murder thing? ‘cause either way, I’d prefer you skip the talking.” is a great line.

The idea of a tea that gives someone knowledge of their past lives is very un-Wheel of Time, but it does help the show make some sense of Ishamael’s motivations. The rest of the Forsaken just want power. Ishamael understands the nature of their cyclical struggle with the Dragon and wants free of it. This is a more subtle piece from the books that the show gets absolutely right. It is weird that they miss so many big things and get this, but it is appreciated nonetheless. So they do a good job with Ishamael here, but less so with Mat.

I don’t hate Uno as a Hero. But I recognize it as a cheap attempt to manipulate the audience. I will say that it never seemed realistic to me that all of the Heroes of the Horn would be bound at the time the story takes place. This is a hugely eventful time in the turning of the Wheel! Many are surely walking the earth, which means that at least a few characters must be Heroes. (We do eventually learn in the books that one character is a Hero.) The Heroes here, though, are a pretty paltry group. The show never properly builds up the Horn, but it is supposed to be a big deal. A few Heroes don’t cut it.

Photo Credit: Jan Thijs
Copyright: © 2023 Amazon Content Services LLC and Sony Pictures Television Inc.

The show still hasn’t given us a landmark set piece. Season 1 of Game of Thrones was a little light in that regard, too, but remember that season 2 gave us the Battle of the Blackwater. Forcing the battle between the White Cloaks and the Seanchan into the city streets is a neat way to hide that you can’t afford or won’t pay for a proper battle, but it doesn’t replace that battle.

Mat is the toughest of all characters to judge here. There was the recasting, which may or may not have been Rafe’s fault. The new actor is more that serviceable, though, and on the screen he looks more than enough like the old actor to avoid jarring the reader out of the story. (The casting remains the strongest aspect of the show by far.) It’s tough to compare him to book-Mat because there are really three book-Mat’s—the original, thinly developed Mat, Dagger-Mat, and post-healing Mat. It’s not clear where the show stands in all this, in part because they don’t want to follow any of the rules from the book. It isn’t enough to avoid touching the Dagger. Just having it out in the world is too dangerous. The tea and the makeshift spear suggest we may not see a few of Mat’s marquee scenes, which would be a tragedy. And tying a dagger to a stick is not the same thing as a proper spear. Nor did they bother to set up Mat as handy with a quarterstaff, suggesting they will skip another one of his marquee scenes.

Rand Indiana Jonesing Turok is fine . . . but it is a decision that the show forced itself by failing to establish Rand as a swordsman. And Rand being a swordsman is a fairly important aspect of his character.

Rand is still not doing jack. Rand may be one of just six main characters, but the show needs him, and it needs him more than the other five. Amazon itself, or at least the people who write its copy, seem to recognize this: my Prime picks email from last week informed me that “Fate leads Rand and the others to an inevitable showdown . . .”

The cast remains almost perfect. I’ve come to believe that the biggest mistake in casting was Rosamund Pike as Moiraine. Not because she isn’t good as Moiraine—she is great—but because it caused Rafe to make huge changes to the story in order to give her a bigger role to play this season. There is a ripple effect to all those changes.

Rafe also never hesitates to change a character for a cheap thrill. He basically committed character assassination against Suian for one otherwise inconsequential scene.

Not a fan of the depiction of Moghedien or that entire scene that closes the second season.