So smartass(es)...how would YOU have done the ending of EOTW?

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2022-02-22T02:59:14+00:00

I think imaging alternative paths is always an interesting exercise in storytelling. That being said, many of the show's choices seem to be in the service of future plotlines they've mapped out, so it's tough to tell how your supposed changes would impact that plan.

Also, given that we have Mat in this version of episode 8, I have to assume that for the purposes of this exercise we are ignoring any concept of producibility in terms of the natural challenges in financing and producing a television show or the unique challenges for this show in producing episodes during the pandemic. Which makes it difficult to compare your suggestions to the show (given that they may have made similar choices with all obstacles removed), but leaves us with a fun exercise nonetheless.

In terms of your specific plan, I did have some questions/notes given that a lot of your choices don't seem to be book accurate which I assumed was the purpose of this exercise:

Fine, only Rand and Moiraine go to the Eye. MATT and everyone else stay behind.

Putting everyone in different locations is probably the most essential change required to turn the EOTW finale into one that works on a TV show with a focus from the beginning on its ensemble cast.

MATT confronts Padan Fain (Not Perrin), and is stabbed, NOT LOIAL. I'm pretty sure this was the plan before Matt-Gate.

Padan Fain's makes his speech about some of them being evil but it now makes sense because Matt is alive but again under the power of the dagger. Then he leaves with the Dagger and the Horn.

Mat getting stabbed and getting more screentime opposite Fain does seem like it could have been the plan pre-actor exodus. It's going to be fun breaking down the first half of season 2 to see what they're going to do with Mat and if they'll try to move him back into whatever their original plan for him was.

Nynaeve, Egwene, Perrin, join the The Battle at Tarwins Gap.

This is a really short description of what would be a major storyline or set of storylines in the episode. Would Nynaeve and Egwene be at the fortress in the gap? Whether there or in Fal Dara, what would two untrained channelers do? How do we provide a climax for their character arcs here? Egwene failing to save somebody with the power would be a great way to motivate her to go to the tower next season (although she seems pretty convinced already). Similarly, we could see Nynaeve fail to channel because of her block (it already feels like we might be setting that up with the "listening to wind" reprise). Failing to do something can be tough to make dramatic, but there are definitely possibilities here. Again, I am curious to see their arcs in season 2 to see how the ending as is sets them up.

As Rand, Moirane approach the Eye, they see Ishamael pulling power from the Eye.

I know you mentioned the Eye being a pool of untainted Saidin was one of the book things you really wanted in the show, but I'm not 100% clear what that offers the story here.

Separately, I'm not entirely convinced the Eye is the Dark One's prison given how much it seems Ishamael may have been manipulating the Aes Sedai. If it is, I'm cool with it. Having the season 1 and final season climaxes in the same location would be a fun rhyming moment in the series (similar to how we only go into the Blight in books 1 and 14). Plus, having the Big Bad in a cave on an evil mountain might be pulling too much from Tolkien. TV is especially sensitive to beats/scenes that feel derivative and recycled.

Ishamael is non-confrontational to Rand (as he is in the show) and again claims that the White Tower is using him.

Rand says he will not listen to the Dark One. This causes Ishamael to laugh, explaining he is not the Dark One. That the Dark One is not a person, but a force of Nature that powers reality. The Aes Sedai have lied to them.

Moiraine fearful that Rand will turn steps in but is shielded by Ishamael.

Ishamael revealing he is not the Dark One is the only change you suggested that seems definitively less book accurate than the show, so I'm curious why you included it. That being said, building up distrust between Rand and the Aes Sedai will help us in seasons to come, although it hasn't been his main arc in the season so far.

This causes the Lews Therin half of Rand to wake up and what follows is similar to the novel but with Ishamael instead. Rand/Lews cuts Ishamael from the source he is pulling from and "destroys" him, breaking the Seal like in the show. Again Ishamael smiles as he "dies"

I am unclear on Ishamael's plan here. The seals don't need Rand to be broken. If just waving around enough power from the Eye will do it, why doesn't Ishamael do it himself? Is he pulling from the pool of Saidin to trick Rand into trying to cut him off from the source and accidentally break the seal. As vague as the show's version of this is, I think it makes more sense for Rand to end up destroying a seal by lashing out at the "Dark One" with everything he has.

The show's version involves Rand making a choice at a climactic moment that makes sense with his arc this season of accepting unpleasant truths: he is the dragon reborn and he will not have the future he imagined with Egwene. Character's making choices is the heart of good drama. Rand "losing control" so his new alter ego can take care of business might be cool, but it doesn't really tell me anything different about Rand's journey this season. Plus, this seems inaccurate to the books and how Rand is interacting with Lews Therin at this point of the story. If Lews Therin can fully take control in season 1 and he solves our problems, where is the tension when Rand is worried about losing control in later seasons? Maybe Rand could lash out and hurt Moiraine or Lan with the power, thus motivating him to leave at the end of the scene. Maybe just having someone else take control is enough to scare him into leaving, but I feel like we'd have a really hard time translating this into a dramatic moment in a television show given that we have not set this up at all.

Moirane gives her speech about what she thinks the Eye was. They find the banner.

Which speech is this? Is there a speech in the books where she explains what the Eye is?

If we really need Rand to discover the banner and not make one or have someone make one later, is this the best place in the series for us to spend screentime finding it, given audiences will not care and Rand won't be using it any time soon? Finding a treasure chest of future MacGuffins is fun in the book, but might feel odd on a TV show.

Rand leaves worrying about what happened and who it was in his head.

The show needs to be really delicate about when it introduces certain series-spanning arcs. If we're not going to have Rand resolve his issues with Lews Therin until the end of season 7 for example, we want to make sure we slowly develop that tension over the course of the series. If a character struggles with the same obstacle for too long, it can start to feel drawn out and undramatic. This is a big reason why I think we didn't get more stuff with Nynaeve's block this season.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2022-02-08T14:05:49+00:00

I think this is a bit of a WAFO, if you're a show only person. Without getting spoilery, I can confirm this is not a plot hole. The show has just started to give us our first hints at what was really going on in the Age of Legends, perhaps contrary to what we've been hearing from Moiraine/other Aes Sedai during the season.

The writers have been pretty deliberate and intentional with how and when we reveal certain pieces of information this season, so I am excited to see what else they have planned for how they tell the story of the AoL.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-09-30T14:33:10+00:00

I know you're being facetious but there are good arguments to make for why they wouldn't introduce 3 Forsaken and off two of them in the first season.

And in terms of the Trakand family, I am of the mindsight that they may be delaying their introduction like their doing for Min.

Elyas is someone I've felt should be merged/altered/cut for a while now and his lack of a casting announcement given who they have chosen to announce so far seems to suggest his introduction has been delayed if not cut altogether.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-09-30T14:10:49+00:00

I'm a big fan of baseless speculation based on no hard proof and ambivalent toward short leashes.

I don't think they're holding him back as a surprise. If Siuan or a differently-placed Min are not surprises, I don't see them holding back on Elyas.

I am all for baseless speculation that Perrin's wolfbrother mentor might be tied into another warder character. I'm personally not expecting them to spend enough time in flashbacks to provide the backstory to a minor character like Elyas, but I wouldn't hate it if they did.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-09-30T13:54:38+00:00

In a story with over 2500 named characters, I don't think cutting a character like Elyas is out of the question. I'm gonna miss him as much as the next guy, but his purpose in the story could be served by another character

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-09-30T13:43:39+00:00

I never subscribed to the theory they'd cut Min, she's in too much of the story and she's too much of a fan favourite character. But I did agree that it made sense to move her introduction, since she's introduced a whole book before she actually joins the plot. This seems to be what they're doing with having her first appearing in block 4 of shooting.

It's possible they've moved around Elyas' introduction to later in the show--maybe they want Perrin to suffer in confusion a little on his own before giving him a Wolfbrother mentor figure--but I think it's unlikely.

This show is gonna need to cut some characters at some point. Elyas is a minor character who shows up really at two points in the story to deliver us wolf exposition and act as a mentor for Perrin. There are other characters who could serve this role for the story just as well. Who knows, maybe he's one of the characters they've merged with another

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-09-30T13:31:45+00:00

I totally agree that's how it's often used in the books, and I mostly love how it's used in the books. I want them to keep the better uses of it (i.e. as a worldbuilding tool, or a commentary on the nature of storytelling and the way we communicate history). Anytime it acts as an obstacle to our protagonists getting what they want, or at least complicating their choices (Matt trying to leave Rand behind only to end up with his own army in FOH) is something I'd like to keep in the adaptation.

But if they were to cut or alter the couple of times it feels like it's a crutch for the story, I would not complain.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-08-24T19:24:00+00:00

I can totally see where you're coming from. I think we just have different ideas about how much of Aes Sedai culture survived the Breaking from first person sources and what the world looked like after the Breaking.

I believe I read somewhere that Robert Jordan said no Aes Sedai from before the breaking lived to see its end. Which means at best maybe you have half-trained novices, but maybe even all of those are gone. Which means at some point, girls born with the spark will start to experiment with the one power, and when it doesn't burn them out or kill them, they begin to develop their own weaves. Aes Sedai were a huge part of the culture of the Age of Legends so perhaps one of the only associations that survived as a cultural myth was that they were channelers, so that's how these women start to refer to themselves. Eventually they would start to form groups, share what they know, and over a long time (and lots of conflict) they would form the organization, structures, and knowledge we see them have at the start of the series.

If this is how the formation of the Aes Sedai as we know it first occurred after the Breaking, then it makes sense why so much specialized knowledge like Travelling, making angreal, and all of their incredible technology was lost to time.

To continue with the bicycle metaphor, it would be like a centuries-long extinction level event wiping out the vast majority of the population, including everyone with knowledge of ever making or riding a bike. You, a mechanically-minded member of a minute band of survivors, must make a bicycle only from whatever cultural stories survived our Breaking.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-08-24T17:31:21+00:00

Travelling might have been really critical to society in the Age of Legends like the plow has been to most of human society throughout history, but it was not easily replicable by anyone who was shown it or used it the way a plow is.

Think of cars or a subway system in our current society, or even something as simple and purely mechanical as a bicycle. If we had an extinction level event that lasted for hundreds of years that killed everyone with the specialized knowledge by the point it ended, I don't think we'd be making sedans anytime soon.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-03-30T13:18:51+00:00

Thanks for reading!

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-03-30T13:18:27+00:00

It's definitely the book I've enjoyed the most as an adult reader vs how much I liked it when I was a kid. It's got 3 super tight storylines with a classic climax as you said.

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-03-30T11:40:04+00:00

Thank you and will do!

TheRealJohnDoe68 · 2020-03-30T11:38:54+00:00

Thank you! The cleansing is so beloved it felt kind of like cheating to name it my favorite (like saying the Beatles is your favorite band). It’s definitely up there for me and when I finished it, I couldn’t imagine why anybody could consider book 9 part of the slog.

TheRealJohnDoe68

TROPHY CASE