INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and
they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV
of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series
We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out
If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.New episodes of The Wheel of Time season 3
will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday
right from the jump, so to speak: LOIAL! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! That was some out-of-left-field Game of Thrones-ing right there
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
NOOOOOOOOO
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: Standard
Thom Merrillin, The Wheel of Time season 3, episode 6).
For example! When the Cauthon sisters fricassee Eamon Valda to avenge their mother
and Alanna laughs joyfully at the sight of his charred corpse? That's a death you ain't coming back from.Even assuming that Loial's plot
armor has fallen off, the way we've seen the show shift and consolidate storylines means it's impossible to say how the presence or absence
of one character or another couple ripple outward
This episode alone introduces a bunch of fairly major shifts that could play out in unpredictable ways next season.But let's back up! The
show takes a break from its usual hopping and skipping to focus entirely on one plot thread this week: Perrin's adventures in the Two Rivers
This is a Big Book Moment; how do you think it landed?
Fain seems to be leading the combined Darkfriend/Trolloc army.
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Fain seems to be leading the combined Darkfriend/Trolloc army.
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Lee: I would call the Battle of the Two Rivers one of the most important events that happens in
the front half of the series
as bigger and more impactful than anything a show or movie could give us.
Though it was a hell of a battle, yeah
in the first bits of season 1 shows not just better visual effects or whatever, but just flat-out better composition and clearer
Emond's Field.
Darkfriends and Trollocs pour into Emond's Field.
Andrew: Forgive me in advance
for what I think is about to be a short essay but it is worth talking about when evaluating the show as an adaptation of the original
work.
Part of the point of the Two Rivers section in The Shadow Rising is that it helps to back up something we've seen in our Two Rivers
extent that the books are concerned with Themes, the two big overarching ones are that strength and resilience come from unexpected places
and that heroism is what happens when regular, flawed, scared people step up and Do What Needs To Be Done under terrible circumstances
and ASoIaF is mainly focused on subverting them.)But to get back to what didn't work for you about this, the strength of the Two Rivers is
meant to be more impressive and unexpected because these people all view themselves, mostly, as quiet farmers and hunters, not as the exiled
heirs to some legendary kingdom (a la Malkier)
They don't go around singing songs about How Virtuous And Bold Was Manetheren Of Old, or whatever
Manetheren is as distant to them as the Roman Empire, and those stories don't put food on the table.So yeah, it worked for me as an
in-the-moment plot device
The show had already played the "Perrin Rallies His Homeland With A Rousing Speech" card once or twice, and you want to mix things up
I doubt it was even a blip for non-book-readers
a good set of points, yeah
keep me coming back to the show
almost-throwaway moment where Perrin catches up with the Cauthon sisters and gives them an update on Mat
The two kids absolutely kill it, transforming from sober and traumatized young people into giggling little sisters immediately at the sight
Not even blowing the Horn of Valere can save you from being made fun of by your sisters
(The other thing that scene highlighted was that Perrin, seated, is about the same height as Faile standing
The guy seems to have a destiny that will take him away from his family, and that destiny grabs firmly ahold of him here.
Perrin is tall.
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Perrin is tall.
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: Yeah, I think the show is leaving the door open for Aram to have a happier ending than he has in the books, where being
ejected from his own community makes him single-mindedly obsessed with protecting Perrin in a way that eventually curdles
Here, he might at least find community among good Two Rivers folk
We'll see.
The entire Whitecloak subplot is something that stretches out interminably in the books, as many side-plots do
Valda lasts until Book 11 (!)
Dain Bornhald holds his grudge against Perrin (still unresolved here, but on a path toward resolution) until Book 14
The show has jumped around before, but I think this is the first time we've seen it pull something forward from that late, which it almost
certainly needs to do more of if it hopes to get to the end in whatever time is allotted to it (we're still waiting for a season 4
second-string characters were up to while the starting players were off doing big world-changing things)
100 percent in character for all involved
(Loial, of course, would never kiss outside of marriage.)
A calm moment before battle.
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
A calm moment
before battle.
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: All the Bain and
facial expressions convey the meaning
All of the Alanna/Maksim stuff is great
Alanna calling in a storm that rains spikes of ice on all their enemies is cool
Daise Congar throwing away her flask after touching the One Power for the first time was a weird vaudevillian comic beat that still made me
laugh (and you do get a bit more, in here, that shows why people who haven't formally learned how to channel generally shouldn't try it)
There's a thread in the books where everyone in the Two Rivers starts referring to Perrin as a lord, which he hates and which is deployed a
whole bunch of times here.
I find myself starting each of these episodes by taking fairly detailed notes, and by the middle of the episode I
catch myself having not written anything for minutes at a time because I am just enjoying watching the show
On the topic of structure and pacing, I will say that these episodes that make time to focus on a single thread also make more room for
toward the upcoming season finale
Things didn't exactly work out like this in the book!
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Perrin being led off by Bornhald
Things didn't exactly work out like this in the book!
Credit:
Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: For better or worse, Game of Thrones did help to create this reality where Who Dies This Week? was a major driver of
the cultural conversation and the main reason to stay caught up
I'll never forget having the Red Wedding casually ruined for me by another Ars staffer because I was a next-day watcher and not a day-of GoT
viewer.
One way to keep the perspectives and plotlines from endlessly proliferating and recreating The Slog is simply to kill some of those
people so they can't be around to slow things down
I am not saying one way or the other whether I think that's actually a series wrap on Loial, Son Of Arent, Son Of Halan, May His Name Sing
In Our Ears, but we do probably have to come to terms with the fact that not all fan-favorite septenary Wheel of Time characters are going
to make it to the end.As for fears, mainly I'm afraid of not getting another season at this point
The show is getting good enough at showing me big book moments that now I want to see a few more of them, y'know? But Economic Uncertainty +
Huge Cast + International Shooting Locations + No More Unlimited Cash For Streaming Shows feels like an equation that is eventually going to
stop adding up for this production
I really hope I'm wrong! But who am I to question the turning of the Wheel?
