Wheel of Time, Amazon Prime

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Unfortunately, much of the LoTR side of it seems...generic?

Beyond everything that’s already been mentioned, this series doesn’t seem to have a musical identity of its own. Most of the music feels hopelessly generic, and the bits that are more involved seem to be mainly supporting action scenes.

Howard Shore’s music for LotR was the definition of epic, while leaving room for lighter moods. Game of Thrones had a theme that was grand, weighty and ominous, not exactly subtle, but distinctive and compelling.

Bear McCreary’s music for BSG was wildly creative, by turns poignant and driving, and he’s leaned into the Celtic and early American for Outlander. And speaking of Arcane, what I’ve heard of its score is elegant and captivating.

But most of the tracks from this series seem to be generic-spooky or generic-fantasy, shades of Enya mixed with passages that are at best uninspired, and sometimes just plain trite. There’s more energy, personality and flair in your average LoL login screen than the music for this series.

There must be any number of composers who could have thrown their all into a score that would have been brilliant and memorable, but for some reason we get…whatever this is. It speaks volumes to me about the lack of care and consideration for one of the key aspects of any show.

Originally Posted by Mechalich
Nor is it even the best fantasy show I watched this year.

Out of curiosity, what was?

[Ramza00]

This reflects the nature of the Aes Sedai as an organization and their many failings in the 'New Era' period of the Third Age. Specifically, massive recruitment failures have led to a collapse of Aes Sedai numbers and a corresponding collapse of their presence throughout the land. The majority of the rural population go their whole lives without encountering an Aes Sedai or anyone who can openly channel, and therefore the rural areas represent something much closer to Early Modern Period life on Earth since the One Power and basically all other fantasy elements are essentially absent from their lives.

By contrast, in the non-Randland areas where recruitment of female channelers has not collapsed women either rule openly (Seanchan), rule by proxy (Shara), or exercise total cultural influence while letting men manage military affairs (Aiel).

Exactly why the Aes Sedai have screwed everything up for themselves so badly isn't entirely clear and probably depends on a combination of factors of which the most significant is the machinations of the Dark One - both via the Black Ajah and also since Randland faced direct assault during the Trolloc Wars, meaning Randland has had an additional apocalypse that the other lands did not suffer. In particular the Three Oaths - a self-inflicted action that crippled the power of the Aes Sedai - appears to have bene a consequence of the Trolloc Wars.

Also the Arthur Hawkwing stuff from a 1000 years ago. After a False Dragon besieged the White Tower Arthur raised an army to defeat them, and then he conquered the continent much like Alexander the Great. He sent two of his kids with their own armies to the Seanchan and Shara continents. Well this was 55 years before Arthur’s death the start of the conquering, 20 years before his death he dismissed all his Aes Sedai advisors, had a shoot on site order, and attacked the white tower with a siege. The siege stopped when Arthur died, but his empire dissolved with his death and there was a War of the Hundrend years where the continent fractured again and many (likely all) of his heirs were killed.

[Psyren]

It's...not a very compelling mystery

It's not to you, and that's okay. From what I'm seeing, I think it's proven much more effective than if they had made it as obvious as it was in the books.

It doesn't make it to the top of people's watch queues.

Reality disagrees

[Rynjin]

That doesn't really contradict anything said. It can still be a huge hit even if it's a lot of peoples' "third tier show". If they watched very episode Amazon isn't able to keep track of what other shows they watched first.

[Psyren]

That doesn't really contradict anything said. It can still be a huge hit even if it's a lot of peoples' "third tier show". If they watched very episode Amazon isn't able to keep track of what other shows they watched first.

As long as it gets watched enough to get a third season that's all I care about honestly.

[Rynjin]

As long as it gets watched enough to get a third season that's all I care about honestly.

Wasn't it already approved for all 8? Hopefully the success means they get more wiggle room for future seasons in terms of episode count and length. A lot of the godawful decisions made can be traced right back to this season being insanely short for a series of 1 hour episodes.

It'd honestly be nice if it was structured more like a British "prestige" series like Sherlock was, but I doubt that'll ever happen. I'd settle for at least 12 episodes a season, like a normal show.

[Gnoman]

Season 2 has been officially confirmed, but 3 hasn't. In practice we can see all the things that need to happen for another season happening, but Amazon hasn't come out and said "The show is renewed for a third season". So it is happening, but not official.

Since filming on 3 hasn't started yet, there's opportunity for a rework of episode or season length starting there, where 2 is pretty obviously locked in. That may be why they haven't announced it - they were waiting for the reception to decide if they needed to change anything.



I'm also hearing some sources talking about where the money went. Apparently, besides hoarding money for episodes 7 and 8, they put a ton of cash into preparing stuff for later, and the only visible effect of it is stuff like the random Sea Folk guy we saw this episode in a crowd scene.

[Mechalich]

Out of curiosity, what was?

The cheeky answer is The Good Place (I saw the final season via Netflix this year). Somewhat more reasonably, in the class of live-action shows in English - eliminating both various high-quality animated offerings like Trese or Yasuke, all the anime I've seen this year, and any of the endless horde of fantasy K-dramas that have found their way onto streaming (by some lights freaking Squid Game qualifies as a fantasy) - I'd probably go with The Magicians. That's a dumb but joyously fun show. EDIT: Actually, Marvel shows count as fantasy, so Loki. Shouldn't count those out.

I'd put Wheel of Time about even with Shadow & Bone. The latter had three plotlines, one terrible, one meh, and one that was fun. WoT is just all meh.

Also the Arthur Hawkwing stuff from a 1000 years ago. After a False Dragon besieged the White Tower Arthur raised an army to defeat them, and then he conquered the continent much like Alexander the Great. He sent two of his kids with their own armies to the Seanchan and Shara continents. Well this was 55 years before Arthur’s death the start of the conquering, 20 years before his death he dismissed all his Aes Sedai advisors, had a shoot on site order, and attacked the white tower with a siege. The siege stopped when Arthur died, but his empire dissolved with his death and there was a War of the Hundrend years where the continent fractured again and many (likely all) of his heirs were killed.

Yes, and Hawkwing's ability to do that highlighted the weakness the Three Oaths imposed on the Aes Sedai. By contrast, when his armies attempted to invade Shara, they got pasted, and they only conquered Seanchan because the region was divided up among apparently countless Aes Sedai warlords and they co-opted a particularly creative one. But yeah, the War of the Hundred Years set back development substantially. We do see this implied in the books in various ways and if I recall World of the Wheel of Time was fairly explicit in calling out Seanchan as just being at a higher developmental level overall.

[Corvus]

Uno, Masema and Ingtar have been cast.

They describe Uno as a 'tracker' so that may mean Hurin has been combined with him. Stick an eye patch on him and he looks the part though. I always pictured Masema as a bit older and a lot more fanatical but we'll have to see.

[Psyren]

I'm curious to see how they improve the "Prophet" subplot this time around.

[Mechalich]

I'm curious to see how they improve the "Prophet" subplot this time around.

The really seems like an ideal plotline to cut. I mean, let's assume the show doesn't get canceled and they work out an eight season plan. There's fourteen books, so you need to average 1.75 books per season. Some seasons, like this first one, will be more weighted to a single book, which really means you need to cram two books into a season for the majority of the seasons. A plan might work something like this:

End of Season 2: End of Book 3 - this involves massively compressing Great Hunt, which is doable.
End of Season 3: Mid-point of Book 5 - doable, book four has opportunities for significant compression
End of Season 4: End of Book 6 - this is the best climax in the whole d*** series so you need to end a season here.
End of Season 5: Somewhere in Book 8 or 9 - this is where the books start to get really muddled.
End of Season 6: End of Book 11 - Knife of Dreams concludes with a major military campaign and significant plot developments, making it a good halt point.
End of Season 7: End of Book 13 - likewise Towers of Midnight has a significant climax, though you could push a few events into the final season.
End of Season 8: End of series.

Looking at it like this you need the biggest cuts in the range of seasons 5-7, which need to cover the better part of 7 books in 3 seasons. Thankfully, huge chunks of books 7-13 are extremely open to being excised, with whole subplots that span across multiple books suited to outright elimination.

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Perrin's entire suite of activities between leaving Cairhein in book 7 and finally reuniting with Rand can be basically obliterated, none of it really matters, and most of it can be avoided simply by having the Shaido retreat back to the Three-Fold Land after Dumai's Wells. Likewise the entire Elayne plot to unify Andor amounts to functionally nothing and can either not happen or happen offscreen. Elayne can be 'delayed by political concerns' for however long proves necessary. Egwene's, Mat's, and Rand's plots during this period are all much more essential and can only be streamlined though there are definitely big chunks, like the whole Far Madding digression and a significant portion of Mat's wandering after leaving Tuon behind can be removed.

[Saph]

Looking at it like this you need the biggest cuts in the range of seasons 5-7, which need to cover the better part of 7 books in 3 seasons. Thankfully, huge chunks of books 7-13 are extremely open to being excised, with whole subplots that span across multiple books suited to outright elimination.

Yeah, I never understood the people who kept saying how impossible the series was to adapt because of how long it is. You can cut huge chunks out of books 7-13 easily – very few people are going to be all that sad about losing several hundred pages worth of Perrin wandering around through the woods following the Shaido.

But at the rate the show is going, that's not going to be enough, because they're adding so much extra unnecessary stuff that's eating up all the screentime. You've got enough time in an 8-season run to cover all the important stuff from the books. You don't have enough space to cover all the important stuff for the books AND spend long chunks of time on extra sideplots and random battle scenes that cost lots of budget but don't actually advance the story.

[lord_khaine]

Yes, and Hawkwing's ability to do that highlighted the weakness the Three Oaths imposed on the Aes Sedai.

What you call a flaw would be seen as a feature by others.
The Aes Sedai does wield an immense amount of political power.
And they have managed to remain united.

[Mechalich]

What you call a flaw would be seen as a feature by others.
The Aes Sedai does wield an immense amount of political power.
And they have managed to remain united.

The Three Oaths are a storytelling device. Fundamentally they are a mechanism Jordan used to justify why Randland, unlike all the other developed societies in his world, isn't a Magocracy. It's a good device and it works, making it one of WoT's more inspired bits of world-building, but the Aes Sedai are weak, and insular, and hidebound, and despite the united front they present to the world internally divided.

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The White Tower breaks during the series to the point of one side formally declaring war on the other, and exposition reveals this isn't even the first time this has happened. Likewise, recruitment has failed so massively that Egwene, simply by changing policy to allow unrestricted volunteers, not mandatory testing or compulsive learning or anything similarly stringent, quadruples membership in under a year. Likewise Taim was capable of building, in under a year, a Black Tower capable of challenging the White Tower in a straight fight. Jordan also made it very clear, in the many-worlds portal stone journey in The Great Hunt, that if the Dragon Reborn failed to emerge and claim his place in history the Seanchan obliterate the Aes Sedai.

The Three Oaths are a nerf, a gigantic, neon-blazing nerf, and they were just one of several nerfs Jordan imposed. He also threw in no item crafting, no mind control, and no teleportation. All things he recognized as necessary to keep his world in at a verisimilitude acceptable medieval stasis. He also recognized that without those constraints, the setting was on a very short runaway to a magocratic magitech utopia/dystopia.

[Saph]

To be fair, a lot of the weakness of the Aes Sedai is very specifically due to how much Ishamael/Team Evil have focused on them.

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They're so heavily infiltrated that the Black Ajah's about the size of two or three of the other Ajahs put together. And the vast majority of the Forsaken are tasked with sabotaging/screwing things up in Randland, rather than everywhere else.

When the Forsaken do turn their attention to the other parts of the world, they're able to cripple them very easily – Semirhage throws the entire Seanchan Empire into civil war by assassinating the Empress, and Demanded outright recruits Shara to the Darkfriend side. Randland might be disunited, but they actually do a much better job of resisting the Dark One than the other continents do.

[lord_khaine]

Well. Honestly the Oaths are hardly a nerf at all. The only meaningful limit it imposes, not using the power as a weapon, dont count in self defence.
Or defence of your Warder.

The reason Randland isnt an obvious magocracy is more that the white tower decided for soft power instead of hard power.
They still have "advisors" to every major power. They just dont want obvious power.
Since they still cling to their Age of Legend legacy.

I also wont call the lack of gating or mind control nerfs directly.
Since those were lost arts noone but the shadow had.

Well the lack of teleportation is fairly self explaining early on.
Thats the bane of a lot of d&d campaigns.

[Mechalich]

To be fair, a lot of the weakness of the Aes Sedai is very specifically due to how much Ishamael/Team Evil have focused on them.

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They're so heavily infiltrated that the Black Ajah's about the size of two or three of the other Ajahs put together. And the vast majority of the Forsaken are tasked with sabotaging/screwing things up in Randland, rather than everywhere else.

When the Forsaken do turn their attention to the other parts of the world, they're able to cripple them very easily – Semirhage throws the entire Seanchan Empire into civil war by assassinating the Empress, and Demanded outright recruits Shara to the Darkfriend side. Randland might be disunited, but they actually do a much better job of resisting the Dark One than the other continents do.

Actually I think the outcomes are fairly even.

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The Forsaken take control of Randland nations easily too. Tear, Illian, and Andor all acquire outright Forsaken rulers. Arad Doman collapses due to Forsaken machinations, and Cairhien at least partially. Ghealdan falls apart due to a combination of Logain's actions and Masema, and the Seanchan - under the control of a Darkfriend in Suroth - take Tarabon, Altara, and Amadicia. That's literally every Randland nation except Murandy - which doesn't function as such - and the Borderlands. Even the Aiel, by far Jordan's most-favored faction, take a huge walloping from the Forsaken in the form of Couladin.

And that's actually very fair. The combination of talents the Forsaken possess, notably teleportation and mind control, make it very easy for them to seize control of or destabilize preindustrial monarchies/magocracies. Freedom is really preserved only through the actions of Rand himself; through a combination of taking control of nations directly, removing Semirhage from the board so Tuon can gain back control of the Return (otherwise she never makes it back to Ebou Dar), and pulling the Borderlander monarchs and most of their military strength massively out of position (which is a really bizarre subplot overall, honestly, but it seems to confuse the Forsaken). Rand has to unite the lands to win the last battle and he actually does that, even if he's not entirely aware of all the parts he played.

It's all Rand though, it's not the Aes Sedai who provide critical unity. In truth, I don't recall the Ajahs doing anything all that impressive in the Last Battle at all. There are critical individual performances by Moiraine, Nynaeve, and Egwene, but as an institution the Aes Sedai doesn't amount to much. That's part of a general trend in the series as a whole. The Wheel of Time is very much pro-monarchy and anti-bureaucracy. It repeatedly replaces oligarchies with monarchies in one state after another, ex. in Tear and Illian, and lauds strong states over weak ones even at the expense of tyranny. The whole series supports rule by the strong, though Jordan spent a lot of time working through his definition of what 'strong' actually meant. In many ways when GRR Martin directed his criticisms about what he disliked in fantasy at LotR he actually should have been talking about WoT. Of course he would never do that because as Ramza00 pointed out, Jordan did Martin a solid with regard to GoT.

[hamishspence]

Well. Honestly the Oaths are hardly a nerf at all. The only meaningful limit it imposes, not using the power as a weapon, dont count in self defence.
Or defence of your Warder.

The fact that they:

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halve a channeller's lifespan, is something of a nerf.

The Oath Rod was originally intended to be used on criminals, after all - hence the "no lying" thing.

[lord_khaine]

The fact that they:

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Meh.. not a meaningful one from an institutional standpoint.
Since the Aes Sedai mostly spend that time plotting or scheming anyway.

[Psyren]

The Three Oaths are a storytelling device. Fundamentally they are a mechanism Jordan used to justify why Randland, unlike all the other developed societies in his world, isn't a Magocracy. It's a good device and it works, making it one of WoT's more inspired bits of world-building, but the Aes Sedai are weak, and insular, and hidebound, and despite the united front they present to the world internally divided.

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The White Tower breaks during the series to the point of one side formally declaring war on the other, and exposition reveals this isn't even the first time this has happened. Likewise, recruitment has failed so massively that Egwene, simply by changing policy to allow unrestricted volunteers, not mandatory testing or compulsive learning or anything similarly stringent, quadruples membership in under a year. Likewise Taim was capable of building, in under a year, a Black Tower capable of challenging the White Tower in a straight fight. Jordan also made it very clear, in the many-worlds portal stone journey in The Great Hunt, that if the Dragon Reborn failed to emerge and claim his place in history the Seanchan obliterate the Aes Sedai.

I mean, when you need a literal artifact to even give them pause so the continent gets some breathing room then the other result isn't too surprising.

Regarding recruitment (for both types of channeler), it's heavily implied that

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the Pattern itself was helping with the proliferation of channelers, even if 10-20% end up Darkfriends and they are able to Turn an additional 10-20% (being very generous) that's still a big net gain for the Light.

To be fair, a lot of the weakness of the Aes Sedai is very specifically due to how much Ishamael/Team Evil have focused on them.

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They're so heavily infiltrated that the Black Ajah's about the size of two or three of the other Ajahs put together. And the vast majority of the Forsaken are tasked with sabotaging/screwing things up in Randland, rather than everywhere else.

When the Forsaken do turn their attention to the other parts of the world, they're able to cripple them very easily – Semirhage throws the entire Seanchan Empire into civil war by assassinating the Empress, and Demanded outright recruits Shara to the Darkfriend side. Randland might be disunited, but they actually do a much better job of resisting the Dark One than the other continents do.

Agreed. "The Westlands" might be far from perfect but they definitely beat all the others.

[hamishspence]

To be fair, a lot of the weakness of the Aes Sedai is very specifically due to how much Ishamael/Team Evil have focused on them.

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They're so heavily infiltrated that the Black Ajah's about the size of two or three of the other Ajahs put together.

From the Wiki:

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https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Ajah


Demographics

The breakdown by public Ajah of all Black sisters in comparison with that Ajah's size is as follows. The count is based on sisters living immediately prior to the events of the first book:

Red Ajah: 48/200 or 24%
Green Ajah: 38/180 or 21.1%
Gray Ajah: 31/140 or 22.1%
Brown Ajah: 28/130 or 21.5%
Yellow Ajah: 21/120 or 17.5%
Blue Ajah: 21/100 or 21%
White Ajah: 17/80 or 21.3%

In total, there are 204/950 or 21.5% Aes Sedai that are Black Ajah. The numbers above are from Verin Mathwin's list of Black Ajah sisters, which Egwene al'Vere says was remarkably accurate. Only one known named sister, Evanellein Lorn, was not on that list, who has been added to the total above. There may be some other sisters that Verin could not find, but it is unlikely to be more than a few and indeed Evanellein may be the only one.

So the "size of two small Ajah put together" is about right - the Yellow and the White put together. Slightly more than the two smallest put together - the Blue and the White.

[Sivarias]

Internet glitch, please ignore

[Sivarias]

"There are still some" implies the opposite; there are a few holdout nations who "hold women in contempt". More to the point we see multiple times in the books that though most governments are ruled by women, there's a lack of respect for women among the commonfolk of some places, and particularly for channelers and especially Aes Sedai. We even see this in Emond's Field to a certain extent in the books; many of the farmers and whatnot still treat their women as though they're meant to be subservient. Not maliciously, just as an expectation.

Do you have an example of this? Because the only emotion I see from men towards Aes Sedai is cautious suspicion and fear.

RE: Valda: Allow me to paint a picture for you.

You have tied up and tortured a man. You are feeling very secure in yourself and your manipulative talents.

While taunting another prisoner, this man gets loose and looms over you.

You are unarmed.

The man is also unarmed. However, the man has at least 100 lbs. (maybe 150) and about a foot of height on you. He has arms that could be reasonably compared in size to your torso.

This man is extremely angry at you, specifically. His eyes are glowing. He is growling at you like a wild animal in pure rage. He has, apparently, lost all sense of reason.

He reaches toward you while you are still frozen in shock at the turnabout.

What do?

I'm also very confused as to why you think Perrin would rip a man's throat out with his teeth as a first response. Or second or third for that matter. What, in either the books OR show gives you the impression that this would be the case?

I thought Valda still had his sword? Am I incorrect?

Re: Perrin and teeth, it was just an idea I tossed out to reflect the feral nature Perrin is struggling with in an dramatic and television friendly way (since we can't be inside his head like we were in the books). And unless my memory is completely shot, Perrin had the thought once or twice in combat and had to remind himself he was a human, rather than a wolf.

[lord_khaine]

Regarding recruitment (for both types of channeler), it's heavily implied that

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The impression i got was that it were simply a question of reaching a huge untapped market.
When they moved from only testing the girls who came to Tar Valon on their own.
To instead actively move out by gateway and test girls for the talent.

The same with men. Since noone had touched the ones who could just learn to channel.

[Psyren]

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The impression i got was that it were simply a question of reaching a huge untapped market.
When they moved from only testing the girls who came to Tar Valon on their own.
To instead actively move out by gateway and test girls for the talent.

The same with men. Since noone had touched the ones who could just learn to channel.

I think it's both. Yes, casting a wider net is a big deal. But for saidin especially, the strike rate and speed of growth are perhaps best explained by T'V fingers on the probability scales.

Do you have an example of this? Because the only emotion I see from men towards Aes Sedai is cautious suspicion and fear.

Rand mentions in Eye that there aren't any stories where the Aes Sedai isn't the villain as one example. That would likely inform commoner attitudes, particularly among men who have a lower starting disposition towards AS.

[Sapphire Guard]

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The Oaths allow them to secure their power. A ruler knows that if their Aes Sedai says it, it's true.

Otherwise, you either end up with the channelers in chains or holding the chains. Or rigidly controlled by society a la the Aiel and Windfinders.

Wasn't the thing about Emond's field that both the village council and the women's circle both believe they are secretly manipulating each other?

So GRRM was critiquing the medieval era? Wow, way to be 300 years too late to be relevant.

[Ramza00]

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The Oaths allow them to secure their power. A ruler knows that if their Aes Sedai says it, it's true.

Otherwise, you either end up with the channelers in chains or holding the chains. Or rigidly controlled by society a la the Aiel and Windfinders.

Wasn't the thing about Emond's field that both the village council and the women's circle both believe they are secretly manipulating each other?

So GRRM was critiquing the medieval era? Wow, way to be 300 years too late to be relevant.

George RR Martin stuff.

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It was not just critiquing the medieval era, it was also deconstructing the Heroes Journey and has a very "Dune's vibes" recreated but medieval / fantasy instead of medieval science fantasy which is Dune.

It is a series which talks about Myth and how we purposefully forget things when we tell stories and songs, and how we should be skeptical of messiahs such as Bran (the Blessed) in the Celtic / Welsh Myth the Mabinogion, or King Arthur.

It is also kind of relevant to his "life events" that happened in his 20s to 40s (he was born in 1948, I would let you figure this out due to our rules about politics and world events.)

So in the end with line 4 I say this is "timelessly" relevant but hey that is just me.

[Psyren]

Episode 6 is out.

Spoiler: The Flame of Tar Valon

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The Moiraine/Siuan thing has been amped up to eleven in this show - no complaints here

Moiraine, Alanna and Liandrin were called before the Amyrlin to answer for flouting the Law. While Liandrin was accountable due to being second in command after Kerene, she successfully calls attention to Moiraine's clandestine excursions outside the Tower, forcing Siuan to question her about a subject she can't answer. This ends with her being exiled from Tar Valon - not a big deal story-wise since she's never there after New Spring anyway. Before being exiled, Moiraine learns of the threat to the Eye from Siuan, and reunites the EF5 to head over there. They're still not sure which is the Dragon, which puts the rest of them at risk, but they have no choice.

Questions answered:

We learn what that thing in her room was - it appears to be a dream ter'angreal she uses to hook up with Siuan in TAR without setting tongues wagging in the Tower. You'd think the Hall would notice something like that going missing
Logain has indeed been gentled in case that wasn't clear.
Egwene and Perrin make it to Tar Valon. Moiraine being her usual self, conceals this fact from the others until later. She also learns that Rand is hiding Mat, and sort-of heals him of the dagger.
Prior to being exiled, Moiraine hooks up with Siuan, who informs her of a threat to the Eye of the World. Moiraine gathers the Emonds Fielders and Loial and prepares to head out. The episode ends with them about to brave the Ways, but Mat, having been ruled out as the Dragon, seemingly stays behind.

The Eye is described as the DO's prison in this version, or at least where the past Dragon attempted to reseal him. No idea what that will mean once we get there.

We're going to get some time with the 5 (4?) recounting their adventures to Loial in the Ways. I expect this is where we'll learn about Ta'veren. Oddly, the Tar Valon waygate appears to require channeling to activate - no idea if all of them work that way (which would make them pretty challenging for Ogier to use) or if that one was modified to need saidar to keep it safe from non-Aes Sedai.

With only two episodes left, I expect we won't spend a ton of time with the group fighting their way through the Blight to get there.

[Gnoman]

Your summary does miss one easily missed plot point.

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Ships are going missing in large numbers. That means that the Seanchan are coming. Looking more and more like the theories of that being the big season-end cliffhanger are correct.

[Ramza00]

Just a heads up about future episodes (some behind the scene stuff that will influence what happens.)

Spoiler: Information from Dragonmount a WOT Fan site for 2 decades

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Fact: That filming for episodes 1 to 6 of Season 1 happened before COVID, while episodes 7 and 8 happened after the pandemic began and thus new rules and regulations were involved. This may influence how those episodes were filmed and what choices they made on a host of issues.

There is more but I am not repeating here for it is speculation and we do not know enough to confirm the rest. I just figured I would share what is something we are more sure of since those episodes are coming up.