Wheel of Time season 1 episode 8 "The Eye of the World" season finale

[Kordin]

I didn't know the seanchan were Sauron's human mercenary's.

[Kordin]

Anyone else think Matt is going to get super changed based on his snip of a scene?

Mat as a character has already been changed so much, plus they changed actors...

[Dimmu]

What a hot mess, that barely touched the source material. I am for for interpreting the original story for a wider audience, but damn this episode was a major failure for anyone with even a passing acquaintance of the written story. The showrunner/script writers would better off retconning the second and subsequent seasons to avoid all mention of the flaccid first.

[Kryyg]

I was cringing the entire episode. Agelmar dying to a point blank spear - he had like 15 seconds to avoid that dung, even my deconditioned ass could have avoided it! So much wasted time on how they are defending to the death and he dies like a chump. At least show him get overwhelmed by a chortlesnorfling fade not just a trolloc. firetruck THAT!!!

No Green man or other forsaken introductions...sad. The actual battle...sad..just talk then POOF bye bye. Despite all of this bad I was like now he's going to travel to the gap and explode dung. Why the dung couldn't they at least stick to that part, have him save everyone. Would prefer Nynaevae dead. Ishamael stilling/shielding Moiraine but then is like OH dung A DAGGER! YOU ARE TOO POWERFUL NOW! I CANT STOP YOU! Idiotic.

Lan..lolololol. My favorite character from the books spent the entire episode running around avoiding a fight.

The seanchan evoked no emotion at all from me. They look stupid. They are already shown as morons wasting water for a child. So their story is already ducked. Instead of conquering and assimilating those who swear the oaths it’s just going to be tsunami time. Ugh.

[Aira]

Anyone else think Matt is going to get super changed based on his snip of a scene?

No, I didn't walk away thinking that. They used old footage of when he entered TV. It's probably the only thing they could use in a context of the future . Everyone has more or less made their choice for the Light. He hasn't. Balance is a theme yeah, but my take always was that bookwise, it needed three ta'veren to restore balance. Might as well be 5. Egwene was always ta'veren adjacent anyway. The Wheel tipped too much in favor of the Shadow for 3k years, so now it needs a serious course correction. Plus, Fain, he's a filthy lying darkfriend and the series is full of unreliable narrators (at least they got that part right).

[Hackett]

That was terribly upsetting.

I've been trying to stay positive all season (there are plenty of good parts and things they did well) and hope that they'd stick the landing in the end and bring stuff together/justify decisions. This went the complete opposite way and not only failed to deliver, but actually made a lot of the worst criticisms about wokeism and cw/drama pretty legit to me. Lan is the simplest example of this - went from literal? greatest swordsman alive who is defined by duty to...Moraine's bitchboi who can't track, can't keep watch, can't sense shadowspawn, is a substandard fighter to the point random gaidin are giving him pointers during training, and fucks off to go hook up with a random girl he just met while his aes sedai waltzes away on the suicide mission they've devoted their lives to. chortlesnorfling. Triggered. Oh wait, it gets better...village girl throws him a bone and tells him how to track Moraine. Because, you know? She has a...tell? Duh, Lan, haven't you ever noticed her...tell???

Loial's death has me trying to decide whether I'd rather not have seen this or not. I was actually immediately happy when he died (assuming that a deep stab to the chortlesnorfling chest from the SL dagger actually kills him in the show...fking fuuuuck its sooooo baaaad...I'll never forgive you, Rafe) because I'd 100% rather not see this version of him make me cringe through 8 seasons. A bit after the ending, that rational quickly moved to the entire show.

I think I agree with Katherine re winter dragon sooooomehow now looking pretty chortlesnorfling good in comparison. Truly unbelievable...I never would've thought that was possible a week ago. Its a crazy world - I am actually kind of sad that the show has done so well because there's probably no chance they'll replace the showrunner after all the success they had off the early season viewership.

It's Wheel of Time. We're most of us going to watch whatever they'll give us no matter how bad it is, but damn I wish they'd let someone else make this.

This scene with Lan was especially triggering for me. It reminded me of having to teach Gaidin Trik how to track. He kept letting bloody trollocs get away. I ended up explaining to him the secret tell how of how to track bloody trollocs (they leave highly noticeable bloody trails on the ground). From that day forward, Gaidin Trik improved enough that he was no longer a shame to (most) Gaidin.

[Dinuc]

I mean seriously how did Nynaeve come back to life? How are Loial and Uno going to survive? How will we trust our be interested in any deaths in the future? So dumb

What is funny is how many people we have seen brought back from the dead in this show. It should be a running joke at this point.

1. Nyneave dragged off by trolloc, but still alive.
2. Tam was near death, and he was saved by Moiraine I think.
3. Moiraine was near death, and saved by Nyneave.
4. Thom died, but we know he probably comes back...
5. Perrin was cut up and injured, healed by Aes Sedai.
6. Matt was near death, and saved by Moiraine .
7-12. Bunch of Aes Sedai and Lan near death, heal bomb by Nyneave.
13. Moiraine killed in a dream, wake up and is alive.
14. Nyneave near death, healed by Egwene.

Next season will be starting with Loial near death and being healed from the dagger.

[halfhand]

My thoughts.

Acting: The acting was good. Rand and Moiraine was good. Padan Fain and Ishamael were great. The ancillary characters were good. I'm not a fan of Perrin's acting, but I presume he is acting like he was directed.

CGI: Shadowspawn are well done. The One Power was well done.

Characterization: I think Rand's arc would have benefited from smoother development that was sacrificed for a shallow mystery.
Lan seems to be a newbie. He has to be taught to track Moiraine by a Warder. Everyone can recognize a heron mark instantly except him. He role seemed to be written out this episode.

Sets: Blight is still not good at all. The Eye of the World is okay. Tarwin Gap is okay for what we can see of it.

Costuming:
Seanchan: I will have to see more what they do with it, reserving opinion so far.

Plot: There was some issues here.
The Seanchan army were fomidable, but what is the point of using so many channelers to create a tsunami on an obviously deserted coastline and one girl?
The Malkier army rushes to the gap in full armor and warhorses, so they can stand and shoot crossbows?
Why hold the channelers in reserve? Would it not be effective for combined arms for a Great Captain (I get that the concepts of the Great Captains are going to be deleted after this episode)
The encounter at the EOTW was fine for what it was. It was always going to be shot differently than the books. I think the climax for Rand was anticlmatic though.
I did like Fain's entrance, the five channeler final stand (although I wish there was some changes that would have improved it).
Horn of Valere.
The part about Cuendillar seems to be confusing to me. I assume its a Seal just based on book knowledge, but they don't explain it to the viewer.

Music: I think it is scored well for the moment, but not very memorable


My non-book reader wife liked the episode and the season in general. I think the biggest difference is the big potential (and expectations) that we see that we are just not hitting. I will post my final thoughts on the season and what I am hoping for next session.

[Kryyg]

My problem with the 5 channeler scene is that…apparently this was the largest force that has ever hit the Gap. They said lead by 50 fades so like 20k trolls. The cgi suggested about 100 trollocs. Now beyond how stupid such a massive force was underwhelming. 5 untrained literally wilders just destroyed the largest force to attack FD. Abel mar said his sister was right and she should have called for help from TV and yet all she needed was the local wilders. Nothing makes sense.

[Chloro]

My problem with the 5 channeler scene is that…apparently this was the largest force that has ever hit the Gap. They said lead by 50 fades so like 20k trolls. The cgi suggested about 100 trollocs. Now beyond how stupid such a massive force was underwhelming. 5 untrained literally wilders just destroyed the largest force to attack FD. Abel mar said his sister was right and she should have called for help from TV and yet all she needed was the local wilders. Nothing makes sense.

I was disturbed the scene but not for this reason. I think the reason the weaves where so power is she was over channeling to begin with, add nyneave and egwene to her circle and yeah she had enough to take on that force. Fitting she couldn't control it in the end and it killed her. The girls where always powerful, what stopped them from channeling was their own mental blocks which would not be a problem for a circle leader.