Ep4 about Nynaeve
Yeah I think I said out loud ‘whoa she’s OP’ when watching it with my wife. Couldn’t remember exactly how that scene played out in the book but it didn’t feel right at the time.
I don’t know Pike from anything else she has done. (the only thing I see on her resume that I can recall was she was once a Bond girl for a Pierce Brosnan Bond flick. I certainly don’t remember her from it)
My first thought was, Wow, Julia Ormond has aged well. Turns out that, no, that’s not Julia Ormond. It’s some blond that has dyed her hair dark. But they do look a lot alike
So you didn’t see Gone Girl or Jack Reacher? Maybe the two movies that really turned me off from her.
Didn’t see Gone Girl. Saw Reacher, but didn’t remember her character, or much about movie. Saw her in I Care A Lot. She did a good job of making me hate the character.
Enjoying the series so far. Been a while since I read the novels. Are they conflating The Dark One and the Dragon a little, or is that Logain’s misunderstanding. I don’t remember the novels clearly enough to know.
I have not read the books, and I have seen eps 1 & 2 only.
I am certainly confused if they are not one and the same. What I got out of it was that the Dragon is the bad guy/good guy who is bad/good on odd/even spins of the wheel of time? He destroyed the earth on spin #3, and now we’re on spin #4 right?
I don’t think we know the number of spins the wheel is on.
Not sure how much you want spoiled/corrected on what you wrote, or if you want to watch and find out.
There was one thing that everyone at Thanksgiving could agree on though: No matter what, this is way better than the Sword of Truth TV series.
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Don’t know, but it’s not as initially compelling as Westerosi Politics.
Yeah, it’s not her character i remember from that movie either. I don’t think she was hired for her acting ability.
Helps that the source material is much better as well.
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Ok, new eps today.
So answer me this ( I have seen the first 4 eps, and am not a book reader)- but I have been internet sleuthing to add to my understanding of the elements of the “world.” I am not trying to pre-discover plot points, but trying to learn about stuff like the Aes Sedai colors (Ajah), Warders, channelers, and political factions and crap like that. Like, at this point I am predicting that Nynaeve is a Wisdom which is like a junior level Aes Sedai, and Egwene is going to be in the Aes Sedai at some point.
If the whitecloaks are against the evil forces, and the Aes Sedai are going up against the evil forces, why are the whitecloaks going around killing the Aes Sedai? Aren’t the enemies of their enemy their friends?
I haven’t finished ep 5 yet either (stupid life getting in the way), but I have read all the books. I don’t think I spoiled anything below though, but just give some additional background that the episodes haven’t hit on (yet).
A wisdom is more of a town healer or medicine woman (I believe in this world they are predominately women). They go by different names in different parts of the world. They rely on herbs/medicine to heal, not the one power (at least not openly). At this point in the story, Nynaeve would not admit to being able to touch the one power, either to herself or others. The series shows Egwene being a bit more open minded about this, but it was still news to her that she could touch the one power.
Whitecloaks like to view themselves as the ultimate good (hence dressing themselves all in white). They actually call themselves Children of the Light (pretty sure that’s right). Whitecloaks is just what everyone else calls them. They believe that touching the one power is evil, therefore Aes Sedai are evil, no matter what their intentions are. One thing someone pointed out to me was early on (ep 1 or 2), when Moraine and the group have their initial run in with the whitecloaks, no whitecloak would tell someone to go get healed by Aes Sedai. In the books there are whitecloaks that die from wounds rather than be healed by the one power.
OK, your last paragraph explains it. Thanks.
The fact that Nynaeve seemed to explode the one power all over that cave with false dragon Logain, healing everyone (especially Lan who seemed seconds away from bleeding out at the neck) leads me to think she got “it” which means now that she is more than just a Wisdom with 11 secret herbs & spices, she’s got “T1P” (The One Power) and is on her way to getting a cloak and ring too.
And Egwene started the fire with her hands using T1P, so I think that is just the start of her path toward eventually getting into the White Tower, it’s just a matter of what color she will end up choosing. She chooses herself, right? It’s not like there’s a sorting hat or lottery or test or something that indicates what color cloak she gets?
Women get to choose their Ajah. They actually have to be accepted into the Ajah, though I believe it’s rare to be rejected (they spend years training, so there’s lots of time to decide and get unofficial approval).
There is some reference to this in Ep5 (because of time zone coding on Amazon I guess, you can actually watch them Thurs night at like 8EST I think). Not an essential plot point and we kinda already know this so not a spoiler, but Nynaeve basically confirms via anecdote that she’s always been able to heal with the power and just didn’t know it.
The sorta spoilery but not really part:
The anecdote is about Egewene pulling through a crippling disease as a child. Everyone thought she would die but Nynaeve held her hand all night and she was completely fine by morning. It’s part informing the audience that Egewene is simply strong-natured and will be fine out on her own (they haven’t all joined back up yet), but the implication is that Nynaeve just healed her without realizing. The book as I recall dives more into Nynaeve’s thought process, and she basically realizes ‘oh wait, I actually healed her’, but she then deliberately refutes that idea because she wants to believe Egewene really is just that strong. That may not be entirely correct but it’s how I remember it at the moment.
Weaselette heard about this show and independently suggested we start watching it. I never read the books but this is definitely in my wheelhouse so I’m glad she brought it up instead of me trying to push her to watch it. We’re 2 episodes in and I’m looking forward to the rest. Perrin axeing his wife was surprising. Weaselette is pretty sensitive to scary/gory stuff so she might be doing a lot of closing her eyes until I tell her it’s ok to look. Might have to wait until next week to catch up on the rest of the episodes.
Regarding the sorta spoilery anecdote – In the books, there are some women who manage to touch the One Power on their own, sometimes even gaining some control over it. The common thing among these “wilders” is that they wish for something harder than ever before…and they unconsciously channel to get it.
I didn’t read the books, but I didn’t get that from the scene. I’m glad you told me, so I think it is/could be true, but it was too subtle. What I am picking up on, which isn’t stated, is the implied sexual relationships between warder & aes sedai. I mean, I interpret that Stepin’s suicide was just as much about not wanting to be polyamorous with another Aes Sedai, as much as it was about the loss of Kerene.
I’m getting drawn into the story. I have seen the last two episodes twice each, trying to pick up subtleties that I may have missed.
It didn’t look to me like Egwene killed Child Valda when she had the chance. I expect that to come back to haunt her. I also didn’t quite understand how she and Perrin escaped being tied up. Was it Perrin channeling? Was it Egwene after her tiny little fireball didn’t even stun Child Valda? It just looked like “oops, maybe these knots aren’t tied too well.”
There’s a lot that I don’t like about the casting of characters. For book readers, do the actors line up with your pre-conceived notions of those characters from the books?
It seems that suicide will be an ongoing theme in the series. I don’t like that.
Nobody seemed to shed a tear for green Kerene. They just dug a very shallow grave and tossed her in, but Stepin’s death gets a big angry/sorrow filled funeral with tuvan throat singing and everybody punching themselves in the shoulder?
What wasn’t subtle was the the mean girl vibes coming off of Liandrin toward Moiraine. What the hell happened to “we’re all sisters?” And the other greenie warns Moiraine that the other so-far-unseen Queen Bee A/S has a bug up her butt about Moraine too? Why aren’t there other Blues around to help prop up Moiraine? Where’s her peeps?
The internal politicking and fighting between Aes Sedai is definitely a part of the books. Even though they are all “sisters”, they each have their own agendas and aren’t afraid to put others down to get there.
Yes, OK I get that. I understand you to mean “put others down” the same way you “put down” an injured horse. So sooner or later the Aes Sedai are killing each other. Is that Aes Sedaicide?