The Wheel of Time - 2.3 What Might Be
Feb. 22nd, 2025 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessOnly afterwards did I realise that, although oft referenced, Moiraine hadn’t appeared in this episode, which felt weird. Of course, Lan hadn’t really appeared either.
We went straight into Nynaeve’s trials, where she had to face her worst fears, the first seeming to be reliving(?) losing her parents. Was the warning against red about Liandrin’s order as well as the plants? In the second, she was back in Two Rivers, where fever had broken out (a rather convenient for TV type of fever) and Mat’s mum(?) was now the Wisdom and basically euthanising everyone she couldn’t heal. When she returned to the Tower, Nynaeve was all for going there straight away as if it had been a vision, not a fear. The three Aes Sedai supervising all this were an odd mix of resolute, sympathetic and ‘don’t offload your fears on us, kid.’
The third trial seemed very trippy and a disorientated Nynaeve came out, holding what looked like a version of the note Lan had nicked from Moiraine. Not sure what she’d done, suspecting she’d killed, she refused to become an Aes Sedai, said goodbye to Egwene in a touching little scene – saying she’d come to the White Tower only to protect Egwene, could now see that Egwene didn’t need it and would be a brilliant ‘Servant of All’. She was heading back to the Two Rivers, and then happened to bump into Lan –
I’m not going to claim anything more than that a bit of my brain was going ‘Huh, that’s convenient’ and ‘I thought we’d have seen Lan go through something ceremonial’ before we saw the outline of the arch and realised Nynaeve was still in her trial. The cut to the three Aes Sedai waiting and then realising Nynaeve wasn’t coming out was a bit of a shocker. The Mistress of Novices, partly blaming herself, came down like a ton of bricks on Liandrin for pushing Nynaeve to do this before she was ready.
I think my working theory was that Egwene would rescue Nynaeve, because I didn’t think that stuck in some curtain fic was going to be Nynaeve’s fate. Liandrin let Mat go. Her assessment of him as a coward seemed to be accurate, because yeah, I remember it as him leaving (or not joining) his friends, and he absolutely did not come through for Egwene in her grief.
She found out abruptly that Nynaeve had been lost and was all anger and grief, shaking off Elayne, even facing up to Liandrin, tapping into the Source and not backing down when warned (attagirl!) Elayne proved to be a good friend, coming to stop her from trying to magic open the Arch and hurting herself, but staying by her side as if it were a wake for Nynaeve…
I loved all the clothes in Rand’s section. The False Dragon sent him off to get some fancy wine before answering his questions, because he recognised that Rand could channel and remembered him, even if I’m not sure that he fully grasped that he was the Dragon. And so we learned that Rand’s landlady-with-benefits also runs a kind of pub and a bit more about the local politics. (I am starting to feel that this adaptation is lacking in maps. I have no sense of where anywhere is in relation to other places.) I don’t know if class politics are beginning to kindle in Rand.
Anyway, he learned that the False Dragon can’t control his powers, duh, went back to his lover, who encouraged him to let go without really knowing what she was saying (and seemed chill about all the channelling. No, actually, not chill as much as turned on.) They must have had tv sex (or was it all a dream?) because he woke up clothed to find that he’d magically set the house on fire. Oops!?
Perrin and his company watched as the invaders took some girls (couldn’t work out if this had something to do with channelling or if it was just regular taking young girls while conquering.) There were some, well, similar to Aes Sedai and Warder dynamics going on, with the Lady of the Impractical Nails issuing orders, a spokeswoman and one of the gagged channelers pointing to victims, but not all of the soldiers were men. One of them – a woman, who had discolouring around her mouth – drew attention to one of Perrin’s comrades who thought that, armed with one knife, he could do something.
Get impaled is what he ended up doing. Ishamael had certainly spotted Perrin, who was the most reluctant to kneel and repeat the oath of loyalty. And so later, when Perrin woke up chained in a carriage Ishamael had a chat with him, which basically confirmed that he’s some kind of werewolf. He claimed that the wolfier Perrin got, the more he’d be under his thrall – although the other wolves seemed to be fighting against Ishamael’s allies. Tracker rescued Perrin, anyway. I remain frustrated that Perrin has not asked him what is going on with him. It’s well past the point of denial. Having said that, Rand knows what he is, but he doesn’t know what to do with it.
We returned to Nynaeve’s curtain fic, where Perrin and Rand were happy and healthy at Two Rivers, where, echoing the first trial, she had a daughter with hair-down Lan, and then it all turned bad, with a trolloch attack killing all the other adults. And then she saw the arch, carried her daughter towards it and came back out to find Nynaeve and Elayne. Nynaeve comforted her with similar words to those she’d comforted her ‘daughter.’
Depends how they play it and what choices Nynaeve makes next, but I think they chickened out of doing something really daring there. Other than, perhaps, showing that the Mistress of Novices was talking rubbish when she said Nynaeve only had one chance to leave her trial. Admittedly, we also got the reveal that Liandrin had a deal with the bartender who has visions, and wasn’t just releasing Mat out of defeated grief, but with another purpose.
But mainly I am already bored of visions of a happy family life at Two Rivers, now that we’ve seen Rand and Nynaeve experiencing them. If any of the others have one, I will…shake my puny fist at the TV set.
We went straight into Nynaeve’s trials, where she had to face her worst fears, the first seeming to be reliving(?) losing her parents. Was the warning against red about Liandrin’s order as well as the plants? In the second, she was back in Two Rivers, where fever had broken out (a rather convenient for TV type of fever) and Mat’s mum(?) was now the Wisdom and basically euthanising everyone she couldn’t heal. When she returned to the Tower, Nynaeve was all for going there straight away as if it had been a vision, not a fear. The three Aes Sedai supervising all this were an odd mix of resolute, sympathetic and ‘don’t offload your fears on us, kid.’
The third trial seemed very trippy and a disorientated Nynaeve came out, holding what looked like a version of the note Lan had nicked from Moiraine. Not sure what she’d done, suspecting she’d killed, she refused to become an Aes Sedai, said goodbye to Egwene in a touching little scene – saying she’d come to the White Tower only to protect Egwene, could now see that Egwene didn’t need it and would be a brilliant ‘Servant of All’. She was heading back to the Two Rivers, and then happened to bump into Lan –
I’m not going to claim anything more than that a bit of my brain was going ‘Huh, that’s convenient’ and ‘I thought we’d have seen Lan go through something ceremonial’ before we saw the outline of the arch and realised Nynaeve was still in her trial. The cut to the three Aes Sedai waiting and then realising Nynaeve wasn’t coming out was a bit of a shocker. The Mistress of Novices, partly blaming herself, came down like a ton of bricks on Liandrin for pushing Nynaeve to do this before she was ready.
I think my working theory was that Egwene would rescue Nynaeve, because I didn’t think that stuck in some curtain fic was going to be Nynaeve’s fate. Liandrin let Mat go. Her assessment of him as a coward seemed to be accurate, because yeah, I remember it as him leaving (or not joining) his friends, and he absolutely did not come through for Egwene in her grief.
She found out abruptly that Nynaeve had been lost and was all anger and grief, shaking off Elayne, even facing up to Liandrin, tapping into the Source and not backing down when warned (attagirl!) Elayne proved to be a good friend, coming to stop her from trying to magic open the Arch and hurting herself, but staying by her side as if it were a wake for Nynaeve…
I loved all the clothes in Rand’s section. The False Dragon sent him off to get some fancy wine before answering his questions, because he recognised that Rand could channel and remembered him, even if I’m not sure that he fully grasped that he was the Dragon. And so we learned that Rand’s landlady-with-benefits also runs a kind of pub and a bit more about the local politics. (I am starting to feel that this adaptation is lacking in maps. I have no sense of where anywhere is in relation to other places.) I don’t know if class politics are beginning to kindle in Rand.
Anyway, he learned that the False Dragon can’t control his powers, duh, went back to his lover, who encouraged him to let go without really knowing what she was saying (and seemed chill about all the channelling. No, actually, not chill as much as turned on.) They must have had tv sex (or was it all a dream?) because he woke up clothed to find that he’d magically set the house on fire. Oops!?
Perrin and his company watched as the invaders took some girls (couldn’t work out if this had something to do with channelling or if it was just regular taking young girls while conquering.) There were some, well, similar to Aes Sedai and Warder dynamics going on, with the Lady of the Impractical Nails issuing orders, a spokeswoman and one of the gagged channelers pointing to victims, but not all of the soldiers were men. One of them – a woman, who had discolouring around her mouth – drew attention to one of Perrin’s comrades who thought that, armed with one knife, he could do something.
Get impaled is what he ended up doing. Ishamael had certainly spotted Perrin, who was the most reluctant to kneel and repeat the oath of loyalty. And so later, when Perrin woke up chained in a carriage Ishamael had a chat with him, which basically confirmed that he’s some kind of werewolf. He claimed that the wolfier Perrin got, the more he’d be under his thrall – although the other wolves seemed to be fighting against Ishamael’s allies. Tracker rescued Perrin, anyway. I remain frustrated that Perrin has not asked him what is going on with him. It’s well past the point of denial. Having said that, Rand knows what he is, but he doesn’t know what to do with it.
We returned to Nynaeve’s curtain fic, where Perrin and Rand were happy and healthy at Two Rivers, where, echoing the first trial, she had a daughter with hair-down Lan, and then it all turned bad, with a trolloch attack killing all the other adults. And then she saw the arch, carried her daughter towards it and came back out to find Nynaeve and Elayne. Nynaeve comforted her with similar words to those she’d comforted her ‘daughter.’
Depends how they play it and what choices Nynaeve makes next, but I think they chickened out of doing something really daring there. Other than, perhaps, showing that the Mistress of Novices was talking rubbish when she said Nynaeve only had one chance to leave her trial. Admittedly, we also got the reveal that Liandrin had a deal with the bartender who has visions, and wasn’t just releasing Mat out of defeated grief, but with another purpose.
But mainly I am already bored of visions of a happy family life at Two Rivers, now that we’ve seen Rand and Nynaeve experiencing them. If any of the others have one, I will…shake my puny fist at the TV set.
