I liked it on the whole - the shock reveal of her being a Darkfriend worked well for me, at least.
They killed the shock for me, by putting so much of a spotlight on her. The only options were revealing she's a Darkfriend, or expecting us to be upset by her death at the hands of Rand's & Mat's pursuers.
You have a good point, but needing a scene as a bandage for missing stuff as a result of your shitty choices isn't much of an excuse. That's the problem with so much original material, it's purpose is dubious and forces this sort of writing economy. Keeping Ba'alzamon dream appearances over fire-face CGI jump scares or multiple discussions of feelings and relationships (why do they think they need MORE conversations with Tinkers than we get on the page, but FEWER confrontations with the enemy, whether Ba'alzamon, Myrddraal or Darkfriends? )
Typing mistake in the first sentence, you mean in the show.
Thanks.
Yep.
I'd agree after rewatching that some of this, especially outside when they both stand there while she's waving the sword and talking about Ishamael, seems to be based on the idea of a sword being basically equivalent to a gun - and moreover, she has already admitted that she doesn't want to kill them, but hand them over to the Dark One alive. Then again, Rand and Mat aren't exactly supposed to be trained fighters at this point, nor to have a warrior mentality, and it's plausible that it doesn't even occur to them to close on her and try to take the sword away, with her unwilling to use lethal force to prevent that.
But, that's probably why Jordan did not have them face off with a pseudo-swordswoman, instead having a quick surprise attack they could handle with a stroke of apparent luck, or in hindsight, dagger-induced paranoia.
Yeah, when it comes to them failing to speculate, that's bad but far from the most implausible one...
Not the failing to speculate, just that her words didn't have much effect, so why build up a whole scene to give weight to them?
But it could have been handled better, and I think multiple encounters with Darkfriends would have been better in that regard. Have different Darkfriends each thinking they are on the track of the right targets. Have a Tinker Darkfriend get caught whispering to a raven, so they have to flee the caravan and run into the Whitecloak's arms. Have one of Logain's followers suddenly recognize Nynaeve and try to grab her and drag her away from the battlefield, muttering something about "forget killing the caged Dragon, I'll turn in the real thing," and she can show her gumption in escaping, or Lan can be wounded saving her so her Healing blast is more about responsibility than a crush.
I definitely think it's better to have this encounter than not to have it at all - yes, it would've been better if they had been more consistent about the Darkfriend threat and Ishamael's plotting, but better this than nothing. All in all, the whole sequence still serves a fair number of purposes for the show (which is more than one can say about all the funeral scenes...): establishing the Darkfriend threat
Given the choices they made is pretty damning anyway, since the same people necessitated those boxes by making those choices.
In fairness, Mat has the Shadar Logoth dagger affecting him - and given that everything needs to be sped up from the books, that also goes for the effects of the dagger. I don't really have a problem with Rand and Mat's relationship becoming increasingly strained here - but it would've been nice if it had been established more, earlier on, how they interacted normally. Like with more time spent in Emond's Field, prior to the Trolloc attack.
I think that's possibly a flaw Jordan fell into as well, given that a lot of people seem to think the first book or two did not do enough to get them invested in Mat, and he did not emerge as a fan favorite until Book 3. But for people so bound and determined to fix the series, you'd think they'd have been all over that, instead of the nonsense with is horrible family, which, BTW, they clearly did not think through any more than they did the idea to give Perrin a wife and friendly-axe her at the outset. Supposedly his "selfish" inclinations are redeemed by the implication that his primary concern is getting home to take care of his sisters, but then you have to ask why he doesn't actually go home. If he's being held back by the dagger from going into the Ways, that's Moiraine's fuckup. They didn't think through what a commitment to their change entails. It's like selecting a wife because she's got a great rack at 21, without thinking about how living with her over the next 70 years is going to be, when that initial attraction no longer applicable for most of that time. Perrin's dead wife and Mat's dependent sisters ARE really big deals, but they are not things you can get rid of when it's no longer convenient or easy or it demands the characters act in ways that don't serve your story.
It's like Game of Thrones, wanting to give Robb Stark a love story. A 16 year old jumping into bed with a girl his age because of hormones and emotions, regardless of the political implications is not only more understandable, but pretty much par for the course. As is the idealism that would motivate him to rectify the situation as he did. But for a man in his 20s (the actor was 27), who has been raised to hold a position of power and trained in the realities and necessities since childhood, to blow off political arrangements because of his longer-developing romance is criminally, almost unforgivably stupid.
I'm not bothered by the more 'woke' aspects of the show except when they actually harm the overall story, like their choice to pretend the Dragon could be any of the four, or even any of the five, or when they are handled so clumsily that they backfire, like Nynaeve's and Egwene's respective ludicrous Healing feats. In the context of this particular post, though, I don't see it being an issue anywhere.
It's the same pattern of poorly thought-out choices. It's not that I object to the content as the motivation, or rather the fact of a motivation. It's exactly the same as Christianizing the series, which has plenty in there for Christians to appreciate as it is, but no, we have to make it EVEN MORE Christian and overtly so. We don't have the patience to play out the whole story, so people can see the reality of the setting and story with some perspective, we have to get the message across in episode 1. The bible-thumpers are too lazy, impatient or zealous to wait to see the big picture, they want their God fix in episode one, so we have to spend most of our efforts in Emond's Field on Egwene's confirmation and the celebration thereof, and how impressed all the people are that she's taken this step on her faith journey. In the book Egwene getting her brain was just "I'm an adult now and it's time for some choices about my life," whereas there isn't much point to the womanhood stuff aside from Egwene porn. Like, it is literally only there for fans of Egwene to enjoy watching her one the screen, like a slice-of-life fan fiction story.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*