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Andrew: Yeah, I’m not saying I want to return to the days when every drama on TV had 26 hour-long episodes per season, but when you’re doing one eight-episode run every year-and-a-half-to-two-years, you really feel those gaps. And maybe it’s just [waves arms vaguely at The World], but I am genuinely happy to have this show back.

This season’s premiere simply whips, balancing big action set-pieces and smaller character moments in between. But the whole production seems to be hitting a confident stride. The cast has gelled; they know what book stuff they’re choosing to adapt and what they’re going to skip. I’m sure there will still be grumbles, but the show does finally feel like it’s become its own thing.

Lee: Oh yeah. The first episode hits the ground running, with explosions and blood and stolen ter’angreal. And we’ve got more than one episode to talk about—the gods of production at Amazon have given us a truly gigantic three-episode premiere, with each episode lasting more than an hour. Our content cup runneth over!

Trying to straight-up recap three hours of TV isn’t going to happen in the space we have available, so we’ll probably bounce around a bit. What I wanted to talk about first was exactly what you mentioned: unlike seasons one and two, this time, the show seems to have found itself and locked right in. To me, it feels kind of like Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season versus its first two.

Andrew: That’s a good point of comparison. I feel like a lot of TV shows fall into one of two buckets: either it starts with a great first season and gradually falls off, or it gets off to a rocky start and finds itself over time. Fewer shows get to take the second path because a “show with a rocky start” often becomes a “canceled show,” but they can be more satisfying to watch.

The one Big Overarching Plot Thing to know for book readers is that they’re basically doing book 4 (The Shadow Rising) this season, with other odds and ends tucked in. So even if it gets canceled after this, at least they will have gotten to do what I think is probably the series’ high point.

Lee: Yep, we find out in our very first episode this season that we’re going to be heading to the Aiel Waste rather than the southern city of Tear, which is a significant re-ordering of events from the books. But unlike some of the previous seasons’ changes that feel like they were forced upon the show by outside factors (COVID, actors leaving, and so on), this one feels like it serves a genuine narrative purpose. Rand is reciting the Prophesies of the Dragon to himself and he knows he needs the “People of the Dragon” to guarantee success in Tear, and while he’s not exactly sure who the “People of the Dragon” might be, it’s obvious that Rand has no army as of yet. Maybe the Aiel can help?

Rand is doing all of this because both the angel and the devil on Rand’s shoulders—that’s the Aes Sedai Moiraine Damodred with cute blue angel wings and the Forsaken Lanfear in fancy black leather BDSM gear—want him wielding Callandor, The Sword That is Not a Sword (as poor Mat Cauthon explains in the Old Tongue). This powerful sa’angreal is located in the heart of the Stone of Tear (it’s the sword in the stone, get it?!), and its removal from the Stone is a major prophetic sign that the Dragon has indeed come again.

Book three is dedicated to showing how all that happens—but, like you said, we’re not in book three anymore. We’re gonna eat our book 4 dessert before our book 3 broccoli!

Andrew: One of the bigger swerves that the show has taken with an established book character, I think! And well before she can claim to have been under the control of a Forsaken. (The other swerves I want to keep tabs on: Moiraine actively making frenemies with Lanfear to direct Rand, and Lan being the kind of guy who would ask Rand if he “wants to talk about it” when Rand is struggling emotionally. That one broke my brain, the books would be half as long as they are if men could openly talk to literally any other men about their states of mind.)

But I am totally willing to accept that Morgase change because the alternative is chapters and chapters of people yapping about consolidating political support and daes dae’mar and on and on. Bo-ring!

But speaking of Morgase and Forsaken, we’re starting to spend a little time with all the new baddies who got released at the end of last season. How do you feel about the ones we’ve met so far? I know we were generally supportive of the fact that the show is just choosing to have fewer of them in the first place.

Lee: Hah, I loved the contrast with Book Lan, who appears to only be capable of feeling stereotypically manly feelings (like rage, shame, or the German word for when duty is heavier than a mountain, which I’m pretty sure is something like “Bergpflichtenschwerengesellschaften”). It continues to feel like all of our main characters have grown up significantly from their portrayals on the page—they have sex, they use their words effectively, and they emotionally support each other like real people do in real life. I’m very much here for that particular change.

But yes, the Forsaken. We know from season two that we’re going to be seeing fewer than in the books—I believe we’ve got eight of them to deal with, and we meet almost all of them in our three-episode opening blast. I’m very much enjoying Moghedien’s portrayal by Laia Costa, but of course Lanfear is stealing the show and chewing all the scenery. It will be fascinating to see how the show lets the others loose—we know from the books that every one of the Forsaken has a role to play (including one specific Forsaken whose existence has yet to be confirmed but who figures heavily into Rand learning more about how the One Power works), and while some of those roles can be dropped without impacting the story, several definitely cannot.

And although Elaida isn’t exactly a Forsaken, it was awesome to see Shohreh Aghdashloo bombing around the White Tower looking fabulous as hell. Chrisjen Avasarala would be proud.

Andrew: Maybe I’m exaggerating but I think Shohreh Aghdashloo’s actual voice goes deeper than Hammed Animashaun’s lowered-in-post-production voice for Loial. It’s an incredible instrument.

Meeting Morgase in these early episodes means we also meet Gaebril, and the show only fakes viewers out for a few scenes before revealing what book-readers know: that he’s the Forsaken Rahvin. But I really love how these scenes play, particularly his with Elayne. After one weird, brief look, they fall into a completely convincing chummy, comfortable stepdad-stepdaughter relationship, and right after that, you find out that, oops, nope, he’s been there for like 15 minutes and has successfully One Power’d everyone into believing he’s been in their lives for decades.

It’s something that we’re mostly told-not-shown in the books, and it really sells how powerful and amoral and manipulative all these characters are. Trust is extremely hard to come by in Randland, and this is why.

Lee: I very much liked the way Gaebril’s/Rahvin’s crazy compulsion comes off, and I also like the way Nuno Lopes is playing Gaebril. He seems perhaps a little bumbling, and perhaps a little self-effacing—truly, a lovable uncle kind of guy. The kind of guy who would say “thank you” to a servant and smile at children playing. All while, you know, plotting the downfall of the kingdom. In what is becoming a refrain, it’s a fun change from the books.

And along the lines of unassuming folks, we get our first look at a Gray Man and the hella creepy mechanism by which they’re created. I can’t recall in the books if Moghedien is explicitly mentioned as being able to fashion the things, but she definitely can in the show! (And it looks uncomfortable as hell. “Never accept an agreement that involves the forcible removal of one’s soul” is an axiom I try to live by.)

Andrew: It’s just one of quite a few book things that these first few episodes speedrun. Mat has weird voices in his head and speaks in tongues! Egwene and Elayne pass the Accepted test! (Having spent most of an episode on Nynaeve’s Accepted test last season, the show yada-yadas this a bit, showing us just a snippet of Egwene’s Rand-related trials and none of Elayne’s test at all.) Elayne’s brothers Gawyn and Galad show up, and everyone thinks they’re very hot, and Mat kicks their asses! The Black Ajah reveals itself in explosive fashion, and Siuan can only trust Elayne and Nynaeve to try and root them out! Min is here! Elayne and Aviendha kiss, making more of the books’ homosexual subtext into actual text! But for the rest of the season, we split the party in basically three ways: Rand, Egwene, Moiraine and company head with Aviendha to the Waste, so that Rand can make allies of the Aiel. Perrin and a few companions head home to the Two Rivers and find that things are not as they left them. Nynaeve and Elayne are both dealing with White Tower intrigue. There are other threads, but I think this sets up most of what we’ll be paying attention to this season.

As we try to wind down this talk about three very busy episodes, is there anything you aren’t currently vibing with? I feel like Josha Stradowski’s Rand is getting lost in the shuffle a bit, despite this nominally being his story.

Lee: I agree about Rand—but, hey, the same de-centering of Rand happened in the books, so at least there is symmetry. I think the things I’m not vibing with are at this point just personal dislikes. The sets still feel cheap. The costumes are great, but the Great Serpent rings are still ludicrously large and impractical.

I’m overjoyed the show is unafraid to shine a spotlight on queer characters, and I’m also desperately glad that we aren’t being held hostage by Robert Jordan’s kinks—like, we haven’t seen a single Novice or Accepted get spanked, women don’t peel off their tops in private meetings to prove that they’re women, and rather than titillation or weirdly uncomfortable innuendo, these characters are just straight-up screwing. (The Amyrlin even notes that she’s not sure the Novices “will ever recover” after Gawyn and Galad come to—and all over—town.)

If I had to pick a moment that I enjoyed the most out of the premiere, it would probably be the entire first episode—which in spite of its length kept me riveted the entire time. I love the momentum, the feeling of finally getting the show that I’d always hoped we might get rather than the feeling of having to settle.

How about you? Dislikes? Loves?

Andrew: Not a ton of dislikes, I am pretty in the tank for this at this point. But I do agree that some of the prop work is weird. The Horn of Valere in particular looks less like a legendary artifact and more like a decorative pitcher from a Crate & Barrel.

There were two particular scenes/moments that I really enjoyed. Rand and Perrin and Mat just hang out, as friends, for a while in the first episode, and it’s very charming. We’re told in the books constantly that these three boys are lifelong pals, but (to the point about Unavailable Men we were talking about earlier) we almost never get to see actual evidence of this, either because they’re physically split up or because they’re so wrapped up in their own stuff that they barely want to speak to each other.

I also really liked that brief moment in the first episode where a Black Ajah Aes Sedai’s Warder dies, and she’s like, “hell yeah, this feels awesome, this is making me horny because of how evil I am.” Sometimes you don’t want shades of gray—sometimes you just need some cartoonishly unambiguous villainy.

Lee: I thought the Black Ajah getting excited over death was just the right mix of of cartoonishness and actual-for-real creepiness, yeah. These people have sold their eternal souls to the Shadow, and it probably takes a certain type. (Though, as book readers know, there are some surprising Black Ajah reveals yet to be had!)

We close out our three-episode extravaganza with Mat having his famous stick fight with Zoolander-esque male models Gawyn and Galad, Liandrin and the Black Ajah setting up shop (and tying off some loose ends) in Tanchico, Perrin meeting Faile and Lord Luc in the Two Rivers, and Rand in the Aiel Waste, preparing to do—well, something important, one can be sure.

We’ll leave things here for now. Expect us back next Friday to talk about episode four, which, based on the preview trailers already showing up online, will involve a certain city in the desert, wherein deep secrets will be revealed.

Mia dovienya nesodhin soende, Andrew!