There is a lot of great foreshadowing moments in the show that get missed on a first watch through.

For example the first thing you see in the Aes Sedai camp in Episode 4 is a box.

 

I liked the way they alluded to Padan Fain following along with audio cues rather than showing him with the Trollocs/Fade. I feel like this series is going to be fun to re-watch after the season is done, just to spot the foreshadowing.

 

There's two Dragon's Fang motifs I'm aware of. Gotta rewatch episodes 2 and 4 because I swear they probably have them as well.

 

I will be rewatching the episodes again to see if I can spot each time the channeling music theme pops up with Rand- I only noticed it when he broke down the door.

Rafe said something about things that we are missing being referenced in the future seasons, so I’d be willing to bet that in this first season while they are playing coy with who the Dragon is, we won’t see them but in future episodes and seasons we will see other things, like Tam telling Rand on the way down the mountain.

Mat being driven to steal was rooted in taking care of his family. Specifically his sisters. When I saw that I was able to forgive it. I’m gonna want to riot if he takes down the two pretty boys with Luck and a quarter staff though. That should be a skill thing.

Over all enjoying it. I feel like I’ll get a better feel as I watch and rewatch but like what they’re doing with a good many things. Mat’s home life is by far the worst move they made.

 

arthellion is fucking delusional this show is really bad

 

This episode was irredeemable.

 

Stepin shoulda jumped in after the ring. Just sayin'

 

Wasted episode. Side character got way too much screen time.

 

It's really funny that at the time when I've made the first post about the show, I had thought that after first three episodes there was no ground for them to become ever worse, and that it might just grow from that point onwards. Boy, was I naive.

While I could understand the 4th episode from a standpoint of their narrative choices, it failed on many lore levels, but I managed to get over that; after all it's hard to show onscreen something that took that many words from Jordan, it's hard to visualize what comes with it, since the visuals were the only major device they could employ in order to make the episode work. But okay, it had to be done. Something had to be done.

Surely, from this point onwards it can get only better. And so I fell into the same hole. It's not that it's terrible, but I really don't understand what's the idea behind this whole episode. What I previously thought of as a good narrative choices, for the sake of plot and pace, well, it doesn't stand anymore, since this episode killed the most of the momentum built previously, and has about none impact on the overall happenings. I guess this is that mid-season point, a calm before the storm, that sought to push the characterisation forward which makes zero sense because of crucial character changes that are yet to come.

But, okay. It is what it is. Surely, surely, this cannot sink further.

 

What a waste of an episode.

Instead of actually showing the ways that Matt and Rand have to travel, Rand meeting Elayne, nope, there they are, some grassland whoops here we go, Tar Valon. And the worst part is of course, the sin of not showing, but telling.

"Thom told me about this."

When, Rand? When did he tell you?

Then there's Loial, supposed to be ten feet tall, and yet Rand and him are almost of equal height in the show. And the look of Loial - you have to wonder whose pocket the money for this show went into, because it sure as fuck wasn't the visual effects.

Perrin's eyes flashing as if he were Super Saiyan.

This whole episode was such a blunder.

 

I can forgive Loial. His voice keeps me on board there.

I can't forgive a showrunner leaning on the fact that Amazon restricted him to 8 episodes and then using a good portion of one of them on Warder nonsense that should have no bearing on future narrative.

Twenty or so minutes, a good third, of episode five was wasted space.

I usually do the math here. Let's be generous and say each episode is 60 full minutes.

8 episodes x 60 minutes = 480 minutes

20 minutes of warder nonsense = 4.2% of the entire first season.

Wasteful.

And don't get me started on Lan. Character assassination.

 

A reddit take of Episode 5's ending,

"The funeral is very much a homage to many cultures, and specifically several East Asian cultures, where you are allowed and even in some ways EXPECTED and OBLIGATED to EXPRESS emotion during the funeral." i.e. one person is meant to act/show everyone's grief.

Imagine Lan not doing his duty or his obligations. Unimaginable. I'm surprised he didn't slit his writs and commit sudoku by drowning on his own blood to express everyone's grief. Duty is heavier than a mountain.

 

I really hope you mean seppuku. Committing Sudoku might not nearly be as cinematic by comparison.

 

Saying Sudoku instead of Seppuku is the single oldest joke in the world.

 

Never heard it, as evident clearly. Apologies in that case.

 

Wheel of Time audience: "Okay, rough start, but watchable. Could you please just make us care about the main characters a little, and maybe develop the main plot?"

Wheel of Time showrunners: "Have you ever heard the tragedy of Stepin the Random?"

I'm betting costuming and set design. It takes a lot of dough to fabricate all that stuff from scratch. The thing is though, without a significant amount of money dumped into makeup/lighting/composition/editing all that cash goes down the drain, because your costumes and sets end up looking cheap as fuck. Talkin RenFair level.

Also, the LOTR show is literally hoovering all of Amazon's media funds. It's supposed to be over 400 mil for Season 1 alone at this point, and that's AFTER the 250 mil cost of buying the rights.

 

"Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather"

Come the fuck on.

What should have happened:

Lan: He abandoned his duty.
Moiraine: And would you have done any different? You may have thrown yourself against the Blight rather than off the roof, but the outcome would be the same.
Lan: [emphatic] ...

 

So firstly, hated this last episode...but one thing I think is worth noting is that this show was filmed during the height of covid. If Season 2 looks just as bad on some of those thing then I'll hate on the aesthetics but for now it looks alright when one considers they weren't able to have too much close contact and gaining massive amounts of people was difficult.

VFX takes a major hit because you're not all sitting in a room watching on a big screen and offering real time feed back but watching our your own or over zoom.


Additionally, next season they should be able to pour more money into upping the quality because a lot of this base stuff has been built.

 

Yes, loss of taste certainly is a known side-effect of covid.

 

That is literally the only reason I remain hopeful this will improve. That said, even for covid, the lack of good shot comp editing and lighting is pretty abysmal. You could fix a lot of this stuff with just vfx techs sitting at their computer playing around in their studio software.

Not entirely sure how vfx techs physically being around other people during a viewing would improve the visual effects. Not like they're all sitting in a room working on a single machine and doing one task at a time. Sure, zoom/remote communication sucks, but the experience of the editing process likely hasn't changed that much. You have a meeting, you go back to your computer, you work, you have more meetings to fix issues. You do the same thing in a remote work setting.

If you want to argue that productivity and morale is down due to people not used to working remotely, and that in turn affects overall quality, then sure I'd agree with that.