Wheel of Time - S1E7: The Dark Within The Ways

24 December, 2021. 1,016 words.

The Ways and Fal Dara and The Warder and The Wisdom.

I went to re-watch episode 7 on Thursday night so I could throw together this post, and it turned out that episode 8 was already available. So I watched that instead. Which means this post is a bit delayed, and I’m trying to put episode 8 out of my mind as I finish up this post.

Summary

Mat is gone. The Fellowship travels through The Ways and arrives in the border city of Fal Dara. Min tells the future. The kids turn on each other, but it all works out. Nynaeve professes her love for Lan, but it can never be! Rand suddenly realizes he’s The Dragon Reborn and leaves with Morraine. They’re heading for The Blight to face The Dark One alone at The Eye of The World.

Reactions

Overall it was another mediocre “good enough” episode. Good character development in this one.

Very cool prologue scene, but again, it doesn’t seem related to the events in the series. Scenes like that make me wonder if they’ve mapped out a finite number of seasons, say five, in which to hit all the story points in the books, expecting to make all five of those seasons. But it seems like they might want to spend more time on the more immediate story matters, rather than setting up these lavish scenes just for a minor callback.

This wasn’t a good episode to watch in the daytime, if your television is prone to glares, like mine is. (It was dark in The Ways.)

Well, the other shoe dropped and the whole “who’s the Dragon?” thing went out the window in mere seconds. At least we don’t have to worry about deviating significantly from the books anymore. It was all, it turned out, a feint.

It wasn’t clear to me why the Two Rivers kids were suddenly turning on each other. They didn’t precisely say it was a hangover from The Ways but that was my assumption.

I don’t think they’ve done a very good job of setting the stakes for the confrontation with The Dark One. They keep saying The Dark One is Super Duper Evil and it has to be stopped or everybody’s going to suffer and die, but they haven’t shown very much Super Duper Evil. So I don’t feel any tension building toward the last episode.

I wish they’d spent more time with the Two Rivers kids before this seventh episode, when they suddenly seemed to spend a lot of time with them.

Best Scene

Nothing specific, but I tend to like the slower character-development scenes. The Two Rivers gang turning on each other was a fairly tense scene, and the aftermath of that.

Best Line

Nothing really jumped out at me. ~~That one from Lan was directly from the book: “I’ll hate the man that marries you,” etc. etc.~~ That was in episode 8, nevermind.

Characters

Morraine. I really like how devious Morraine is. She’s sort of the anti-Gandalf.

Lan. One of the strongest characters in the series. Possibly even stronger than Morraine. I was surprised they spent so much time on him and Nynaeve.

Rand. This was the most Rand-focused episode I can remember since the first couple. Not a welcome addition. But he was tolerable I suppose. I have no earthly idea why he suddenly realized he was The Dragon Reborn. It seemed to come out of nowhere.

Mat. And he’s outta there. I wonder why?

Perrin. Not much of a factor, yet again.

Egwene. Seems to be the moral compass of the group. The one who “does what’s right.”

Nynaeve. The love that can never be! It was a big deal in the books.

Thom Merrilin. I mean, he’s going to be back, right?

Loiel the Ogier. Yeah, he was there some more, doing his schtick.

Padan Fain. Remember him?

Book Spoilers

Min sighting!! Yay. She was one of my favorites from the books. At least, I think she was. The hundreds of book characters run together, to be honest. That scene with Rand and Min happened in a different city in the book, much earlier in the journey. I think it was Baerlon.

I recognized that prologue scene from the books. I don’t remember which book it was in, though. And I don’t remember it taking place on Dragonmount. And I don’t remember any of the details. I just remember an Aiel Spearmaiden fighting in the snow. Spearmaiden? Is that what they were called? I can’t remember. Something like that. I seem to recall we didn’t actually see them until the fifth book.

Somewhere in the first book, I believe they said Tam al’Thor returned to Two Rivers with “an outlander woman” and a baby. So, slightly different.

Nynaeve’s channeling way more in the series so far than she did in the first book. She didn’t channel at all in the book up to this point in the story, unless you count “listening to the wind.”

I thought they had come out of The Ways into the Aiel Wastes at first, skipping right to Book Five. I didn’t remember them stopping in ~~Fal Moran~~ Fal Dara at all. I only remember it as the starting point of the second book.

I thought that might have been Mat following them through The Ways, but from the book I learned it was Padan Fain.

Speaking of Mat, he didn’t leave in the book. But, as I recall, they all split up in the second and subsequent books, so he might as well head off on his own now. I wonder why they did it though? I know they’ve re-cast the character for the second season, so I wonder if they wrote him out because the actor didn’t want to finish it.

I thought they were rushing ahead with Nynaeve and Lan, but it turns out she did confess her love for him in the first book. They didn’t, ah, you know, spend the night together or anything, though. The books are extremely G-rated. I mean, except for all the graphic violence.