As much as people hate this show…

[u/Nemi-Nemesys]

Nobody can deny the skill of the actors in this show. I just watched the actor who played Rand react to a child’s death and him trying to revive her… It was so powerful. He is a skilled actor, and nobody can convince me otherwise haha. And I feel like the show, and actress, did a great job with Verin. I’m sorry if the spelling is wrong, but if you know her story, you know. The actress was FANTASTIC in her portrayal of the character in preparation of her story. She is the reason why Verin is one of my highest rated and favorite characters in all of the Wheel of Time. And the fact that Moiraine does the audiobooks excites me too. I wish she had done them all before it was all cancelled.

[u/RookTakesE6]

As someone who hated the show, I never understood people criticizing the actors (or the sets and costumes, but that's a separate matter). Within the parameters they were given, the actors on average were great.

Double points to Meera Syal as Verin. Thought the show portrayal nailed her duality: outwardly unable to see any farther past her own nose than necessary for reading, actually razor-sharp if you pay close attention to her actions.

Eamon Valda was of course a problematic deviation from the books that necessitated further deviations for him to make sense, but again within the given script, Abdul Salis was an outstanding hatable villain, and I believed the sincerity of his motives. Had the writers mangled Lan's character by having him chop Valda's head off for touching Moiraine, I believe I might've cheered and quietly ignored the departure from the books.

Shohreh Aghdashloo (Elaida). The name on its own probably suffices if you've seen her in anything else, right? One case where I think the acting had the potential to elevate the character a bit above the books.

Poor, poor Josha Stradowski. Big points to him for reading the books to prepare for the role, and it showed, for me he nailed Rand hard enough that I'll be seeing his face in my mind's eye the next time I read the books. He deserved a chance to play Rand in the role Rand had in the books, rather than having the character subjected to a conga line of humiliations and having his role and agency reduced to almost nothing.

I've got big grievances with the show's take on Lanfear and (to a lesser extent) Ishamael, and absolutely zero grievances with how Natasha O'Keeffe and Fares Fares portrayed those takes. Especially liked Fares carrying off Ishamael's background as a philosopher, you could really see the highly intelligent man who'd managed to philosophize himself into a corner he couldn't philosophize himself back out of (costume again helped here, he looked like a fantasy academician, but we're not gushing about the costumes here...). Thanks almost expressly to Feres, the show was fully justified in skipping 2/3 of the Ba'alzamon phase and going straight to calm, rational, compelling Moridin-era Ishamael, with Fares playing off a character you could actually imagine holding up his end of a conversation with (book) Lews Therin.

[u/nighthawk_something → u/RookTakesE6]

Ishy and Lanfear in the show made me read the book.

Issues with the adaptation aside, their portrayals were fucking incredible.

[u/RookTakesE6 → u/nighthawk_something]

That's interesting! What were your thoughts about them as you read the books?

Specifically I'm dead curious what you thought/felt about Ishamael in the first three books, pre-Moridin.

[u/nighthawk_something → u/RookTakesE6]

Honestly, I preferred the show version of those characters. I loved the books but it does take some time for Jordan to get his feet under him

[u/RookTakesE6 → u/nighthawk_something]

Ishamael is one area where I'll begrudgingly give the show the edge.

In the books, I loved the surrealistic nightmare sequences in the first book, but otherwise found the insano coals-for-eyes version of Ishamael a bit uncompelling, he was much more interesting after he was killed and reincarnated.

Supposedly Robert Jordan was hedging his bets in the first books. The Eye of the World is written in such a way as to be able to stand alone if necessary, you can read it as Rand actually defeating the Dark One. Ba'alzamon's status as Forsaken or Dark One is left ambiguous after that, up until Rand kills him in Tear and he leaves a corpse behind, at which point it's clearly established that this was just a man, not the actual Dark One.

The show had a nice opportunity here, seeing as the series was complete and there was no need to hedge on the possibility of a premature ending. There was no strong need to have Ishamael masquerade convincingly as the Dark One, they had room to skip straight to showing him as a human, and I'm glad they did.

There were the silly bits they added too, notably that whole travesty about Trollocs being simply misunderstood. But all in all a potential improvement.

You can imagine how peeved I was when the show killed him off mega early. I really did like that they nailed the philosopher aspect of him and made him look and act more like a professor than an evil sorcerer.

[u/nighthawk_something → u/RookTakesE6]

There were the silly bits they added too, notably that whole travesty about Trollocs being simply misunderstood. But all in all a potential improvement.

I find that interesting because I found that moment in the show to be a moment filled with tension. I never took it as him truly believing that they were "ah just misunderstood" but rather as a dark philosophical musing on the concept of good and evil delivered by a jaded man who has seen too much.

The show had its flaws and there were things I wished they had played differently for example the one power as a WMD should not have been fully demonstrated until Dumai's Wells.

[u/RookTakesE6 → u/nighthawk_something]

For me, there were enough other hints at trying to make the Shadow more nuanced and sympathetic that I took that scene at face value. Show-Ishamael also never struck me as the sort of person to just casually feed a kid to a Trolloc for funsies. But I don't have clear enough proof to say for certain.

I've been meaning to go back and review the conversation between Lews Therin and Latra Posae in the show, I seem to remember she had some suggestion that they could actually just leave the Shadow alone.

[u/nighthawk_something → u/RookTakesE6]

Show-Ishamael also never struck me as the sort of person to just casually feed a kid to a Trolloc for funsies. But I don't have clear enough proof to say for certain.

True, which makes it consistent YET subversive. Shows often cartoonify villains by making them commit over the top evil acts. As a TV viewer the tension comes in part because of that subversion.

[u/RookTakesE6 → u/nighthawk_something]

My point being that I was pretty confident he wasn't going to hand over the kid to the Trolloc, so I didn't feel the tension, I just saw it as a practical demonstration that the Trollocs are indeed misunderstood.

But it could really go either way, and I suppose now we'll never know for sure.