got grenaded gayboy 😔

THE WHEEL OF TIME | 2.06 “Eyes Without Pity”

Ceara Coveney as Elayne Trakand in THE WHEEL OF TIME | 2x06

THE WHEEL OF TIME ↳ Season 2 ↳ Episode Six |  Eyes Without Pity

ok sorry i gotta say it but 1) why would anyone think al'lan mandragoran of malkier iS A DARKFRIEND HELLO 2) why would malkier not come up when he SAYS HOW HE WOULD NEVER BE A DARKFRIEND

Because the Malkieri diaspora seems to include a disproportionate number of darkfriends? At least if the books are anything to go by.

yeah of course there have been malkieri darkfriends! my point is not that a malkieri cannot conceivably be a darkfriend; my point is that this specific malkieri cannot conceivably be a darkfriend. he's not just A Guy from malkier, he's the heir to the dead throne who was smuggled out as an infant and, in the books, proceeded to center every choice he made for the rest of his life around this fact. it's absurd that he, specifically, does not cite malkier and the betrayal visited upon his family as a reason he hates the shadow more than anybody.

it's absurd that malkier only came up in the context of one or two romantic scenes with nynaeve and barely ever since, is what i'm really saying. this scene wouldn't matter to me if the show remembered that he has a life and motivations besides moiraine's drama. lan is a character always defined in certain ways by her, of course, but the show giving us expanded screentime with him and never once mentioning or alluding to the backstory that it itself set up last season is ridiculous.

what i'm really saying is that using lan (and siuan, but others have articulated that far better than me) as props for moiraine's plot is a tiring choice that undermines both of their characters.

It's such a very specific and borderline funny choice to have Alanna of all people, an Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah who was definitely alive in the show timeline when Malkier fell, accusing Lan of all people to be a Darkfriend. My jaw dropped when the last Lord of the Seven Towers True Blade of Malkier etc etc didn't ask her right back where her and the rest of the Battle Ajah were when Malkier fell. It seems like such an obvious writing choice to anyone who knew the most basic facts about Lan's charcter to have him reply with something related to Malkier. Even if Lan were a Darkfriend, it would still made sense for him to react with anger at that question when it came from Alanna specifically.

Unless, of course, the writing team is made of people who fundamentally see Lan, an Asian man, as Moiraine's Warder before they see him as his own person with his own character backstory and motivations that don't entirely revolve around a white character.

really gonna give siuan "weaponry made of air is stupid" sanche an air knife crown, huh.

if only they hadn't co-opted that scene to give a certain Darkfriend characterization

wonder what Blues are with the Cairhien travel party, seeing as the Maigan-Anaiya mashup is... otherwise occupied

ah, really should have renamed Anaiya simply for the fact that "an Aes Sedai" and "Anaiya Sedai" sound almost identical. makes much more sense than Moiraine going "this letter needs to be delivered to an Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah please thnx" to the family butler