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I would consider myself a super fan. I even have replicas of the Heron Mark blade and the Ashaman pins that I wear at Ren Fest. >_> Anyone who expects them to not change things is dillusional. Nothing done here so far is particularly different from the kind of things they did with LotR and The Hobbit or The Witcher. It's easy to nitpick, but the spirit of the books is there and there is clearly passion put into it. It could still absolutely go south depending on how they proceed, but I see a lot or promise so far.

They definitely sped up the pacing of events, but this is understandable considering the intent at the moment appears to be fitting the entire series into 8 seasons. Also, I don't know that the books' success has much to do with that. One of the biggest complaints I see about the series (especially later on) is how slow moving some of it is. At one point, there's at least two entire books that revolve around the same period of time and it wears on you a bit when reading it. But yeah, they aged everyone up. Originally they're like 15 or 16 in the first book. Perrin is very much not married, Rand/Egwene are (I believe) betrothed (or will be before much longer) and are very much a thing, but there's no insinuation of a sexual relationship, and Mat doesn't have an implied bad home life. The changes to Perrin feel awkward, but I believe it's setting up to help speed some things along later in the series as the books rely VERY heavily on internalization of a lot of feelings and Perrin especially is a bit of a mess in his own head and what they did here will really help externalize a lot of those feelings and make it easier for audience to pick up on that without a lot of exposition. The Rand/Egwene thing was probably unnecessary, but once again, probably easier and more expedient to show a "strong" relationship this way than to spend excess time focusing on it later (which they seemed to do anyway? So once again, maybe unnecessary). Perhaps this was a larger studio thing that got pushed? IDK. This is probably the weirdest of the core group changes IMO. For Mat, I feel like making his home life a rough one helps feed into how his character is, and the books also had an issue of presenting people with unstable homes growing up as all being the "bad guys" and all the people who had good, stable homes ended up being the good guys so I think this was used to rectify that. ======= Not going to spoiler the rest since I'm covering too many different topics, so anyone who hasn't watched, you've been warned. Just show spoilers, no book spoilers past what has been in the show. ======= As said, Moiraine was just viewed as a noble woman. I get expediting the process of revealing she's Aes Sedai, but I wish they would have left in more of her "investigating" the characters to try and figure out who she was looking for. Her giving them the coins to track them especially since that's something that was semi-important later. They also lightened up on everyone's suspicion of her more than I was expecting. They expediated a lot of the stuff in the Two Rivers in general which is understandable. Having two episodes dedicated to them just chilling and staring at the weird lady before leaving would probably have been terrible pacing for a TV show. XD Thom was also supposed to be in the Two Rivers and leaves with the group when they go and plays a bigger role in what was covered in these 3 episodes. This is one of the parts I'm most disappointed in. As cool as his intro was in the show, it rubbed me the wrong way for a few reasons, but I'm hoping they do more with him going forward, but I feel like this will really lessen the impact of some stuff that should happen somewhere in the next episode or two. Also, he better have a damn patchwork cloak hidden somewhere. The introduction of the Fade felt awkward too. Originally, you first meet it when Rand is trying to get Tam back to town after he's injured by the Trolloc. I'm assuming they skipped that because it had too much of a "Hobbits hiding from the Ring Wraith" LotR vibe to it maybe? It was such a powerful scene in the book though. Just seems like a hooded rider at first, but it's a windy night and Rand notices that despite the wind, it's cloak does not move at all and it felt like it would be very powerful imagery for a show if done right. Also, Tam's fever dreams and stuff he says in his sleep kind of give up the ghost on a number of things they're trying to keep secret longer in the show. But even so, it showing up during the Ferry Scene was a lot more potent imo, and would have been a better introduction in that case. The random scene with it just didn't have much impact. Also feel weird about the design choices for them as well. In the books, they look like normal (if really tall and super pale) people in sinister black armor while their hood is up and pulled over their face. You don't really see the problem until you can see they have no eyes, though the leave you with an unsettling feeling even if not seeing their face. The design for the show just keeps making me think of Voldemort. XD The rest of the events are also pretty expedited. They left out them reaching Baerlon which is unfortunate. This is where they encountered the White Cloaks initially if I recall, also Min a character who becomes MUCH more important later (understandable to leave her out at this point though really) and they also re-encounter Padin Fain, the peddler who was in the Two Rivers. There was some stuff left out in Shadar Logoth (Trollocs actually DO press into the city for example, but it does not end well for them, and there's another person that appears in there that might have made for a fun scene). I'm not sure what town it is supposed to be that Rand and Mat find themselves in after though as the part with the Darkfriend happens at a different place in the book, later on so I was a little confused here. Things with Moiraine are a bit different too (I don't recall her being injured at all) but it's a better visual way of making her useless for a bit than just "she's tired", so I can see why they did this. Seems like they'll be cutting out a character that Perrin and Egwene meet as well that should have popped up before they run into the Tuatha'an but probably isn't SUPER important just yet. There's probably some other stuff, but some of this may just be rearranged and will come into play later which is fine if they do it right. Overall though, stuff that was left out is mostly fine. While watching I wasn't shouting "WTF WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THAT??" and didn't notice some of it until after the fact. The Children of the Light felt sufficiently dickish (their uniform designs are super cool, but feel impractical. Would have liked that for the Inquisitors, but left the normal ones in legit armor), Shadar Logath felt sufficiently ominous and creepy, and the part with the Darkfriend was well done even if in a weird spot. I'm definitely enjoying myself. My biggest concern at this point is that they're supposed to have the entirety of the first book in this season and it's only 8 episodes long and that feels like just not enough time to cover things properly. 10 episodes might have been enough so I'm worried at what else will need to be shuffled/cut. Also, Loial will probably be really easy to screw up, but we'll see. >_> Side note: I'm clearly a bit of a fan. This series is actually where my username comes from. XD

I'm sure that was the intent, yeah. And it's cool that it has the Ajah color for the stone on it, but if they're just going to color code how all of them dress it feels like a pointless feature at that point. XD Yeah, the books drag on in a few places and there is a LOT to follow by about halfway through. I personally loved them, but I can completely get someone having trouble getting through them. I liked what Sanderson did for the writing for the last 3 books though. Felt a lot better. The costume design is definitely really cool. I feel like they went a bit overboard stylizing some of the stuff (such as the White Cloaks) and I feel like that's going to hurt later on when there were some specific details to the styles of certain countries. It's still good though for sure.

I'm not expecting a 1:1 adaptation for sure, but there were some weird design choices that I don't get. They clearly color-coded the Aes Sedai, so I'm confused at why they had to change the ring design for example. XD Changes they've done with where Thom comes into the story were probably the only thing that threw me off as far as the plot goes. Also, if Thom doesn't actually have a colorful, patch-work cloak I may end up being a bit annoyed. >_> They've done a great job overall though. It's mostly aesthetic stuff that has bothered me and that has all been relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. SO much of it is done so well that I'm hardly going to hold my gripes against it. It is being handled far better than I could have hoped for with how long something based on the series has been in development hell.

I have a few complaints (some of it a little nit-picky), but overall it's been really good. I've been waiting for an adaptation of this for nearly 20 years so I'm super excited to see the rest of the season.