Hello. Tom again, with just some first thoughts at the newest press release The Wheel of Time put out, on the castings of Faile and some important Aiel. Nothing too surprising here, until, of course there is. We’ve often joked on our pod that in order to truly predict how the adaptation will be, you need to put something in that just is completely fabricated, and perhaps nonsensical on the surface. This may be a bit of that here.
Before we cover that, let’s get to the items we already knew, or at least kind of knew.
Isabella Bucceri as Faile Bashere, looks like she’s going to follow her plans in the books if they weren’t interrupted by Perrin, Hunting for the Horn of Valere where Manetheren once was. Surprising the Aiel Wise Ones here are Bair and Melaine (Nukâka Coster-Waldau and
Salóme Gunnarsdóttir respectively), but no Amys. That’s my only thoughts here to these two castings, other than it’s interesting they’re hinting at dreamwalking, but not saying it outright. Tel’aran’rhiod was introduced in S2, but I guess they’re still making it a bit of mystery as to how large a role it plays in the remainder of the series, at least for now.
Björn Landberg as Rhuarc works, and I hope he gets to show off his pipes singing some Aiel battle songs at one point or another.
Synnøve Macody Lund plays Melindhra. That’s odd that she’ll be featured, being that it seems Mat won’t be in The Wa- wait, wha? A Malkieri survivor who was taken in and raised by the Taardad Aiel? What?
Firstly, is this just something the Aiel do now, and Shaiel wasn’t an exception? That doesn’t change much other than her “specialness”, and it actually gives them more parallels to the Tuatha’an, so I don’t really hate it – but it should change their xenophobia quite a bit later in the series. Which honestly, is just less of a headache for everyone. Fine with this change.
But why a Malkieri? Honestly, I think this is answered by the call sheet. Daniel Henney is still second billed on this show, and needs to have more to do this season than be concerned for Moiraine and train Rand how to use a sword. Flesh out his backstory, tempt him with glory, have a (probable) Darkfriend mess with him for a lot of the season. It gives him a lot to play with, so go for it!
Melindhra’s death in the books is one of my favorite scenes, and I assume this change means we’ll miss all of that, the attempt to get Rand to focus on Sammael, the image of Mat throwing the dagger and trying to catch it after it’s thrown… but hopefully, for the non-book readers, we’ll get another stunning Darkfriend reveal this season!
Other than that, let’s keep the hype coming!
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