So far the casting is great and it seems like all the actors have a solid grasp of the source material. Lan and Moiraine stand out in particular.
I'm only on the second episode so I can't say much more but from the dialogue and portrayal of the Two Rivers village to the climactic battle scene in the first episode I'm pretty sold so far.
I genuinely don't understand how there are armies of nerds complaining about how they "ruined the books" by casting brown people.... Like Robert Jordan EXPLICITY describes Rand and the only white guy in the two rivers and he is bullied about it as a child, Elida also comments about how Rand's skin is too pale, his eyes too light, and hair too red to be from the Two Rivers. The first queen of Andor (the kingdom the two rivers is in) is also painted on the ceiling of the palace in Caemlyn and is described ad having black skin and tightly curled hair. This is all not to mention the fact that it makes sense that populations would be radially diverse here because this IS NOT MEDEVIAL FANTASY, it is POST APOCOLYPTIC, with the age of legends (only 3000 years ago, which is not nearly long enough to homogenize populations) being a futuristic, high-tech utopia. I am convinced like half these nerds haven't even read the books and the other half is willingly ignoring them and pretending that everyone in the Wheel of Time universe is while simply because it is "fantasy".
:wojak-nooo: NOOOO, the Two Rivers is an isolated region which means they must all be white! No geographically isolated area has ever been populated by non-white people!
:wojak-nooo: It’s called The Two Rivers, not Los Dos Ríos!!!
It seems like they have very selective memory about the books.
Obviously the strict gender divide is kinda problematic from a modern lens (i am interested to see if they deal with this in the show, especially considering some specific events later in the books), but it has a very feminist lens for it's time, and how anyone could read that, then watch the show and say it's too "feminist" is beyond me.
Excellent comment, I was just thinking about this while I was watching the show. The casting does a lot of storytelling itself. Even people who haven't read the books should be able to pick up on this after seeing the ruins of skyscrapers in the background.