Well, I think one of the issues with Jordan as a writer, and this is a big part of why the books are so long, is that he chased threads just for the sake of chasing them. The Seanchan exist as a plot device (at least initially for sure), but also in a place where they are essentially akin to an ongoing thought experiment of some kind. He just sort of continuously unfurls them as the series goes along, and their role as a plot device becomes marginalized and, in the end, basically a cul-de-sac. He spent a million years describing them in detail, and all the horrors of their made up civilization, and then it ends up parked in neutral- partly because he died, but also partly because I don't think he ever planned to actually do anything with them in the larger resolution of the
theme. The main protagonist of the story is fighting someone/something called the Dark One.... and yet the horrid slave empire is not actually contained therein; they are off to the side. The Dark One is defeated, but the Seanchan get to chill down the street. Some people might call that "interesting", but I call it lousy and borderline creepo sexist.
So then I start watching, and I know that out there in this fantasy world is an empire that exists in which the magic women are subjugated in pretty profoundly intense ways. Turned into something worse than an object and, in the books, there is essentially no hope or even instance of that being resolved in any way other than total despair. They spend the whole series kidnapping people and turning them into object and then that's just how it is for them forever, broken down into mental and physical mush. There are a few escapes, but that is radically far outside the implications for the extended universe. Take the character of Ryma, for example; she's a very minor character in the books, but still ends up a broken slave that just gets to be a broken minded slave for the rest of her miserable life, which goes on into the foggy future beyond what Jordan wrote. It has troubling connotations when it happens again and again and again throughout an entire fictitious world and the author never deals with it concretely. And of course he did die, but... still. When I got the the part of the show where
I was like oh come on now, this is getting nasty. You're threatening to put too much icing on the despair cake. I don't think that character comes up in the finale, or at least my eyes missed her in the hubub perhaps, so I suppose the fate is left unfortunately uncertain still. However, they
did at least give us the satisfaction of resolving that situation in a way that dealt with the Seanchan from a sort of narrative philosophical perspective, punctuated with concrete results. None of this "Dragon's peace treaty" type stuff (and of course that would be way later, but still I think you see my point). I plan to continue watching if they actually deal with the Seanchan like the villains they are.
