Lathund

Sticking just to what has been shown/told on the show so far, the Aes Sedai's reactions when confronted by the oaths and the subject of breaking them suggests that at least they consider them impossible to break. And that someone being able to break the oaths is, to put it mildly, sus. I don't recall if the show has talked about how the oaths are sworn yet, so I'll leave it at that.

Definitely sounds a lot more like "Välkommen" than "Willkommen". Though why he'd say that to someone who (As far as we know anyway) doesn't speak Swedish or has a connection to Sweden seems a bit of an odd choice.

The Habsburg quote is actually "Inbred Habsburg giant" in Icelandic-accented Swedish. In addition to that, there are a few times during the scenes at that BBQ where you hear Mattsson speaking Swedish in the background. When Tom is talking about pawn sacrifices Mattsson is speaking at the same time, first part of it I can't make out. Mattsson (I think...): "...all the time...but you can divide it" (Not using the word for "divide" you'd normally use when talking about chopping up and selling a corporation for parts) Someone else (Icelandic dude I think): "yeah yeah, you can do that". As Tom walks over to the table, the audio of their conversation moves to the foreground Mattsson: "I don't know, it's worth thinking about" Then the "Quad Squad" conversation before Tom sits down at the table as they say: Mattsson: "When you've found a track (Or direction/strategy) that works you want to keep working at it. So you don't.. I mean so you don't.. cuz it's so easy to get distracted" ("Once you're on track, keep going" and "Once you have a winning strategy, stick to it" are less direct ways to translate the first sentence, but work better in English) After some awkward Tom perching, Mattsson says they were talking about France. Which they might have been, but didn't really sound like it. I suspect he just picked a topic he knew Tom wouldn't have anything worthwhile to say about. So did the Swedish conversations have any real meaning? Or did they perhaps ask Alexander Skarsgård to just talk in the background and there is no meaning or intent behind it? There were some other random background chatter in Swedish in some scenes, but I don't think there was anything more from Mattsson, and most of it was really hard to make out. Anyway, I hope there are some massive nerds out there that find this interesting. I always enjoy it when Swedish (Or Danish/Norwegian for that matter) show up in foreign films/shows so just wanted to share.

There's certainly no shortate of arrogant footballers out there, but everything about Zava just screams Zlatan. From theh way he looks, the fake bio (Albeit exaggerated. 9 teams in 23 years; but that's quite a lot for a top-level player), the attitude, the body language (Again exaggerated). Will be interesting to see where they go with it. Whichever way they go I'm sure there'll be a lot of ridiculousness.

Finished a The Wire rewatch before I started on this. I expected a lot ot The Wire alumni, but just in the first episode we have Marlo Stanfield and Poot who have switched to the other side and became cops. Slim Charles getting pulled up for nothing, Eileen Nathan going from the DA office into the Mayors staff it seemed, Jay Landsman of all people climbing all the way to the Commissioners Office. And one of the guys on the Gun Trace TF who robbed Andersons place was muscle for Marlo with a fondness for drive-bys. Despite being a lot of setup, I enjoyed the first episode. Expect it to just get better.

My main issue with the original ending of Dexter was that I wanted people to find out about him. Dead, arrested or escaped mattered less. So at least I got that. But I wanted to see the aftermath too, and we're not getting that. And what a shitty thing to do to Harrison. At first I thought it was a way to give Harrison a way out, "I found out what he did and tried to stop him leaving, he attacked me and I shot him in self defense" or something like that. But instead Harrison ends up all alone once again. So it was good to see Dexter again and I appreciate getting at least *some* kind of closure. But eh, overall it was quite unsatisfactory.

It's been some time since I read the books, but I don't think Triss had even appeared yet at this point in the story. IIRC the first we hear (not see) of her is after the battle at the end of season 1. The games take place after all the events in the books too,

Lombardian sun actually, but yes he is! I only know that because I wanted to figure out where those beautiful shots at and around Mattssons "Swiss" home were from and where that house was. Turns out to not be Swiss, but just across the border at Lake Como. Not that it matters really, but why talk about Switzerland and specifically Lake Maggiore on the show and not just let it be where it is, on Lake Como? Coincidentally, Alex Skarsgård was also involved in another of those odd choices on True Blood, where he played a Swedish (ex-)Viking Vampire, where he spoke some Swedish. They brought on his sire for some episodes, played by a Danish actor, and for some reason had him speak pretty bad Swedish instead of just having him speak Danish. Again, inconsequential really, but just a case of making it harder/worse for no reason or gain. Anyway, back to the episode! Absolutely loved it, fantastic episode. Great performances all around. Though I think that perhaps the pacing of the season overall could've been better; such a contrast between this episode and most of the season where the plot moved at a glacial pace. Not complaining too much though, the on-location set piece episodes are nearly always great, so utilizing them fully makes sense. That it leads to developments and time happening off screen to an extent is often a good enough tradeoff.

This probably won't help you with your frustration over the artistic decision, but if you'd like to see how the game went then here is an analysis of it.

As Kasienka said, the books aren't big on geography or maps. I don't know if it was CD Projekt Red (Who made the games) who created the maps, or if they already existed by then, but the games have maps. How much of it is canon, and how much of it is patching together the various geographical details that are mentioned is something I don't know. But this is rather official-looking from Netflix. ANd while the dimensions are rather different and the style entirely different, the location of nations, cities and such matches this map from, I think, the Witcher 2 collectors edition.

Well I can't speak to ICantDoThatDave's specific reaction, but I would suspect it has to do with appearance. There are characters whose appearance isn't described much in the books, or where the description has room for interpretation. Where sometimes peoples' notion of what they should look like is based on their appearance in the games, which isn't canon. Triss is not one of them; she has at least one very distinct feature she's known by, which isn't present. Which isn't something I'd personally go "Eww" about, but I can understand it to an extent. There are other casting choices where characters are rather drastically different looking from the books, but where their physical appearance is described once at never refered to again. In those cases I couldn't really care less about that, only that the actors are good. Not that I care about this either, just seems a bit unnecessary. As far as character and personality, she didn't really have enough screen time to judge. The book crowd and game crowd tend to have very different opinions about her, so inevitably someone will hate her character no matter what.

I don't know if it's enhanced, or if it's just him, but clearly sounds a lot closer to Geralt's voice in the video games than it does to Cavill's usual voice.

MyAnna Buring is also the first crossover with the games that I've seen; she was Duchess Anna Henrietta in the Witcher 3.

Pavetta and Ciri aren't the same person, Pavetta was Ciri's mother. Pavetta threw up presumably to show that she was pregnant. And the child would be the "child of surprise". Geralt, who didn't want a reward to begin with, probably wasn't too keen on being saddled with a child.

It very well may become about them next season. That is assuming they go through with having June die; they've had characters (including June IIRC) say so many times that she'll be killed if she continues with her plans. With how much she has survived already that would've put anyone else in Gilead on the wall, any my general lack of faith in the writing, I have my doubts that they'll actually do that. But they should. Having introduced more Marthas in the story, giving us at least a glimpse into the "Martha network", it would seem logical.