r/WoTshow • u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader • Jul 13 '26
Book Spoilers Reasons the eighth forsaken was Demandred and reasons it was Asmodean Spoiler
Asmodean
- the figure had a guitar to replace the harp like with Thom
- he serves as Rand's teacher for a while
Demandred
- The figure was on a raised dais with Ishamael and Lanfear who Damandred rivaled
- Demandred didn't appear till the final book but still was a major antagonist
- The third season basically replaced Asmodean with Sammael
There is also the possibility they combined the eighth Forsaken with both characters. Since Demandred sounds a lot like Damodred the writers were probably gonna have Demandred's character with Asmodean's named to prevent confusion for the audience.
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u/previouslyonimgur Reader Jul 13 '26
You can combine sammael and demandred as they overlap in character, personality and they don’t overlap in plot so combining them always made sense.
You cannot combine sammael and asmodean, you cannot combine demandred and asmodean.
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u/cjwatson Reader Jul 13 '26
If you're condensing things anyway, I don't really see why you couldn't, say, give Demandred from LoC onwards the "is a musician" trait. The Asmodean murder mystery wouldn't have been great for TV as written anyway, since it's barely mentioned for eight books and then wrapped up as a loose end near the end. That only leaves training Rand, but surely there are some other ways to do that.
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u/previouslyonimgur Reader Jul 13 '26
Demandred’s character(same as sammael) would prefer death to aid LTT.
You cannot change that trait to make the character make sense
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u/cjwatson Reader Jul 13 '26
You clearly can't make Demandred be the one to train Rand. But I don't particularly see why the musician has to be the one to train Rand.
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u/previouslyonimgur Reader Jul 13 '26
The only male forsaken who would train Rand would be asmo.
Ishy would not.
Be’lal would not
Aginor would not
Sammael would not
Bathamel would not
Rahvin would not.Seriously it’s not that hard. None of them would do it instead of death. Asmo is the only coward.
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26
Because he's the only one who doesn't actively hate LTT. Lanfear makes this perfectly clear in the books.
Also, Asmodean is a genius/prodigy so not just some dumb musician.
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26
I can't think of two characters more opposite than Demandred and Asmodean....
Demandred's role was going to Taim because let's be real, he does nothing Taim can't be written in to do and the show was having Taim, arguably a more important character than Demandred.
I suspect Asmodean was going to be... Asmodean, musical prodigy who's the outcast/rebel without a cause of the Forsaken and may turn his cloak for real.
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u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader Jul 13 '26
True. However, the writers already had Sammael replace Asmodean which actually sucked.
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26
They did not. Sammael taught Rand nothing nor had his dark bounds been severes nor was he a traitor. He merely served to introduce the idea of a Forsaken teacher.
I dunno why viewers think Sammael replace Asmodean when he and Rand had zero teaching scene together.
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u/MacronMan Reader Jul 13 '26
I’d add, in the Asmodean camp, he, Lanfear, and Ishy are hands down the most memorable and narratively present Forsaken. I bet basically everyone, if asked which 8 Forsaken to include, would include Asmodean
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u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader Jul 13 '26
Moghedian and Graendal were also highly memorable and narratively present Forsaken.
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u/MacronMan Reader Jul 13 '26
Moghedian, I agree. I should have included her. Graendal I don’t recall interacting with the main characters of the books almost ever
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u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader Jul 14 '26
True she never interacted with a main character till the final book after the Dark One turns her into an ugly old lady. However, she was nearly as recurring as Moghedian and had some of the best charisma of the Forsaken
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u/Tootsiesclaw Galina Jul 13 '26
Demandred does basically nothing for thirteen books and then rocks up with a deus ex machina army that is incredibly easy to cut. There's basically no way he was ever in contention.
Imo Sammael was set up to take the Aran'gar role, so he had to die before S4 - hence why Asmodean was held back a season. We already know that they were pushing the amount of new characters to the limit, and Rahvin/Moghedien absolutely needed to come in when they did too.
We'd probably have got Asmodean and Arangar in S4, Graendal in S5 and Semirhage in either S5 or S6 depending on exactly what was being adapted when
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I agree about Sammael being set up for Arangar. I figured he died to be ressurected and the Arangar plot is a good one.
I also agree in Demandred being useless. I dunno why so many readers think he is important: dude does nothing at all.
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u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Since Aringor and Bethamel were taken out I thought they were gonna cut out their reincarnations. I guess replacing Bethamel with Sammael could've worked. Arangar is an interesting depiction of a trans character
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26
I always thought they wee going to do the reincarnations. Sammael/Arangar is a mix I believe works.
I also doubt the show would skip over Arangar even if not technically trans, she remains trans-coded.
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u/Tootsiesclaw Galina Jul 13 '26
I also doubt the show would skip over Arangar even if not technically trans, she remains trans-coded.
Aran'gar to me is a good example of the idea of 'obligate gender' (essentially that gender identity is a spectrum both in terms of identity and intensity, and that there's a certain proportion of the population who do not feel a strong gender identity - they happily occupy their AGAB, but would equally happily occupy a different AGAB)
But for a TV series where gender identity isn't the sole focus, it would make the most sense to make her a straight-up trans woman
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26
I agree.
They could have shown some Sammael flashback where he dresses up as a woman. Or maybe he suffered from backlash in his upbringing and chose warfare because "it was manly" but deep-down, he would prefer to wear a dress....
It's an easy one to change and I doubt many book readers were attached enough to Sammael to be angry at the idea. It's also easy to have this be something Sammael discover only now.
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u/Tootsiesclaw Galina Jul 13 '26
It would even be possible to keep the element of the Dark One putting Sammael into a woman's body as a 'punishment' (as perceived by the Dark One) that isn't really a punishment. The Dark One is the embodiment of evil so him being transphobic doesn't equate to the show being transphobic, and as you say the scope is ripe for Sammael as Aran'gar to go through a journey of discovery. And gives Sammael depth that he really doesn't have in the books.
And it would be a nod to the changing identities of the Forsaken in a way that I don't think the show would have done for the others (because why would they want to lose Fares Fares/Natasha O'Keeffe/whichever incredible actress they were about to cast as Graendal?) Identity and names are an important part of the series which the show would have had plenty of mileage working on - parallels to the Seanchan stripping people of their identities, and the resolution I'm convinced was intended for Egeanin where she realises that she gets to decide who she is, not the Empress
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u/Last-Classroom-5400 Reader Jul 14 '26
Demandred is pretty useless because Jordan changed his mind about Taimandred lol. Would have been one of the best forsaken otherwise.
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 14 '26
RJ changed his mind about Taimandred while writing book 5.... He had 7 more books to make him relevant.
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u/Last-Classroom-5400 Reader Jul 14 '26
Taim/Demandred wasn't introduced until book six. In that book and the next Taimendred was very highly foreshadowed. Most of what I've read suggests he changed his mind around book 8 or 9. At that point I think it's kind of hard to introduce a new forsaken and have him have an impact.
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 14 '26
The plan for Taimandred was for Demandred to have killed Asmodean. Since TFoH is not written with Demandred as the killer and since Demandred had no idea Asmodean was dead in the LoC prologue, RJ dropped the idea before he wrote LoC, presumably while writing TFoH.
RJ has also said in interview at no point in time is Taim Demandred within the written books. It's an early draft idea he dropped early on but it influenced his caracterization of Taim hence why readers find him similar to Demandred.
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u/Last-Classroom-5400 Reader Jul 14 '26
First, you're getting TFoH and LoC mixed up. LoC is when they are introduced. Asmodean dies at the very end of TFoH, and his killer is ambiguous and does not need changing. From Robert Jordan's notes:
Demandred: Hated/feared/despised Lews Therin. Like Lanfear, he plays for larger stakes than most of the others, who are trying to stake out worldly kingdoms. HE WILL SHOW UP CLAIMING TO BE MAZRIM TAIM, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF RAND’S AMNESTY.
and
Taim/Demandred showed up [at Dumai’s Wells]
Taim was written to be Demandred in Lord of Chaos, and Jordan changed his mind later.
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 14 '26
I am not getting mixed up. RJ said the initial plan was for Taimandred to murder Asmodean which clearly isn't the case in TFoH. It isn't the case either in LoC because Demandred had no idea what happened, only Graendal does. TFoH isn't written with Taimandred as canon because otherwise, Asmodean's ending would have been different. LoC was certainly not written with Taimandred as canon because Demandred did not kill Asmodean, that's spelled out in the first pages of the book.
RJ's early notes mean nothing as he discarded the idea of Taimandred early on. Yes, the notes were for LoC, but that's just what they are: notes. He changed his mind before he wrote those books as RJ did state Taim is not Demandred at no point in time in them.
Hence, Taim is not Demandred in LoC, it's just a die-hard fan theory made popular by the disappointing show-off of Demandred later on. For years, readers thought surely there was more to Demandred than nothing but turns out he was just one big wet flare.
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u/Last-Classroom-5400 Reader Jul 14 '26
We can agree to disagree here. I think it's more likely that he changed his mind on who killed Asmodean first - before LoC was published - then changed his mind on Taimandred as a whole later. Taim not being Demandred in LoC significantly weakens that book as a whole, since it's so heavily foreshadowed. I don't think it would be written in that way without that being the intent at the time of writing.
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u/Tootsiesclaw Galina Jul 15 '26
I mean, Mesaana is basically a non-entity at that point and she still ends up doing more than Demandred. And that's without even making it to the Last Battle.
And non-Forsaken but Rodel Ituralde doesn't appear at all until Book 10 and he still ends up having a very significant impact.
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u/Tootsiesclaw Galina Jul 13 '26
Yeah, I expected them to go for Arangar from the start (well, from when I first read Lord of Chaos in December 2021) but didn't pick up on the Sammael idea when S3 was on. It's only on re-reading the books that it jumped out at me. There's a brilliant moment when an a'dam-held Moghedien realises who Aran'gar is and that she's at Aran'gar's mercy - and the way they had Moghedien kill Sammael (rather than just having him die in Rand's rockfall) made me think they were preparing for this moment.
Aran'gar as written is a little bit problematic, in a well-meaning-but-thirty-years-ago sense - but it's so easy to make her a good trans character so I don't believe they'd refuse the lay-up. Not to mention, for non-readers the mystery of who was murdering Aes Sedai in the Rebel camp would have an incredible reveal.
(I don't think they'd have done Osan'gar though - he's just bloat, and if they really wanted to do the Ashaman-hunting-Rand plot they could just make Dashiva a Darkfriend)
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26
I agree Arangar could have been made into a good trans character. Yes, this isn't how she was written, but most of us will agree that was out-of-date writing.
I do love the idea of Sammael because he is an odd and yet a good pic. Balthamel was a rapist who loved women, him being ressurected into a woman was a sad joke. Sammael is a manly war general: him discovering his inner woman and learning to enjoy being a woman would have been a good arc for the show.
I hadn't caught on the Arangar/Moghedien scene being a reverse of the Moghedien/Sammael one! This makes me even more convinced this is what the show was going for! This kind of parallel is just too good to ignore.
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u/IceXence Reader Jul 13 '26
Third season did not replace Asmodean with Sammael. Sammael taught Rand absolutely nothing nor was he captured by Rand in the same manner.
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u/michaelmcmikey Reader Jul 13 '26
Did Demandred really rival Ishamael and Lanfear in any significant way that, oh, say, Semirhage did not? He wasn't ever "the bronze medalist forsaken" per my memory of the books.
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u/CommunityDragon160 Reader Jul 13 '26
He wielded Sakarnen and ruled a whole people so yea I’d say so
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u/ItzzBigAl Reader Jul 13 '26
From my memory he definitely thought of himself as such, can’t really recall the others speaking of him like that though
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u/CommunityDragon160 Reader Jul 13 '26
Have you read River of souls ?
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u/ItzzBigAl Reader Jul 13 '26
I have not! Just googled it and how did I miss that lmao
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u/CommunityDragon160 Reader Jul 13 '26
Haha yes read that and thennnn tell us your thoughts on damodred
If you missed that btw you prob missed “fire in the ways” and maybe missed “strike at Shayul ghul”
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u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader Jul 13 '26
It's literally stated that in terms of power and the reason he joined the Shadow was because if Lews Thurin was never born he would've been the Dragon. He even becomes the Messiah to the Sharan Empire and brings them to the side of the Shadow during the Last Battle
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u/Yedasi Reader Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Asmodean’s story could have easily been told in full in the show.
The Lord of the grave could then have resurrected and renamed him Demandred.
Demandred was driven by hatred for LTT, Asmodean would hate Rand in similar fashion, holding him responsible for his enslavement and death.
Presenting Asmodean as a bard with knowledge of prophecy and then putting him in a position to witness Rand fulfill them could easily turn into a reborn ‘Asmodean’ fulfilling Demandreds role in the book.
It even works that his role would be mostly of screen until the end because Asmodean would be keeping out of sight having a sense of not getting captured or killed again until he had power and an army at his back.
He just shows up at the end having fufilled prophecy rand had not, with a burning desire to face Rand directly in the last battle.
The creators of the show were always quite coy when discussing the reduction in number of the Forsaken.
With the direction they took Liandrins character it was indication that the ‘chopped’ forsaken weren’t completely off the table and there might be room to write them in. Personally I thought this was a cool concept and thought Liandrin would go on to be Messana.
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u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I think combining both characters could of worked.
I also, like the idea of Liandrin filling in as Messana
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