Here’s what’s going for it for me. We’ve been dropped a dozen hints that Liandrin might not be (no spoiler tags exist)WHAT SHE IS(end not spoiler) YET. That’s a huge step out from the books. What would turn someone that passionate and not… that… into someone who leads that? A little girl being held hostage, a girl that she can’t even tell her sisters about. A girl she had with a man from North Harbor who ISN’T who we thought at all.

And it solves what bugged me about Moiraine knowing about the man from North Harbor. How would she know so little about it if it’s what we all thought? Makes more sense she knows MORE about it and it’s innocent, just something the Reds can’t learn about… And readers were manipulated to think it was something else.