Posted this to [email protected] yesterday, but just found out this community exists and is much more active.
Going to the Aiel Waste, and presumably Rhuidean, before Rand collects Callandor from the Stone, is a pretty big change to the timeline. I’ve not been a big fan of many of the previous changes, but I don’t think I hate this. The justification in terms of using it to explore Rand’s inner life and acceptance of being the Dragon Reborn in a way the book did through inner monologue (something the TV show didn’t have the luxury of doing) makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t think this should affect the overall story too much in the long run.