This is exactly right. This isn't an adaptation of the books for TV. Rather, this is Rafe's big chance to show how creative he is by writing a totally different story with some of the same names and concepts. The problem is that he hasn't written a good story.

Nearly everything they chose to do in this episode sucked.

-The defense of Tarwin's Gap was ludicrous. Get your channelers on the wall and hold that narrow space at all costs. Make a series of ditches. Have a ton of men on top of the wall. I could go on and on about this.
It's not like the last Game of Thrones didn't get a lot of shit for how they choose to shoot and stage the big set-piece battle in their final season.

Yep, because this is the first episode where he had lines. Before that he was a jump scare special effect.

But.. but.. the digging! And he ran in circles in the keep looking for Fain, who doubled back on the place he was in in the first place. Clearly the point was to separate Perrin from the Horn did, because it would be a lot easier for Fain to take out bunch of professional soldiers and a giant with a widowed blacksmith was also not in the room...

Or maybe the writers didn't know any other way to get Perrin out of the way so he could survive without Fain looking like a chump. And never mind that his wolf senses should have precluded Fain losing him that easily, since tracking his scent should have been second nature to Perrin...

See one of the problems with the WoT series is that Lan is so important at the end and matters so much, but the readers just are not that invested in him. So Judkins had to fix the series, by making Lan matter to the viewers, by finding a way to make us care about him. As Jordan failed to do. Sorry, in this case, Jordan simply did not provide sufficient material in Eye of the World for the show to build on, and make Lan's tragic circumstances and story come across to the viewers. /sarcasm
Eh, it could have worked, if there was some reason for his existence beyond an in-joke with the WoT-swears. Far as I'm concerned, his physical appearance boils down to "eyepatch".
Because Nynaeve has to matter, otherwise the relationship is totally unbalanced and we can't have that. Look at the new Matrix, where they needed to make Trinity also The One, because reasons. So I guess Trinity (meaning Three) and Neo (anagram for One) combine to be The Two...? It's also why Egwene gets so much more character polishing. What traits does Rand have to a superlative degree, the way people talk about Egwene on more than one occasion? This is not unique to the show, I can recall readers on the WoTMB & WoTmania who thought Rand deserved a love interest who was more his "equal" (because Elayne is not? Aviendha is not? Min is a lesser being? ). Matching everything to power levels and skill resumes is the same fallacy the Aes Sedai use to defend their general failure to make human connections by claiming that men don't want women who are more powerful. But some readers wanted a "good" version of Lanfear (or the version of Lanfear they projected onto the book character, who was a psycho stalker whose colleagues generally held her in contempt and whom Rand and Asmodean both completely out-thought and out-smarted)

This just goes to show how clueless the writers are. They can't even stick to their ideological fixes or messaging and change the story to be consistent with their "improved" version. Like when the Last Game of Thrones got shit for how season five ramped up the violence and misogyny and got a lot of pushback, so they said season six would be all about women on top and girl power. So we had a clever manipulator and schemer like Margaery Tyrell flailing about incompetently, completely impotent to save her brother or influence her naive teenage husband. So we had Sansa do a considerable bit of the heavy lifting to help retake Winterfell, piss away any audience good-will by refusing to tell anyone that help was coming so drama can happen, and then get completely overlooked when the Northern lords choose their new leader (and never mind that half of the lords present, the ones who actually formed the decisive attack to win the battle, are Vale lords who only came for Sansa and could not give a shit about Jon who is no kin to their own Lord Robin). But a spunky girl proposed it, so it's all good. We had Asha Yara Greyjoy campaign for Queen of the Iron Islands, by having her brother make the big speech on her behalf. We had two Queens, Dany & Yara make an alliance, but only after their male advisors give them nods of permission. And this wasn't Theon's first time upstaging a powerful sister, when he had to prompt Sansa through the formula for accepting an oath of allegiance, and never mind that courtly ritual is Sansa's greatest skill from her first PoV chapter. I could go on and on with that tangent from my original point, which was that shitty writing is shitty, and it doesn't matter if they have a great or better message. Their choices and priorities show that they aren't nearly as evolved as they congratulate themselves for being. How do they choose to convey Nynaeve's strength? Have her wave a blade around and contrarily argue over semantics with absolutely every authority figure. It shows how little they understand strength in general and Nynaeve in particular. It was a Thing in the books that Egwene ditched her braid as a symbol of her moving on from the Two Rivers. Before it was a symbol of her aspiration to a degree of autonomy and agency that was as high as she could hope in the Two Rivers. Rand was angry about her giving it up, because he was forced to leave the Two Rivers and here Egwene is just throwing it away. But the show writers just saw relationship squabbles, and decided to "fix" Rand by having him be more supportive and understanding of Egwene (although their initial encounter in the village give plenty of clues that he understands her far better than Judkins did after reading 12 books in which she is a major PoV character). And they had her keep the braid to set up Nynaeve's stupid line at the end. What was the point of that? To explain Nynaeve' sacrifice? Was she taking on more of the Power burden on herself, since she should have been the last to be burned out, given that she's so much stronger, and at this point in their careers, much closer to her full potential than Egwene? Who knows, we get no explanations of how the Power works, but we can't even fall back on the books, because they deviate from the channeling rules on more than one occasion. But why does Nynaeve need to explain her sacrifice? It's the core of her character, it should be obvious that it's what Nynaeve would do. Why does she need to explain it in those terms? Would she not do the same for one of the boys? Frankly there isn't much build up to establish a relationship between her and any of them. Her sole one-on-one conversation that comes to mind is with Rand in his inn in Tar Valon, where she mostly hyped Egwene. Or was her speech about the braid a reminder to Egwene of their bond as Two Rivers women, so Egwnene would be motivated to save her in turn? Do we really think Egwene would need that reminder, or a reason to save her? It's like in aMoL when Nynaeve is Healing refugees and Egwene offers to link so Nynaeve can use her strength since Egwene can't Heal. She has to give a whole big speech explaining her motives which is supposed to be moment of awesome (I think; it was Sanderson writing it after all), when no one should need to explain or justify helping out in that situation. Instead of giving Egwene a chance to shine all it did was at best make her look like a spin doctor needlessly covering for a perceived flaw in lacking an innate Talent, or perhaps making a do-good moment into a PR opportunity. At worst is suggests something creepy about her character that she does not see the inherent motivation to do what she is offering, and that Nynaeve/B-Sand has a low opinion of Egwene that (s)he would be surprised at Egwene doing such a basic thing and would require an explanation for her actions.

Are the writers aware that's why they are a threat? It's not explicitly stated and I don't think such evolved and enlightened persons such as themselves need to dig deeper than "I am wholeheartedly opposed to slavery! Persecute me if you wish for taking such an uncompromising and virtuous stance, but I shall never cease to speak truth to power on this controversial issue!"

I think that explains EVERYTHING we have seen so far or will see in the future about the depiction of the Seanchan. Barbaric? Of course, they're barbarians, they have slaves and they oppress women with the potential for power. Killing a little girl? What do you expect of a society that has slaves, and binds women of power? Stupid and showy waste of effort on pointless destruction? See above, re: slavery and oppression of women...

Bad writers write badly.