The introduction of a trio of minor characters from Book 3 is the only element of Book 3 to make it into Season 2. And you can't even call it character introductions, since the only things we know about them as characters, is that two of them have no sexual interest in Perrin, but one of them might want to sleep with him. Hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes? Nature of their current vocation? Nah. They are conventionally attractive woman, so sex and their likelihood of engaging in it are the most important things about them.

When they were introduced in Book 3, we learned that Aviendha had a strong sense of honor and loyalty, trying to accommodate her injured cousin's dying wishes, confronting Aes Sedai in order to get her Healed and then following the people who helped her to repay that aid. We also learned that she might be required to give up her life as a warrior and that the authorities back home almost prevented her coming on this expedition. We learned at Bain & Chiad take that life so seriously, that they place their friendship and bonds as sister-warriors above even the loyalties to their respective feuding clans, and that each one risked her life in the other's home settlement to affirm that commitment. Also, the PoV characters assumed their celibate institution meant they disliked men, but they denied this.

Of that paragraph of material, only the last statement made it into the the show. That is the sum total of a book with significant coming of age character development for the four younger Emond's Fielders. If you asked the showrunners, they would undoubtedly insist that the important things were accomplished - Mat left the White Tower against the wishes of the Aes Sedai who kept him there, and Perrin freed an Aiel from a cage and fought the Children of the Light to make it stick, despite neither scene having anywhere the same meaning it had in the books. By the way, that incident for Perrin in the books introduces him to his companion for the rest of the series and his love interest, while on the show he meets someone else's love interest only, who is quite explicit that she is not interested in having sex with him.

Good news! They are going to mash together the two books universally acclaimed as the high point of the series, when they haven't done a quarter of the plot work alone to set either up. Forget character work - to the degree the show understands any of the characterization, they will simply be and do whatever is necessary for the plot at any given moment.
Is Rand actually the protagonist, or just a prop for the female characters? In what way would anyone, based solely on the on-screen material, define him as the protagonist?

Nor can you honestly say he was born from the Aiel culture. He was born to a wetlander tourist, and born in violation of their cultural rules and laws. From the moment of his birth, the closest he has ever come to an Aiel-blooded person was when he passed through a town with an Aiel corpse in it on the show, and when they all converged in Tear at the end of Book 3.

It's being depicted by this show. It can't be in good shape.

Considering they were unable to leave the White Tower and Aes Sedai politics out of the season based on a book which had none of it, hardly news.

Did he really? Or did some chucklefuck characters call him the Dark One for no reason?

It got too much screentime in season 2, for something that was utterly irrelevant to the plot. It was really just an excuse for artistic expression by the costume department.

They have a much more ordinary time period of history behind them, because they've been asleep for 3000 years.

Why would we? What reasons has the show given us to love them?

In other words, they still have not learned their lesson from how the "fun" 'who's a Dragon' storyline.

Tell me how Lanfear or Ishamael were driven by love, or any way at all in which you showed that on-screen.

In the books, Lanfear was driven by vanity, ambition and lust for power, and clearly and obviously mistook her selfish attachments as love. Ishamael was driven by the exact and completely opposite of a love, a nihilistic hatred of life and existence.

Moghedian was more dangerous because she was more concerned with survival and eliminating her enemies than posturing or making a show of power. That is 180 degrees in opposition to everything we have been shown of her on-screen, where she postured, antagonized someone more poweerful than she, and did nothing effective to stop Lanfear or cover her own ass.

Really? Because I seem to recall Moiraine telling Rand to communicate with her in his dreams and turning to Lanfear to help them break Rand out of captivity and get them to Falme.
And failed, as epically as they have done in every other aspect.

Why? You were never supposed to believe Rand and Lanfear would end up together. You were supposed to see her as a ticking time bomb, who would become a major threat the moment she realized what we knew all along, that Rand had zero interest in a relationship with her and would never give her an inch.
They went to all that effort for yet another mislead of the audience, for a character who, if what they say above is true, will be gone after no more than eight more episodes.
What, out of everything on the screen, was supposed to make her lovable? What were we supposed to understand about her as a woman?

For that matter, what are the Forsaken? The show has never made that clear. From people propriating them with prayers and incense in both seasons, to Lanfear's slit throat regenerating, to the scene of Lews Therin and a group of Aes Sedai appearing to bind or banish Ishamael with a magic circle, the inference is that they are demons or supernatural entities of some kind. So how are we supposed to get invested in Lanfear as a woman, when we have no reason to believe she is one?

I have doubts about the actual reading ability of anyone who is that seriously invested in this show.

Sanderson is such a contemptible hack. His bare minimum of technical competence at writing which allows him to recognize the problems of the show does not change that his own depiction of the series demonstrates gross misunderstandings of the characters, setting, themes and morality.

Everything about this secret plot in the book screams incompetence and fixation on all the wrongs things on his part. He says that people didn't pick up on the clues and inconsistencies, but that's because everything he wrote was inconsistent with the established characters! How are we supposed to know the difference between Cyndane acting out of character in aMoL, because she is Up To Something, and because EVERYONE is out of character in aMoL? There is also the fact that he felt compelled to set up a paper trail, so fans didn't accuse him of retconning her survival also speaks to his consciousness about his work. He is thinking of his audience, not his characters and story, and is more concerned about the fourth wall than the three we paid money to see. Of course, this was obvious with his immersion-breaking IRL people inserted as minor characters into his WoT books, and fan servicing plots.

But what was to be gained by the idea that Cyndane/Lanfear survived? How does that service the story? It doesn't affect the characters, because the only two it might concern, are explicitly cited in Sanderson's commentary as being deceived. So what point, other than to offer fan-fiction writers a jumping off point for their post-series scribblings.

What is REALLY out of character about Lanfear/Cyndane, is going to the trouble of this elaborate deception. Lanfear is rather incompetent at deception and manipulation, because they require a degree of understanding of other people, and she is among the most solipsistic of those extremely self-absorbed Forsaken. Her pose of Selene is extremely unsubtle and her efforts to persuade Rand, ham-fisted. Her attempts to persuade Mat in the White Tower are equally over-bearing and clumsy as is her attempt to induce the Wonder Girls to go to Tear. Her disguise as Keille in the Three Fold Land is even more half-assed than Selene, who was too tall & distinctive-looking to pass for a Cairhienin noble. The only way she fools Rand at all is because Kadere happened to bring along a gold-digging bimbo whose behavior served as a red herring. Super-skank Isendre was so Lanfear-like that Rand wasn't sure which blatant fraud was which. Rand, Asmodean and Rahvin stand out as people she attempted to manipulate for her own purposes, all of whom ignored her and did their own thing, in the case of the two former, actually using her to pursue their own goals with a better payoff than Lanfear offered. She is also completely lacking in self-control, even when she knows better. But Sanderson wants us to believe she has the patience to play a long con on Rand and Perrin to fake her own death and escape Tarmon Gaidon unnoticed. Because she is beautiful, powerful and wants to ride Rand's bone train, so this absolutely makes her a character who needs to survive, because That Would Be Cool. I'm glad he's feeling all hot and bothered about the version of the story the show is excreting with his name in the credits, and I am glad its fan-girls are turning on him for his efforts to distance himself from it.