Which characters could be eliminated from the series entirely?
Spoilers for the whole series; don't read if you don't want them.
I just finished the series yesterday. I gave up in the middle of Winter's Heart when I was a teenager (which was the newest book at the time, I'm old), but decided to reread and finish the series maybe a month or so ago. I remember hating how many characters there were when I was younger, and this time around, I still hated having a ton of POV characters (but dealt with it by listening to the audiobooks).
Upon finishing, I'm struck by the thought that several plotlines could have been eliminated without losing much of anything. The two characters that come to mind right away are Jaichim Carridin and Padan Fain. Carridin's sections all amount to some version of "You failed the Dark One; we're giving you one last chance," until he is, finally, killed, without doing anything important. Fain's sections amount to "I hate Rand and Perrin and Mat; I'll get them in the end, hahaha!" before he gets unceremoniously killed by Mat.
Who else could be cut to make this series, which is honestly a little bloated, more streamlined?