Keep in mind that when reading the ending, that the ending Robert Jordan originally intended
was used by Brandon Sanderson in the book with a couple of slight very minuscule changes. So the ending is RJ's almost 100 percent. Jordan talked about having an open ended finale for the
possibility of books (this was years ago) down the road so it would seem that Brandon and Harriet chose to honour this and keep it intact.
I just started reading the book.