Confused about Season 2 ending

They're just playing nice with each other in person, but Ishy knows that she's fucked him by bringing Rand so soon.

Iirc she says it sarcastically as a joke between old friends and ishamael plays it off like he buys it's just a joke. That's why the next time we see him he's telling fain 'lanfear has betrayed us'.

In the moment he probably doesn't want to start shit with her because she may be able to beat him, but also if he is able to turn rand to the dark, in his head that probably gets lanfear back onside anyway.

I havent watched since it cane out though, so if I've got something factually wrong, my bad.

We won’t know the answer to this until next season but the fact Ishy broke the seals and she didn’t know he was going to strongly suggests that Lanfear betrayed him for real. She jokes about betraying him in an earlier episode as well and he plays it off as a joke that time too.

I think it's good that you're confused. And I think this is what I love about show Lanfear, you believe her when she tells Rand she's here to help him , and you believe her when she tells Ishamael that she's here to help him. I think these are both true, Lanfear is here to help Lanfear

I think The whole dialogue between Ishy and lanfear explained further... he was still trying to put all his plans in place and wasn't ready, but lanfear basically forced his hand by bringing rand to falme via the ways.

The betrayal was that he was forced to face rand instead of continuing to subtly try and turn him. at least that was my takeaway from it all.

In an earlier episode Ishy and Lanfear are talking. Ishy says that he was chosen as the leader of the Chosen because he is the only true believer in the dark. Ishy wants to end everything, the world, all life, time, everything. Just a big bowl of nothing. Ishy is the only Chosen who wants this and is the only true believer. He needs Rand to join the dark and ally with him because he needs Rands help break the wheel.

Of all the other Chosen, there is only one who also wants Rand to join the dark and that is Lanfear, but for a completely different reason then Ishy. She just wants to be with Rand. We don't know if she wants to rule the world with him but we can reason that's probable. We know she has no interest in sharing the world with other Chosen as she is willing to have their seals dumped in the ocean. We don't know if she wants to break the wheel with him, but if she does it's not to end everything. We have a hint of what she might want by a temptation that Ishy offered Rand in episode 8 of season one, where he claims by breaking the wheel Rand can remake the world in his image. We don't know if the other Chosen believe this, we just know it's a theory Ishy has to tempt Rand, so it's possible he got it from them.

Ishy and Lanfear can work together for a time because they both need Rand to turn to the dark. But once that happens all bets are off and the alliance is over. Ishy has no interest in keeping the world together so Lanfear and Rand can live happily ever after and Lanfear never had an interest in letting Ishy destroy the world.

Lanfear was always going to betray Ishy, and Ishy knew that, it just happened a lot sooner then he expected.

So the thing is, Ishamael and Lanfear have very different goals. They are old friends and thus have an affably evil companionship built over centuries of friendship and likely won't fight against each other directly, but they joined the Dark One to serve their own interests. They know they're going to end up betraying each other, and the two of them are at the pinnacle of One Power strength if they fought each other they wouldn't be able to guess at the winner, so they'd rather play the long game and try to betray each other at the end.

Ishy's just upset that he didn't anticipate she would betray him so soon. He thought they'd turn on each other after Rand was turned to the Shadow. As he said to Lanfear in Ep 5 "I know what you want", so he thought that he could predict her moves. But he's flustered and angry in Ep 8 because he realized that actually, no he couldn't. He's the philosopher-king amongst the Chosen, if there was any to predict the moves of the other Chosen and outwit them it would be him. Of course he'd be upset that she one-upped him.

I think this is a little bit of a WAFO because it may be fair to say that not every Forsaken has the exact same idea of what it means for the Dark One to "win." Ishy says he wants to end reality permanently so no one ever gets reborn into a life of suffering ever again, and he says (in ep5, when Lanfear enters his dreams) that he believes this is also the Dark One's goal and that he is the only one of the Forsaken who is really on the same page with the Dark One regarding ultimate goals. So I think we can assume that, from Ishy's perspective, no one else can really be trusted to accomplish his main objective. It might be a good thing to turn Rand to the dark regardless, but even if Lanfear accomplishes that, she may be more interested in enjoying immortality with her newly-evil reborn-ex-boyfriend than in ending existence.

So, I don't think Ishy consented to Lanfear's plan in their scene together in the finale. Instead, I think he realized that his own plan became more difficult, so while he was still going to try to make it happen, he at least could hope that Lanfear's plan would make a good Plan B. After all, we see that his own plan has sub-plans: ideally he threatens Rand's friends in a way that makes him turn to the dark, but if that fails (which has been made more likely by Lanfear's meddling), at least he can try to gentle Rand and kill his friends and ruin the Light's chance for victory. This implies that Ishy hopes that, even if he doesn't win (ie, end existence) during this Turning of the Wheel, it might be easier in the next Turning if the current one ends in stalemate or something.

So, to summarize, Ishy's plans are:

Plan A-1: manipulate Rand into turning evil and helping to break the Wheel by putting his friends in danger. He's still trying to make this happen, imo, right up until almost the end of the episode. But he knows it's now unlikely because Lanfear brought everyone to town too really. So,

Plan A-2: if Rand refuses to turn evil, have the damane on the ship ready to gentle him. I think the show will eventually make clear why Ishy would've preferred Rand to use his powers for evil, but if that proves impossible, might as well take away his power so good can't completely triumph. Note that I think Ishy basically just waits too long to switch from Plan A-1 to Plan A-2. He was trying so hard for Plan A-1, hoping that Rand would eventually give in if he had to watch Egwene's air shield slowly buckling (which is why Ishy wasn't using his full power at first), that by the time Rand's friends no longer need saving, Moiraine had already taken out the damane on the ships (due to Lanfear having put her in position to do so).

Plan B: let Lanfear's plan proceed: maybe she's right that, if Rand knows she helped him kill Ishy, he will trust her enough to let her keep influencing him and eventually turn to the dark. As discussed above, Ishy doesn't trust that Lanfear's goals align with his enough to be happy about it (especially if he's no longer around to guide Rand to help end reality once he turns), but it's still probably preferable to the good guys winning and probably would make his quest to end reality easier to accomplish in their next lives, at least for all he knows.

Plan C: .... At the same time, just in case Lanfear REALLY can't be trusted... Better let all the Forsaken out in advance. In the best case scenario (from Ishy's perspective) Rand gets turned to the dark at Falme and it doesn't matter if they're out or not; in the worst case, they provide an extra challenge to Rand if he never turns.

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The Forsaken are, will intimately, working to the same goal are in constant competition with one another and will backstab or betray one another at the first opportunity. They both know this, i think the “betrayal” in question was Lanfear planning to drop the remaining seals in the ocean so Ishy couldn’t let the others out.

The Father of Lies looked upset.

Maybe he was.

Maybe he wasn't.

I guess we'll have to watch and find out.

(see also "Moiraine, who cannot lie, says something is definitely true")