The Wheel of Time: Adapting a Fantasy Epic
The Wheel of Time is a vast fantasy epic by Robert Jordan, and later, Brandon Sanderson, that spans fourteen books and a prequel to the series itself. Brandon Sanderson completed the series after Robert Jordan’s passing in 2007 when Jordan was planning what would become The Gathering Storm. Sanderson achieved this by following Robert Jordan’s meticulous notes for the final book, which needed to be split into three books, due to length. 1 The series was recently adapted into a TV show on Amazon Prime, with Rafe Judkins as the showrunner.
So far, the show has had two seasons, the first of which had a number of complications it faced during filming, including the pandemic, rewrites, and actor changes. 2 The show has been greenlit for a promising third season, according to the actress who plays Nynaeve and Rafe himself. 3 4 While season three appears promising, the show has not yet been renewed for a fourth season, making fans of the show wonder if it will continue. Signs seem to point to a renewal for a new season, but this will be explored near the end of this piece. 5 There are spoilers for some moments from The Wheel of Time books and from the TV show in later sections.
Attempts to Adapt the Series in the Past
The Wheel of Time had numerous licensing partners with its rights, with the hopes of adapting it into a TV series or a movie. Most of the buyers of these rights, such as Universal Studios and NBC never got a project off the ground. Part of this is because Robert Jordan was notoriously specific about his creation. The other reason for this might be because a fantasy TV series or movie series was not really feasible or existent at the time. 6
From NBC to anime, there were many attempts to have The Wheel of Time adapted to the screen. However, all of these attempts prior to Amazon’s have failed. It took thirty one years for Wheel of Time fans to receive an adaptation of the fantasy epic. For context, The Lord of the Rings had an adaptation done within a few years of the book being published, and, other franchises, like Harry Potter for example, can have adaptations made from book to screen in around four years. Part of what stopped attempts at a Wheel of Time adaptation come down to cost and time.
NBC, who obtained rights to The Wheel of Time in 1999, planned to do a mini-series, like they had with the 1998 version of Merlin or Dune. Unfortunately, the executives backing the project moved on from NBC, and a lack of interest killed the project. Next, an undisclosed Japanese animation company, who would, theoretically, be more familiar with adapting incomplete works within a budget contacted Jordan about the rights to his work. Unfortunately, while the author was initially open to the idea, when the company proposed that they adapt only the first three books into a feature-length film, their offer was turned down.
Then, Red Eagle Entertainment, which will be examined in the following section in depth, struck a deal with Jordan for two comic books and a film. They went on to make a short film in 2015, but otherwise left their adaptations lack-luster and wanting. Jordan’s reaction to this treatment of his property is detailed below. Warner Bros. picked up the rights next, hoping to adapt The Wheel of Time after Harry Potter’s success. However, the studio shifted focus to developing their Hobbit trilogy and ultimately passed on the project after speculative development.
Universal Studios then obtained the rights to make a feature film of Eye of the World into a feature film, but after the main developer left the studio, interest in the adaptation once again dried up. Around the same time as this, Red Eagle attempted to partner with game studios to adapt The Wheel of Time into a video game, but nothing materialized. In 2012, Red Eagle Entertainment tried Kickstarter to develop a Wheel of Time mobile game with no success, which brings the rights for adaptation into the current day, where Sony and Amazon have joined forces to create the current show. 7 Now that The Wheel of Time‘s complicated adaptation history has been detailed, it is time to move onto how Red Eagle Entertainment handled the franchise.
Infamous Short Film by Red Eagle Entertainment
In 2015, Red Eagle Entertainment aired a twenty two minute short film, entitled Winter Dragon during an infomercial time slot for the FXX Network. The short film covers the prologue of The Eye of the World. The film made a few changes from the book, such as depicting Lews’s children running and playing a game, or merely implying that Lews Therin was going to end his own life, whereas the book made no mention of how his children acted and chose to explicitly state that Lews ended his own life, rather than implying it. This short adaption of The Wheel of Time happened so that the entertainment company could retain their rights over the Wheel of Time property before it ended in 2016. Red Eagle Entertainment’s actions caused distress for Robert Jordan and his wife, Harriet. 8
The lack of an adaptation for The Wheel of Time from Red Eagle Entertainment in 2006 caused the following statement about the group about a month before Jordan’s passing:
“I hear things now and then floating out in the air. For instance, I hear that word was floating about ComicsCon in San Diego that I am displeased with Red Eagle. Too true. Too very true. In a few more months that last contract they have with anyone on God’s green earth that so much as mentions my name will come to an end and we can see what happens after that. You see, among other things they forgot an old dictum of LBJ back when he was just a Congressman from Texas, when he famously, or infamously, said ‘Don’t spit in the soup, boys. We all have to eat.’ Worse, Red Eagle though they could tell me they spit in the soup, or pee in it, if they wanted to and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. You can’t apologize your way out of that with me, not that they tried. There isn’t enough money in the world to buy your way out of it with me. Not that they tried that either. So they get no further help from me. Once they are completely out of the picture, we’ll see what happens.”
Robert Jordan 9
After the airing of Winter Dragon, a lawsuit was filed against Harriet MacDougal, now Jordan’s widow, for slander. This lawsuit happened because Harriet voiced her displeasure of the adaptation. She was “dumbfounded” when the production aired. Furthermore, Harriet posted on Facebook, “It was made without my knowledge or cooperation…I never saw the script.” This is significant, because Red Eagle Entertainment insisted that this post was slanderous and that MacDougal had more awareness of the rights Red Eagle Entertainment had than she let on. However, it is suspected that Red Eagle Entertainment knew what their deadline with The Wheel of Time‘s rights was and wanted to produce something to potentially expand their option with a Hugo-Award nominated series that has been compared to Game of Thrones. The lawsuit by Red Eagle Entertainment reached a withdrawal in July 2015. 10
After the withdrawal of this lawsuit, aspects surrounding a Wheel of Time adaptation fell silent until 2016, when the Robert Jordan Estate confirmed that they had a satisfactory legal discussion regarding a TV series from a “major studio”. On October 2, 2018, Amazon confirmed that they greenlit a Wheel of Time TV adaptation and would be starting production, though Sony and Red Eagle Entertainment would still be attached to the project. The Wheel of Time premiered on November 19, 2021. 11 This brings the past attempts to adapt The Wheel of Time to the more current day, and allows for a deeper examination of Amazon’s current attempt with their Wheel of Time TV show.
Amazon Prime’s Adaptation of The Wheel of Time
So far, Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time has two seasons, with a third in production, as previously mentioned. The showrunner, Rafe Judkins, had a plan to tell the fourteen novel epic in eight seasons before the show was even greenlit. He stated at Comic-Con 2021 that he wanted to be sure that he had the ending for the show in mind before he even started his first episode. In addition, he expressed some concerns with being able to tell the story, which is quite sprawling in book form, in a concise, compact enough manner that would keep the feel of the series in tact on the small screen.
In terms of his writing team, Rafe likes to keep a mix of die-hard fans of the series, like himself, and writers who have never read the books. According to him, the process helps the die-hard fans question how exact they need to be when conveying parts of the books. 12 So far, season one mostly covered the first book of The Eye of the World, but skipped its prologue. 13 Part of this choice may have happened because there were three animated shorts that explain some of the prologue as well as a few other moments that fans might want to see to coincide with season one’s release. 14 Despite this, the animated shorts can be hard for viewers to find. 15 Meanwhile, season two of the show covers books two and three of the series, so The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn, respectively. 16
As for season three of the show, it will focus more closely on The Shadow Rising, which is the showrunner’s favorite book, and he is excited to be able to bring this book to television and have the audience see why he fell in love with the characters. Like the other two seasons, season three will have eight episodes, and the main cast of Moiraine, Lan, Egwene, Nynaeve, Mat, Perrin, and Rand will be returning. It appears that episode one might be titled “To Race the Shadow”, with other episode titles tentatively being “A Question of Crimson”, “Goldeneyes”, and “He Who Comes with the Dawn”. While some characters, namely, Sheriam will not be returning in season three, but will be in season four, should the show be renewed for one. 17 Wheel of Time‘s season three has the Dark taking more of the center stage, and has been in post-production for around two and a half months. 18
Regarding production costs for the series, it has been reported that The Wheel of Time received an approximate $13,000,000 filming incentive for filming in the Czech Republic, where Jordan Studios and the location for Tar Valon is located. Furthermore, it is estimated that an episode of Wheel of Time costs around $10 to $12,000,000 to produce, meaning season production costs are around $80,000,000. To put that in perspective, The Witcher cost roughly $90,000,000 for its first season and $176,000,000 for its second season. 19 The costs of producing this adaptation serves as a reminder as to why past adaptations often failed–either the interested director left the studio, or the budget was an issue–so the fact that The Wheel of Time can maintain consistent production costs to a studio like Amazon, the adaptation may well reach its goal of eight seasons, provided it is renewed for more. In addition to this, two movies are currently in production as well. One of these movies is called Age of Legends, and will likely cover the Age before the setting of The Wheel of Time in some capacity. This movie is the first in a trilogy. 20 The other movie, currently titled The White Tower is an animated original story. 21 The likelihood that The Wheel of Time will reach its originally planned eight seasons is examined in a later section, after discussing what the production team hoped for in terms of reception. For now, it is important to look at why this adaptation happened in more detail.
Reasons Why the Adaptation Happened
While the history of past attempts to adapt Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic from book to film have been previously addressed, it is important to consider why an adaptation of the series is happening now. There are multiple reasons for the current Wheel of Time adaptation, and this section leads into topics like Robert Jordan’s stance on an adaptation of his work, HBO’s Game of Thrones series’ success and why it may have led to the current adaptation. In addition, this section covers Amazon getting permission for the adaptation. These aspects are discussed so that readers have a better understanding of the “why” of the adaptation.
Robert Jordan’s Stance
While it is known that Robert Jordan had a falling out with Red Eagle Entertainment, this one stumbling block in the road does not necessarily accurately portray what Jordan wanted to see in terms of his work. The fact that he gave the rights to so many studios with the hopes of getting the series adapted into a series or movie, as discussed previously, suggests that the author wanted to see his work or certain parts of it in a multimedia format.
In fact, when he first partnered with NBC, following the creation of The Wheel of Time video game for PC, Robert Jordan would have been happy to receive a mini-series of his works, as the studio had done with Merlin. He states the following:
“Well actually I have in hand the contracts from NBC in the United States which as soon as I get a chance I will sign and send back to them by which they are buying an option to do a miniseries based on The Eye of the World…The fact that they’re buying an option doesn’t mean that it will actually happen, of course. But they want me to be a consultant if it does, mainly to make sure they don’t do anything that will cut off their ability to buy options on future books. They’ve outlined how they want to buy options on all of these books. And I find it very nice. It means that maybe they’ll be doing… they’d do two a year, who knows how many years they’d be doing the mini -series. Well they’ve done Merlin and they’ve done – It’s the same screenwriter who did Merlin. What did you think of Merlin? I thought Merlin was alright. Yeah. Alright. Not any caliber but alright. If what I get is what they did in Merlin, I’d be perfectly satisfied.”
Robert Jordan 22
From this exchange, and given his reaction to Red Eagle Entertainment, outlined previously, the issue for Wheel of Time’s author seems to not necessarily be that an adaptation to his series happened, but that it was not up to his standard. This means that the eventual, successful launch of The Wheel of Time as a TV show may have made Robert Jordan happy, but, sadly, we won’t know for sure what his reaction to the show would have been. For now, the examination of HBO’s The Game of Thrones is next.
HBO’s End of The Game of Thrones
The Game of Thrones was adapted from a novel series to a show for HBO. The author, George R.R. Martin, was heavily involved with the process of the show for the first half of it, from seasons one to four. 23 The novel series started six years after The Eye of the World, the first book in The Wheel of Time, was published and has references to The Wheel of Time, because Martin was a fan of Jordan’s work and actually wrote one piece of Wheel of Time fanfiction. 24
The Game of Thrones show began in 2011 and ended in 2019, but it did something revolutionary for fantasy TV series in America. The show won fifty nine Emmys of the one hundred fifty nine awards it was nominated for, with four of those awards being for outstanding drama. The show also sparked an interest in studying the medieval period. 26 In addition to these successes, The Game of Thrones managed to bring in two point two billion dollars of profit and a steady subscriber growth for HBO and its streaming platform. 27 The success of this show reportedly made Bezos want his own successful book to show adaptation, though this has been getting mixed reviews on the adaptations that have been attempted, which will be covered in a later section. 28 For now, it is important to examine how Amazon acquired permission for the rights to The Wheel of Time.
How Amazon Approached the Adaptation
So far, The Wheel of Time adaptation has proved to be quite a challenge. While it is being filmed in Prague mostly, all of the cast involved has to live in that city. In addition to this, Amazon greenlit season two of the show while the pilot of season one was in production. While working on production of season one, the showrunner, Rafe Judkins, needed to also work on season two. In addition to this, producers at Amazon had a lot of questions for the first season, and it fell to Rafe to determine how to address those questions and notes. In addition to this, the promotional materials for the first season in particular needed to catch viewers who have never heard of The Wheel of Time series while also appealing to avid readers of the books. The end goal, in addition to giving Bezos his Game of Thrones, is to hopefully condense, but tell the full story within the fourteen book epic. 29
As previously discussed, while season three is in post production, it does not currently have a release date, and, there has been no word on a season four of the show. Despite these aspects of the Wheel of Time show being in the air, that does not mean that the show itself has failed. Now that it is more clear on how Amazon handled the production of the first and second seasons of the show, it is time to move onto how the show is different from the books.
Changes from the Books
With any adaptation, there are likely to be changes from one medium to another. This is particularly true when adapting something like The Wheel of Time book series into a TV show. There are going to be a lot of aspects that work well in text that will not work so well on screen or in a script. For example, a lot of the descriptive paragraphs used to describe a place in a book can be depicted faster with how a set looks or how a character is cast and dresses on set. It is even possible to give two different directors or showrunners the same source material, and they might end up with differences in their interpretations, despite the highly descriptive nature of something like The Wheel of Time.
The Wheel of Time‘s showrunner, Rafe Judkins, touches on this in an interview with Variety. On making an adaptation, he states the following:
“‘I came into it already a fan of the books — [I] read them all with my mom when I was younger — so I already had the great burden of responsibility on my shoulders…A lot of it is about figuring out how to stay true to the heart of what’s there in the books, but also create something that a new audience can understand,’ he added. ‘You don’t have the benefit of pages and pages of exposition that explain the world. You have to figure out how to tell it with visual cues,’.”
Rafe Judkins in an interview with Variety
The adaptation of The Wheel of Time also faces the reality that fantasy TV is a more established genre than it was when adaptations of the book series first started. There are aspects from The Wheel of Time that have already appeared in The Game of Thrones show, according to Rafe during the same interview, so, part of his challenge of a showrunner was to lean into the aspects of The Wheel of Time that were unique to it as a series. 30 Keeping all this in mind, it is time to examine the casting choices and if they line up with the descriptions of the same characters in the books.
Casting Choices
In the book series, Robert Jordan created a diverse swath of characters, though this diversity when it came to the main characters, Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne could be easy to miss. This is particularly true in the medium of text, where the reader might be focused on something other than the descriptions of a person, especially if they already imagine the characters a certain way from previous books and miss more nuanced details. That said, Jordan has a wide range of characters, and this includes many people of color in the books, that makes his world feel diverse and lived in.
That said, when casting for a TV show, these descriptions are far less lengthy and can be used to inform a showrunner how the cast should look and act to fulfill their roles. So far, most of the casting for The Wheel of Time‘s show adaptation has been close to those in the book series. The show has also been honoring the diversity that is in the source material as well. For example, to the left is a picture of Lan from the books and below is Lan from the show, and this kind of similar comparison could easily be made with all the other characters that have been confirmed for the show so far.
There is one major change to casting that was made to the show from the books, and that is with the actor who plays Lews Therin. While Lews Therin was depicted as brown haired and dark eyed and white 31, the actor who portrays Lews, Alexander Karim, is a person of color. 32 This change is minor, adds more inclusion into the work, and the actor does a decent job of portraying Lews so far, in the few flashbacks he’s been present in. If the show does decide to cover The Breaking, it will be interesting to see how this portrayal of Lews will act during it. Now that the cast of the show has been analyzed, it is time to look at some of the changes that happened to the characters as they move through the narrative.
Changes to Character Arcs and Changes to When Characters Meet
One of the aspects that The Wheel of Time show either condensed, or, potentially accelerated, depending on how one views it, is the character arcs. For example, in the books, a lot of the character arcs can be defined over a long period of time over many books, which leads to a slower development pace. Broadly, the main character themes often deal with fleeing or facing responsibility, coming to terms with the power your given and balancing who you were with who you’ve become, and, in the case of Perrin specifically, being nonconfrontational to the point that you do not know when to defend what you care about or using your power, even if it causes harm, to lead others to what’s right. Much of these character arcs are shown a bit more directly in the first episode of season one in the TV show.
Specifically, Mat, contrary to his upbringing in the books, is shown to have to be the one to take responsibility for his family, which contradicts his wish to simply run away from his duties. This choice was likely done to show the broader arcs of Mat’s character in the books, since he struggles with the very same conflict in the text, but, again, this is shown over the course of the novel series, culminating in Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light–the last two books of the series. However, with Mat’s character, there was an incident with the actor originally portraying him, Barney Harris, walking off set with little explanation, which caused Mat in the show to leave his friends in The Ways at the end of season one. This change caused an entire rewrite of season two and had consequences for the rest of the main cast in the end of season one, which meant that Rand, Perrin, and Mat ended up separated earlier than they did in the books. Rafe Judkins had intended to bring out more of the “reluctant hero” out of Mat during the hunt for the horn, but needed to change the story after the actor for Mat left and forced the party to split. 33
Similarly, with the case of Perrin, he kills his wife in the show. This choice was particularly removed from the source material, as he was not married at all, until later in the book series. Despite this change to his character, the direct conflict of hurting others in defense and how that impacts his efforts to be nonviolent in the future makes the broad arc of what Perrin’s development was in the books more apparent. Following these changes, there are implications for season three that may allow Perrin to have a familiar, but more original character arc in season three. For example, there is speculation that Perrin will be returning to the Two Rivers to confront the White Cloaks, similar to how he did in The Shadow Rising, but, since Perrin could be using the Wolf Dream, he may be able to team up with established Heroes of the Horn from season two 34, which may lend itself to more of a narrative arc for Perrin in future seasons that may account for some of the desynchronization that happens with Perrin’s character arc in later books.
As for changes to the other characters, there has been a lot of more mature themes that do not happen until later in The Wheel of Time book series, such as an implication that Egwene and Rand sleep together, even though they were only ever assumed to be promised to each other for marriage in The Eye of the World on reaching adulthood during Bel Tine and never slept together in the books. These more adult themes and actions happened more overtly toward the midsection of the book series. While the inclusion of more adult themes is different and happens faster than it does in the books, it does let viewers know, much like the books did, that these characters are new adults, trying to figure out what they want in life.
In addition to these kinds of character changes, the order in which certain characters meet also differs between the show and the books. For example, Min meets Rand late into season one, at Fal Dara instead of in Baelron. Likewise, Rand meets Thom the gleeman later in season one and not in the Two Rivers before the Trolloc attack as he did in The Eye of the World. 35 Elayne makes an appearance at the very end of season two, during the battle of Falme, where she tries to Heal him from his injury, rather than meeting Rand after he falls into Caemlyn’s castle garden in The Eye of the World. Some of these changes in how a character meets another character in the show serves to give the new character more prominence on screen. It allows the viewer to understand the importance of the new character and it condenses some of the slower build some of the supporting characters have in The Wheel of Time books. This brief look at character differences and when certain characters meet at different times than they do in the books leads into the next change to the show–missing towns.
Missing Towns and Changes to Events
While Jordan took his time crafting exactly how the trio of Rand, Mat, and Perrin separate from one another shortly after the attack on the Two Rivers and how each of them reach their destination of Caemlyn in The Eye of the World, the TV show takes a slightly different, more truncated version of that journey. While the group does travel to Shadar Logoth and encounter the horrors there, and Mat does steal a cursed dagger in both the book and the show, the journey after that point is different. Instead of travelling to Caemlyn to meet the Amyrlin Seat and Queen Morgase, as they do in The Eye of the World, Rand and Mat instead head for Tar Valon. They do end up stopping in White Bridge for the night, but never pass through Baelron. Part of the changes to what towns are shown in the TV series so far could be because of constraints to the filming times and process, and, the show tries to name drop the places it cuts out in dialogue, so it is understood to viewers that these places do exist, even if they are not faithfully shown on screen.
The other reason for missing towns may also have to do with the changes to events that happened between the book series and its show adaptation. As previously mentioned, a major change to the events of season one is that Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, and Nynaeve all travel to Tar Valon in search of Moiraine who told them to go there. Instead of meeting up again in Caemlyn, meeting in Tar Valon helps establish the Aes Sedai, the White Tower, and some of its politics and the relationships that the Aes Sedai have with each other. 36 Sensibly, Mat can be Healed from his brush with the cursed dagger here, Rand meets Siuan Sanche, the Amyrlin Seat, and Nynaeve and Egwene can have their character arcs begin to be fleshed out faster.
It is also possible that changing the events to the ones described above allows viewers to make connections between Moiraine, speculations about characters’ futures, and makes it so that viewers do not have to encounter the two or three layers of politics that are hinted at in The Eye of the World right away. This means that the events in the show fit its medium, make direct lines of connection while hinting at its own foreshadowing of future events, and is easy to understand without needing to dig into the subtext of the show right away. Now that the missing towns and changed events from books to show have been analyzed, it is time to move onto how fans received the adaptation itself.
Fan Reception of The Wheel of Time’s Adaptation
Fan reception to the adaptation of The Wheel of Time has been mixed, with a lot of hardcore fans of the books hating the way some elements of the show have been portraying the places, characters, and plot of the book series, to the point that some have questioned what Robert Jordan’s widow and editor, Harriet MacDougal, thinks of the show. 37 Other fans have pointed out that there is a lack of humor in the show that is especially present between Rand, Mat, and Perrin in the books. One fan in particular thinks that trying to imitate Game of Thrones is the cause, since that show is particularly dark and humorless. This led to a discussion on whether or not The Wheel of Time or Game of Thrones can be adapted to film satisfactorily. Mostly, though, the discussion quickly devolved into the hate someone had for the series, as most discussions around the show tend to do in their respective forums. 38 Still more fans criticize the audience that Rafe Judkins intended The Wheel of Time show to be for, because he tried to shoot for the space between people who have never read the books, and those, like himself, who have read the series multiple times. This deliberate choice was made to shoot for the largest audience possible to justify the show’s existence. Following this, more fans start to take apart the quality of the production of the show itself. 39
Despite the negative reception by some fans, others are accepting of the changes, understanding that a lot of changes need to happen from the books for the different film medium. In fact, in this discussion, people point out just how many things COVID negatively affected about the show’s first season and are willing to see if season two is better. 40 Concerning obstacles around COVID, it seems like the pandemic halted production during episodes five and six of season one, and then, when production could resume, social distancing rules were in place, which caused the location of the Blight to change to a set piece. In addition to this, there was an entire choreographed fight planned with people dressed up as Trollocs that had to be changed to CGI last minute, due to the social distancing required at the time. Furthermore, it seems that Brandon Sanderson could not check over those episodes’ scripts at the time, so, these episodes of season one have had a more negative reception as a result. 41
Particularly for people who have not read the books, it is clear that the first season of the show introduces viewers to the breadth and depth of themes and events that came from the books. Some of the things within the show can appear jarring, like the appearance of the White Cloaks, for example. However, for the most part, the show seems to capture a similar feeling to the books. 42 The fan reception of the show leads to the question of what the production team of the show hoped for, which is examined next.
What the Production Team Hoped For and Overall Ratings
In terms of construction, in an interview, Rafe Judkins makes it clear that he hoped to make season one of The Wheel of Time longer, but was denied by Amazon. In this same interview, Rafe also details why he had to combine The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn in season two, and it was because of the too similar narrative arcs that the books share, making it impossible to film back to back in a satisfying way. Brandon Sanderson actually recommended that Rafe combine both books. The makers of the show know that the first season is a bit disjoined, given that there are over one hundred pages from a book covered per episode, and they hope by the end of season two that viewers can start to see where the threads of character development and plot start to come together. Regarding fan reception, Rafe says that he appreciates the theories that have been generated by the viewers, and he admits that some of them noticed something small in season one that will pay off in season three. 43 In terms of what the production crew behind the show hoped for as an outcome to their adaptation, it is difficult to say, though the show seemingly caused renewed interest in the book series. 44 Regarding the aforementioned COVID-19 setbacks, the producers of the show hoped that they managed to pull off the scene transitions and the end of season one brilliantly and want to show how much respect they have for Wheel of Time fans and the source material in this adaptation. 45 Now that the hopes of the producers have been explained, it is time to analyze the ratings of the show.
Season one of The Wheel of Time has an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an average rating of 7.0/10, with the critic consensus saying, “The Wheel of Time‘s revolutions can be a bit creaky as it tries to stand out from other fantasy series, but it succeeds admirably in making Robert Jordan’s epic approachable for the uninitiated,”. On MetaCritic, the first season got a “mixed” review, more specifically a 55/100. The second season improved, with an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, or an average of 7.65/10, with the consensus being, “The Wheel of Time keeps spinning on a steady track in a rousing second season that deepens its characters.” In addition, MetaCritic reviews went from “mixed” to “generally favorable”, with a specific score of 69/100. Critic reviews ranged from low for the first season to 4/5s, with stronger ratings for the second season, claiming that the show has found its feet. 47
In terms of viewership, the first season of the show had over one billion watch minutes within its debut week. In addition to this, The Eye of the World was in the top twenty on Amazon’s Fiction List. The Wheel of Time‘s debut season ranks in the top five shows for Amazon Prime Video. 49 However, viewership for season 2 fell to 515 million watch minutes, which is a 55% drop. Despite this, the show ranked 3rd in the UK, and there was a lack of promotion for the second season on Amazon’s part. 50
In any case, season three is in production, and if it does well, there may be a season four. In addition to this, Amazon is looking to expand The Wheel of Time as well. 51 This in depth look at adapting a fantasy epic like The Wheel of Time now leads to the conclusion.
As seen from the sections above, the act of adapting a fantasy epic as beloved as The Wheel of Time is quite an undertaking. Changes in the medium in which the story is told will naturally force changes to that story in the new medium. The best that viewers can hope for, given that there is not an unlimited budget with unlimited time to catch all the intricacies as Robert Jordan wrote them in filming format, is that the TV show captures the same feel and essence of the story. The Wheel of Time show tends to capture the same feeling to overarching narratives from each book it has covered so far. After some growing pains in season one, it is clear from season two that the feeling of the novels could very well be intensified going forward. While it is too early to tell whether or not The Wheel of Time show will be able to reach a conclusion based on A Memory of Light by season eight, it seems that everyone involved with the adaptation do care about the source material and are trying to figure out how best to put the narratives they can on screen in a way no one else with The Wheel of Time rights could before.
Works Cited
- The Wheel of Time. (2024, June 10). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time ↩
- Tootsiesclaw. (2024, September). Rafe is the showrunner (which means he’ll have had a hand in every episode, even if his name isn’t the one getting the writer credit) and he’s also not really had an episode yet which wasn’t majorly affected by outside factors. [Comment on the online forum post What is everyone’s take that Rafe Judkins is the writer of S2 E8?]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/WoTshow/comments/16w3qn9/what_is_everyones_take_that_rafe_judkins_is_the/ ↩
- Danoff, O. (2023, December 21). Nynaeve Actor Teases Big The Wheel Of Time Season 3 Character Moment: “Book Readers Will Be Very, Very Happy.” ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/the-wheel-of-time-season-3-nynaeve-book-moment-moghedien/ ↩
- Al-Ghamdi, A. (2023, October 15). Wheel Of Time Season 3 Book Revealed, Teases New Forsakens, Locations & Dreamwalking. ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/wheel-of-time-season-3-book-reveal-forshakens-location-dreamwalking/ ↩
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What do you think? Leave a comment.
Robert Jordan’s work got me into fantasy more than anything did short of maybe Peter Jackson’s LotR adaptation. I had a rough set of formative years and books were literally my only escape. WoT was the biggest reason why i didn’t perform a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It saved my life. I accept that there’s some rough patches in the series, but i will still defend the books until my dying breath. I so desperately wanted to be a fan. I wanted to support the show. I would have been overjoyed if, even if it was bad, it still came from a position of love and respect. I would have shouted it’s praises from the rooftops.
To have witnessed the desecration that Amazon permitted and see people actively defend their works, it filled me with a considerable amount of despair and rage that can’t quite be described.
I heard season 3 was announced and just felt like– “Please let it die”
I admitted this was a bad adaptation by the end of the first episode of the first season. The only reason this piece of refuse doesn’t rise to the same level as RoP is because the betrayal of Tolkien is arguably more significant given his contributions – to which Jordan’s work owes its existence.
Tolkien is just a whole different level, which makes RoP so much worse.
Wheel of Time is sadly just one of many cases of writers thinking they can do better than the original author and showing their blatant disrespect to the source material.
I initially viewed it that way myself, until I wrote this article. I wasn’t aware of how difficult of a balance it would be to strike to get it right, and I had my own reservations about it being adapted at all. I think the showrunner having read the series and making the cast read the series is a decent start. The truth is, we don’t know how much of this is on the showrunner and how much of it is on Amazon itself. I do know that, as mentioned in the article, COVID really did a number on season one, as did the original choice for Mat leaving, to the point that the likely more book accurate fights and training scenes had to either be cut, completely rewritten, in the case of actually showing the Great Hunt, or done in CGI. I think that, especially when things can be played straight from the books, like Egwene getting captured by the Seanchan, the show has moments of draw. That said, I know that they’re planning to be closer to the books in season 3, since it covers Shadow Rising, so I’m at least willing to see how they accomplish that.
It’s never going to get made to the end I read the books its a huge story it would be about 15-16 sessions
Yeah, I think it would take that many if they had the chance to slow down and do it more by the books. I still don’t know how they are going to do it in eight, if it even gets that far. I’m at least hoping it ends in a satisfying way, if nothing else, and, part of me is at least hoping that this doesn’t turn into another “We tried and it can’t be done” after all the other attempts to get it off the ground.
Having just read the first book what they have done is disgusting, it has the potential to be extreamley good on its own merits if done properly – the sex/violence and wokery is complete tosh!
WoT series is good. For one, I was actually able to read WoT. I was fairly put out with Tolkien after it took 20-30 pages to describe going over a few hills with nothing else actually happening.
Comparing any epic fantasy to LOTR does strike me as slightly lazy.
I haven’t read Wheel of Time, but is it as close to the stories of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as they were to the Norse legend of Sigurd (and the serpent and the ring)?
The first book very much starts out in a Tolkienian way, arguably the first three books kind of have that feel, and it really isn’t until book 4 or 5 that the characters start to be better defined, with a few exceptions with Nynaeve and Egwene in books 2 and 3. That’s part of the reason why I’m curious to see what they do with season three, since it’s going to be covering the 4th book, so, there’s going to be a lot less of a slower pacing to draw from.
The WHEEL OF TIME draws upon a fairly large amount of mythology for its inspiration: the legend of Arthur is in there but there are also analogues to Indian and Hindu mythology, Norse materials (one of the characters’ story arcs is in fact a bit too obviously inspired by Odin) and references to other sources, including Japanese mythology. Jordan’s net is much wider than Tolkien’s, although he doesn’t go into any particular mythology as deeply as Tolkien does with his Iceland/Finnish inspirations.
The LotR/WoT similarities are also fairly limited, and limited to the first book. There’s a sequence which is vaguely Moria-ish (when the ‘heroes’ visit a ruined city called Shadar Logoth) and some creatures which are a bit Nazgul-ish in the fact they wear cloaks and ride horses (but otherwise are completely different) and a character called Padan Fain who is occasionally reminiscent of Gollum, but more in being someone corrupted by an evil magic artifact; in story function and character he’s very different. Other than that the references to LotR are more tributes: an inn called the Nine Rings and a moment where a character is talking about a favourite story from childhood and it’s hinted to be either LotR or THE HOBBIT (WoT is set in our world a few thousand years hence, so it’s not impossible they have survived).
This is a fantastic series; sure a lot of the books have a Tolkien-esque feel but this is a detailed well-formed secondary world with a level of internal intricacy only rivalled by Tolkien. The writing style, granted, is subjective, but in no way inferior.
Ya know what they could’ve done? Set the show during The troloc wars. No need to destroy the cannon. No need to piss on beloved characters like mat.
Nice article. I am a fan of the show ! I really appreciate seeing the story on screen. It is hard to watch the first time with expectations I have from the book. Once I let that go the show really changes and in my opinion is quite good. For me it captures the heart of the characters. Nynaeve is my favorite and it is clear she cares for the Emonds Fielders and struggles with the fact she can channel. I thought season 2 was a big improvement with amazing costumes and sets and a huge improvement with the weaves visuals. Overall I am a big fan of the show !
Thanks for the comment! I definitely had my own reservations about an adaptation, and, after doing the research for this article, a lot of the changes made between the two mediums make a lot of sense, particularly with the expectations set around a fantasy TV show. I really think the show tries, like you said, to keep the heart of the characters there, and I found that, while it may not be how I interpreted things, the show still manages to give me the feeling I had when I was reading the books. I don’t think that is easy to do, by any means, and, I think the second season was an improvement on the first season, too. With what’s been said about the third season, I’m hoping that the show finds its stride and really improves on the elements its already trying to weave together! I also want to see this series the rest of the way through as a different experience from the books, too.
WoT is enjoyable enough to read in a pulpy kind of way, and it has some interesting ideas – notably the leashed mages – but I found an awful lot to annoy in it – the quality of the writing is pretty execrable, the gender essentialism becomes immensely annoying book after book, there is a disturbing tendency to glorify corporal punishment which gets quite uncomfortable by the later books, and the characters seem to be multiplying out of control by about book 8, but most of the characters – and Rand particularly remain rather flat and two-dimensional.
I think that the show might be trying to navigate its way around some of that, personally, and I’m interested to see how they do that, especially now that they’re out of the “You get one book deal. Hey, that worked, write a sequel. No, wait, we’ll actually take a trilogy.” territory of the first three books. I know I kept wondering which characters were important to the plot, and, especially by book 8, kind of had to stop until the series finished, so I could see how it ended, personally.
Passable, unoriginal fantasy fiction does not sell 90 million books. there is so much more going on here. the epic scope of the story, the sheer number of well-developed characters and peoples, the ups-and-downs, twists-and-turns. Whether it is your cup of tea or not, The Wheel of Time is a tremendous achievement that has brought pleasure to millions.
But…the story isn’t actually epic, the characters aren’t well developed. the fiction is, at best, passable.
I can understand reading and not enjoying the overall story, or not liking the characters. But claiming that the characters aren’t developed, or the story isn’t epic in scope? That’s speaking out of sheer ignorance, and I can think of no reason for that besides trolling the readers.
The story is certainly epic. It spans continents, there are at least seventeen distinctive cultures/nations/peoples all developed in a reasonable level of detail and it has a backstory extending across 3,500 years (and, unlike Erikson or Martin with their much longer timespans which don’t always convince, Jordan does do a very good job of getting across how immense that timespan is).
It’s only ‘not epic’ if you only count poetry as being epic, since that’s where the term originated from, but that is bordering on pedantic.
As for character development, certainly quite a few characters develop from one type of person to another over the course of the series, most notably Rand, Mat, Perrin and (especially) Egwene. Others stay very much the same, though in some cases that’s deliberate (Elayne, certainly so) because not everyone does the ‘growing and learning’ thing, especially if they are privilieged or overly-entitled. Jordan is no Martin when it comes to developing characters, but on the other hand he’s certainly better than most.
The world is vivid and well-detailed, the plot has quite a few twists and turns that are interesting and the writing is reasonable enough to transmit that across. Jordan’s no prose stylist, but this story is about the characters and the world. You may as well ask why Star Wars or Harry Potter is so popular when they weren’t written by prose stylists either.
The Wheel of Time is high fantasy at its finest.
I really think there needs to be an animated adaptation with a genuine love for the original work.
It sucks, plain and simple. It is hypersexualized, and barely resembles the books at all. I barely stomached the first season, watched one episode of the second season and then gave up.
If they had been more faithful to the books it would have been jaw dropping, instead apart from one or two scenes it’s underwhelming.
A lot of the plot details are just pointless. Why did Perrin need a wife in the first season? He’s supposed to be 17.
Lanfear was far scarier in the books, now she’s some sort of weird unkillable monster.
Gaul replaced with aviendha, because a bromance is not allowed and another strong female was needed in a story that already has dozens of strong females. Sigh.
The bottom line is, I suspect that Robert Jordan would have hated this adaptation.
I couldn’t finish season 2. I was so disappointed.
Robert Jordan wrote the best characters I’ve read in fiction. I say this because my understanding of them changed as a grew from my teen years to middle age. This is a very rare experience. I think the show had the talent to make that happen, but not the direction or writing.
The show scrapped every major theme and allegory, then flattened every character. Incredible.
The best advice I got was during season 1 that if it made me angry, not to watch and go enjoy the books again. I took that advice and have read through the whole series again and have never looked back. My imagination is better than anything these clowns can produce. What a waste, but to those upset I give the same advise. Don’t give views to Amazon for this PoS, go listen to the audio books or read through again.
Three out of eight episodes in the first season were essentially fan-fiction that had little to do with the plot. I gave the second season a try & made it two episodes before walking away. When/if a third season comes along I have no interest.
The Wheel of Time show on Amazon really is the most excellent example of everything that is wrong with current year entertainment.
The only upside is that no one gives a darn about it so it can’t do that much damage to RJ’s legacy.
The real question is: will they even reach middle of the road of the books or get cancelled before?
It doesn’t follow the books. I understand that changes need to be made when you adapt things to a different medium, but it is so different that it’s like some weird very bad fanfiction. WOT deserves better.
I got as far as volume 8 before I surrendered. No, it’s not John Steinbeck, but it’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be interesting and fun for lovers of fantasy. And it starts off that way. Maybe one day I’ll finish the series.
I have to say, though, that A Song of Fire and Ice is a much superior series, in terms of writing, structure and originality. Martin maintains the momentum better than Jordan.
The really sad thing is, it could have been fantastic.
It has elements of brilliance, the casting for moiraine and rand, for example, some of the action sequences.
It always bugged me that the three young men are portrayed as sexually-experienced, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it bugged me. And the whole part about Perrin’s wife (not just her overly-gory death; the fact he had a wife AT ALL at this point) contributed nothing to the story other than gratuitous violence.
They did a few things well. The attack on Emond’s Field, while a bit gory, was decent. The endless variation and beastly ruthlessness of Trollocs was true to the book. The dead city of Shadar Logoth was good, even if they botched Moridin and Mashadar. Tar Valon was lovely, if unrealistic.
But then there are the problems: The Dragon Reborn wields saidin – the male half of the One Power – and therefore must be male. Period. Full stop. (Yea, I know, Robert Jordan later let the Dark One spin out previously-killed Forsaken souls into cross-gender bodies, but that was the Dark One’s doing, not a natural birth.) They nearly lost me with the “one of the five of you”, but I hung in there. (That line, too; in the book Moiraine didn’t reveal that point until much later.)
Other things that make the show unwatchable for me and other WoT fans (non-exclusive list): skipping Baerlon and downplaying Min’s character, ability, and role; meeting Thom Merrilin in the wrong place and downplaying him, too; skipping Caemlyn entirely (including an important Whitecloak encounter and meeting Queen Morgase, Gareth Bryne, Elayne, Gawyn, Galad, and Elaida, all of whom become VERY IMPORTANT characters); glossing over Shienaran (and greater Borderlander) culture; the “cheesification” of the Blight and its dangers; leaving out the Eye of the World (the title of the damn BOOK, for cryin’ out loud!) and the Green Man, replacing it with a big, dark hole in the ground which I can only assume is supposed to be The Bore, even though they don’t visit the Bore yet and they’re in the wrong place anyway.
And was Loial even in this or did they skip him, too? It’s forgettable enough that I don’t remember. And where the hell is Padan Fain?
Oh and what they did to Mat’s character and his family. In the book, Mat is a mischievous young man – a prankster, but generally harmless – raised by good parents who take care of him and his sisters. In the show, Mat is a troubled young man from a broken home, who takes it upon himself to raise his sisters and keep them safe from a serially-drunk, abusive, and womanizing father and disengaged mother. In the book, he didn’t want to leave because Ma and Da would worry; in the show, he didn’t want to leave and subject his sisters to their father’s drunken rages without him as a buffer.
A lot of these things, Amazon could have done right, and it probably would have made production easier, cheaper, and/or faster. But they chose not to, and the fans suffer. It’s as simple as that.
It was never going to be a faithful adaptation. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad show. And apparently it’s doing well. Third season is on it’s way and will probably be renewed for a fourth.
WOT is my favorite book series ever and the absolutely butchered every single aspect, it’s insane.
And I am a geek-pedant but this series is truly Epic, in a way I don’t think has been seen since Tolkien.
Wheel of time isn’t trying to do anything new in fantasy – in fact it follows the standard set more than most other books but it does it brilliantly. But you have to be a certain sort of reader with a certain sort of wishlist to truly enjoy it.
Robert wrote a masterpiece with this series, and I think Brandon Sanderson did very well with completing it for Jordan. But Amazon went and Amazoned it, so the series was broken before it even started. Real fans of the books cannot accept the dumpster fire that is this TV show. I’ve waited over 20 years for some kind of movie adaptation, and Amazon let me, and everyone else, down. But then, because it’s Amazon, I didn’t expect it to be watchable anyway.
Same like the Witcher with Netflix.
As someone who never read WoT. I have really enjoyed season 1 (I’m on episode 6).
It seems like a lot of the negative reviews are from long time fans of the books, who dislike the adaptation. Which I think is totally legitimate!
I don’t know what this show is, but it is definitely not the Wheel of Time! They ruined it! What a disservice to Jordan’s work.
The production looks like the cheap Hercules and Zena TV series in the late nineties. Just shameful.
I don’t think Moraine and Lanfear will be in later seasons, cause the show will 100% be dropped after 3rd or 4th season
I have read, and for the most part enjoyed, the series (though admittedly I read most of the books when I was younger and less critical). My main critique is that it is very dated in places (LotR, by contrast, has a much more timeless feel, not least as it’s written in a more mythopoeic style), mostly because fantasy has changed a lot since 1990. It is not the first non-Tolkien epic fantasy series I recommend to people certainly, and that’s not because of length. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is certainly more immediately accessible, Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen much more genre-bending and Bakker’s Second Apocalypse more profound.
I enjoyed the series particularly season two and yes I have read the books. It has made a lot of great changes with a key one being the reduction of the men vs women nonsense that is present in the books
I also appreciate those changes, because it got rather grating in the books, particularly with how Tylin and Mat were reacted to by some of the women cast as a “getting a taste of his own medicine”, when he himself uses consent and follows it seriously, and, in a re-read, written, in a sense, as though it’s a joke or played for laughs in some regards.
Sometimes I wish Peter Jackson had been a fan of The Wheel of Time, rather than the LOTR. But then we wouldn’t have that original masterpiece trilogy
I knew nothing of the series when I gave it a try and I immediately turned it off after the horrible death of Perrin’s wife.
It is as bad as rings of power. All characters are so much younger and more innocent in the story.
Its like Amazon buys the rights and then just tosses the material out of the window. “Nah, we can do it better”.
I made it to the point in the show that perrin had a wife, and thought, “I’m not giving my time to this.” I thought it was going to be Robert Jordan’s story, not just the title.
I always loved Perrin as my favorite character in any story I’ve ever read.
I’ve struggled with anger and aggression problems my whole live and never fully identified with another character as truly as him.
So hard to watch as an OG WoT fan.
Read the book series 3 times… personally I think it’s a masterpiece (the book series). This amazon version has no depth and tastes like the life experience of an executive.
I admitted this was a bad adaptation by the end of the first episode of the first season.
I never read the wheel of time but my sisters and many of my family members did and they are happy with it.
This is an exceptional critique. I’ll watch the third season.
Thank you! I’m planning to watch the third season as well.
I like the show because I haven’t read the books.
They lost me when they said the Dragon Reborn could be female. It makes ZERO SENSE!
A good article on a series I enjoy. I am waiting for the third season and hope it goes beyond that to several more seasons.