Television series come and go. There are always beginnings but not always endings to a television series. A wifi signal pierced the air through the mountains, finding its way to my router. It streamed a collage of images to my television through my Roku’s Amazon Prime Video app. It was a beginning.
And it made me nervous.
I first read The Wheel of Time series starting almost twenty years ago and it took me years to finish it, which is fine because it took years for each book to be released. I’ve only read the series once. I’ve indulged in much of the lore online, but I also had to have many of the secrets of the series divulged to me by others online. I never was able to theorycraft any new idea that some other reader hadn’t already done so perfectly or otherwise tore to shreds with their superior knowledge of the series.
In short, I’m a simple fan of the series. I love it. But I don’t consider myself the gatekeeper to its secrets, custodian of its integrity, or protector of its content against those who are “unworthy”. I just enjoyed reading it, and basically grew up with the characters as they did since I was a teen of seventeen years when I first met the fellow teens and would-be heroes from Two Rivers.
All the way back to the strange, rushed, Billy Zane-featuring Winter Dragon from 2015, Wheel of Time fans have had a battered relationship with the novels being adapted to the screen. That… strange thing was more of a legal pissing contest over intellectual property rights than a good faith attempt at adaptation. It left many fans in doubt that the gargantuan task of adapting a sprawling fantasy series could or ever would be done.
Fast forwarding our own time wheel here and *poof* Amazon has released the first few episodes of an actual, realized, funded television adaptation. And it already has a second season in production. So… are Wheel of Time fans once again getting jerked around? Depends on who you ask.
After having watched the first few available episodes, I have… well, some thoughts.
Much like Robert Jordan’s first entry The Eye of the World began as an homage to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, since Tolkien essentially defined the literary genre of fantasy fiction. Amazon’s Wheel of Time similarly pays homage to another work of television that essentially defined the fantasy genre. Namely, Game of Thrones. There’s drinking and cussing, sex and beards, and muted colors and blood blood blood, but strangely no blood and bloody ashes. It really sounds like a good time actually.
Comparing this series to Game of Thrones is inevitable, even if many of us are traumatized by the memories of betrayal and ringing bells. The Song of Ice and Fire series of novels is more or less a competitive contemporary of Robert Jordan’s series in book form.
For the most part, the “edginess” is fine. It’s fine. It’s…fine. I get it. It’s what audiences expect. It’s what producers expect. It sells. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Ring series even went that way with The Hobbit films, not that that was a good thing for the series, but evoking the wholesomeness of Hobbits and the Shire is just not currently en vogue. En Vogue was writing hit songs when Jordan’s books first came out anyway, if that provides any temporal context.
So evolving with the times is inevitable. Fine.
My only complaint about the first few episodes so far is that the first episode is not only a bit rushed as far as pacing, but some of the “character building” additions to the story only crowded the pace without seeming fully realized. The story beats that did match the books worked fine, and ultimately things happened that needed to happen.
I’m not saying that most of those changes shouldn’t have been there as much as they felt shoehorned into an already crowded script. So they exist in some intermediate version where they are either too cramped to make an impact, or not developed enough to fully belong.
But choices like this were inevitable, and in some cases necessary. Robert Jordan was a deliberate writer. His first few novels unpeeled layers of the world a bit at a time. In later novels, he continued peeling off a few layers at a time, which resulted in some of the books seeming to stall as the peeling of layers never stopped. It was a slog at times.
Robert Jordan’s books often had the pacing of a daytime soap opera. You could read a little bit every day and some people would still be having the same conversations. Then finally, maybe once a week or so, something grand or exciting would happen, a plot discovered, a twist revealed. But after, it would continue at its normal pace.
This is fine for books. Unless you’re Dan Brown.
Amazon’s Wheel of Time is not a daytime soap which will air five days a week with ultimately hundreds of episodes. It doesn’t have time to deliberate on dress colors and internal thoughts. No, it has places to show and men to gentle. And in that regard, I feel the aspects of the world that have been revealed, from Liandrin to Whitecloaks, are necessary. Multilateral depiction of a world in a television series meant to adapt a large setting is necessary, especially early on.
Having said that, I think the opening scene with Liandrin, and later the Whitecloak scene with the Aes Sedai at the stake, were a bit redundant and I have a feeling they were added later. It’s almost like someone said, “I don’t know who these characters are and our audience will be stupid so let’s handhold them through every scene.”
Liandrin first appearing at the end of episode 3 would have been just fine, especially with the false Dragon in tow, and I didn’t need to see that Questioner play with severed hands before seeing him fondle Moiraine’s hands, presumably looking for her ring, to get creeped out by him. The absence of those scenes would have opened up some time and space in the story without losing anything that we wouldn’t learn later anyway.
“Don’t you believe in mystery, don’t you wanna play my game?” as Vanity 6 once said. Show don’t tell, even if what you’ve shown isn’t followed up for a few episodes. The uncertainty can but fun, if you let it pay off. Audiences aren’t stupid.
Aside from the heavy-handed overexposition, I enjoyed most of everything else. The casting was great, and it’s probably the series greatest strength so far, even if we already have a season 2 recast for Mat. Shadar Logoth was incredible, one of the highlights in the first book and I loved seeing it brought to life, even sans Mordeth, but I was puzzled that Mashadar was altered. It still worked, though.
The reveal of the Darkfriend in the tavern actually got me, because I found that was a great way for the TV show to introduce that concept of how literally no one can be trusted. So if we can get more moments like that, I’ll be happy.
So after watching the first episode, I’ll admit that I was nervous. I had been looking forward to this series since it was announced and none of the press up to this point had given me much reason to doubt the series or its “faithfulness” to the source material. After continuing the next couple episodes my nerves were mostly quelled.
The adventure, once it properly began in episode two, really began to align with the spirit of the books and as long as that spirit is kept in mind the series will have a masterful guide. I think the first episode just had too much of an identity crisis. Too many chefs in the kitchen trying to make sure the “pilot” episode (even though functionally it wasn’t a pilot since the rest of the season was guaranteed anyhow) ticked all the boxes, of which perhaps there were a couple too many.
Overall, I’m glad the show is finally here, but the show should ideally stick to its own identity. It doesn’t need to be Amazon’s GoT, or the starter course for Amazon’s eventual Lord of the Rings series. Let it be Wheel of Time and ride on the winds of time and streaming television. Trust the material.
And lastly, I’m sickened at seeing some fans of the books get bent out of shape regarding the diversity of the cast. You’re not fooling anyone arguing about accuracy to the book characters. You know what you sound like, and so do we.
Snarkoplex 