How will Amazon break down the massive Wheel of Time books for TV?

The Wheel of Time turns, ages come to pass, and still, very little news is coming out about the production of Amazon’s highly anticipated series. That’s sensible enough. Everyone has their hands full, with producers busy shooting season 1 while the writers break season 2, so we’ll have to satiate ourselves on the odd behind-the-scenes pic posted by showrunner Rafe Judkins until the first official images drop:

While we watch the clock, it might be beneficial to consider how those writing the show will break down this massive collection of 14 novels. Penned by Robert Jordan (and later Brandon Sanderson, after Jordan passed), this series is a high enough mountain to climb if all you want to do is ready it, much less adapt it as an expensive television show. Fortunately, before the show entered heavy production, Judkins offered some insight that will help us predict what storylines will be kept, which adjusted, and which removed.

To start, it’s safe to say that it’s probably too much to hope for a 14-season story arc, with each season adapting one of the series’ massive installments. Managing a large-scale budget for that long is no easy task, to say nothing about how much of a drain it would be on the cast and crew.

For right now, let’s just focus on the upcoming first season, which is rumored to have eight episodes. During the summer of 2018, Judkins tweeted out a couple of photos revealing the titles for almost half of the episodes in season 1. Episode 1 will be titled “Leavetaking,” followed by “Shadow’s Waiting,” “A Place of Safety” and “The Dragon Reborn.”

Each of the first three episodes takes its name from a specific chapter from The Eye of the World, the first book in the Wheel of Time series. However, “The Dragon Reborn” is the title of the third book in the series, and the name of a chapter from The Great Hunt, the second. It has also been rumored that the sixth episode of the first season is titled “The Flame of Tar Valon,” another chapter from the second book.

The interesting thing here is that the episode titles aren’t consistent with the chronological order of the chapters in play. This may reflect a comment made by Judkins (above) pointing out his need to reshuffle and repurpose the storyline for television. I won’t go so far as to say the first season will span the story of the first three novels, but it seems likely that the first season will include material from both the first and second books.

This assumption is supported by comments from Judkins, who tweeted that he will be condensing a portion of the books. He specifically calls out the “latter middle section,” notorious for its slow pace.

The section Rafe is talking about here is generally considered to be from book eight to 10. It isn’t that these books are particularly bad, but rather, they set up the pieces leading the way to the final conclusion. It’s possible this portion of the series will be condensed into one season, or, as Judkins pointed out earlier, reshuffled and repurposed with material from the final books to create a better-paced experience.

Relatedly, Wheel of Time readers are very aware that certain characters disappear for books at a time. Judkins and his team may want to reorder things so we don’t lose contact with characters so much. For example, there is a storyline with Perrin from the later books that could be adapted to occur earlier in the story.

The Wheel of Time is full of characters. It wouldn’t be surprising if a handful of minor ones don’t make it into the show. Judkins has said he would rather not cut any characters who add to this fantasy world, but with the complexity of production, you can’t always get what you want.

There are also characters who play a small role in the beginning but eventually evolve to play a much larger part. For example, Logain is an important part of the story, but is only seen briefly during the first novel and doesn’t return for quite some time. To solve this problem, Judkins might expand his role throughout the series.

Based on the information available, one begins to get an idea for how the series will play out. There is a good amount of information here, but it should be taken with a grain of salt based considering how early into pre-production Rafe Judkins was when he made these comments.

We’ll be keeping our ears to the ground for more Wheel of Time news!

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