The Wheel of Time is rolling on Amazon, and it’s officially a hit. Based on Robert Jordan’s 14-book fantasy epic, the show has been a long time coming — the first book came out in 1990 — and is so long that Jordan wasn’t able to finish it before his death at the age of 58 in 2007. Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, who’s a producer on the series, stepped in to write the final three books, the last of which came out in 2013.
Sanderson has spent a lot of discussing discussing the “fantastic” scripts with The Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins. He also loves the cast and crew, especially Rosamund Pike as Moiraine. “She’s great,” Sanderson told People. “She is both terrifying and inspiring at the same time. Which is exactly what Moiraine should be.”
"Moiraine walking that line between noble threat, but still threat, and mentor figure, is just one of the huge selling points of the series. She is probably the singular most interesting character in the entire series because it’s not cut and dry. She keeps her motivations close to her heart — and they are complicated. She is the driving force behind everything happening in this series. And that’s the question: Is Moiraine here to help us or hurt us?"
Moiraine has definitely been a highlight of the show so far, to the point where it seems like the series has been reoriented a bit to center her journey. Of course, the other characters are important too, namely the five young people from Emond’s Field — Rand, Perrin, Mat, Egwene and Nynaeve — any of whom could be the legendary Dragon Reborn, a figure fated to either save the world or destroy it.
“This soul is going to get another chance, this person that is the Dragon, to do it again, but maybe do it right this time,” Sanderson said. “And you don’t know who it is. You don’t know how it’s going to play out. But you know that they kind of failed once and this is their second chance. One of the big questions of the series is: Who is the Dragon? Who is the Dragon Reborn? And what is their story going to be?”
The Wheel of Time show needs “this kind of budget”
Sanderson started reading The Wheel of Time series when he was 15, and has particular thoughts on what has made it endure. “The big catch-22 of fantasy is people go to the fantasy section for the world building. But they don’t stay for the world building. World building can only do so much,” he said. “Thirty something years ago, when I picked up The Eye of the World myself … it had the sense of adventure conveyed on the cover. But the reason I read 11 of those books and eventually agreed to finish the series was because I fell in love with the characters.”
There’s also the interesting themes of the story. As viewers of the show know by know, The Wheel of Time takes place in a world where only women have untainted access to the One Power, meaning that only women can use magic; men used to be able to do it, but things got messed up around the last time the Dragon was around. “There’s this power dynamic where a lot of the rulers and a lot of the people in power — because of the magic — are women,” Sanderson said. “This creates a very interesting, different world from our own. It is treated very delicately, at least in the books, for the time. It was an extremely progressive series.”
And now it’s finally time for it to play out onscreen. Amazon is throwing a ton of money at the show — reportedly around $10 million per episode — which is the kind of scratch Game of Thrones was throwing around late into its run. Sanderson doesn’t think there’s any other choice:
"We knew if Wheel of Time was going to be done right, it would need this kind of budget. This is not a series you can just go film in the woods. The setting of The Wheel of Time, it is a world that basically suffered the apocalypse 1,000 years ago and barely survived. Society collapsed and [was] rebuilt over 1,000 years."
Like I said, The Wheel of Time has found an audience, so it looks like Amazon’s gambit has paid off, at least for now. We’ll see how the rest of 13 books go.
New episodes of The Wheel of Time drop Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.
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