The Wheel of Time director reveals how COVID affected the final episodes

Ciaran Donnelly

Few scenes from the first season of The Wheel of Time were as memorable as the cold open to the seventh episode. Called the Blood Snow in the series’ mythology, this scene saw a pregnant Aiel warrior named Tigraine Mantear fighting off soldiers while in the middle of labor. It was one of the craziest fantasy fight scenes in recent memory, and did a wonderful job of expanding on something that is never explicitly shown in Robert Jordan’s novels to create a sequence that is fast becoming iconic in its own right.

Speaking to WoTSeries, Irish director Ciaran Donnelly, who directed Episodes 7 and 8, talked about what it was like to create the show’s climactic sequences and some of the challenges faced by The Wheel of Time team. For Donnelly, it all came down to preparation.

"[The process of preparing to shoot those episodes] was really detailed in terms of the sets and the world building and designing sequences and gaining the necessary understanding of the mythology and what it all meant. The story moves forward through different worlds every two episodes — so everything I had was new! Which is a joy. It’s almost like starting from the beginning. So, lots of exploration of how places might look and feel, How I’d shoot, the lighting of the sets and locations, the detail on every level was truly immense, from costume to spear heads! We saw several versions of everything before finalizing anything. I had good rehearsal time with the actors too, which was vital. The story is complex with a myriad of world rules and reasons why things are they way they are. The mythology of Wheel of Time is really a deep well, so we had lots of conversations about all that. And there was lots to figure out — The the Tigraine/Blood Snow sequence, Fal Dara, Rand is the Dragon,  The Blight, the Ways, The Eye of the World. Thinking back, it’s breathtaking."

When you see all those sequences laid out like that, it is quite a lot to fit into two episodes.

With so many important moments to bring to life, did the director have any favorites? “Tough question!” Donnelly said. “There was such a wide spectrum of scenes from epic action to deeply personal and emotional. It’s really hard to answer. The reaction to the ep 7 cold open, the Blood Snow, has been amazing and I love that sequence, also the Eye of the World. But then the moments between Egwene and Perrin, Nynaeve and Lan, Moiraine and Lan, Rand/Egwene… have so much depth. I just can’t choose.”

Another memorable scene was the cold open to the finale, which introduced us to Lews Therin Telamon (Alexander Karim), the Dragon before Rand. That scene was set in the distant past, and as such, the entire thing was spoken in the Old Tongue. Donnelly, who has previously worked on History Channel’s Vikings, felt right at home:

"I’ve been there before! With the Vikings, we did some scenes in the Saxon language. It was amazing to hear a language which did exist and is no longer spoken. So, similarly with the Old Tongue. The achievement there is really with the actors who learned it and made it second nature to themselves, and the translation by Naomi Todd, otherwise it would not be convincing."

The Wheel of Time’s plans were “upended by the pandemic”

As fun as it was to film these sequences, The Wheel of Time encountered some production problems. Complications like the sudden departure of main cast member Barney Harris and multiple shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced the show to reorient.

“The Blood Snow, The Ways, The Blight, The Eye of the World, the battle with the trollocs at the end of [episode] eight. They all had specific issues to resolve. All were really tricky and complex,” the director recalled. “Some of our plans for various of the scenes were upended by the pandemic, so there was lots of rethinking and reconfiguring, The Blight and the Final battle particularly, but in the end, the audience should never be aware of our problems… I hope we made it look brilliant is all.”

That said, Donnelly also feels there were ways that the coronavirus helped the production. “I think the fact we couldn’t travel forced us to think harder on certain sequences, The Blight and the finale especially. I think they benefitted in fact.”

In the end, making a massive series like The Wheel of Time is no small feat. There’s a lot of pressure adapting a series that already has such a dedicated and passionate fan base, something Donnelly is well aware of. “It’s fair to say I think collectively, we wanted to honour the millions upon millions of fans already there for the books, and to bring a new world of fans to the Wheel of Time world with the TV series,” he said. “The experience of reading a book versus watching a series or movie on screen are two different experiences, books work in our imagination and we respond emotionally and intellectually in a way specific to each of us, where as on screen, someone has to decide- this is what it looks like… and there are many other influences now coming into play, schedule, budget etc.”

"But I get the sense, there is a generally great reaction to the series. With any adaptation, there’s a reason it’s being adapted, because it’s a great story with great characters, and those elements have to land on screen. So, put simply, my philosophy is to make sure we have what’s great about the book on screen, not just the world, but the feeling. When we read, we really respond and feel it in a very deep way. Great books derive a lot of passion and can be very formative for a reader, like your favorite albums as a teenager, it’s all about how the reader or listener relates to it. Working with that relationship is a real responsibility."

The first season of The Wheel of Time is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. Season 2 is currently in production.

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