How Brandon Sanderson would have changed The Wheel of Time
By Daniel Roman
How Brandon Sanderson would have changed Egwene and Nynaeve’s ending on The Wheel of Time
While Perrin’s arc was the one Sanderson had the most thoughts on, he had some much simpler notes he wished he could have given for other characters, namely Nynaeve and Egwene. “I’ve got a fix for [Nynaeve and Egwene] that’s a lot easier, and I wish I’d been able to talk about this.”
Sanderson explains how in both the show and the books, Nynaeve and Egwene’s character arc at this point deals with them struggling to decide whether or not to trust the Aes Sedai enough to go train at the White Tower. Nynaeve is the stubborn voice of resistance; Egwene sees that there might be good in the Tower, and that they could likewise do good by joining the Aes Sedai. Sanderson holds that the show did a great job of getting that arc across, but dropped the ball on it at the finish line.
“I think that your ending episode just then needs to end with them both deciding to go train to be Aes Sedai,” Sanderson said. “I don’t know why they did the whole linking thing to fight off the Trollocs. I think it would be a really easy to fix to have Egwene and Nynaeve need to be there to help with the defense…and they’re just not trained enough. Nynaeve can’t access her power the right way. Egwene can’t control, and at the end of it they’ve helped out, but then they realize ‘if we had been fully trained, all these people over here wouldn’t be dead. We need to go do the responsible thing, go learn to use our powers, and if there’s a hierarchy and power structure [in the White Tower] that is messed up, well then we fix it. We become part of the solution rather than just walking away.’ And if that alone had been there, I think their whole arcs would be really great through the whole season.”
How Brandon Sanderson would have changed Lan’s ending in The Wheel of Time
After talking about a few more things he enjoyed on the show, like the episode seven Blood Snow cold open (which might be his “favorite thing” from the season) and Nynaeve’s burst of power in the climax of Episode 4, “The Dragon Reborn,” Sanderson turned his attention toward the last big thing he would have changed about The Wheel of Time’s finale: Lan.
“Lan doesn’t do anything in the last episode except run to find Moiraine,” Sanderson says, echoing a pretty common fan complaint. The author has a pretty cool idea for how he would have made Lan a more active participant in the season’s final moments.
"They have that beautiful moment, top-down shot in episode one where Lan is protecting Moiraine, that is partially there because I asked them for it, and it’s so beautiful. Imagine if [in the finale] he’d run off to find Moiraine, and saw that the Trollocs were coming, and then you do the thing that I’m asking for where Nynaeve is fighting but she’s not good enough and things like that, but she is killing some Trollocs and one almost gets close to her…and then same perspective shot, Lan appears out of nowhere and gets the Trolloc. And for a few moments they’re fighting together, just like Lan and Moiraine were. Wouldn’t that have just been the most beautiful scene that you could imagine?"
“Moiraine left [Lan] on purpose. And Nynaeve needs him right then,” Sanderson said. “That would have been so good…but I didn’t get to give feedback on these ones.”
Whether you’re behind this idea or not, there’s no doubt it would have given Lan more to do in the finale.
For all Sanderson’s thoughts about things he would have advised be changed, he left us with one other thing he thought the show absolutely nailed: Loial, the Ogier builder played by Hammed Animashaun, who is one of the author’s favorite characters.
“He was spot on from the books,” Sanderson said. “They just did an amazing job with Loial. Perfect, wouldn’t change a thing.”
What do you think? Would you have liked to see any of these changes in The Wheel of Time? Or did you like the first season just like it was?
Next. 5 ways The Wheel of Time improved the books (and 5 ways it failed them). dark
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