The Wheel of Time showrunner shades the fast travel on Game of Thrones

It’s a wild time to be a fan fantasy TV! HBO’s long-awaited Game of Thrones successor show House of the Dragon premieres in but a few short weeks, Amazon Prime’s wildly expensive The Lord of the Rings prequel show The Rings of Power is coming next month, Netflix is making more of The Witcher, and The Wheel of Time is working on a second season and was prepping its second season and was just renewed for a third.

Fans of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time book series have been waiting a long time for an adaptation. Showrunner Rafe Judkins recently took to Twitter to answer some fan questions and ending up throwing some very light shade at fantasy juggernaut Game of Thrones.

Judkins threw the shade after being asked how The Wheel of Time was going to handle having its characters spread across the map in season 2. The book that season 2 is largely based on, The Great Hunt, sees our heroes split into multiple groups, traveling long distances by either foot or magic before they eventually meet back up. Travel times can be a particular challenge in epic fantasy stories where characters are going on world-spanning journeys by , sometimes on foot, sometimes by ship, sometimes on horseback, or sometimes by magic; all of these methods have their own relative speeds. It’s pretty fair to wonder how The Wheel of Time will manage that without getting things mixed up.

The Wheel of Time will try to avoid this Game of Thrones mistake

“Time gaps are very difficult moving to the medium of television with the stories intercutting, but we try to do as much as we can to avoid one hour cross continent dragon flights,” Judkins replied. This alludes to an oft-mocked aspect of the later Game of Thrones seasons, where the show played fast and loose with travel times in order to have characters get to where the plot need them to be. The worst offender was the whole “Beyond the Wall” sequence where Gendry ran to the Wall, a raven flew to Dragonstone, and Dany flew from Dragonstone to north of the wall in what seemed like an unbelievably short amount of time. Or when Varys traveled back and forth from Dorne to Meereen with mermaidic swiftness, etc etc. The examples are well-documented.

Regardless of the shade, it’s good to hear that The Wheel of Time will be paying attention to this potential pitfall in its upcoming season.

The Wheel of Time season 1 is streaming now on Prime Video. Season 2 is expected to air sometime after Amazon’s other big fantasy show, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, drops this fall.

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h/t CBR.com