Here’s why The Wheel of Time got rid of its opening titles sequence

Amazon Prime Video is currently airing the second season of The Wheel of Time, its adaptation of Robert Jordan’s beloved book series. People seem to be enjoying it, which wasn’t a given after the first season got knocked for venturing too far from the books. We love a comeback arc.

In general, the second season seems more confident when it comes to the characters and the pacing, not to mention getting what looks like a bump in the production budget. But things have been lost along the way, too. For instance, in the first season of the show, every episode opened with what I thought was a very cool title sequence. In the world of The Wheel of Time, all things are determined by the Pattern, the ineffable design of reality expressed metaphorically as a pattern being woven on a great cosmic loom. The opening titles are all about the Pattern; we see key images from the story woven in and out as the credits flash across the screen:

But in the second season of The Wheel of Time, the opening titles sequence is simply gone. What gives?

The Wheel of Time reveals why the opening credits are gone in season 2

The official Wheel of Time Twitter account addressed this during a live-tweet of the latest episode, Episode 4. “We know a lot of you were/are missing the amazing opening credits from last season,” they wrote, “but part of it came down to ‘Do we want the opening credits or more show?’ and we thought you might choose the latter.”

So there you go: the opening titles are gone so they could make room for more show. I can’t say that’s a bad decision. The episodes so far have been pretty dense and I wouldn’t want to cut them. Of course, given that these episodes aren’t airing on linear TV or anything — Amazon Prime Video is a streaming service — I guess I wonder why they couldn’t just include the titles anyway and make the episodes slightly longer? It’s not like anything else is gonna get pushed back.

But whatever, the season has been solid so far. New episodes of The Wheel of Time drop Fridays on Amazon Prime video.

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