How The Wheel of Time season 2 improved on the books (and how it failed them)

Failure: Lan and Moiraine break up

In The Great Hunt, Moiraine Damodred and her warder Lan don’t have much to do. They pretty much only turn up for one chapter. This was a problem for Amazon, since Rosamund Pike, who plays Moiraine, was put forward as the face of the show. If they adapted the books accurately, she would be side-lined for the bulk of season 2, and that was not something they were willing to do.

Or at least that’s my best guess for why The Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins and his team of writers added in a subplot where Moiraine loses her powers and severs her connection with Lan, leading to several awkward scenes where Moiraine is unnecessarily cruel to her longtime companion, and then to several boring scenes where Lan mopes and pees against trees.

Pike and actor Daniel Henney do the best they can with this material — Pike in particular seems incapable of being less than compelling onscreen — but much of this plotline feels like the show filling time. Moiraine and Lan being forced apart like this doesn’t feel true to who we know the characters to be. It’s particularly weird when you consider that Moiraine’s best scenes this season — like the bit where she slits Lanfear’s throat and tries to make a getaway with Rand — would’ve been largely the same even if she had kept her powers.

To be fair, I did enjoy the scenes where Moiraine finally gets her power back and when she and Lan reforge their bond. But getting there felt like wasted time.

Improvement: We feel Egwene’s pain

If Lan and Moiraine had the weakest plotline in The Wheel of Time season 2, Egwene had the strongest. The season really started to pick up around Episode 5, when Egwene was captured by the invading Seanchan people, collared, and placed in servitude to the twisted Renna. In Egwene’s world, women who can channel can become powerful Aes Sedai sorceresses. But to the Seanchan, women who can channel are damane, sub-human slaves whose magical abilities are used as weapons for the glory of the Seanchan empire.

The Seanchan represent a major narrative swerve for The Wheel of Time; they’re an unexpected X-factor who come out of nowhere to disrupt the story we thought we were being told, and the show does an excellent job of making them feel strange and scary. Egwene shoulders much of that narrative load, as we watch Renna try to break her new charge by inches; she beats Egwene, humiliates her, and tries to crush her spirit. Along the way, we grow to loathe the Seanchan, to sympathize with Egwene, and to admire the acting abilities of Madeleine Madden, who is given a juicy role and bites into it with a fierce hunger.

All of this happens to Egwene in the book, as well, but Jordan doesn’t linger on it. We hear that Egwene is being mistreated and then move on. The show drills down on Egwene’s experience, devoting much of Episode 6, “Eyes Without Pity,” to her struggle. That decision pays dividends. By the end of the season, we understand Egwene far better than we did at the start, and for the rest of the show, we’ll have a personal stake in any clash with the Seanchan.