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

Failure: Loss of detail

A book can be as long or short as the author wants it to be, and Robert Jordan wanted his books to be long indeed. In The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn, no stone is left unturned, no detail unmentioned.

TV is very different. Amazon only has eight episodes to tell this story, and sometimes it shows. While the TV series mostly maintains a coherent narrative through-line, interesting things from the books are cut or compressed, and important bits of context are lost. For some, this makes for a confusing viewing experience. For others, big twists aren’t as satisfying as they should be because there isn’t time to properly set them up.

For instance, the season finale revolves around a big battle in the city of Falme. The fanatical paramilitary group the Children of the Light, aka the Whitecloaks, attack the city in order to drive out the invading Seanchan, with Rand and our other heroes caught in the middle. Perrin had a brief encounter with the Whitecloaks earlier in the season, but that was pretty much all we saw of them before the finale. Considering how important they were to the big finish, it’s surprising we didn’t see more.

Or take the case of Lord Ingtar, a Shienaran nobleman who begins the season traveling alongside Perrin looking for the Horn of Valere. In the book, he has a moment during the Battle of Falme where he admits to being a Darkfriend, someone who has sworn themselves to the Dark One. But he repents to Rand and ends up sacrificing himself so his friends can live. On the show, Ingtar still goes down fighting, but this very moving twist from the books is left out; there simply isn’t time for it.

It may be too much to ask for more episodes per season for The Wheel of Time; the show already costs a fortune to produce. But the series could definitely make use of the extra time. A big story requires a big canvas. Unless Amazon gives one to this show, we’re always going to lose detail on the margins.