The second season of The Wheel of Time has finished on Amazon Prime Video, and the consensus seems to be that it was an improvement over season 1 in pretty much every way. The show is more confident, the special effects are better, the cast gelled, the story is really getting going…if this trend continues into season 3 and beyond, we could be in for a once-in-a-generation TV experience. After all, the series hasn’t even adapted a fourth of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books yet.
So the show improved on itself, but did it improve on its source material? As usual, the answer is mixed. In some cases, The Wheel of Time season 2 one-upped Jordan’s books. In others, it could have stood to stick closer to the text. Let’s separate the improvements from the deteriorations, starting with how The Wheel of Time improved on our cast of villains…
Improvement: Putting the spotlight on the Forsaken
The Wheel of Time season 2 adapted the second and third books from Jordan’s series, The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn, more or less. In these books, Rand and co face off against members of the Forsaken, including Ishamael and Lanfear. But these don’t much resemble the characters we met on the show, at least not yet.
Lanfear is introduced in The Great Hunt, but we don’t learn that she’s Lanfear until the very end. For the whole of the book, Rand is under the impression that she’s a woman named Selene. She doesn’t get up to any of the destructive antics she undertakes on the show, nor does she wear any of the crazy outfits.
Ishamael, meanwhile, is going by the name Ba’alzamon. At this point, Rand and friends believe him to the Dark One himself. We don’t really learn anything about Ishamael’s motivations; he’s an amorphous, smarmy evil presence.
Eventually, in the books, Ishamael and Lanfear start to look like the characters we know from the show: Ishamael is melancholic, determined to break the cycle of reincarnation; and Lanfear is a bit of a selfish vamp. The TV show has the advantage of looking ahead and introducing these characters as fully formed people rather than discovering their personalities as the story goes on, like Jordan did. The result is that we get a pair of entertaining villains right off the bat. Lanfear especially stole the show in season 2.
And the show ended the season by introducing another member of the Foksaken, Moghedien, who looks like she’ll come back ready to play in season 3. Honestly, I’m a little afraid that The Wheel of Time will become one of those shows where the villains are more fun than the heroes, but that’s better than having no fun at all.
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.
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.
Improvement: Liandrin and other characters get more to do
And yet…for as much as the show cuts from the novels, it adds a fair amount too. Maybe the story would flow a little more smoothly if they added more context for the plotlines that matter rather than adding, say, a new storyline where Moiraine loses her powers.
That being said, some of the things they added brought a lot to the table. For example, season 2 gives the Aes Sedai sorceress Liandrin a lot more to do. As in the books, she ends up being a member of the Black Ajah who kidnaps some of our heroes to sell them into slavery. But on the show, we also learn that she has an elderly, dying son. That helps us understand Liandrin better, not to mention the Aes Sedai as a whole; sure, they have long life, but at what cost?
Plus, the actor who plays Liandrin, Kate Fleetwood, sizzles onscreen, so it’s fun to see her take up more space. Her jawline deserves a credit by itself.
The show also introduces us to Moiraine’s sister Anvaere and nephew Barthanes. Both of these characters are in the books, but we don’t meet them this early nor get to know them this well. Seeing Moiraine interact with her family rounds her out as a character, and Anvare gets a nice little hero moment after she learns her son is a Darkfriend, locking him up despite how much she loves him.
Failure: Loial is still kinda lame
One of my favorite characters from the books is Loial, the eight-foot-tall Oiger who looks like he could tear your arm out of your socket but is actually a gentle nerd who wants to spend all of his time thumbing books in libraries. You can’t not like him.
Loial is on the show, but in the first season I was disappointed by how little he had to do and how small an impact he made. I didn’t think his personality from the books came across. The second season does a better job with him; I liked the scene where he demonstrates his Oiger magic by singing to a plant in front of the Seanchan, and we get more moments of him being a big lovable dweeb. But it’s still not enough.
In The Great Hunt, there’s a subplot where we visit the steading where Loial grew up and meet his family. I’m not shocked this didn’t make the cut for the show — there are bigger things to attend to and only eight episodes to work with. Still, the series can only benefit from more Loial, and I’m going to keep whining until he’s as charming on TV as he is in print.
Improvement: Bringing the look of the book to life
I can’t end this article without giving some props to the costumers, set designers, makeup artists, special effects technicians and other professionals who made this season so very pretty to look at. This isn’t quite an “improvement” on the books, but the crew of the TV show often took Jordan’s original descriptions and added their own flair.
Take the Seanchan, who are definitely one of the visual triumphs of the season, with their flowing robes and elaborate face masks. In the books, Robert Jordan says that some of High Lady Suroth’s fingernails are a bit longer than the others, one of the many things that mark the Seanchan as alien and strange. In the show, the crew decided to give Suroth and her boss High Lord Turak nails that are at least a foot long. I don’t know how they go to the bathroom, but they sure do look cool.
Lanfear’s outfits stand out. She wears a series of vampy numbers that make her the center of attention in whatever room she’s in. And there’s a lot of color on The Wheel of Time, from the many-hued weaves of the Aes Sedai to Rand’s iconic red coat to Moiraine’s bold blue dresses. The high fantasy genre is sometimes painted in shades of brown and grey, so it’s refreshing to see The Wheel of Time go in another direction.
Whatever nips and tucks they made, it’s clear to me that the people behind The Wheel of Time have a lot of love for the source material. Although there are changes, I’ll dare to say that the spirit of the novels is largely preserved, and in some cases upgraded. It’s not the same, but it’s a good watch. I hope Judkins and his team get to adapt the whole series, cause I want to see what they do with it.
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