A couple of weeks back, Amazon announced that it had canceled The Wheel of Time, its adaptation of Robert Jordan's epic fantasy book series. That came as a blow to fans who had just enjoyed the show's third season, easily its best yet. What's more, the show ended right in the middle of the story, leaving fans feeling adrift.
That's galvanized them in a way I feel like we haven't seen in a while. Fans have organized a campaign to save the show, either by getting Amazon to reverse its decision or getting another streamer to pick it up. They've started a petition that's gotten well over 100k signatures as of this writing, and they've raised funds to pay for billboards and other events designed to call attention to their cause.
That's impressive enough. I was even more surprised to see that an entirely separate group of fans not connected to the fund-raising effort I linked above had already banded together and bought a billboard in Times Square in New York City:
There's plenty of chatter about the billboard among fans on Reddit. It was paid for by fans in Brazil, hence the Brazilian flag on it. If you're wondering why the billboard doesn't actually have the words "The Wheel of Time" on it, I'm with you, but it may have to do with copyright issues.
Anyway, cast and crew members from the show have been sharing the billboard on their social media accounts, including Josha Stradowski (Rand al'Thor), Madeleine Madden (Egwene) and showrunner Rafe Judkins, who called the billboard "incredibly humbling and touching."
But will it these efforts actually make a difference? Judkins himself has admitted that the odds are long, but he's still hoping for the best. Seeing the fans being so industrious, it's hard not to get inspired. I was a fan of The Wheel of Time show from the start and especially enjoyed this latest season, so count me among the people pulling for the series to continue somehow.
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