5 best changes The Wheel of Time show has made from the books

The torture of Egwene al'Vere

So far we've talked about places where the show filled in gaps in the source material, or polished things up to bring early book content more in line with the tone of the later novels. But with Egwene (Madeleine Madden) and Renna (Xelia Mendes-Jones), the show improved something which was already great in the books.

Late in season 2, Egwene is captured by the Seanchan, an empire of conquerors who enslave women who can channel. These slaves, called damane, are then given to a handler — a sul'dam — who "breaks" them like they're less than animals until they can no longer resist orders. Egwene becomes the property of a sul'dam named Renna, who tries her hardest to bend Egwene to her will.

All of this happens pretty much the same in the novel...except that we don't actually see the worst of Renna's attempts to break Egwene. Instead, we see Egwene get captured and initiated into the ways of the damane, and then pick up with her a few chapters later after she's already so broken that she's contemplating ending her own life just to escape her situation. It's heartbreaking, but what the show did was even more so.

In The Great Hunt, there's a single paragraph where Egwene explains how Renna used a pitcher of water to torture her into submissoin. The show took that paragraph and expanded it into an entire episode centered on Egwene's torture. Much more so than the book, the show puts us into Egwene's shoes as she goes through the absolute worst of her imprisonment. As a result, we got arguably the best episode of the entire series to date, "Eyes Without Pity."

The TV show also made Egwene and Renna's relationship even more f**ked up and complicated by making Renna far more earnest in her desire to gain Egwene's friendship, while Egwene has to war with her own innate desire for recognition, which was denied to her as an Aes Sedai novice but which Renna is more than willing to dole out as a reward for good behavior. It's messed up. It's compelling. It's impossible to look away from. Of all the adjustments The Wheel of Time has made from its source material, the larger focus on Egwene and Renna's time together might be one of the best.