5 worst changes The Wheel of Time show has made from the books (so far)

3. Moiraine loses her powers for no particular reason

At the very end of the first season, Rand and the Aes Sedai sorceress Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) face down the Forsaken channeler Ishamael (Fares Fares) at the Eye of the World. Ishamael is centuries old and knows how to use the One Power in ways long forgotten by Moiraine and her sisters. He cuts Moiraine off from the One Source, making her unable to use magic.

Moiraine struggles with this lack throughout the second season, and her frustration manifests in some pretty odd ways. Most notably, she gets very frosty with her bodyguard Lan (Daniel Henney), with whom she shares an extremely close connection, eventually banishing him from her presence.

Later, Moiaine will get her powers back when it's discovered that what Ishamael did to her can be undone. I enjoyed the scenes where she regained access to her powers and then later reestablished her magical connection to Lan. But too much of the material in between felt like wasted space. Moiraine was being needlessly chilly and Lan was being pointlessly mopey, hanging out with his polyamorous warder buddies and peeing against trees. What payoff we got down the line wasn't worth it.

I think it's easy to diagnose what went wrong here. The second season of The Wheel of Time largely adapts the second book in Jordan's series, The Great Hunt. Lan and Moiraine barely appear in The Great Hunt, but because Rosamund Pike is the top-billed actor on the show, the writers felt compelled to give her something to do. This storyline feels tacked on because it is.