Why The Wheel of Time season 2 is irrefutably better than season 1

The hit Amazon original series The Wheel of Time recently wrapped filming on its third season, which will likely premiere in early 2025 or even in the final months of this year (I am full of unvarnished and unrealistic optimism about the release date). With its season 2 finale airing in October 2023, either release date would be a stunningly quick turnaround for a high-budget prestige fantasy genre television show, many of which are taking increasingly long in between seasons.

Either way, the show’s second season was well received and has placed The Wheel of Time in the upper rank of genre shows currently airing on TV. This elicited a huge sigh of relief from fans after the notably uneven first season aired in 2021. As a huge advocate of both the TV series and the famous novels they're based on, I was one of those cheering at the end of the second season, despite having mixed feelings about the show’s original run.

So, what made the difference between the much lambasted first season and the acclaimed second? Below are some of the reasons why I believe season 2 thrived and season 1 was mired in controversy. Please beware SPOILERS below!

Humanizing the Aes Sedai

In the world of The Wheel of Time, the witches known as Aes Sedai are one of the most important groups and can claim many of the series main characters among their membership, or the membership of their apprentices. Powerful, proud, and enigmatic, getting the Aes Sedai right was absolutely critical to the success of this series. The show got off to an excellent start in season 1 with its casting decisions, casting the legendary Rosamund Pike as one of the shows leading characters, Moirane, and casting Kate Fleetwood as one of the series antagonists Liandrin. One of the more successful aspects of season 1 was the portrayal of Aes Sedai power, showing them fighting in battles and living in the iconic White Tower, the Aes Sedai citadel.

Season 2 improved on this by devoting a great deal of airtime into humanizing the Aes Sedai, including the villains, in deeply personal ways. A big part of the second season was spent with Moiraine as she struggled with not being able to access her powers. In a great surprise reveal, the audience follows an old woman in the city of Cairhien going about her daily routine until her servants announce the arrival of her older sister, only for it to be — surprise — Moiraine. As the Aes Sedai age much more slowly than regular humans, it is entirely probable that Moiraine’s younger sister would appear to be in her 70s while Moiraine still looks like a woman in her thirties.

The show went even further with the cold-hearted Liandrin, who we find out still cares for her dying, decrepit, elderly son. That doesn't excuse some of the things Liandrin does during the seaso, like selling a few of our heroes into slavery, but it does make her a more well-rounded character.

More Forsaken

More Forsaken. More Forsaken. More Forsaken. Season 1 of The Wheel of Time features only one of the iconic Forsaken sorcerors, the big bads of The Wheel of Time franchise. This first member of the Forsaken, Ishamael (played by Fares Fares), is featured again in season 2, this time joined by Lanfear (played by Natasha O’Keeffe). A third forsaken, Moghedien, makes a brief but perfectly creepy appearance in the last scene of of the season 2 finale, setting her up for a bigger role next season. The show is cutting down the number of Forsaken who appear in the books from 13 to eight, but if they're all as entertaining as Ishamael and Lanfear, eight will be more than enough.

The Forsaken are some of the most vibrant and fascinating characters in The Wheel of Time novels, and the more they are included in the show, the better it seems to be. Giving the heroes of the show human villains to strive and struggle against is infinitely more interesting than them fighting hordes of nameless beasts. While Moghedien’s debut in the final episode of season 2 is chilling, the prize for best Forsaken moment has to go to Lanfear, who when asked to create a distraction strolls through the city of Cairhien blasting people and buildings to smithereens, having an absolute ball doing it.

Correcting Mistakes

This one may be a bit cheeky, but one of the best things that season 2 did for The Wheel of Time was go back and correct some much-maligned missteps from season 1. The final episodes of the first season featured two large changes from the source material that didn’t go over well. Firstly, Mat Cauthon, one of the famous Emond’s Field Five and a main protagonist of the series, makes the decision to stay behind and not go with his friends to the northern city of Fal Dara for season 1’s climactic battle. There are rumors that the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in preventing original Mat actor Barney Harris from coming to set. While the second season was not able to change what happened, they rebounded by recasting Mat with actor Dónal Finn and writing a new story for him where he's captured and imprisoned off-screen. That sets him up for ane interesting side quest that involves several important characters.

Secondly, the season 1 finale “The Eye of the World” ends with Moiraine Damodred losing her powers during a climactic confrontation with Ishamael. Losing one’s powers in this world is called "stilling," and it's a shocking and dangerous experience that often leads to a person’s eventual death.

Unfortunately, the ‘important magical character loses all their powers’ plotline has become a tired trope across the genre, especially in superhero films. Many fans were deeply upset  by this choice, which represents a change from The Wheel of Time books. It seemed like Moiraine, one of the most iconic characters in the series, would have nothing to do after only one season.

Season 2 simply retconned this (there’s no other way to say it) revealing later in the season that Moiraine’s powers were not lost, but only blocked by Ishamael. Overt retcons are dangerous to the plot, but in this case I believe the Wheel of Time showrunners made the right call.

Luck

Rafe Judkins has served as showrunner on both seasons of The Wheel of Time released so far, and he's clearly put a lot of care into the series…but only one of those seasons had to be filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic: the first. The second was a lot better, which suggests that future seasons can only improve and Judkins and his team get more comfortable in their roles...so long as another world-altering pandemic doesn't throw a wrench into their plans.

Advice for season 3 and beyond

The Wheel of Time novels are famously long, spanning 13 massive tomes in the main series as well as a prequel story. The Amazon series will have to be very selective about which plotlines it includes and which it jettisons in the pursuit of brevity. Many of those plotlines are amazing… and some are quite boring: with over 10,000 pages of text, it’s impossible for all of them to be good. The author of the series, Robert Jordan, had a particular talent for building to big crescendos in the plot of each novel. These climaxes were particularly grandiose and epic in scale even within the fantasy genre. The showrunners should figure out which characters and plotlines are really necessary to make those big set pieces happen the way they happened in the books, and really drill down on them. In an era where streaming services are looking for big-budget shows to make a splash in the final episodes of each season, that’s where their focus should be.

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