Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series runs a massive 14 volumes, none of them small. It's one of the most epic of epic fantasy series, and adapting it for TV was always going to be a challenge. Rafe Judkins, the showrunner behind Prime Video's The Wheel of Time TV show, has been at it for years, and although the new season is the best yet, there are still plentiful changes from the source material.
And I think most fans expect that; it's unrealistic to think that nothing is going to change when you adapt a series this big. The question is whether Judkins and his team are making the right changes. He explained his thinking to Tech Radar.
"I'm always focused on the emotional truth of the characters and trying to get that across on screen," Judkins said. "That's where television shines. If you're doing an adaptation for television, I think you really need to focus your energies [on that] because that's what the art form of TV does best – it brings those characters across."
And Judkins didn't stop at empty pladtidudes; he provided an example of his philosophy he action: "In this season, for instance, we do a lot with the relationships that Rand has with Lanfear and Egwene," he said, "And neither of those are really present in the books. A lot of what we have to do is condensing [stuff down from the novels], but sometimes we need to expand [on what's on the page]."
"Rand has really deep, complicated relationships with these women, but they don't have a lot of scenes together in this book [The Shadow Rising], so it felt like we really needed those in order to understand the depth of these relationships and how important they are to those characters."
In the books, the relationship between Rand and Lanfear is pretty one-sided; she's into him but he never seriously entertains the possibility of being with her. On the show, he seems to consider, although I doubt that will last; she is a Forsaken sorceress sworn to follow a guy named the Dark One, after all. Meanwhile, in the books, Rand's relationship with Egwene has pretty much fizzled out by this point, but on the show it's still in the process of withering away.
I don't think this is the kind of change that's going to upset many people; it's still mostly in keeping with the books, but approached from a different angle. "That's an [example of] where we're actually adding something that wasn't in the books," Judkins continues. "I'm sure it'll drive people crazy but there's a reason why we do it, and that's because we want viewers to emotionally understand the relationship between these characters and how each one affects the other. It has a huge impact on the story as it moves forward."
There are other changes coming this season on The Wheel of Time. How will they be received? New episodes drop Thursday on Prime Video. Check back here for all our coverage! In the meantime, George R.R. Martin — the author of another epic fantasy series — has some pretty pointed thoughts on adaptations:
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