Starting Season 2 of Wheel of Time

Recently Hawk and I started watching Season 2 of The Wheel of Time. It's streaming on Amazon Prime. As I write this we've watched the first two episodes already. I'm not going to write about them, though, but the series in general up to the start of S2.

Season 2 is not new, per se. Its 8 episodes of dropped 4-5 months ago (September and October 2023). If I'm a a bit late to the party it's because I haven't been sure I care about this party.

Waning interest in The Wheel of Time is, ironically, not a new thing. It's also fittingly not a new thing, as "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time," as all WoT fans know, and the Pattern repeats itself. "What was once will soon come again." I lost interest in the books halfway through the series years ago, even after the first third of the series had been a defining part of my life for years. It's how I met my wife, among other things. But as "The Wheel of Time turns [...] legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time the age that gave birth to it comes again."

A Long Gap

Part of the reason my interest waned in watching Season 2 is the long gap between seasons. The Season 1 finale dropped December 24, 2021. The Season 2 premier dropped over 20 months later, on September 1, 2023. "When's the next one going to come out?" is something we fans of the books agonized over years ago, particularly as the author's pace of writing and publication slowed down. That was one of the reasons I ultimately lost interest in the books halfway through.

With the streaming series there's an external reason, i.e., one that's not just about the writers: Covid shut them down. The global Coronavirus pandemic hit toward the end of production of the first season. It mucked with timetables for preproduction and production of Season 2.

Slower, Faster

Gaps between books was only part of the reason I lost interest in the written series, and it was probably only the secondary reason. The main reason was the sluggish pacing of the story. Being brief was certainly something author Robert Jordan was never accused of. Indeed, among F&SF fans who didn't like his books back in the day, "They're too slow" was basically the entire criticism. Across the first few books I found in the wordiness a lot of richness in developing the characters and the world. By the 5th book, though, it just became ponderous. By the 6th it was painful. After the 7th I found so little happening in the books that, combined with the slowing pacing of publication, I completely lost interest in the series.

Slowness is absolutely not a problem in the streaming version of Wheel of Time. As befits the dictates of the medium, the showrunners are practically racing through the story. Eight episodes of S1 roughly mirrored the first book in the series, The Eye of the World. S2 looks like it will track more or less to book 2, The Great Hunt, in its 8 episodes. Each of these are 600+ page novels so, yeah, a lot has to be condensed. And honestly that's a good thing.

Off Script from the Books. A Refreshed Perspective.

"It's too slow" isn't why I lost interest in the streaming adaptation between seasons. The fact of how widely it breaks from the books in ways big and small is. Now, the gap in my interest isn't at the level of a death sentence, like it was for me with the books years ago, or like it seems to be for some fans of the books in rage-quitting the streaming series after S1. I knew I'd watch it eventually. I just didn't care when. Finally the time came on a weekend when the weather sucks and I was bored nearly to tears.

"Books are books and TV is TV." Believe me, I understand that. Major changes have to be made in adapting a huge and sprawling (many would say too sprawling) series of novels. But as I enumerated across my many blogs from watching S1, the writers of the streaming version have diverged from the books in too many key areas. It's not just cutting out side plots and minor characters— which are generally good changes to make— but changing major plots, major characters, major motivations, and even changing the rules of how the universe works (which books author Robert Jordan was very meticulous about).

My pique about the breadth of these changes softened up a bit by watching Game of Thrones in the long gap between seasons. There, my situation with books-vs-TV familiarity was reversed. I haven't read GoT. I found the streaming series fairly enjoyable for what it was without being tripped up by what differed from the books. I did read about some of those differences in fan wikis about the show... and while some fans were evidently really stuck on the changes made, I found them to be positive changes for the most part.

I applied that perspective in hindsight to S1 of WoT. Were the changes all that bad? Most of them were not— but then again, I was tolerant of those changes from the start. A few things still rub me the wrong way, though. Mat ran off for no reason (truth: there was a problem with the actor and he had to be recast). Rand asked Moiraine to pretend he's dead and ran off. Perrin had a wife and killed her. Oh, and the whole arc of series 1/book 1 changed from "Rand learns he's a child of prophecy and struggles to start to come to grips with his destiny" to "The DrAgOn ReBoRn CoULd bE AnYbOdY!1!" with the writers actively concealing some things about Rand to spring it on viewers as a reveal in the season finale.

WoT S2E1: The Darkfriend Social!

Just recently Hawk and I resumed watching the Wheel of Time TV series with season 2. Here are my thoughts as we watched S2E1, "A Taste of Solitude". Originally I started structuring this as Five Things but then realized it was getting way too long, with 4-5 paragraphs per Thing. Thus I'm splitting it up into a few pieces. The first one is the infamous Darkfriend Social.

The episode's cold open portrays the scene from the prologue of The Great Hunt, the second book of the series. That tracks with season 1 lining up with the first book of the series. At a mysterious location a dozen or so powerful darkfriends gather secretly to be given instructions by Ishamael, the most powerful of the Forsaken and the Dark One's right hand.

As a note, the term darkfriend comes directly from the story. It's an epithet characters across multiple cultures use to describe those who secretly serve the Dark One, the evil power trying to destroy the world. Calling this scene the “Darkfriend Social”, though, was coined by a net.friend of mine in 1993. Yeah, that's a long time ago now! I'm glad to see it's caught on pretty widely across fandom.

In portraying this scene the TV show writers once again make a change from the books I don't entirely like. They change the viewpoint character.

( Scene Details (click to open) )

This is one of those situations where the change seems good for the short term, making the TV scene emotionally powerful in the moment, but bad for the story in the long term, depriving us viewers of important foreshadowing that's essentially buried in the scene.

WoT S2E1: A Taste of Solitude

Here are a few more thoughts about S2E1 of the Wheel of Time series streaming on Amazon Prime. The episode is entitled "A Taste of Solitude", not "The Darkfriend Social" like you might have thought from my previous blog. That's just a fun sobriquet that a friend of mine created over 30 years ago that's since become common in the fandom! Following that the bulk of the episode aligns to its name, showing how the main characters are split up and dealing with things on their own. Here are Five Things:

1. Moiraine Labors Without the One Power

In the next scene we see Moiraine at Tifan's Well, a remote villa owned by fellow Aes Sedai Verin Mathwin. She's laboring to carry water drawn from a well up the hill to the manor. She's doing this as part of her... exercises, for lack of a better term... to keep herself focused while cut off from the One Power.

Yes, Moiraine's still cut off— Ishamael did that to her in S1E8— even though it's apparently been several months now. I think the writers intend this as Moiraine being Stilled, as it was called in the books, rather than merely temporarily shielded. In the books both things can happen, though being Stilled is far more powerful and punishing. It seems the show writers do not differentiate the two.

Of course, in terms of divergence from the books, the show writers also made up Moiraine being exiled from the White Tower earlier in S1 and being out here with Verin in S2. In the books Verin was in the Tower at this point. The show writers are definitely writing their own story at this point.

As I explained in my previous blog, that's not bad per se. It is a bit disorienting to us viewers familiar with the books. But ultimately this show will have to stand on its own as good TV. I think they're making good TV here by pushing Moiraine into the background, showing what a plotter she still is, and leaving the younger folks from the Two Rivers to have to fend more for themselves. That part at least is true to the spirit of the books.

2. Novices in the Tower

The third major scene shows Egwene and Nynaeve studying as Novices in the Tower. We see the degradation of the scut work they're given (novices scrub plates and pots in the kitchen) and the harsh way the Aes Sedai frame their lessons in channeling the One Power. Each of the girls is given a glass of dirty water and told they must drink it— after passing it through a magic weave they're being taught to purify it. The harshness is "Learn this thing fast or you swallow mud," which the teacher is very direct about.

This is an enjoyably vivid way of showing these two aspects of Egwene's and Nynaeve's life in the tower compared to the page, and pages, and pages of, frankly, dull prose in the books describing it. That's often the case with visual media, though. Showrunners can show a scene that conveys in 2 minutes what 100 pages struggle to say. Oh, and Nynaeve's stubbornness and difficulty channeling are beautifully shown in a quick scene where ( Tiny spoiler )

There's still the books-vs-TV issue that Nynaeve is a novice. In the books she was admitted as Accepted right away because of her strength in the power. I'm not sure this really matters. Frankly I like it better with the two women from the Two Rivers continuing to bond as there was time for little of that character development in season 1.

3. Loial's Not Dead!

The next arc of the episode follows Perrin as the viewpoint character. He's traveling with a band of Shienaran soldiers pursuing the dastardly darkfriend Padan Fain. Fain snuck into Fal Dara (in Shienar), killed a bunch of people, and stole the Horn of Valere. (That was S1E8 in the TV series but early 2nd book.) The horn is a magical artifact that summons heroes of legend and is storied to be important in winning the looming battle against the Dark One.

The TV writers change up the plotlines here. Mat and Rand are not with Perrin here. Nor is Verin; she's off at her private ranch with Moiraine, as noted above. In the books they're on this mission together. But one person I was surprised to see here is Loial— he's not dead!

The showrunners left it vague at the end of S1 whether Loial had died when had Padan Fain stabbed him (and Uno, and others) with a cursed dagger in Fal Dara. I assumed they meant to kill off Loial because they'd obviously spent so little money on FX for portraying him as an 8 to 9 foot tall quasi-human with tufted ears and hands. I mean, it only makes sense to cheap out so badly with a low-budget Loial in S1E5 if they've rewritten him as a throw-away minor character going who only has a few brief appearances.

4. Is that Idris Elba?

Another juggle in "Who's where, and when?" between books and TV involves the Shienarans' new tracker. In the books it's a long-term minor character, Hurin. In the TV series there's mumbling between soldier extras about "some new tracker". In a big reveal we see it's Elyas Machera— an interesting minor character from book 1 who was sadly cut out of season 1 to condense the story. While he's minor in the story as a whole he's actually really important to helping develop Perrin's character, so I'm glad they worked him in here.

For those not familiar with the books— and, okay, for us fans of the books, too— part of what makes this is a big reveal is probably, "Wait, is that Idris Elba?!" Haha, no, it's actor Gary Beadle. The showrunners aren't willing to spend the kind of money it would take to cast a big-screen star like Elba, especially for a minor character. Though Beadle's makeup and costuming with glowing, golden eyes sure recall Elba's portrayal of Heimdall in various Marvel movies.

5. Ingtar Admonishes Perrin: "They had a reason"

As Perrin and the Shienarans survey a slaughter scene left behind by Padan Fain and his band of darkfriends and evil monsters, Perrin frets about how he may not be able to contain his rage when they catch the darkfriends.

The group's leader, Ingtar, cautions Perrin about the perils of revenge as a mindset. He explains that if Shienarans sought revenge for all wrongs, there'd be no Shienarans left. He notes that people who do seemingly bad things must've had some reason to do what they did, and admonishes Perrin to pause to consider what that reason might be before assuming the worst and killing them for retribution.

The first half of Ingtar's lesson is standard fare for speeches about revenge, but the second half seems a bit off. Knowing what's revealed later in the books makes it way off. ( Spoiler from later in the second book )