Why The Wheel of Time Deserves Another Chance

On May 23, Prime Video announced the cancellation of one of its flagship fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. The show’s fans were angry and disappointed, to say the least, and almost immediately rallied to start a #SaveWOT campaign. 

As a fan of the show myself, this cancellation baffled me. The latest season had done well both in viewership and with critics, who almost unanimously declared it the best season so far. The Wheel of Time Season 3 shot for the stars, from fully committing to its fantastical elements like in The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 4, “Rhuidean,” to working in an impressive amount of books 3-5 into the season’s overarching plot. 

Not only did the show manage to make an impressive attempt at adapting a gargantuan 14-book series, but it also featured a diverse cast whose stories were given equal respect, even improving upon the books’ representations of women and people of color. It deserves a return worthy of Jordan’s canon and the wildly talented cast and group of creatives that have dedicated so much to the show.

Like most shows on streaming that meet similar fates, Prime Video’s reasoning was apparently purely financial, as the show was not gaining viewership worldwide at the rate that studio executives would have liked, according to reporting from Deadline. If only the streaming landscape wasn’t so reliant on exponential rises in viewership and actually gave shows a chance to improve upon themselves, yet alas, here we are.

Setting out to make a television adaptation of a 14-book series that has a very dedicated (and occasionally purist) fanbase was no small task, but showrunner Rafe Judkins and producer and star Rosamund Pike made their commitment to the source material clear, albeit with some updates for the 2020s.

For the most part, Judkins remained true in all the ways that mattered, and his changes, especially to the women and characters of color in the series, were welcome ones.

In an interview with Tell-Tale TV, Judkins noted the importance of one of these changes: Moiraine and Siuan’s now-confirmed romantic relationship.

“In my head, reading the books, their love was canon. I know, that’s just like a gay kid reading into these books when he was young,” Judkins said. “But for me, I loved the two of them and their relationship with each other in the book.”

“It’s been really inspiring to see what that relationship has meant to a lot of people,” he continued. “We’re very careful with that relationship and how we treat it and keeping it real and having real conflict between them, because they’re two women who would have a lot of conflict with each other.”

Pike has even narrated four of the audiobooks, and she, along with other cast members, was clearly invested in their characters and their arcs.

The show undeniably had some growing pains in the first season, what with the fridging of Perrin’s wife, and the somewhat choppy CGI and pacing.

However, it did make quantum leaps in quality in Seasons 2 and 3, as the show expanded significantly to incorporate some of the more interesting locations and characters in the series – especially the Aiel, the Forsaken, and the Seanchan. From costumes to set design to the new, innovative way of showing the magic system, Season 2 leveled up the quality of the show significantly.

There is a dearth of good high fantasy that really swings for the fences right now, and while the original attempt to make The Wheel of Time Prime Video’s Game of Thrones was misguided, the show has moved past its growing pains to become one of the most intriguing fantasy series on TV/streaming right now. 

This commitment to its fantastical elements benefited The Wheel of Time, especially in episodes such as Season 3 Episode 4, “Rhuidean,” where Rand walks through his ancestors’ past lives in a truly daring episode storyline that still managed to tie several of the show’s arcs together.

Josha Stradowski played seven different characters in the same episode, a truly impressive and ambitious feat for any actor and for the show overall to stay so focused in one location with so few episodes.

Another highlight was The Wheel of Time Season 3 Episode 7, “Goldeneyes,” the much-anticipated episode that gave the beloved Perrin “Goldeneyes” Aybara his time to shine as a leader of his home in the Battle of Two Rivers. The episode delivered nail-biting action sequences and managed to raise the stakes even higher for the main cast.

The Wheel of Time also updated the source material to be far more inclusive. Rand, the protagonist, is not being mooned after by three different women simply because he is the chosen one, and the main cast is now much more racially diverse too, allowing the different locations to draw inspiration from different cultures in the real world too.

Perhaps the most interesting change was making Rosamund Pike’s Moiraine and Sophie Okonedo’s Siuan Sanche a couple; this change made Moiraine’s machinations to get the White Tower to support the Dragon Reborn all the more intriguing.

Pike and Okonedo also delivered outstanding performances in their respective roles, straight to the (very brutal) end of Siuan’s story in the season finale. The storylines of many of the characters were deepened by the increased diversity in the cast too.

Even with truncated 8-episode seasons, The Wheel of Time managed to deliver on its promise to make an adaptation worthy of the expansive canon that Robert Jordan began in 1990.  

The Wheel of Time Season 3 was one of the most ambitious fantasy adaptations of recent years after the domination of the Game of Thrones series, and it is because the show dared to do something different with its source material.

Unfortunately, we have no idea if the show will return even through another streaming service, which is a shame considering the creator and cast members all promised that the show would only get bigger and better now that Rand has accepted his destiny as the Dragon Reborn. 

Perhaps we will see another turn of The Wheel of Time, but if not, at least we have three strong seasons and a bold, diverse adaptation of the much-loved book series.

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The Wheel of Time is currently streaming on Prime Video.

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