The Wheel of Time Trailer

[Dark Shadow]

I found S2E6 overall to be another "step up" for the season. There was much to appreciate in this episode (the Sul'dam/Damane relationship portrayed fairly well, O'Keeffe's Lanfear and her interactions with Rand & Liandrin, Rand seizing the source, Finn's portrayal of Mat, and Rand & Mat reuniting). That said, there was still plenty of time-consuming nonsense that kept this episode from achieving greatness.

I get that they need to keep the characters Lan & Moraine in the story in order to keep the actor's engaged with the series, but are those two arc's really the best the writers could come up with? They could have had Lan help guard & work with Rand to train him on the sword, and they could have had Moraine interacting with some of the more interesting "sisters" to help flesh out the nuances of the power and the politics. But instead, they're given these weird uninteresting tangents that seemingly add nothing to the greater story.

There's still much to achieve to effectively wrap up even just the basics of The Great Hunt, it'll be interesting to see how/if they do it.

These deficiencies and whatever the lingering effects of the writers' strike will have on S3...well, it isn't exactly looking like sunshine & lollipops.

[MRP]

i guess as fans of the books, we have to set that expectation aside and just enjoy the show for what it is. I thought Ep5 was fine. some action and building towards the greater story

I haven't started on season 2 yet, but season 1 felt more like someone using Jordan's characters and world to tell their own pastiche stories than an adaptation. If you accept that, it's a decent fantasy series. If you can't accept that, it's not going to be to your liking. I am behind in my series watching (I am in the middle of House of Dragons and have to get to Secret Invasion yet before tackling season 2 of this-Ahsoka is the only thing I'm current on because it's appointment TV for my wife).

-M

[Nostalgiabuff]

i guess as fans of the books, we have to set that expectation aside and just enjoy the show for what it is. I thought Ep5 was fine. some action and building towards the greater story

[Nostalgiabuff]

good to hear. i have to watch ep5 still

[Dark Shadow]

We watched S2E5 over the weekend. I found it to be the best episode so far this season, and it is first episode that I'd be willing to watch again since the middle of the first season. Fluke, or a sign of things to come? TBD.

[Dark Shadow]

We watched S2E4, and it looks like some threads may be starting to come together. Maybe?

On the downside, we are already halfway through the season, and it's frustrating to realize how much precious time has been wasted on nonsense.

On the upside, Matrim is gambling, Perrin's learning more about his nature, Rand is channeling, and it looks like Nynaeve, Egwene & Elayne are headed to Falme. I'm certainly not assuming that this means things are "getting on track", but it was nice to watch an episode that had some moments that reflected the actual story that was written.

If S2 is going to wrap up where we leave off at the end of The Great Hunt, the next four episodes should be pretty well stacked. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the season plays out and whether or not S3 will actually happen.

[Nostalgiabuff]

they definitely are not following the books, other than the main concept and names of places and characters. it's entertaining enough to keep me watching but ultimately it is a disappointment as a fan of the books

[drquest]

I haven't decided if I want to waste any time on season 2. Season 1 was a mess.

[Nostalgiabuff]

yeah, i have only watched the first 2 so far, but it's not any improvement over the mess that was season 1. so far at least

[Dark Shadow]

We watched the first three episodes of Season 2.

I've come to terms with the reality that the creators have no intention of adapting Robert Jordan's story, but have instead co-opted his world & characters in order to tell their own story. Whether this is due to a lack of confidence in their own abilities, or if they believe themselves to be more intelligent than the author is anybody's guess?

I'm having a hard time understanding how anybody who has not read the books would be able to make any sense out of the series. As a reader, I'm able to fill in the blanks for most of the holes and lack of clarity, but still find myself asking "Where? What? Who? How?".

I was pretty forgiving with Season 1 due to the repercussions of the pandemic and the "greenness" of the creative team, but nearly half way through Season 2 and let's just say I'm a lot less forgiving this time around.

I'm going to watch the rest of the season to see if they are able to make this story of theirs cohesive and/or find some sort of footing.

If not, I'll not return for the third season.

[Nostalgiabuff]

it was a very weak S1. i will also come back at least to start S2 but if they do not make some serious course correction i will be out too. I don't understand why they take these amazing fantasy series and so drastically alter them. it never, never works. the one series that worked was the LOTR and that is because it was such a labor of love for all involved and even though they did make some changes to the overall story, they still stayed faithful to the source material

[YoungOnce]

I've never read the books, but the first couple eps of the series were promising enough to keep me coming back. That Trolloc raid on the village in E1 was a very impressive spectacle and I'm pretty sure blew 80% of their VFX budget I was even able to forgive how hilariously derivative of LOTR many of the show's tropes were.

But as the show plodded on, I started to feel like I was watching that awful Shannara series on MTV from a few years back (a series of books I devoured as a kid). Things just kept getting sillier.

By the finale I was just happy it was over

This was me. I never read the books, but thought I'd give it a go. The start of the series seemed promising enough, but by the finale, it all felt rather rote.

Maybe it's just that I was hoping for a better resolution. It felt like they beat the "level 1" boss and now they'll move on to level 2, 3, 4 etc...

[Sideshow Spock]

I've never read the books, but the first couple eps of the series were promising enough to keep me coming back. That Trolloc raid on the village in E1 was a very impressive spectacle and I'm pretty sure blew 80% of their VFX budget I was even able to forgive how hilariously derivative of LOTR many of the show's tropes were.

But as the show plodded on, I started to feel like I was watching that awful Shannara series on MTV from a few years back (a series of books I devoured as a kid). Things just kept getting sillier.

By the finale I was just happy it was over

[MRP]

What a disappointing mess the last 2 episodes were. I will probably at least start watching season 2 when it drops, but everything I love about the books is missing from this series, the characters are nearly unrecognizable, and I feel there is this weird cognitive dissonance in that if you haven't read the books, the series doesn't make a lot of sense as it just leaves out or poorly explains a lot of key lore and plot points, but if you have read the books, the series doesn't make a lot of sense either because things have been weirdly and needlessly changed to undermine the lore the thematic underpinnings of the series and robbed of everything that gave it its charm.

It just seems like the showrunners either don't trust the material or don't really understand it. From little things like calling Lews Therin the Dragon Reborn when he was the first Dragon to either confusing or intentionally changing the different ways the Source works for men and women-in the books men must aggressively control the One Power while women must submit to it and let it flow naturally through them, accepting the One Power and becoming one with it rather than conquering it, in the show it is the opposite as the Forsaken explains to Rand that to channel he must submit to it and let it flow through him and become one with him while Morraine describes how she learned to channel and having to seize the one power and master it. Not sure if they meant this change to be intentional and were trying to make some sore of thematic or sociological statement about the nature of masculinity and femininity in opposition to that portrayed in the book or whether they just plain screwed the pooch and got it backwards because they didn't understand what was actually in the books. Either way it fundamentally changes the lore and the portrayal of the one power and how its used which is at the heart of so much of the books' thematic underpinnings.

And the other stray thought was, for a show with such a large budget, I am not sure what they spent it on. Maybe they blew the vfx budget on the early episodes, but the CGI got progressively worse as the season progressed, and the editing of the last episode in particular looks like the editors were asleep at the wheel.

There were things I liked about the season, and I even liked a small portion of the changes made (and acknowledge some changes needed to be made to cram that big a book into an 8 episode season). There were performances that stood out in a positive way, but overall the negative far outweighs those meager positives and my overall feeling is one of wasted potential and missed opportunities. A strong second season could go a long way to rehabilitating my impressions of the show, but the second season really does need to be a reclamation project, and it will be an uphill battle because they killed some of my favorites (who continued to play huge important roles in later books) or have fundamentally altered favorites to remove or change the things that drew me to the characters. But we'll see.


-M

[Dark Shadow]

Just found this quote from the showrunner, Rafe Judkins, (on Decider) which brings some relief:

Decider asked Judkins if it was always the creative plan to leave Mat behind and he said, “We try to take any production thing that happens and try to make it the strongest reactive decision we can and to move forward with it creatively. So, there were a bunch of different things that happened during COVID that we had to sort of bob and weave with in terms of production. We tried to do all of those in as seamless a way as we could and try to tell the best story we could and then, you know, take us and land us back closer to the books in Season 2 as well.”