Amazon’s The Wheel of Time is Finally Getting Good – But Is It Too Late?
Wheel of Time Season 3. Image courtesy of Amazon.
Season 3 of Amazon’s Wheel of Time adaptation is finally doing some things right (while also still doing many things wrong). What a shame it took them 3 seasons to start doing so.
The show does look better, in certain respects. I still think they could be more creative in using visual cues and imagery to convey deep background aspects of the world building. For instance, the weaves should really come from within the channelers, as they open themselves to the One Power, but they seem instead to materialize out of thin air. But sometimes they also seem to come from within. One of the show’s biggest problems is that it’s very inconsistent about how the world it’s building works. This is a problem when you need to build an expansive and intricate world.
There simply could have been more thought put into how the visual language of the show could do some of the heavy-lifting of the world-building. But that is sadly absent, and the inconsistencies really make the world-building suffer. It seems like the overriding mandate was to do things that looked cool (or at least what would look cool to lovers of incredibly garish melodrama) rather than something that makes sense within the logic of the world and helps reinforce and build the reality of that world.
That’s a shame. If they had consistent rules about how the world works and those rules were reflected in the visual language of the show, it could be so much better. An example: can non-channelers see weaves or not? The show is not consistent about this, and doesn’t seem to think it matters. Does it take time for people to learn how to channel, or can they immediately do impressive feats whenever the plot demands it? The show couldn’t care less. Why do characters constantly get shot with arrows and stabbed only to recover instantly? Nobody cares. This indifference to the details of the world-building undercuts the show at every turn.
Although it’s getting better, the production design and look of this show is still pretty weak. You can tell that a lot of it is shot on sound stages. The sets look fake. They look like sets. The lighting is bad. It takes me out of the show constantly. I also still have my problems with the sound effects that accompany the weaves, as well as other creative choices like the ones I mentioned above. Having said that, overall the special effects including the big magic showdowns look better than they did.
This seems like a compliment, but it’s really not. A show like this should not have taken 3 seasons to learn how to do basic things moderately well. It’s not a film school class where the crew and producers were supposed to be learning by doing. They should have been hitting these notes right out of the gate. Game of Thrones, you will recall, looked great and felt real from the get-go. It established a clear and compelling visual and tonal language right away. It didn’t take 3 seasons to find its footing with set design, lighting and editing. Wheel of Time is getting better, but it’s frustrating that it took 3 seasons to simply reach a modest level of competence.
The second thing is that the story (but not necessarily the writing) is getting better. And there is a big and obvious reason why. They are getting closer to the books, and they are focusing more on Rand. The refusal to focus on Rand, not just as the main character, but as a character of any consequence whatsoever, until the third season was such a colossal error. He is the main character of the story. The writers may have not have liked that, but the refusal to build his story and character arc from the beginning have really hampered the structure of the show overall.
Book One (or Season One), should have focused on world-building – explaining the world we were in, through the eyes of a couple of country bumpkins and primarily Rand. It would have set up who the Dragon Reborn is, why people fear him, and what the stakes are. Then, we learn that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. Excising the time Mat and Rand spend together traveling through the Andoran countryside was a big mistake. Lots of world-building and character development left on the table there. And for what? Pointless side plots and character arcs that don’t build the world, don’t set stakes, and take away from the actual meat of the narrative.
Book Two is Rand coming to terms with the horror of being the Dragon Reborn, while going on an adventure quest – a brilliant framing device that creates lots of opportunities for, you guessed it, more world building! It should have culminated in his begrudging acceptance of the duty and responsibility, and sacrifice, required to be the Dragon Reborn. Big fight scene in sky. Many ways they could have done this. They picked one of the worst, laziest ways. The Horn was incidental, and looks ridiculous. The actual main characters were incidental.
Now after accepting his fate, Book 3-4 (Season 3) is what Rand is going to do about it. Now we’ve got momentum. Now we have a main character. Now the narrative is being anchored by its main character, rather than side characters who, while important, are not the main character. Now the ensemble cast can play off the central character – Elayne can counsel Rand about the burdens of leadership; Mat can urge Rand to blow off his duties while slipping into the Old Tongue; Moraine and the White Tower can try and fail to control him. You need Rand as the main character, bearing the weight of the world and the impending doom of the Last Battle, so that everyone else in this world can play off of him.
But the writers took too long to make him the main character (and even in this season, he is arguably not the main character but a co-main on about equal narrative footing with, say, Liandrin or Siuan). Why did they refuse for so long to actually adapt the books, to acknowledge that the books have a main character and it is Rand? This season is better, but it’s hard with a show this expensive to let it take 3 seasons to find its footing.
And what is even more frustrating about all of this is that there was absolutely no reason for it to take 3 seasons to start finding its footing. It is one of the most popular fantasy series of all time in the entire world! Millions of people already liked it the way it was written! The template, the basic bones of the story and the character arcs, they already exist! All you had to do was figure out how to adapt them for a visual medium. There was no need to shove the main character to the outer edge of the story, and spend enormous amounts of time fleshing out Liandrin’s child bride backstory or Alanna’s absolutely terrible arc with her warder.
While I am glad the show is finally starting to get kind of good, it’s so maddening that it took this long in the first place when the template for a successful fantasy series and exquisitely detailed world-building was handed to them on a platter. And even now, the show has taken so long to course-correct, and is still doing so many things badly, it’s not clear if it can actually recover from the earlier decisions to not focus on Rand. Amazon has yet to renew it for a fourth season, and one does wonder if this course-correction, welcome as it may be, is too little too late.
