As a fan of the books, I didn’t trip over one thing in the first three episodes of The Wheel of Time Season 2 until Nynaeve walked into the third arch and didn’t come back out. Everything before that, I got. I’m a fan of this adaptation, and I’m not a big fan of what Amazon did with The Lord of the Rings, so that’s saying something.
This one’s a little special for us, too. Not by the calendar, because the dates are a little different, but this is technically the two year anniversary of the channel. If you go far enough back in the archives you’ll find a video called Wheel of Time series review. That’s the very first review this channel ever did, for season one, way back in the day. We’ve come a long way, baby.
Mrs. Know-It-All is with me on this one, and she wants it on the record that she hasn’t read any of the books. There are about 12. They’re big, long, very detailed books, and I’ve read them. So you’re getting two takes: how it looks if you know the story, and how it looks if you don’t. And let’s be for real, ever since last season ended she’s asked me at least twice a month when it’s coming back.
Why I’m Okay With the Condensing
I’m not against what they’re doing. It’s just taken me a lot to swallow it. What got me there was Brandon Sanderson, the writer who replaced Robert Jordan after his untimely demise and finished the series. He was interviewed last season, and one of the things he brought up was that there’s no way to do a season for every single thought and every single thing. If you did, the series would be 30 seasons long. Mrs. Know-It-All’s answer to that is why not.
A lot of what’s in these three episodes is taken from several books. If an event happened in book four but it relates to book one or two, you’re going to have to smash it in there. I’m okay with those kinds of changes. I worked in film and TV, and those things make sense. Liandrin is the example. She does show up early in the books, but not as early as she does in the series, and I know why: they didn’t have five books to introduce her.
If you’re interested in The Wheel of Time, go check out Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube channel, specifically a podcast he does called Intentionally Blank, which is a writer’s reference to the first page of a book usually being left intentionally blank. He talks about the show during the season. As soon as I’m done with this, I fully intend to go listen, and I’ll talk more next week about what he may have said.
One Year Later, and Everybody Thinks Rand Is Dead
The reason they dropped three episodes at once is pretty simple. They have to set up very quickly where everyone is, and that’s both good and bad. We assumed we’d start closer to where we left off and see how everybody moved and traveled. They didn’t do that. The series begins just about one year later.
At the very beginning of episode one everybody thinks Rand is dead. Moiraine hasn’t said it flat out, but she’s intimated it, because, you know, they can’t lie. And if you remember the end of last season, Ishamael, or the Dark One working through Ishamael, cut Moiraine off from the Source. For men who can channel they call it gentling, and I think for women they call it stilling. He did it with a whip of a hand, very fast, and one of the things I really appreciated is how the series talks about just how powerful channelers were back in the day.
That’s because this season introduces us to the concept of the Forsaken. They’re the chosen of the Dark One, channelers who back in the Breaking, three thousand plus years ago, said we’re going to choose the Dark One over our own people. He elevated them, gave them immortality, gave them a level of sheer strength they didn’t have before, and he protects his male channelers from the taint that’s in the One Power.
For those of you playing at home, the One Power is what they call magic in this universe. They call it the Source, and there are two halves, a male half and a female half, saidin and saidar. Men channel their half, women channel theirs. Normally women can see other women channeling and men can see other men who can channel. It’s a whole thing.
So Moiraine is recovering at Verin Sedai’s estate, with her sister and her Warders. Lan feels somewhat displaced by the whole thing, because she’s very quiet, but she’s also taking meetings. She meets a new character named Bayle Domon, who’s very important in the books. He’s kind of a chief informant, the guy you send to go get things. He lives on the sea, a sea folk if you will, so he hates being inland that much more. Early on he brings her what looks like a piece of cuendillar. I used to call it “swindelliar” when I read the books, and I’m totally going with their pronunciation, because what’s in my head canon doesn’t matter. It’s like stone but stronger than metal, utterly unbreakable. It’s adamantium for fantasy. There’s a little poem written on it, and she ends up paying for the poem and not buying the other thing. Information, to an Aes Sedai, is way more important.
She’s still running her machinations and she’s really trying to push Lan away. As Mrs. Know-It-All pointed out, their bond was broken. She gets attacked by some Fades and he almost dies in the process, because without the bond he doesn’t get any of the bonuses he used to get. He’s stuck with just being himself again, and she sends him back to the tower.
Egwene and Nynaeve are in Tar Valon as novices. The three levels are novice, Accepted, and then Aes Sedai. They’re in white dresses with aprons over them that say we’re still doing menial tasks. I said the aprons were brown. Mrs. Know-It-All says gray. We totally have this issue with colors, so tell us what color you thought they were. Is the dress gold or is it blue?
Nynaeve is being belligerent about all of it. Mrs. Know-It-All’s word was brat. Egwene sums it up best: the harder she works, the less good she does, and the less Nynaeve works, the better Nynaeve does. I don’t blame her for being mad about that. I think it’s okay to say on the family channel that I’d be pissed.
That’s where we meet Elayne Trakand, the Daughter-Heir of Andor. Andor is one of the largest, most powerful countries on the continent. There’s Illian and Cairhien and some others, but Andor’s the big boy. Forgive me for being self-centered, but Andor is the USA, and they’re just as egotistical as we are. She says to Egwene that she never thought she’d see one of their subjects, because the Two Rivers is in Andor. In the books there hasn’t been a tax collector in the Two Rivers in something like a hundred years, so they basically don’t remember they’re subjects of anybody. Elayne is very cool, she already seems really bright, and in the overarching story she’s going to be exciting to watch grow.
Perrin is with the Shienarans. If you remember last season, Tarwin’s Gap fell, and they were ultimately able to hold the city somewhat, I think because of the women channeling. Now they’re tracking Padan Fain, the guy with the knife from Shadar Logoth. Mrs. Know-It-All remembered him better than I did: the peddler with the lanterns, from the very beginning. He’s leaving a wake of destruction and death everywhere.
You start noticing wolves following them in the distance, and we meet a tracker named Elyas, a character from the books. They talked about this in Tar Valon: the numbers of Aes Sedai have been dwindling, and all of a sudden the Pattern is spitting out women like Nynaeve, Egwene and Elayne who can channel on a level nobody’s seen in forever. Likewise, people are showing up with what the books call talents, things that aren’t brought on by the Power but are sort of Power tangential. Perrin’s going to eventually be able to talk to wolves, and his eyes turn yellow. There’s one scene where they walk into a place where people were killed and he sees visions, because his sense of smell is telling him the story, the same way wolves can paint a picture. That links to another ability later, dreamwalking, the ability to go into the land of dreams, Tel’aran’rhiod. It’s an interesting look at the multiverse of fantasy. Robert Jordan was doing some really cool stuff, storytelling wise, back in the day.
Dónal Finn Is Mat
Last season Moiraine sent a message that the Reds needed to go find a man named Mat Cauthon. Liandrin found him. Nobody knows this, but Mat is being held and interrogated in Tar Valon, not at the tower, in a private place where the sisters go. It’s actually quite a nice room for a prisoner, with a pillow and a blanket. He hides behind a dresser, using a spoon to whittle out these giant hewn stones, and when he finally thinks he’s getting outside, it’s just the next room. Min is in it. She apparently stopped by and got caught.
This is the introduction of Dónal Finn as the new Mat Cauthon. Barney Harris was just fine. He played Mat last season and I don’t know what reasons he’s no longer with the show. But I genuinely liked Dónal Finn a lot. I couldn’t imagine him better than this guy.
The way the last actor did it, Mat felt haunted. He wasn’t jovial. In the books, even at his darkest, Mat was darkly funny. Not optimistic, but he always had a pithy comeback for something bad happening. This guy feels like he lives in that style of universe. He’s got a brighter disposition that I find more Mat-like, and I hope it leads to some stuff in the future.
Rand, Logain, and the Fireworks
Rand has been holed up in Cairhien. He’s got himself a girlfriend, and according to Mrs. Know-It-All he looks like a little discount Eminem, because those pretty curls are gone. He’s trying to hide. A couple of people see him and say there’s an Aielman here.
He’s working at a sanitarium, where he goes to see a swordmaster named Errol, a man his father had told him about, and he’s learning how to use a sword. Somebody else is in that sanitarium he wants to see, and that’s Logain. There’s an orderly who gets to see Logain freely, and that guy finds himself in an accident at Rand’s hands. Bro tripped and fell and hit his head a lot, with a fist. So Rand gets reassigned.
Remember that moment in season one when they were walking through the town, Rand and Logain met eyes, and Logain did that crazy man laugh? I read the books and I should have known this. Even gentled, even cut off from the Source, Logain can still see the outline, in colors, of a man who can channel. According to him, Rand was setting off fireworks. Logain still thinks he’s the Dragon Reborn. Rand’s like, nah man, no you’re not, because Rand knows without a doubt who he is.
The Weaves Look Right
I’m a big fan of how the One Power is being visually represented. They call it weaving, and the books refer to threads, and the show does a really great job with that. In the lesson where Nynaeve is being stubborn, the instruction is to filter dirt out of water. The teacher holds her hands up, takes weaves of water, this blue wispy stuff, then earth, green wispy stuff, mixes them together, and the water begins to clear. Then Nynaeve is told she has to drink water before she leaves, with no explanation, and she just says okay and drinks it. We know what’s in that water. That’s how hardcore she is.
At one point Liandrin asks why she’d need a sword when she can make one, and it becomes this air sword she’s just moving around. That is so cool.
Liandrin is getting under Mrs. Know-It-All’s skin, by the way. She wants to punch her. Liandrin is played by Kate Fleetwood, and she is rough, and the only excuse they’ve given us is that she’s a Red and Reds don’t like men. But there’s a scene I liked where she’s with an old man and you don’t know who he is. He’s her son. She’s long-lived, nigh immortal, and her kid isn’t, and he’s suffering from something. At some point she must have loved someone. Nynaeve stumbles onto it.
The Arches, and the Drama They Didn’t Need
Nynaeve’s elevation from novice to Accepted is a ceremony, and I like that they used the sayings and that she went before the arches. They’re gorgeously represented. Mrs. Know-It-All asked if that’s what I’d pictured, and it isn’t. I’d have thought of something more like a flat, actual archway. These are big, round, tubular, with a lot of engravings. It’s not my head canon and I’m willing to go with it.
Each arch is a fear: things I’m afraid of from my past, in the present, and potentially in the future. She handles the first ones just fine, roughly the way I remember it. In the last one she doesn’t come back, and you’re not supposed to be able to do that.
I understand building drama. But the writers didn’t need to invent it here. If there are things you want to cut or tissue you want to connect, fine. When there’s already a functional thing in the story and you’re telling that part clearly, why add this? Everyone’s standing around saying she’s dead and it’s terrible, and there was already drama and tension in the scene. She could’ve come out the way she does in the books, maybe a little later than she should, and you could still show us what she went through. Mrs. Know-It-All agreed: you didn’t need to show that door closing and her being stuck.
They changed one other thing, and I get why. You’re supposed to go through the arches naked, with nothing, because on the other side you have clothes and things and you are whoever you are in that universe. Here she’s in her undergarment.
People ask whether I want to see the same story I read. Yes, I do. I want to see how they visualize it. I want this brought to life in a way that’s only ever been in my imagination. So stop getting crazy with it.
They do come back around. She does finally come out. I literally thought we were going to have to deal with her being in there for a while.
Coming to It Fresh
Mrs. Know-It-All loves this genre and she has no preconceived notions about how anyone’s supposed to look or behave. Their names are another story. She can never remember them, and it’s really an issue.
Her one real complaint is that the show is drawing out everybody finding themselves an awful lot. If Perrin could just shut up for two seconds and focus. The only one she feels is paying attention to anything is Egwene. Nobody wants to listen to an elder of any kind.
She’s liking it enough that it’s inspired her to go read the books, and we’re going to read them together. I warned her about the detail. Robert Jordan was a ridiculously detailed writer, and I wasn’t a huge fan of a lot of the minutia in the first couple of books. Once it gets rolling it’s okay. Her worry is that these actors are going to be the characters she sees in her head. Mine is that the books are very clear in how they describe people. I understand being diverse and wanting something everybody can identify with, but I feel like some of the changes were unnecessary. I don’t want to shift too hard into that when we don’t know what’s coming.
The Seanchan, and a Few Things for the Road
We get to meet the Seanchan, who I like and don’t like. One of them is Lady Suroth. I believe, and I could be wrong and I’ve got to double check this, so comment below if I’m wrong, because I know you guys love doing that, that she’s the one who ends up with Mat in the books, and she’s described as diminutive and small. The one on the throne with the big long nails is a tall woman. And Suroth is supposed to be bald on one side of her head. Maybe it’s a headdress she’s wearing.
Min has a viewing where she sees Mat seemingly stabbing Rand. I’m not spoiling anything. You need context, and from the books I know why it happens. Mrs. Know-It-All likes that Min doesn’t have the context either, so she’s almost forced not to say anything. She’s not going to walk up and tell you you’re going to kill your friend.
Shout out to Amar Chadha-Patel, who was in Willow. He was a Shienaran and he did really good.
The Verdict
The Wheel of Time Season 2 premiere gets three scores from me, one for each episode: a 6 out of 10 for episode one, a 7.0 for episode two, and an 8.0 for episode three. Normally we do the big giant score on the screen. I’m not doing that with three of them.
They go up on a rising scale. The six is about how slow episode one was more than how good or bad it was. Episode three frustrated me, but once I got past the thing that was upsetting me, the story happening in it is actually really good.
Mrs. Know-It-All and I usually land pretty close, and we didn’t here. She gave the first episode an 8. She’d rewatched the last two episodes of season one, so she was very entertained, remembering things while new stuff came in. She gave the second a 7, because it was good and it just was okay. And she scored the third highest of the three for that last scene when Nynaeve comes out of the arches.
I’m excited for next week, and I like what they’ve built. Amazon’s doing a really good job with their fantasy stuff, and they’re staking their claim as a source for that kind of material. It’s a global release at midnight over in the UK, which means we got all three episodes at eight o’clock last night. I get to watch it at a normal evening time.
Tell us what you thought of the first three episodes, what color those aprons were, and whether I’ve got Lady Suroth right. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
