Everybody’s getting tortured (or re-cast) in the teaser for Wheel Of Time‘s second season
Amazon showed off a second season teaser for its other expensive fantasy adaptation at New York Comic Con this weekend
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Amidst all the hobbit-y hullabaloo for Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power at New York Comic Con yesterday, Amazon did take a few minutes to acknowledge that it does, in fact, still have another expensive adaptation of a best-selling fantasy franchise on its TV docket: The Wheel Of Time.
At a panel for the show’s upcoming second season yesterday, series creator Rafe Judkins talked with fans about the show’s already-completed run of episodes which has yet to set a release date. (Although if we had to guess, “Some time after Rings fever has started to die down in the general viewing public” seems like a safe pick, if only not to invite unflattering expectations or comparisons.) Among other things, Judkins talked a bit about the introduction into the show’s world of the Seanchan, an army of magically empowered invaders who pop up in Robert Jordan’s second Wheel Of Time book to upend the ages-old battle between good-aligned magic users and the ominous, lazily named Dark One.
We get a brief glimpse of this new threat (they’re the ones with the long metal nails) in a new teaser for the show’s second season, which also shows off a few other big changes—namely, the replacement casting of Dónal Finn as main character Mat Cauthon, with Finn taking over the part from Barney Harris. (Finn was one of a handful of actors from the show to appear on stage with Judkins; Ceara Coveney, who’s joining the series as renegade princess Elayne in its second season, was another.) We also just get a whole bunch of shots of things getting worse all around, in the aftermath of the general bed-shitting that happened during the first season finale, as Rosamund Pike’s Moraine remains apparently powerless, and Josha Stradowski’s Rand seems to get himself tortured on a big ol’ wheel.
Wheel Of Time has currently been renewed up through a third season on Amazon.
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Flashing ~100 stills in 15 seconds is a bad way to make a recap. I’m not at risk for seizures as far as I know and it still made me feel slightly ill.Looks like a lot of cool stuff for the new season though. There’s so much specific imagery about the Seanchan that’s hard, impossible, or problematic to pull straight from the books, so the few things I’m seeing here, like the fake fingernails and the heavily remodeled helms, look okay. Finn seems fine too, hopefully he’s as good as Barney was if he’s going to have to be carrying Josha and Marcus through the season again.
I do have to wonder if they retain the accent that’s described in the books— a sort of southern, Texas drawl— which always seemed hilariously incongruous with all the nasty shit the Seanchan do, and even just all the ‘regular’, archly ceremonial stuff.(I’m gonna guess that instead they’ll be vaguely British like villains in these things always seem to be)
While there are certainly multiple issues with Rings of Power, it is a best-of show in comparison to S1 of Wheel of Time.Maybe Judkins will figure out how to somehow make time in the show for some sort of main plot during S2, which was almost entirely absent during S1. He instead spent most of the first season on a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to rewrite the world to fit in stories he’d wished WoT had told rather than adapting the 10,000 or so pages of source material he’s got in front of him. (And as much controversy as it generated when he mentioned it pre-release, it’s now pretty clear why Amazon sent thousands of notes.)Or maybe he gets replaced by S3, which probably would be the best outcome.
If there’s a S3, I’m genuinely surprised Amazon is spending money on both WoT and LOTR.
S3 got formally picked up at Comic Con a couple months ago, so it’s mostly a hope that someone competent will be running it by then.Too big to fail is probably how I’d describe RoP – and apparently is how someone internally did so – which means that pulling the plug on it won’t happen unless they suddenly don’t have the AWS/Prime cash flow to cover the bleeding. Doing so earlier would have massive repercussions for future properties, including the rumors they want to convince the estate to make another Tolkien something (albeit not as audaciously as Netflix.)WoT apparently has drawn very good minutes, so since that’s how they’re marketing their reach in pitches, the show’s quality may not matter unless there’s a significant decline in eyeballs or Judkins gets into a fight with them. I’m hoping for the latter.
Rings of Power is supposed to be a kid-friendly fantasy series. Wheel of Time is supposed to be more adult-oriented Game of Thrones-like fantasy series, a replacement series for the scrapped Amazon Conan the Barbarian series. So they are trying to appeal to different market segments.
I’m pretty sure that an episode of TRoP cost about 6x an episode of WoT. Like WoT has many, many problems that aren’t money related, but great worldbuilding that TRoP has done is in part due to a massive CGI budget.
Maybe they can make WoT for cheap on discarded LOTR sets, the way Roger Corman used to rent sets of completed movies for a couple of weeks before they were destroyed to make his low-budget movies.
some sort of main plot during S2, which was almost entirely absent during S1That’s a fair criticism. I honestly think they just need waaaay more episodes per season, as I think the primary reason why this happened is because there is so much worldbuilding necessary (even with a lot of the excising they’ve already done). And the less time they have, the more likely it is that the worldbuilding overtakes practically everything else.
In all the analysis about what was wrong with the show, it’s a shame that the main plot criticism didn’t get more play because it really was at the root of the issues. It’s even worse since unlike much of the rest of the series, at its core EoTW had a fairly solid spine to build around even if contained tropes: the Dark One desperately wants to find the next Dragon to either kill him or turn him. The two episodes that contained significant elements of this were, unsurprisingly, the most watchable. To your point, I think the problem was that Judkins made his most arrogant and near fatal mistake deciding the season’s focus would be fleshing out his preferred world first and then everything else would come after. If he’d focused on the hunting of the 5 and built up the world around that, he still could have incorporated probably 70%+ of the world building, saved the remainder for next year, and made the show vastly more interesting even if he’d made many of the same other mistakes.It’s also why I’m comfortable directing such severe criticism of him as a showrunner; keeping a show focused over a full season is a specific part of that particular job description. It was the sole chance he had in the entire series to work from a very adaptable roadmap, yet he made the deliberate decision to chuck the whole thing and indulge himself.We’ll see if he recovers, but I’m not optimistic based on his track record.
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RoP is WoT with more money, that’s all. It’s as bad from every point of view but looks better (and not by much).
I had only ever heard of WoT being very convoluted and knew literally nothing about the story before watching the show, and while the show seemed to struggle with a coherent narrative, the breadcrumbs it laid starting after the episode when the manservant funeral happened were entertaining enough to someone who didn’t have any expectations going in
90% of the criticisms of the show come from fans of the book series that don’t like changes from the source material. The show wasn’t perfect, but not nearly as bad as some people want to make it out as. Add in the production issues due to COVID and one of the leads quitting the show before filming was done, requiring the last two episodes to be rewritten on the fly, and I’d say we got a respectable season. I do agree that it would benefit from longer seasons though.I would also say a not insignificant amount of criticism also seems to be specifically targeted at the “wokeness” of the show.
Maybe Judkins will figure out how to somehow make time in the show for some sort of main plot Nonsense. They spent all the running time on the Dragon and the Dark One, especially compared to the meandering of the book series.
To be fair, “the Dark One” isn’t the actual name of the the big bad, but rather a name the people have adopted to refer to it because they believe saying the actual name, Shai’tan, brings the Dark One’s attention upon you and presumably that will cause you pain and suffering.
Not to mention that different cultures have different names for him, which is a lot more realistic than everyone everywhere using the same term: the Aiel, the Sea Folk, various nations around Randland, Darkfriends, even the wolves have their own name for him.
Yeah, just like how the Devil has so many names.
That was a stupid, cheap shot. Leaving aside the fact that this series was written over 30 years ago, when fantasy was basically just Tolkien and Robert E Howard Conan books, “The Dark One” is a perfectly fine name for an evil entity. People are not exactly creative when it comes to naming stuff like that. Look no further than us still calling the September 11th attacks… September 11th.
Leaving aside the fact that this series was written over 30 years ago, when fantasy was basically just Tolkien and Robert E Howard Conan books This is some world-class projection.
There were tons of fantasy novels more nuanced and better written when Wheel of Time came out — many of them commercial and critical hits.
This series was a big hit because it was a good next step for people who had finally gotten exhausted reading Dragonlance novels, not because it was any sort of artistic high-water mark, even in the early 1990s.
I found Season 1 so disappointing. It all seemed so – average. Bland. The pacing, the storytelling, the casting – all just – meh! All I remember of it now is one standout scene with a pregnant woman in battle. Everything else is a blur. Only actors that stood out for me were that pregnant actress, Sophie Okonedo in her brief scenes, and that one Red Aes Sedai who seemed like an adversary to Moraine. Everyone else seemed to either be sleepwalking or acting like they are on stage at a play in drama school. (An aside – I have a soft spot for the books because they bring back memories of being an exchange student in France for a year, they kept me sane during long journeys I’d have to make back-and-forth about once a month : I would literally start a Wheel of Time book the minute I stepped out the door and be completely engrossed in it during the one hour train from my parents’ home in North London to Waterloo station, then the wait for the Eurostar, then the 3-hour train journey to Paris, then the train between Paris stations, then the 3-hour train journey from Paris to Nancy, then I’d arrive at the university residence exhausted from hours the cramped train seats, but would lie in bed still reading the book!)
That’s because, if I remember correctly, they were approximately six thousand pages each.But seriously… I’d meant to watch this, since I actually have Prime as opposed to most of the dozens of other streamers, and I’ve read the books (er, most of them), but just completely forgot the show existed. Though it sounds like I haven’t missed anything.
… I’d meant to watch this, since I actually have Prime as opposed to most of the dozens of other streamers, … Though it sounds like I haven’t missed anything.Well, don’t let me put you off, you might as well give it a try. I was following the AV Club episode reviews and commentary while watching season 1, and I can say many of the other readers of the book had more favourable comments about the series – and actors – than I did …
The acting was weirdly stilted aside from Pike. If they were going to go with a main cast of unknowns they should have peppered the series with some notable character actors to give it some life. Also, visually it just needed something more.
The acting was weirdly stilted aside from Pike.I was just racking my brain trying to think which of the boys is called Pike (there’s a Rand, there’s a Mat …) until it dawned on me you mean Rosamund Pike. Wasn’t impressed with her either, to be honest – I’m a bit tired of her constipated ice maiden act. (someone like Cate Blanchett would have killed it in that role). She may have worked if alongside a real ensemble of ‘notable character actors’ as you say, but as it was she was left to carry the show and the weight was clearly too much, in my opinion(Off-topic about Rosamund Pike – I’m English, was on holiday in Miami this summer and every 5 minutes on TV there was an ad for JP Morgan Money(or was it Goldman Sachs Money?) with Rosamund Pike making fun of banks that give free pens. And I thought, why are they getting her to do an American accent for this ad? Made no sense, anyone who knows the actress knows she has a plummy English accent, so her American one feels inauthentic … and is inauthenticity really what you want people to be thinking of when they see your company’s commercial? And Gone Girl and Bond villain are her two biggest roles – found it an odd choice that someone famous for playing untrustworthy psychos is the face of your bank!)
I mean, I’m excited – if only for the fact that the stars aren’t going to align on this thing a second time. Post-GoT means there’s interest, we have a studio willing to put money and promotion into it, we have Harriet McDougal’s blessing, and peripheral involvement from Brandon Sanderson. I know Judkins hasn’t earned himself a lot of fans, but he strikes me as being passionate about the project and fully committed, in spite of the extremely challenging task. I’m holding out hope that a few seasons will enable it to find its footing.Season one wasn’t perfect…but it had its moments. Some of my personal favorites involving Tam and Tigraine on the slopes of Dragonmount. Something I also kind of loved cause it was never depicted in the books.
Agreed. The first season had its rough patches (that finale was rushed), but the world building was pretty impressive (Tar Valon didn’t disappoint).The criticisms I gleaned about Season 1 from the comments is that it meandered too much and didn’t stick to Eye of the World’s plot. But it’s Robert Jordan; his plots are terrible! The reasons I loved his books in high school were: the detailed magic system, the Aes Sedai (despite being cheap Bene Gesserit knockoffs), and the Forsaken. It wasn’t because of cardboard characters and glacial plots that didn’t matter anyway because everything was solved with a giant magic battle in the last few chapters.There were cool elements in the books, but they were certainly not sacred texts. For all the flak Judkins has received, the guy is a genuine fan. He’s going to try to make something good that also stays true to the books. For my part, I hope he Secret Wars this shit, using the parts he likes and dumping the rest.
I mean, you definitely used the right still. Season 1 was okay….The second half was miles better than the first…..So we’ll see how this all turns out…
I figured out the Chosen One – or whatever – was going to be the bland white himbo pretty fast and lost interest in whatever this is.
Glad to see you’re still keeping up with it then.
Ah, poor WOT. Always compared to LOR, finally given a time to shine, and it’s LOR all over again.
big problem for this show: the source material is embarrassing crap
I sure hope Amazon got some accountants to figure out where all of Season 1’s budget went, because none of it ended up on the screen. They can either slash the budget by 90% or cut off the cocaine supply and see a massive increase in quality.
A lot of discussion here about whether Rings of Power, Wheel of Time or House of the Dragon are the better show. I want to add Shadow and Bone (Netflix) into the mix, which I feel is the best of the lot! I just want season 2 of Shadow and Bone 🙁