The Wheel of Time has the potential to be great, but for now, good enough will have to do.
The Wheel of Time has the potential to be great, but for now, good enough will have to do.
A seeming home-run ball clips the top of the fence and drops back into play. A wide receiver makes an acrobatic catch on what would be the game-winning throw, only to be tackled at the one-yard line. Amazon adapts The Wheel of Time. In each case, something done well is not done quite well enough, and you’re left wanting more.
The Wheel of Time, which began airing on Prime Video in late November, is adapted from the mega-popular book series of the same name, written by Robert Jordan and finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s untimely death in 2007. The series began with The Eye of the World, from which most of the events of the show’s first season are taken.
It doesn’t take a genius to discern Amazon’s aim here: It hopes that this series — and the as-yet-unnamed Tolkien series it has in development — will fill the Game of Thrones–shaped hole in our popular culture. Prime already has a bona fide superhero hit in the anti-Marvel The Boys; can The Wheel of Time give it a fantasy hit?
Not quite. At least not yet.
The Wheel of Time is the story of a medieval fantasy world in which a Dark One (of course) is trying to take over, and a prophesied Chosen One (of course) is the only person who can stop him. This chosen one is called the Dragon, an infinitely reincarnated version of a hero who comes along every few thousand years or so. The problem? No one knows who the Dragon will turn out to be or where to find them.
As the show opens, we join a sorceress named Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) who is on the hunt for the Dragon Reborn. She finds five candidates in a single village: three young men and two young women. She takes them on a quest to the Eye of the World, hundreds of miles away, where the Dragon will be revealed and have to confront the Dark One to decide the fate of the world. They’re chased the whole way by trollocs and fades (think orcs and black riders from The Lord of the Rings) and worse. Eventually, the fated confrontation takes place and is quickly resolved . . . sort of. (The writers leave enough loose ends for a second season, which has already begun filming.)
If this broad outline makes the story sound formulaic, that’s because it is. While The Wheel of Time’s generic quality is not a problem — story formulas have evolved for a reason — it does make for a show that’s highly dependent on its writing and performances, both of which are merely fine.
The writing is serviceable — at times stilted, at times clever, only rarely so bad that it’s a distraction. The performances are about the same. Pike is on hand to lend some gravitas and acting chops, which she does admirably. Among the five potential Dragons, we have a good performance (Barney Harris as Mat, who is unfortunately not returning for season two), a bad one (Marcus Rutherford as Perrin), and a few decent ones (Madeleine Madden as Egwene, Zoë Robins as Nynaeve, and Josha Stradowski as Rand). Stradowski gets the least interesting job through most of this season, though that should change as the story progresses. We’ll see what he can do with it.
As a fantasy adaptation, The Wheel of Time lands somewhere between Peter Jackson’s excellent Lord of the Rings films and MTV’s/Spike’s execrable Shannara Chronicles. Plenty of major changes have been made — enough to get some longtime fans of the books up in arms — but the core story remains intact, and the characters and scenes for the most part look and feel the way they should.
Of course, the first question for any adaptation shouldn’t be how it does as an adaptation per se, but rather how it does as a story vehicle in its own right. And by that metric, The Wheel of Time mostly does well. It has plenty of interesting characters (especially secondary ones outside the main group) and set pieces, with enough background lore to choke a cave troll. Its major problem is perhaps that it doesn’t know its own strengths.
The show is at its weakest in the first and last episodes of the season, when it’s either setting up or attempting to resolve the monumental, world-shifting events of the Dragon-vs-Dark One confrontation. It’s at its strongest when telling smaller, personal stories: Mat and Rand visit a dingy mining village, where a friendly resident isn’t what they thought; an Aes Sedai (sorceress) is killed, and her companion is driven to suicide by his grief; Perrin and Egwene meet some peace-loving fantasy hippies and are seduced by their nonviolent ways. Perhaps the best sequences in the eight-episode run are those in the White Tower, where various Aes Sedai factions vie for power, and where Sophie Okonedo turns in a show-stealing performance as their supreme leader.
Unfortunately, interesting plotlines like these are too often abandoned as the show gets dragged back into its apocalyptic main story. The wandering hippies have a delightfully creepy kid who wants to run away with Egwene for his own little Rumspringa. He’s given plenty of screen time and development . . . until being unceremoniously abandoned by the writers, with no indication of a future role. Then there are the Whitecloaks, a group resembling a cartoon version of the medieval Spanish Inquisition. Despite being a menacing cult that does horrific violence in the name of righteousness, one that even the Aes Sedai are afraid of, the group is ultimately no more than a speed bump for a couple of our main characters on their way toward the epic finale.
Presumably, many of these side plots will be revived in future seasons. But that means that The Wheel of Time has sacrificed tight storytelling for potential future payoffs. Perhaps it will work out. But it means that the first season suffers from too much bloat. Rather than telling a complete, self-contained story, it ends up feeling like one long prologue.
On balance, this is a good show — just not a great one. But failing to hit a home run isn’t the same as making an out, and it’s not the end of the game. The Wheel of Time still has . . . well, time to find its footing. If the writers remember that characters and relationships are more important than cataclysms, they might even make this a show worth recommending to nearly everyone, rather than just fantasy addicts and lifelong Robert Jordan readers.
