There Are Neither Beginnings or Endings to the Turning of the Wheel of Time. But the show had to begin somewhere…

Amazon Prime’s adaptation of the Wheel of Time has been fraught with controversy. For a beloved series older than many of the viewers, changes to the basic premise were tantamount to blasphemy.

But we already have a means of adapting a book 1v1 to another medium: it’s called audio. For a visual, on-screen adaptation that isn’t roughly 460 hours long, the series had to change. Or… adapt. It’s right there in the name.

Mini-rant: Movies and TV shouldn’t be 100% faithful to the book(s). The art and artifice is in the choice of how to adapt them.

So, right off the bat, we have an ensemble cast, any of whom may be the Dragon Reborn. Honestly, even knowing who it was supposed to be from the books, the chance that the might have changed it lent a little extra depth to the supporting characters that might have lacked if you felt like, from the start, they weren’t as important. Eventually, all the main cast was destined to see their time in the spotlight.

• If you’ve read the books or are familiar with the story, you may get frustrated from the get-go with the changes.
• The production values are high. Not quite top-tier, but certainly great costuming and pretty good magical effects. In terms of prestige TV, I’d say it falls short of the Witcher and various Game of Thrones properties, but certainly better than many.
• The series improves with each season (at least through Season 3), so if you’re on the fence about this one, stick with it.

It’s hard to say definitively where this falls overall. If it’s done, as officially declared by Amazon, it’s a little disappointing that it ended abruptly.

But if someone rescues it and it lives on, it has a lot of ground left to cover before a canonical, book-certified ending. It was always a tall task to commit to a series this long and dense. I think it deserves a chance to keep moving forward.