The second season of Prime Video’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s legendarily long epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time has come to an end. The first season received mixed reviews, with critics complaining about a lack of time to adapt the book on which it was based, changes to the story that seemed to make very little sense, and cheesy special effects. The second season, so far, has achieved better reviews.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Which Season of The Wheel of Time is Better?
Overall, the pacing of Season 2 of The Wheel of Time is better, and the plot is much more solid. Season 1 spent a lot more time trying to find the Dragon Reborn, which turned out to be Rand (Josha Stradowski). The thing is, Rand’s identity as the Dragon Reborn is known from the first pages of the novel, something that’s very different in this adaptation than in others. In this production, the Aes Sedai sorceress Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) spends most of the first half looking for the Dragon Reborn from a pool of candidates, which both slows down the plot and causes Rand, the show’s main protagonist, to come across as undeveloped.
Other issues that affected Season 1 were a troubled production which included actors leaving the show, a series of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and difficulty animating the magic of the world the show is set in. Season 2 improves on all those fronts. The pandemic is over (thank God), the adaptation is more faithful, and the pacing is genuinely much improved since last season (although not perfect).
Valerie Vachkova and Xelia Mendes-Jones in ‘The Wheel of Time’
What’s the Same?
One of the core problems with the series cannot be solved with any improvements in production time, however. The eight-episode runtime of each series is simply too short to do justice to Jordan’s bricks of books, meaning that this TV series has to do some serious trimming to compress each of the novels in the series to tell a coherent story in the few episodes each season has. As a result, important turning point moments don’t have the depth or sense of gravitas that they should, crucial scenes for character development feel rushed, and the story as a whole feels more like a summary of the novels than an adaptation.
And yet, there’s a real sense that the plot is going nowhere. Prime’s The Wheel of Time seems to suffer from a surprisingly common ailment: the show is both too fast and too slow. Moments that should be huge, defining character traits are just given the bare minimum, while at the same time, the show stubbornly insists on toughing every main plot the novels have to offer. The result is something that would either benefit from cutting more of the novels (though it’s hard to say what, if any, they could cut and have the story still make sense) or a longer episode count. Sadly, neither of those things can happen, and so the work is stuck.
The Wheel of Time is streaming now on Prime Video.