Despite getting better and better with each season, Prime Video ultimately cancelled The Wheel of Time — and we’re still angry over it.
The wheel of time is my all-time favorite book series. That show was a travesty, and I’m deeply saddened that we probably won’t get another adaptation in my lifetime. I place the blame with the show runner Rafe Judkin’s because he thought he could write a better story than what already existed in the books. The show was only loosely based on the source material. Everything from the writing, to the set building, to the costumes all looked so cheap, like leftovers from a spirit Halloween day after sale. Rafe was responsible for all of these as show runner.
LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO MY BOY LOIAL HE DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS.
Anyone who was interested in the series I implore you to check out the books. It’s a long series but the payoffs are some of the best in all of fantasy writing.
I just wanted to see Dumais Wells. That’s all.
The trailer alone for it would have soaked my undies.
Fade to black The lull roar of combat and screams of battle, the screen fades in on the face of Mazrim Taim “Asha’man…” The screen flickers to the a group of men bursting with viscous black and red fibers of light crawling into the ground.
“Kill”
The screen goes black and from a distance the ripple passing through the Earth rises to wash fighters from the battle field.
There is no fight. There is only the one power and true terror. A 5-second trailer would have done it. I wanted that and they took it from me.
I’m so disappointed. "
I tried really hard a few times with the first book and I just couldn’t do it. Mat it just so fucking dumb with every single decision. I understand characters needing conflict but jfc it’s so, so bad in the first book. I really can’t get past it. Wolf boy or whatever was cool for a bit but every 15 minutes the book has to go back to mat and him whining about how every stupid thing he does rightfully fucks him over. I couldn’t stand it by halfway through the book.
Dear God. I’m so grateful that I stopped watching after 30 min of episode one. That is one unsettling screenshot. How could they butcher that so fucking bad? Fucking carrottop? Realy?
All Rafe cared about were ginger ninjas. Everything else was secondary to that.
Don’t get me wrong he also did poorly at that but it had his attention.
It could have been so easy to just bring the books to life. I understand some things do not translate from the page to the screen, but that should be the exception and not the rule.
Robert Jordan’s work is some of the easiest to translate to the screen because of how descriptive and long winded he is with world building. They took too many creative liberties in the wrong direction with that show.
I always feel a bit bad for actors that put a lot of time into these multi-season shows only for them to get cancelled. Like I’m sure they get paid well, but money isn’t everything for someone in the creative arts industry. Pike and others would have put quite a lot of time into developing their characters and it would be frustrating not to get closure, not to mention they might have missed out on other opportunities due to scheduling conflicts.
Why on earth do you feel bad. She got to be a well paid actress for three years. At any one time 95% of all SAG members are unemployed. She got a good threes years.
At any one time 95% of all SAG members are unemployed.
Wouldn’t this be a reason to feel bad when a handful of them lose their job?
No. It is part off the business.
Both things can be true though. Do you not feel sympathy for anybody who loses out on a passion project or has their “thing” cut short because others aren’t as fortunate? That can be extrapolated about 8 billion ways to the poorest person on earth.
I have read all the books and even wrote a thesis on it when I was in a Masters program. I tried watching the show and it was almost as awful as the Shannara Chronicles.
Shannara is another travesty of adaptations, right alongside the WOT AND Sword of Truth tv show travesties.
Sigh… I was so excited about the sword of truth. Instead we got… Xena.
My biggest problem was it being on Amazon prime. Sure I’ll sail the seas to watch it on day, but that doesn’t help it keep getting made and I’m sure as heck not giving Bezos money if I can help it
…Was the last season any good?
I quit halfway though season 1, but pike was charismatic. She basically carried the show from what I saw.
I guess that depends if you think it was cool to cut gaul and just use aviendha instead? On that don’t don’t you remember the time
Tap for spoiler
Aviendha and Elayne hooked up? And also when they make Perrin ACTUALLY kill Geofram Bornhald? Idk man it’s the easy way out all the way down.
They made Perrin kill his wife too, because the writers were too incompetent to make the hammer-vs-axe choice in a better way. And then they never bring it up again, except for angst reasons.
Brando sando talked about that on reddit and for episode one I can almost accept it… Idk
It got really good by the time they cancelled it. Haven’t read books but my gf did and according to her while there were major changes to the original it was still quite enjoyable. I enjoyed it for what it was.
I’ve read them multiple times and agree with your gf. They’re two different things with the same characters. I liked the show less than the books but I still liked the show and I’m sad it’s gone.
I think part of the problem is that they deviated way too far from the source material so fan favorites never really got their time on screen. Add to that some things they had to do due to covid and losing a great actor (at least my favorite of the EF5) before season 1 episode 8 and having to scramble to fix that mess and they lost a lot of people who would have been their biggest cheerleaders.
These are not complaints of mine, just some observations outside the racist and sexist bullshit rhetoric that surrounded parts of the show fandom.
racist and sexist bullshit rhetoric that surrounded parts of the show fandom.
…dare I ask what this was about?
I don’t know anything about the books, but what could it possibly be?
They had brown people for the Emond’s Field folks. A group didn’t like that. The women were competent in the show (and more competent than the dudes) than in the books (aes sedai notwithstanding). A group didn’t like that. Twice a woman did something seemingly impossible based on the rules set forth in the books. I actually agree that one of them was problematic, but not because it was a woman. My issue with it was that it was just a senseless and unnecessary change. But I didn’t run to the Internet to talk about how it ruined the show, the world, my faith in humanity, and how it’s the worst thing that ever happened to anyone ever.
So there was a split between people who read the books. People who enjoyed it overall (me), people who didn’t enjoy it because it changed too much from the source material (a valid stance and I see why they felt that way), and a persistent and loud group who were mad about brown people and women (shitbags).
It’s the weirdest complaint to me too because the only character that it really seems like we know has to be white is Rand and that’s only because typically only white people have red hair.
When I first read it I thought him being singled out as a white guy with red hair and that being so notable probably meant that tall redheaded white dudes are kind of rare around these parts. People guessed his ethnicity just by looking at him too.
The idea that everyone else would be some other shade of skin makes perfect fucking sense in that context.
I don’t like the way that they broke the rules of magic. It changes the stakes in ways that make the story less compelling but all of the racist and sexist nonsense is pathetic and sad. I’m not sure how people could read 14 of these books and come away thinking, “men are like this and women are like that” or some shit.
Sad…
TBH having a bad first season is a huge hit to a show these days. That’ll turn away the vast majority of streams.
I thought the last season was great, though I have no idea how faithful it was to the source material since I haven’t gotten that far in the books. However, the show is what recently got me to start reading the books, so say what you will about it, but I think the show at least had that positive outcome me.
I stopped when Rand went to Tar Valon almost at once and met Loial, and Loial failed to give the traditional aiel greeting when believing Rand to be aiel… I just turned it off mid episode
I hate watched it to the end of S1 but it was clear in the first couple episodes they were going to destroy the book narrative and replace it with a vastly inferior one, meaning i would never get to see the wheel of time on screen, which is the only reason I watched it in the first place.
The show was trash, she was great in it.
I’ve not read the books, but I did not care for the series. I only got 2 episodes in.
I wish someone would make a good high budget Earthsea series.
I wish someone would make a good high budget Earthsea series.
There’s the 2004 miniseries, but it’s neither of those.
Is it the Syfy one? That one was meh.
unfortunately yes.
The books good but not great. Cool ideas but the writing could be better. My friend read a lot more of them than I did and after the original author died another guy picked up where he left off and those ones are apparently better.
You should just read the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind though. Disney tried to make a TV series about it and they fucked it up real bad.
Edit: wow people are really offended by my opinions of some fantasy novels. Sorry, everyone.
Haha I have the exact same opinion, right down to strongly preferring sword of truth.
I got through like 4 books of wheel of time and was just straight bored and put the series down, something I rarely did back then. It felt like the author didn’t know where he was going any more than the characters did… maybe I’d like it more now, but meh.
“Another guy” Brandon Sanderson is an amazing author not “another guy”.
Sword of Truth started okay, but I felt it quickly became a tract for Goodkind’s libertarianism, fascism, racism, and misogyny.
Huh, I did not pick up on that. Sword of Truth is better-written than the Wheel of Time imo.
Not only is it not better written, it’s notorious for literally stealing things from The Wheel of Time straight up. It’s some of the most blatant plagiarism I’ve ever seen in my life.
Also I refuse to believe you didn’t pick up on the libertarianism. He literally dedicated one of the books to Ayn Rand. The Sword of Truth is the worst book series I’ve ever read my life.
it’s notorious for literally stealing things from The Wheel of Time straight up.
I don’t disagree. I read SoT first and am aware it was written after WoT. That sucks but I had a hard time getting through WoT due to the writing style.
I refuse to believe you didn’t pick up on the libertarianism. He literally dedicated one of the books to Ayn Rand.
I listened to the audiobooks, mostly while driving. They don’t read who it was dedicated to, IIRC. I’ll have to check that out. I did pick up on some general philosophy that I disagree with on more than a few of the books, but it’s fantasy, it didn’t really bother me.
I also listened to WoT audiobooks, and the narrator makes a huge difference. In SoT they had this narrator, Sam Tsoutsouvas, who is just incredible.
Well I’m with you on the Wheel of Time audiobook narrators. I’ve never liked them at all.
Yeah the whole old empire thing was basically a giant socialism strawman (including equal distribution of sex from pretty women, lol) that he totally destroys by showing everyone by example how to pick yourself up by your bootstraps. And his author blurb says he a member of the Ayn Rand society or something like that. That shit didn’t start creeping in in a big way until the later books though (correction: it started early, I didn’t know he wrote 26 of the things). It was enough to put me off his follow-up series.
Edit: Shit, apparently he wrote 15 more after I stopped with book eleven, which really felt like a complete end to me, I was surprised way back then that there were any more. I don’t know how he managed to milk it that much.
He definitely milked it too much. In the later books he brought back some of the things from some of the early books which was frustrating.
Undoubtedly, at least until Brandon Sanderson took over. I enjoyed the last few books so much more due to the significantly better writing quality, but felt bad because Sanderson only took over because Robert Jordan died.
It’s also worth noting that the guy who picked it up was chosen by the previous guys editor (and wife), and was a consultant for at least the first season of the show… and while he offered some pointers, he ultimately thought the showrunners went in a direction he didn’t think was the best.
He’s also Brandon Sanderson, who’s known now for his connected universe works spearheaded by Mistborn and The Stormlight Archives.
I loved the sword of truth series, actually read it througg because of the tv show. It was not good.
A fun power fantasy, but it just got more and more formulaic and preachy over time.
The crazy thing is a huge chunk of the first book was a BDSM femdom fantasy, with both hard and soft dommes represented, and the series got less subtle after that.
I thought the series (of books) was great. The only complaint I had at the time was I thought 2-3 books around the start of the second half should have been condensed into one. But if I was reading it now with them all out it might not bother me. At the time I would be pretty annoyed that the main plot didn’t move much and now I had to wait for the next one.
I’m probably in the minority, but i liked the Sword of Truth TV series more than the books.
Even before before coming out, the gender essentialism in these books made me uncomfortable.
What is gender essentialism?
Men be like X, women be like Y, and there’s no nuance or middle ground.
In The Wheel of Time, only women are able to safely practice magic. Some men can get the ability, but if men use magic, they go insane. It’s just how the magic works.
There is a transgender aes sedai in the show. Also there is a forsaken that gets put in the opposite gender body in the books. I’d say that’s some nuance.
There is a transgender aes sedai in the show.
Really? I completely missed that. In-character-trans, or real-world-trans-in-character-not-discussed?
Real world trans. Lelaine Akashi is played by Rebecca Root. She’s the keeper of the chronicles in the past when the aes sedai choose Siuan as the amyrlin seat.
That explains why I missed it. I have no idea who she is, but I do like it!
this is because mens side of magic in one of the cycles got tainted, it wasnt always like this, they show it was different in the backstory parts when they show the past dragon
Some men can get the ability, but if men use magic, they go insane. It’s just how the magic works.
If I recall correctly, that does, turn out to be enforced by some powerful assholes, at least - not an intrinsic aspect of sexuality or gender.
But I don’t mean to claim that forgives the various essentialist tendencies. It all feels a little off.
Male side is tainted but yeah, if you are someone whi gets upset by their being a hard divide between whats male and female you wouldnt like it, but its fantasy, in this world ppl are always born as what they identify as
They are always the same gender across cycles, but different races and names
Im not. This is what happens when you eff with the source material.
I heard a rumour that the choice of show was between Wheel Of Time and Julian May’s Saga Of Pliocene Exile (my favourite sci-fi / fantasy series). At the time I was gutted we missed out but, seeing what Amazon did with WOT, I think we dodged a bullet.
I’ll try to upload a photo by Nick Dudman who was commissioned to make some artwork for the proposed SPE show (Felice at the Ship’s grave).
I tried to get into it a few times but it felt like it was all over the place both with character introductions and plots. Figured it was made for people who read the books.
Figured it was made for people who read the books.
Narrator: Surprisingly, it was not.
Exact opposite really.
This show was utter trash from the start. It’s scores are bought. There’s no way season 3 gets a legit 97%. All cap.
I’m delighted this nightmare of an adaptation is dead.
I liked it and I’m sad it’s gone. So there.
I also liked the books.
So it’s your fault, then.
I agree. Clearly that guy’s fault.
They ruined it for all of us!
Haven’t seen season 3 but I’ve been enjoying the show. I stopped in book 5 and started rereading the Sword of Truth and couldn’t go back.
… I don’t know if I’ve ever been more offended by a comment in my life.
Agreed. SOT is a preachy capitalist charade that never fully delivers on the fantasy it teases. I did enjoy it up to like, faith of the fallen. WOT is a vastly better epic fantasy.
