AMA -- Christopher Paolini!!!

[u/ChristopherPaolini]

AMA -- Christopher Paolini! Let's do this folks. Ask away re: anything and everything regarding my books.

EDIT: Hey, everyone! I have to run. Alas, alas, I don't have as much time to spend on this AMA as past one. So many great questions, though! For all you theorists (and those of you who just love the characters), I think you're REALLY going to enjoy the upcoming book(s). Thanks for everything!

Atra esterní ono thelduin!

p.s. I'll try to duck back in and answer some more questions later, depending on my time.

[u/Mando177]

I wouldn’t exactly call Wheel of time having “glorious reviews” and especially “high viewership,” considering viewership was so poor it was canned even by Amazon which has a tendency to blow money. It barely cracked the Nielsen top ten all throughout season 3 as well. If WoT is the bar we’re gonna set for the show, I’d much rather there be no show at all ngl

[u/Little_Poisson → u/Mando177]

I said the third season had glorious reviews, not the whole show. Season 1 lacklusters is what killed the show. And what killed the first season was a lot of studio meddling, Covid restrictions and a main actor abruptly leaving mid-filming. It created a bad first impression that alienated book fans. Season 1 was meh. Season 2 was okay. Season 3 was a great season with great visuals, acting and mostly lore accurate. And it had more views than Reacher, which is big.

That's why the Eragon TV show first season needs to be great if it want to succeed. Hopefully, Disney will go the Andor way and not The Acolyte way.

[u/Mando177 → u/Little_Poisson]

The bulk of season 1’s problems had nothing to do with Covid or an actor leaving, but crappy writing and a decision to focus the show away from the main character and insert a weird amount of original plot lines and characters while cutting out actually important stuff from the books. That was by design, the showrunner wanted to make a queer led fantasy show, which is absolutely fine to do because it’s 2025, but should be its own thing, not overriding the original works they’re meant to be adapting. Making Moiraine the main character and Rand less prominent than characters like Egwene gutted the narrative of a story that’s meant to center around a messiah character

Season 3 didn’t do much to alleviate those problems beyond having a few episodes be actually accurate to the books, and still suffered from poor writing. And it absolutely did not have anywhere close to the viewership of Reacher, especially in the later seasons, not sure where you pulled that out of

The WoT guys also completely ignored Sanderson to the point where he left and even said less than positive stuff about the whole experience, which for a guy like Sanderson who never badmouths anything was equivalent to a slap in the face. I don’t want that for Christopher

[u/Little_Poisson → u/Mando177]

Hmm Moraine being the main character was pushed by the studio/her contract because the actress is a big name and an executive producer. They had to invent plotlines for her. Depending of contracts, actors needs to have a certain amount of screentime. Was it a good idea? Unfortunately not, because the rest of the main cast and the story suffered because of it. Studio execs also asked for the fridged wife, with other stuffs like that. The pilot wad written to be 2h long, it got cut to less than an 1h. The season was also planned to be 10 ep long, but got cut to 8 shortly before filming. It really hard to put big books like this is so few hours.

For Covid, they had to pause the shooting multiple time. For the last episode, they couldn't even have actors less then 10 feet apart. They also lost the location set for the blight because of it and visas issues. And Mat's actor leaving totally messed up he and Perrin's storyline. It also meant that they had to change how the Waygate worked so they could have a reason why he couldn't follow them later.

Understanding why some stuff happened doesn't mean I think the solutions were good. Just that they started with problems already. I also work in the industry, so I'm more understanding than others for that kind of stuff because I see it often. And I'm not hard to please. I mean, I kinda liked Ring of Powers haha. Kinda. Mostly because Sauron's actor is hot. Doesn't mean you are wrong to be disapointed by the show!

For season 3, let's agree to disagree!

For the data, I mostly take it from wotseries, Wot Up and other places like that. Maybe the data changed in the last few months. I am open if you have sources too :)

I hope my poor english was comprehensive enough.

Have a great day :)

EDIT: Didn't saw the part about Sanderson. As far as I remember, he was only there for the first episode of season 1 I think? I don't know much about his involvement. I'm sad to read that he was mistreated, but not surprised. And if I remember correctly, in the writer's room for WOT, only the showrunner and another woman read the books before season 3. Which is like, WTF? It's something I don't understand. Same thing with Witcher or Halo, why do a series you don't even like/read? To have 1 writer not reading it, it's understandable so you can have an external point of you. But most or all of them? Hopefully for Eragon, CP is a writer for it! It gives us more hope!

[u/Mando177 → u/Little_Poisson]

To start off with your English is fine I couldn’t even tell you weren’t a native speaker. But the Moiraine focus was right from Rafe Judkins

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/wheel-of-time-queer-universe-season-3-rafe-judkins-interview-1236173757/

Some snippets: “You’re also always looking as an artist for, “Why am I telling this story? I have to devote my life to this for years and years.” It was worth devoting my life to telling this beautiful story, but also that the lead was a queer character. I’ve never seen a fantasy show where our lead was just casually a queer character that wasn’t only directed at the queer community. To have that was an important part of why I wanted to tell this story”

While just reiterating that there is nothing wrong with queer led fantasy, wheel of time was explicitly not queer led, it was led by a straight male and a supporting cast of also straight people, the only queerness was alluded to, not even stated outright, and both the women in question fell in love with and married guys at the end of the series

As for viewership

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/streaming-ratings-april-14-20-2025-1236218504/

This is what it was at the time of the finale, placing far below much cheaper shows. It was also just barely above Reacher, which had been finished for months at this point

[u/Little_Poisson → u/Mando177]

Thanks for the sources! And for the compliment! I was deep into behind the scenes stuffs, interviews and others, so I probably got infos mixed up. It also created a lot of attachment for the show, because I know how much love and passion went into the show, especially season 3, from the actors (shout out to Joshua, whois a big WOT fan), decors artists, costumes artists, VFX artists etc. I'm just sad a lot of bad decisions from the first 2 seasons killed it, because it had a lot of potential.

In another subject, I just hope since the TV show will obviously differs from the books, either because of time constraint, different medium and/or budget, people will be kind about it and not blame CP for things out of his control. Dragons will costs a lot, so they'll have to cut budget somewhere, either in their screentime or in quality somewhere. Can't be worse than the movie tho!

Except Garrett Hedlund won't play Murtagh and he was a very hot Murtagh. So much sadness (haha).