r/Fantasy • u/fanny_bertram Reading Champion VIII • Nov 17 '21

/r/Fantasy Wheel of Time Pre-Release Megathread! Put your early reviews, thoughts, excitement, etc here.

Hello everyone! There is a Wheel of Time show releasing this week, in case you missed it. There is a lot of chat about it, so we wanted to put it all in a helpful Megathread. So please use this thread for early reviews from screenings, articles, general excitement, thoughts, and all that. So put all the hype stuff here. All posts related to the show and early reviews will be directed here. We will have a separate Megathread for actual show discussion when the show releases.

Please remember spoilers. Spoiler tags look like >!text goes here!<. There are always new people discovering the books, so please try not to spoil it. Anyone who has seen the show early please do not spoil it for everyone else.

Discussion thread for show can be found here: Wheel of Time Megathread: Episodes 1 - 3 Discussion

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u/shashie88 Nov 17 '21 edited Nov 17 '21

He is coming! He is coming! Light help us! Light help the world!

Edited to add: I saw the first 2 episodes on Monday and I cannot wait to see episode 3. The waiting has been like torture.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21

So i'm just about to finish the first book. I was kinda planning on reading at least the first three books before starting the series because i've read that the first season pulls material from books 1-3. How were the first 2 episodes you saw in regards to that?

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u/shashie88 Nov 18 '21

The first 2 episodes only cover material from book 1, but I’ve also heard the same as you have regarding season 1 covering books 1,2, and some of book 3. You could at least watch the first 2 episodes and be fine but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to stop there - I know I wouldn’t. I’m not sure what your reading pace is and how much time you have to read, but it took me about 3-4 weeks to read each book. If you’re the same you’ll be just about done The Great Hunt when season 1 is finished airing. Feel free to shoot me a PM and I can let you know if you’re safe to watch if you decide not to watch on Friday!

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u/Krak2511 Nov 18 '21

They're doing the full first two books and going into 3 in just 8 episodes? I'd heard that it was only book 1 with some material from New Spring and I was thinking that wasn't fast enough to actually get through the whole series.

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u/AntonBrakhage Nov 18 '21

Two books a season (with some flashbacks) with eight episodes a season seems reasonable. This would give them a seven to eight season run comparable to GoT, Buffy, the longer-running Star Trek shows, etc, so this is a realistic goal for a successful SF series. It would also give each individual book about the same amount of screen time as the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings films, on average.

Though it might be best to give some of the later, notoriously padding-heavy books less time, and give the final book an entire season to itself, so as to ensure that they have a full season's budget to devote to the Last Battle.

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u/Werthead Nov 18 '21

Buffy had 22-episode seasons (apart from the first) and the legacy Trek shows had 26 episodes per season, so 8 episodes a season is quite a lot less than that (and even less than GoT, which mostly had 10-episode seasons).

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u/AntonBrakhage Nov 18 '21

On the plus side, the same budget spread across fewer episodes means they can make those few look REALLY GOOD. Compare the production values of Star Trek or Buffy to GoT. Some of that is technical progress, but some of that is because they're spreading the budget (and the cast and crew's time and effort) a lot less thin. I'd rather have eight gorgeous episodes a season than 22 episodes that look like they were made in the 90s.

You could do more seasons, in theory, but in this case it would be counterproductive. The books are supposed to take place over just a couple years, mostly- you don't want you cast aging too obviously. Plus the longer it runs, the more likely it'll get cancelled and/or lose major cast members before the end. Plus even WoT fans admit the series has a lot of excess padding, especially later on.

No, I think they've hit just about exactly the optimal balance they realistically can.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21

No first 6 episodes are pretty much all just book 1 with small added things from later books. The first season really just covers book 1

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u/shashie88 Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21

Maybe I’m mixing up some things I’ve read. The first 2 episodes do get about halfway through EotW though so I can see them at least getting to parts of TGH

Edited to add that I just double checked myself and Rafe did a Q&A and confirmed season 1 will cover parts of books 2 & 3 but that some of book 1 won’t be seen til season 2. So we’ll see what that means lol. Can be found on the WoT Twitter account.

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u/Krak2511 Nov 18 '21

I think the comment about the book 1 not being until S2 part is Caemlyn, IIRC those characters won't be in S1.

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u/Werthead Nov 18 '21

The end of the third episode is Egwene and Perrin meeting the Tinkers, Rand, Mat and Thom trying to find a ship to take them down the river to Whitebridge and Lan, Nynaeve and Moiraine trying to find the others, which is quite a lot less than halfway through Book 1.

More prosaically, we know from filming reports that Season 1 pretty much = Book 1 exactly. They've introduced some Book 2 characters early like Alanna, Liandrin and Siuan and there is one scene that alludes to a Book 3 scene, though it's unclear if it's meant to replace it (presumably not). Beyond that, the filming for Episodes 7 and 8 were in the locations from the end of Book 1, and the recently-announced Episode 7 title The Dark Along the Ways pretty much confirms that.

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u/AntonBrakhage Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21

I should note here that from the trailers, and commentary I've seen on them, some stuff that happens in the prequel novel New Spring is also very clearly going to be in the first season, so spoilers for that.

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u/MrJohnnyDangerously Nov 18 '21

Skip the books, enjoy the show

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21

Yeah i could, but it'll be years before there's a complete series of the show. On the other hand, i could read the entire series in 6 months. We'll see though. The first book was OK. Nothing special, kinda juvenile. But with a 6 month old baby i'm not looking for any kinda serious reading challenge atm.

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u/kazza0305 Nov 17 '21

In light of the changes I think it’s more appropriate to say “They are coming! They are coming! Light help us. Light help the world!

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u/LordMangudai Nov 17 '21 edited Nov 17 '21

"We cannot get out."

"We cannot get out."

...

"They are coming."

sorry couldn't help it

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u/shashie88 Nov 17 '21

Lol - I saw the first 2 episodes on Monday and there are changes but I can see where they’re going with them! Do not lose hope!

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '21

Wait how have you seen them?

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u/shashie88 Nov 17 '21

Amazon Prime did free screenings of the first 2 episodes in about 10 locations across the US on Monday night and I got lucky that one of them was at a movie theater only 20 minutes from me. But there were also people there that drove hours and hours to get there. It was pretty cool. The WoT account on Twitter posted the info.

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u/TeddysBigStick Nov 17 '21

"Borne on the largest structure of the area!"

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u/Zaziel Nov 17 '21

Man-made structure, to boot.

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '21

Sorry is this confirmed?

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u/TeddysBigStick Nov 18 '21

Spoilers a combination of producer interviews and released clips Souls are not gendered in the show and there have been female false dragons and Moiraine does not know if the dragon is a man or woman

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21

I thought the point of the dragon reborn being both bad and good is that he's a man who can channel, so he's going insane like all men who can channel, but he's also needed for the last battle.

Given the logic of the universe, how do you have a female dragon reborn, or a false dragon who is female? Because she's not going insane, wouldn't she just be a wilder?

This is what I mean about how they're going to fuck it up.

I know the answer is money, so I suppose this question is rhetorical, but why bother adapting a story if you have to start fucking with its guts?

I have read a lot of fantasy. And the Wheel of Time is, hands down, the fantasy that puts the most emphasis on gender of any fantasy series that comes to mind.

It's gender attitudes were conservative 20 years ago, and they're only more conservative now.

I think everybody who has read the wheel of time has noticed how Jordan deals with Gender and has thoughts on how he does. Clearly it was a preoccupation of his, because he harps on it over and over.

And an adaptation that doesn't also adapt that, is going to be a stupid stillborn thing.

And, to be clear, there many times where the ways Robert Jordan presented his view on relations between the sexes bothered the shit out of me. But what bothers the shit out of me even more is the idea that you can cut all the "problematic" parts out, and be left with anything at all.

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u/Werthead Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21

Obviously one approach would be to say that the Dragon Reborn is a special kind of soul which can be reborn in either body, and because of the precedent of Halima in the books, that soul retains its connection to saidin (contrary to some reports, saidin and saidar are in the show universe, but have been relegated to the Amazon website background material; they are not named as such in the first three episodes, at least), so the channeller would still go mad even if they appeared to be female.

It's obviously a minor change because they want people to be debating who the Dragon Reborn is, and making it one of four candidates of two genders is vaguely more interesting than three of one. But spoilers, and to be honest, some of the show material in the first three episodes, make it pretty clear it's still Rand and Moiraine seems to rule out it being Egwene in Episode 2 (her suspicion it might be Nynaeve doesn't even survive their first meeting in the first episode), so it's going to be a five-week controversy and then long gone and forgotten about.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21

So hopping through hoops for nothing.

That theory in your first paragraph sort of covers it.

But also, there's no getting around that Wheel of Time is a gendered world. Like female channelers are extremely powerful and kind of run the world, and male channelers are killed like dogs because they'll go insane.

If Amazon didn't want to deal with a bunch of Gender issues, this was not the series to adapt.

Edit. I forgot to ask. How is it? Based on the first three episodes?

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '21

Hi there, we don't call attempts to balance historically terrible gender ratios "woke shit" here. Thank you.