The Wheel of Time is one of the most well known series in the genre of Fantasy, even if it never really penetrated into general non-genre consciousness during its publication. If you're reading my blog, you probably have heard of the series before, and well, you might have even read it. I actually haven't read the books before, although from cultural osmosis (and occasional TVTropes browsing), I have been somewhat spoiled - I knew who the prophesied Dragon (the chosen one of the series) is, and I knew the general concept of the series. But otherwise, I've gone into this series blind, enjoying the show on its own merits, rather than trying to compare and contrast it to the books that came first (unlike how I watched Game of Thrones).
So how did I like the Wheel of Time? I found it fairly enjoyable fantasy of the traditional sense, with it feeling very very Tolkieny at times, enough to keep me interested, but not enough to recommend it to anyone who wasn't also already interested in fantasy. The story struggled with pacing, with its first three episodes rushing so much that character development of the main characters suffered, but got significantly better after that. So I'm still on board for the already announced Season 2. There's plenty of potential here to improve too, so hopefully the show does that next season (with one major recasting)....
More specifics after the jump - Note: Spoilers for all 8 episodes:
So the Wheel of Time has some very Tolkieny aspects right from beginning to end: You have a fantasy world which has had multiple eras known as "Ages", you have an unnamed "Dark One" whose forces include what are essentially mobs of orcs, you have a guiding character who is magically powerful (Moraine, playing the Gandalf role at first), and well, at the end of the series you have a stubborn martial city known for defending the borders who suddenly finds itself on the verge of falling due to their arrogance and pride in refusing help. This is all very familiar, and I'm sure will push away people who find these things puerile - I obviously don't, but that prejudice towards fantasy is still very real, and The Wheel of Time is so familiar that I can't imagine it overcoming it.
It also is so epic that the series has trouble slowing down at times to develop its characters, something that is a real problem with its trio of male protagonists: Rand, Mat*, and Perrin. Whereas the series stops at times to focus on other characters and give them full character arcs, none of these three really have character arcs that are independent and their own. Basically our three male leads are introduced and meant to be developed in the first episode or two, before we really expand the world, but those episodes are so rushing through the plot we never really spend a moment to breathe - I really wish they'd given us a full episode in the Two Rivers getting to know them all to make their characters feel more in depth, but instead the show gives us basically half of one before having the Trollocs come to force them all to leave.
*Mat is being recast for Season 2, and is basically absent from the last two episodes entirely, and I suspect that his minimization was due to issues with his actor, so I can forgive that at least.*
Rand is the worst at this, being the eventual chosen one, as he has basically no character traits or arc other than "I love Egwene, but am jealous of her possibly choosing another path". He's generic hero, and well the show even leans into this being his only character trait with his moment of triumph coming when he realizes that loving Egwene while preventing her from making choices would be wrong and is something he couldn't do to her - his character arc is centered around her, not him. Who is Rand now that he's seemingly said goodbye to Egwene? I have no idea, and I'm not sure the show knows either, which is a problem given that he's our series' main hero! It doesn't help that Rand and Egwene don't really have any super chemistry on screen, as 99% of their interactions are him being jealous rather than actually flirting and being interesting.
Perrin is similar - we get that he killed his wife accidentally and his time with the Tinkers (I forget their fantasy-esque name) makes him aspire to pacifism, and that he has some magical connection with wolves. But well, we never get enough time with him before he killed his wife to see how this changes his mind, and until the final episode, he never really faces a choice between pacifism and fighting, and even there I really didn't even notice that was his problem about trying to figure out what to do in the conflict until another person pointed it out in another review. Like there's a plot arc here I can at least see, but it's so underbaked (not helped by episode 7 randomly asserting he has romantic interests towards Egwene out of nowhere) that it just doesn't work.
I could go on with Mat as well, but well you get the point. We don't really get to know any of these characters and who they independently are, so seeing them change isn't really showing us anything.
What makes this doubly frustrating is that the show does so so well with other characters. Nynaeve and Egwene both get tremendous development (with talk about Egwene's past building her up and Nynaeve getting extra time with Lan) that make them tremendous characters, and unlike Egwene/Rand, Nynaeve has TREMENDOUS chemistry with Lan, and I love the two of them so much. I will be rooting like hard for the show to get those two back together as soon as possible, and when it faked killing Nynaeve in the last episode, I was furious for a second there. Moraine is basically the series' main character, and her doubts and strength are really well done.
And this is also the case with so many minor characters, especially in the show's middle third where we deal with politics of the Aes Sedai and the White Tower and the others impacted in it. I know book readers on twitter told me they were frustrated by the fact that this attention was paid to characters who weren't in the books, but I loved all this, and just wished it came in addition to such focus on the leads, not just in place of. The same could be said of the series' antagonists - The Dark One showing up in the final episode just comes out of nowhere, and the dude Perrin recognizes who turns out to be his agent (who apparently was the peddler in the first episode) made no impact whatsoever, so seeing him is just kind of a "huh". The best epic fantasy doesn't need to have its bad guys be shades of grey, but at least we get to know them before we see our heroes face them. The closest we get to that here is with the Red Aja lady of the Aes Sedai (I forget her name), and she's clearly not one of the ultimate antagonists.
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