I gave it a chance, even got my wife to watch it. but holy crap. That last episode SUCKED.
My wife enjoyed it as a nonreader, but even she said the last episode was weak and didn't really make sense. I rate the whole show 5/10. No depth or substance to make it a classic.
Maybe goes 3 seasons.

Well watched all the episodes. They have deviated so far from the books the story is barely recognizable. It os one thing to condense or merge plot lines to make the show work. It is another to just rewrite it all together.

I think I've come to the conclusion they should have stayed closer to the book in season one. Add in another 3 or 4 episodes to world build and explain the main characters. If they need to condense books the middle ones are much easier to do so once the characters have been introduced and developed. Put in more episodes per season and drop the total number of seasons from 8 to 6.

For as decent of a job they have done in developing the main female characters of Egwene, Nynaeve, Moraine and even Min, they have absolutely dropped the ball on Rand, Perrin and Mat. If I hadn't read the books, I wouldn't know hardly anything about the 3 most interesting characters. The fact that the 3 boys are the only Ta'Veren in the books and the world adapts and conforms to their decisions above almost all others is totally being left out to this point.

Like someone said earlier, they are trying way to hard to make everything equal between male and female characters. It feels to me they have gone beyond that even and are trying to place way to much emphasis on the female power, authority and equality when they don't really need to do so. The female characters as they were written in the book were already strong, competent and interesting. It feels like they are trying to be PC and cater to an overly exaggerated female importance so far while totally leaving out character development for the 3 boys. If they don't build the Rand, Perrin and Mat characters a whole lot more in season 2, I'm probably out going forward.

I'll be honest, I tended to skim a lot of the parts of the books where it was just female characters being petty with each other or repetitively fumbling around being bitter about things. To me, Jordan just didn't write likeable female characters for the most part. Moraine and Aviehnda were awesome in the books but most of the time, Nynaeve, Egwene and Elaine were 70% annoying/30% bad asses.

Didn't read the books and just finished the season last night. I am probably 50/50 on whether I pick it up again for season 2. There isn't any character they developed into something that is actually interesting. They are all kinda bland and didn't connect with me at all. Their best chance for me to watch more is to release season two in a real dead time. Maybe if you sci-fi dorks say it is really good, it might sway me.

The Witcher

Some problems I haven't yet seen in here:

1. If you give a Braveheart speech, everyone better die.
2. If you show us women and children as the last line of defense loading Chekhov's ballista, you'd better fire the thing.

What you absolutely do not do is have Braveheart himself die and then have one chick behind him clap her hands and destroy the 20,000 (it looked more like 50 or so) invaders.

israeliag said:

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Wrapped this up last weekend, and as a non-book reader but former D&D player, I gotta say I liked this.

This might not make sense, but it being this very standard D&D campaign - a five person party of a sorcerer, ranger, rogue, druid, and cleric have their village raised by orc-like creatures and are then taken under the wing of a Gandalf/Elminster like wizard, while one of them might be The One destined to defeat the big bad - sorta made it feel fresh.

No too complicated, but the world and most of the characters intrigue me.

Looking for ard ti a second season.

Oh and Rosamund Puke is fantastic.

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As critical and grouchy as I am as a book reader, I can understand that some of the problems I have with the show are irrelevant to non book readers.

Most folks will probably think that trolloc invasion was just another invasion, not the biggest threat since Hawking, show didn't really explain how devastating the breaking of the world was and why Rand is so dangerous so him not defeating the army is irrelevant, Egwaine healing death, Perrin kinda being useless, Lan being very neutered compared to the books, Agelmar Jahad being an idiot, 5 untrained sedai defeating 20k trollocs means nothing considering these are different characters from the books.

After sleeping on it, if a ton of people, who way outnumber the book readers like it, oh well who am I to complain. My wife is also one of the non book readers that love the show, guess I'm happy for her.

Just don't make it so dumb that you build a fortress with lower flow windows, or let the army die before you lightening away the enemy.

I believe in the books Min wasn't the one who had the vision about a baby on Dragonmount, it was an Aes Sedai during New Spring.

I think the thing I dislike most about this season was the lack of any sort of training montage, etc for the girls. I mean crap it's like they're almost full Aes Sedai without any sort of training. How will this work next season?

I just think Rafe doesn't know the material as well as he thinks he does and is just screwing up a lot of little (and big) things as well. I get the feeling he is purposefully putting his own spin on things - sometimes in the name of being woke and sometimes just for ****z and giggles.

Ok, finally finished myself, and as a book reader i'm pretty lukewarm on the series thus far, but has nothing to do with any of the changes. I went in knowing there would be some, and while there are far more than I anticipated, I am ok with them on the surface. Some of those changes were very much necessary, both from a logistical standpoint as well as a mass audience standpoint. Some were "artistic license", and again, I went into it knowing that would happen. Its fine. eyerolling at times, but fine.

What I can't get on board with, is the level of SciFi channel/ B-movie cheese that permeates so much of it. It's given a nice multi-million dollar budget shine sure, but its still on the rank of the other **** tv or film scifi/fantasy adaptations that get canceled after half a season or make a fraction of their budget back. The character development is trash for most of the characters, and the speed at which they are moving everything and everyone around doesnt give the story any time to breathe. The dialog is downright cringeworthy at times. it honestly boils down to story telling. they just point blank arent doing a good job. i feel nothing for these tv characters. i feel nothing for the whole "doomed young lovers" they are trying to build with rand and egwene. i have no sense whatsoever about the scope of the Dark One, and the mythology/history that predates the coming of Tarmon Guidon and the coming of the Dragon. there was very little to no buildup to the battle at tarwin's gap that i felt so little for any of the characters that died.

I'm still in for season 2, bc i love the books so much and hope they can right the ship. they need to slow it down. use that massive budget for more episodes so you can slow the story down and give the story and characters time to breathe and develop, instead of blowing your load on more CGI'd visuals, sweeping shots, or terrible weaves.

just my $.02

Agreed. Finally watched the finale today. I thought the season was getting progressively better, but that finale sucked hard. Really disappointed with what they're doing so far. It's not just the changes, it's the quality overall. I could excuse more of the changes if the show was better. I'm praying they pick it up for Season 2, especially with shows like House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings starting.

One of the few good things this episode is when they mentioned Saidin in the opening sequence (it was when she said "power"). Annoying that they called Lews the Dragon Reborn rather than just the Dragon though.

I'm a bit confused as to why they chose to have Moiraine be stilled unless they want to focus more on her political/mentoring side moving forward. I'm not sure how it's going to play with the other Aes Sedai though.

One of the biggest issues that's been mentioned is letting some rando who wasn't strong enough to be Aes Sedai kill thousands of Trollocs like she's Thor. That really takes the threat out of them. Would have been much better to let her try and fail and then let Rand save the day with the first showing of his power. Instead, Rand makes a little light that looks wimpy despite it really being a big deal to break one of the seals.

Another example of them running wild with the power is letting Egwene basically heal Nynaeve from near death. Even if she wasn't dead yet, that would be difficult for most to try to heal.

The lack of channeling training is annoying, but they might focus on that more next season. My big question is will Lan ever teach Rand to fight.

Lots of plot holes, etc. How was Nynaeve nearly burnt out, but not stilled like Moraine? How did Lan get there so fast? Why wouldn't you show Rand absorbing the pool of Saidin to show what makes him so much more powerful?

Book spoilers, not going to tag them Since it's the spoiler thread.


I did like how the portrayed Ishamael. I am surprised they listed his name in the Amazon X-Ray thing when you stop at a scene he is in, and not label him as the Dark One for now.

Overall, I'm a little disappointed with the season. As others have said, it just seems like the goal for the show was to push diversity for diversity's sake. The most eye rolling part of the season to me is when they ran into the farmers with Indian parents and a white kid. I understand that the writers want to show us a post racial society, but it's to the shows detriment. The best parts of TWOT is all of these different cultures and races coming together and setting aside their differences to defeat evil.if you don't show the conflicts at the beginning of the series, or explain what makes one medieval country different from the other, then the payoff will never be fulfilled. I also have issues with Nynaeve just being able to shrug off the black wind in the ways. The idea of not knowing who the dragon is was fine at the first of the series, but they just totally went overboard with her strength. To her credit, she's easily the most interesting character in the show.


Now on to the memes.

pic.twitter.com/EpMw7Q1OQV

— Wheel of Time Memes (@TheWheelWeaver) December 28, 2021

https://t.co/DYpGgGOczp pic.twitter.com/2tO28AGQ8Q

— Wheel of Time Memes (@TheWheelWeaver) December 15, 2021

As someone who has read the books multiple times this show sucks so much compared to the source material! I've watched it but it's soo much different than the source material It makes me so mad the books were phenomenal and didn't need to be changed so much.

Why not? She's clearly not Aiel and definitely not Aviendha, but at this point in the unmitigated disaster that is the Amazon version of WOT might as well go for broke .

The casting makes zero sense to me. The story invites a racially diverse cast - it's all right there in the books - so I don't know why they need to screw it up so bad.

AgLaw02 said:

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The casting makes zero sense to me. The story invites a racially diverse cast - it's all right there in the books - so I don't know why they need to screw it up so bad.

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Yea it's been really weird to see such the stark difference. This show world feels so small. Jordan does a great job of making the actual WoT world seem so vast (and it is). And because of this vastness, there are big cultural differences everywhere. The show has thrown all of that away, and the world seems small and one-note.

One of the best parts of the books is how much breadth and depth there is between all of the different "countries" and regions.

This particular casting doesn't move any needles for me on the topic, but season 1 in itself did enough to show me that they are largely ignoring much territorial difference. It seems like it's going to be just "big blob in middle of map where most people are from", borderlands, the Aiel waste, the Seanchan as 4 different regions.