Starting Season 2 of Wheel of Time
Recently Hawk and I started watching Season 2 of The Wheel of Time. It's streaming on Amazon Prime. As I write this we've watched the first two episodes already. I'm not going to write about them, though, but the series in general up to the start of S2.
Season 2 is not new, per se. Its 8 episodes of dropped 4-5 months ago (September and October 2023). If I'm a a bit late to the party it's because I haven't been sure I care about this party.
Waning interest in The Wheel of Time is, ironically, not a new thing. It's also fittingly not a new thing, as "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time," as all WoT fans know, and the Pattern repeats itself. "What was once will soon come again." I lost interest in the books halfway through the series years ago, even after the first third of the series had been a defining part of my life for years. It's how I met my wife, among other things. But as "The Wheel of Time turns [...] legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time the age that gave birth to it comes again."
A Long Gap
Part of the reason my interest waned in watching Season 2 is the long gap between seasons. The Season 1 finale dropped December 24, 2021. The Season 2 premier dropped over 20 months later, on September 1, 2023. "When's the next one going to come out?" is something we fans of the books agonized over years ago, particularly as the author's pace of writing and publication slowed down. That was one of the reasons I ultimately lost interest in the books halfway through.
With the streaming series there's an external reason, i.e., one that's not just about the writers: Covid shut them down. The global Coronavirus pandemic hit toward the end of production of the first season. It mucked with timetables for preproduction and production of Season 2.
Slower, Faster
Gaps between books was only part of the reason I lost interest in the written series, and it was probably only the secondary reason. The main reason was the sluggish pacing of the story. Being brief was certainly something author Robert Jordan was never accused of. Indeed, among F&SF fans who didn't like his books back in the day, "They're too slow" was basically the entire criticism. Across the first few books I found in the wordiness a lot of richness in developing the characters and the world. By the 5th book, though, it just became ponderous. By the 6th it was painful. After the 7th I found so little happening in the books that, combined with the slowing pacing of publication, I completely lost interest in the series.
Slowness is absolutely not a problem in the streaming version of Wheel of Time. As befits the dictates of the medium, the showrunners are practically racing through the story. Eight episodes of S1 roughly mirrored the first book in the series, The Eye of the World. S2 looks like it will track more or less to book 2, The Great Hunt, in its 8 episodes. Each of these are 600+ page novels so, yeah, a lot has to be condensed. And honestly that's a good thing.
Off Script from the Books. A Refreshed Perspective.
"It's too slow" isn't why I lost interest in the streaming adaptation between seasons. The fact of how widely it breaks from the books in ways big and small is. Now, the gap in my interest isn't at the level of a death sentence, like it was for me with the books years ago, or like it seems to be for some fans of the books in rage-quitting the streaming series after S1. I knew I'd watch it eventually. I just didn't care when. Finally the time came on a weekend when the weather sucks and I was bored nearly to tears.
"Books are books and TV is TV." Believe me, I understand that. Major changes have to be made in adapting a huge and sprawling (many would say too sprawling) series of novels. But as I enumerated across my many blogs from watching S1, the writers of the streaming version have diverged from the books in too many key areas. It's not just cutting out side plots and minor characters- which are generally good changes to make- but changing major plots, major characters, major motivations, and even changing the rules of how the universe works (which books author Robert Jordan was very meticulous about).
My pique about the breadth of these changes softened up a bit by watching Game of Thrones in the long gap between seasons. There, my situation with books-vs-TV familiarity was reversed. I haven't read GoT. I found the streaming series fairly enjoyable for what it was without being tripped up by what differed from the books. I did read about some of those differences in fan wikis about the show... and while some fans were evidently really stuck on the changes made, I found them to be positive changes for the most part.
I applied that perspective in hindsight to S1 of WoT. Were the changes all that bad? Most of them were not- but then again, I was tolerant of those changes from the start. A few things still rub me the wrong way, though. Mat ran off for no reason (truth: there was a problem with the actor and he had to be recast). Rand asked Moiraine to pretend he's dead and ran off. Perrin had a wife and killed her. Oh, and the whole arc of series 1/book 1 changed from "Rand learns he's a child of prophecy and struggles to start to come to grips with his destiny" to "The DrAgOn ReBoRn CoULd bE AnYbOdY!1!" with the writers actively concealing some things about Rand to spring it on viewers as a reveal in the season finale.
Season 2 is not new, per se. Its 8 episodes of dropped 4-5 months ago (September and October 2023). If I'm a a bit late to the party it's because I haven't been sure I care about this party.
Waning interest in The Wheel of Time is, ironically, not a new thing. It's also fittingly not a new thing, as "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time," as all WoT fans know, and the Pattern repeats itself. "What was once will soon come again." I lost interest in the books halfway through the series years ago, even after the first third of the series had been a defining part of my life for years. It's how I met my wife, among other things. But as "The Wheel of Time turns [...] legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time the age that gave birth to it comes again."
A Long Gap
Part of the reason my interest waned in watching Season 2 is the long gap between seasons. The Season 1 finale dropped December 24, 2021. The Season 2 premier dropped over 20 months later, on September 1, 2023. "When's the next one going to come out?" is something we fans of the books agonized over years ago, particularly as the author's pace of writing and publication slowed down. That was one of the reasons I ultimately lost interest in the books halfway through.
With the streaming series there's an external reason, i.e., one that's not just about the writers: Covid shut them down. The global Coronavirus pandemic hit toward the end of production of the first season. It mucked with timetables for preproduction and production of Season 2.
Slower, Faster
Gaps between books was only part of the reason I lost interest in the written series, and it was probably only the secondary reason. The main reason was the sluggish pacing of the story. Being brief was certainly something author Robert Jordan was never accused of. Indeed, among F&SF fans who didn't like his books back in the day, "They're too slow" was basically the entire criticism. Across the first few books I found in the wordiness a lot of richness in developing the characters and the world. By the 5th book, though, it just became ponderous. By the 6th it was painful. After the 7th I found so little happening in the books that, combined with the slowing pacing of publication, I completely lost interest in the series.
Slowness is absolutely not a problem in the streaming version of Wheel of Time. As befits the dictates of the medium, the showrunners are practically racing through the story. Eight episodes of S1 roughly mirrored the first book in the series, The Eye of the World. S2 looks like it will track more or less to book 2, The Great Hunt, in its 8 episodes. Each of these are 600+ page novels so, yeah, a lot has to be condensed. And honestly that's a good thing.
Off Script from the Books. A Refreshed Perspective.
"It's too slow" isn't why I lost interest in the streaming adaptation between seasons. The fact of how widely it breaks from the books in ways big and small is. Now, the gap in my interest isn't at the level of a death sentence, like it was for me with the books years ago, or like it seems to be for some fans of the books in rage-quitting the streaming series after S1. I knew I'd watch it eventually. I just didn't care when. Finally the time came on a weekend when the weather sucks and I was bored nearly to tears.
"Books are books and TV is TV." Believe me, I understand that. Major changes have to be made in adapting a huge and sprawling (many would say too sprawling) series of novels. But as I enumerated across my many blogs from watching S1, the writers of the streaming version have diverged from the books in too many key areas. It's not just cutting out side plots and minor characters- which are generally good changes to make- but changing major plots, major characters, major motivations, and even changing the rules of how the universe works (which books author Robert Jordan was very meticulous about).
My pique about the breadth of these changes softened up a bit by watching Game of Thrones in the long gap between seasons. There, my situation with books-vs-TV familiarity was reversed. I haven't read GoT. I found the streaming series fairly enjoyable for what it was without being tripped up by what differed from the books. I did read about some of those differences in fan wikis about the show... and while some fans were evidently really stuck on the changes made, I found them to be positive changes for the most part.
I applied that perspective in hindsight to S1 of WoT. Were the changes all that bad? Most of them were not- but then again, I was tolerant of those changes from the start. A few things still rub me the wrong way, though. Mat ran off for no reason (truth: there was a problem with the actor and he had to be recast). Rand asked Moiraine to pretend he's dead and ran off. Perrin had a wife and killed her. Oh, and the whole arc of series 1/book 1 changed from "Rand learns he's a child of prophecy and struggles to start to come to grips with his destiny" to "The DrAgOn ReBoRn CoULd bE AnYbOdY!1!" with the writers actively concealing some things about Rand to spring it on viewers as a reveal in the season finale.