Well in the few years since I touched this project the entire Wheel of Time TV show on Amazon has come and gone with some really good parts of it (casting, pacing, presentation of core elements) along with some bad parts which ultimately doomed it (visual effects varying wildly, disrupted storylines from COVID production, choosing to just straight up change some elements of the characters arc's - Perrin in particular suffers the most from this). All that to say it feels like this is still at least a kinda relevant exercise for me to play out?
Truly the best part of the TV show was its Third season, where it significantly adjusted the order of events, but nailed one of the most critical pieces of the story which is the trip through Rhuidean. I am sad we will never get to see this cast spin out their turning of the Wheel, but perhaps this version I am working on will offer an alternative turning we will never see, but could hope for.
The Amazon/Sony production was finally finding its feet with the characters as well as the story. I felt like the elements added were genuinely mostly positive additions (mostly the back story of the Second Age the precedes the Third of Randland). It was wonderful to see the original Aes Sedai, and the world that was lost since the books at most hint at them. I felt they did a fantastic job with the Rhuidean sequence, its so important to Rand's journey and is one of the most compelling bits of writing in the books, I really loved that episode. I ended with the Declaration of the Car'a'Carn and frankly it left me ready for more. Advancing some of the plot development for Nyn, while working the timeline for Matt closer to the books although he's separated from Rand we still get that lovely through the door with the hanging sequence.
I think the show did itself a disservice by focusing on Moiraine as much as it did. I can understand why they would choose her as a production focal point (strongest established Actor in the role) and her narration for the audio books is lovely. That said, she simply doesn't stay in the story and is missing for more pages than she is around for even if her influence is all over. I don't care about the romance angle thats hinted at in the books for her and Siuan, but it becomes a distraction that doesn't enhance the sequence of her being deposed. Similarly Perrin keeps having his core story derailed with additional changes (his first wife wut, and not staying in the Two Rivers at the conclusion of the Battle for it) in a way that makes his character deeply unsatisfying. It is true in the books it takes him a long time to truly settle into his role as a leader of men, but the show almost does nothing to quantify and provide gravitas to that. Him conceding to go with them is a wet fart of a sequence that occurred to close to the finish.
Finally there is just no escaping the fact that this show had to have been massively intensive from an SFX perspective. The work they did was actually quite good on the whole, but the creature effects vary wildly from scene to scene and as a result the Trollocs and Fades aren't nearly as present in the show as they are in the book. The escalation of those forces I think is an important tell for the health of the world and the dangers the crew face, and it got refocused way more towards the Black Ajah and the Seanchan who are both quality villains, but aren't creating the impression the world is slowly dying as more monsters become available to insert into the story.
Ultimately I wish they had had the chance to finish their story. I think they could have gotten there in another 4-5 seasons which would have sat the Sony production at around 7-8 seasons and approximately 50-60 episodes of television. I think this project even aggressively condensing some of the later books lands closer to the 75-90 episodes of TV run time to properly fill out the story.
Was a live action adventure the right answer for the the WoT? I'm not sure a live action adaptation may have really had the chance to be successful started when it was and with the changes it had to endure. We still don't know why the originally cast Mat left the show abruptly during the first season filming even with the production pauses. Would I want this version run out as a live action adaptation? Certainly you'd hope that has the broadest audience, but that model failed once already. I think I would fall back on the idea that the story bears enough resemblance to a manga/anime adventure that it would be a fitting shift in format to focus on some kind of animation for the story. Romances are fast, people are exaggerated caricatures of their archetypes often, and frankly the magic system would benefit from animation having more options for presentation than live action does.
Sell me Anime Wheel of Time produced by Khara, MadHouse, TRIGGER, Mappa, or one of the major production houses that really can sell spectacle and we could have a truly spectacular product. I am somehow surprised that Japan has not tried this already given the success of the books and their covers over there. I can only blame the rights holders for being truly awful with the media rights for this franchise.
We all wake from the dream. Let us hope that until we do, it is a good one. Fingers crossed I can see this through over time (much like it took Jordan to do) and it won't require someone posthumously completing it for me. Once again it is not the beginning (we did that already), but is a beginning again as the wind blows, the waves crash, and the Wheel turns.
