Two book readers recap a very non-book-ish Wheel of Time season 2 premiere

Andrew: The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and this month the Wheel has woven us another season of Amazon's Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time adaptation! It's another eight-episode season, kicking off with a big three-episode drop for what Amazon tells us is technically an adaptation of The Great Hunt, Wheel of Time book two.

I say "technically" not to be disparaging but to set expectations: by the standards of, say, Game of Thrones, we are miles away from the events of the book on this one, basically right from the jump.

Andrew: It's not your dad's Wheel of Time, but it might be your friend's ship-heavy AO3 Wheel of Time fanfic.

Andrew: Yes, whew, we will probably not cover every event in these three episodes with the same depth we would in a one-episode writeup, because this is over three hours of television and our time on this Earth is finite. But! This is our first big departure point from The Great Hunt, which launched with at least a few chapters where all our faves from The Two Rivers were briefly reunited in the same place.

The biggest change at, like, a production level is that the original Mat, played by Barney Harris, has been recast. The circumstances of Harris' departure have never been fully spelled out anywhere that I can find—"something something COVID" is usually the gist—but Harris didn't even make it to the end of the first season, leaving one of our main characters mostly sidelined for the season's climax. Mat is now played by Dónal Finn, who can't grow as good a beard but does manage to capture Mat's charm and charisma pretty much instantly. He's stuck in the White Tower with Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood), a vaguely menacing Aes Sedai.

Narratively, the bigger changes are that most people think Rand al'Thor (Josha Stradowski) is dead, and Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) has been cut off from the One Power, following their confrontations with what they believed to be the Dark One at the end of the season. Rand is alone(ish!) in the city of Cairhien, trying to hide from everyone he loves following the revelation that he's a Man Who Can Channel, Doomed To Madness. Moiraine and Lan (Daniel Henney) are off regrouping with other Aes Sedai, including newcomer Verin (Meera Syal).

Andrew: Yeah, a big recurring theme in the early WoT books especially is that you cannot run from your fate. But damned if these Two Rivers boys aren't all going to try. Egwene and Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) are actually both hewing fairly closely to their book-selves, tending to their studies in the White Tower. Nynaeve's strength in the One Power has made her a particular person of interest to Liandrin and other Aes Sedai, despite the fact that she can't channel at all unless she's upset (in the books this was just "angry," but the show has expanded it a bit to encompass other heightened emotional states). Egwene is dealing with some low-key jealousy and also wants to be learning faster, but she does make a fast friend in Elayne Trakand (Ceara Coveney), someone else that book readers will know well. Elayne is the Daughter-Heir (read: princess) of Andor and thus, technically, Egwene is her subject, but Egwene is unimpressed by this.

Nynaeve's arc, and one of the strongest arcs across these three episodes, is that Liandrin is pushing her to take the test to become an Accepted, the middle tier in the White Tower hierarchy between novice and full Aes Sedai. Liandrin seems to have an ulterior motive that is only hinted at, but headstrong Nynaeve never met an obstacle that she didn't think she could bypass by sheer force of will. The deal, basically unchanged from the books, is that you walk through an arch that spits you out into a holodeck where every simulation is out to seriously mess with your head; at some point during this test, the arch reappears within the simulation, and you need to walk back through it, away from whatever is happening. If you don't go back through, you fail the test (and also you are probably dead).

I don't want to get too far into the details of these tests because I would like to keep this spoiler-light, but suffice it to say that Nynaeve is still a standout character and Robins is still giving a standout performance. She was one of the better parts of the first season and that continues to be the case here.

Andrew: I am glad you said something about that! Because I minded a bit less about how season one looked but I know exactly what you mean. Scoring is near the bottom of the list of things my brain really grabs on to (unless it's outstanding or obnoxious). But hearing you comment on it backs up my general impression that this show is quite a bit more comfortable with itself in season two than it was in season one. It helps that you can just dive right into plot stuff, instead of starting (as season one did) with three solid hours of character introductions and world-building exposition.

Through the first season, the show gradually rose to the level of "this is working better than I expected it to." The second season, so far, still has a ton of stuff going on, and (personally) I would take a larger number of shorter episodes rather than eight that all seem to run an hour-plus. But I was just straightforwardly enjoying myself with this pretty much the entire time? Which is never a place I got to with season one, or with the Amazon Lord of the Rings show.

Speaking of big exposition dumps, what else do we really need to make sure we address? There's the onscreen revelation that "the Dark One" from last season was just one of the Dark One's top guys, a Forsaken by the name of Ishamael who has been fully freed from a weakened prison by Rand and Moiraine. There's the introduction of Elyas Machera (Gary Beadle), a character from the book (though a composite character in the show) who will be important for Perrin's (Marcus Rutherford) story. And then there's the Seanchan, the big baddies from book two who show up for real in the show's second episode.

Andrew: Yes, I think another character comments on Egwene not doing the hand motions at some point. Early books often depict the White Tower as an ivory tower, an ossified and insular institution weakened over time by closed-minded adherence to old rules and traditions. I'm not sure how much time the show will have to set that up. (Already there's a possible alternate explanation for Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve's power: "The pattern is giving us weapons for the Last Battle" rather than "We're not finding these people because we're not looking properly.")

Two things about being a book reader who didn't go back and watch the first season before jumping into the second: First, it's easy to lose track of who has been introduced and who hasn't, who is a composite character, and who has been invented to elide some of the book's convoluted plotting. Second, let's just say that there is a shortage of plot armor for secondary and tertiary characters.

Jordan was known for introducing reams and reams of named characters to help flesh out each of the book's locations and to give PoV characters someone to talk to once they had been flung to opposite edges of the map. An improbable number of these characters survive right up until the series-ending confrontation at the Last Battle. Bad news, book readers—I can basically guarantee that this show will end up killing one or more of your faves before you're ready.

Andrew: For my closing thought, I would like to circle back to the topic of how horny this show is, because I feel like it's something some book readers might struggle with. ("They're just sexing it up for TV," etc). While it's true that the characters in Randland are all pretty puritanical about premarital physical touching, these books contain a vast ocean of subtextual horniness. Don't blame Rafe Lee Judkins and Amazon for sexing the show up, blame Robert Jordan for creating a world where like a third of the characters are polyamorous magicians. This is all to say, the events have been changed dramatically, but I actually think the vibe of season two is pretty close to being right.

Andrew: I do like the Mat/Min dynamic a lot. I ship it, despite the Complications this would have introduced in the book. OK, that's far from comprehensive, but I think that just about catches us up! We'll be back with weekly episode recaps, starting next week with episode four. Happy (great) hunting, everyone!