Review: The Wheel of Time – S1

Based on the books by Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time is the latest in a long line of big budget epic fantasy series to come to the streaming platforms.  With the whole first season now available on Amazon, we thought we’d take a look at how it was going.  *Warning! Spoilers Ahead!*

The Wheel of Time is an interesting book series as it has been highly successful internationally, selling over 90 million books.  Despite this popularity, it doesn’t have the same cultural significance as say, Lord of the Rings does, and although there are many similar elements, it won’t resonate with an audience as quickly.

As the series opens, we’re introduced to a world full of magic, referred to here as the one power, which can only be successfully wielded by women, as men ultimately go mad when using it. This is due to an age-old corruption and an ongoing battle between the dark and the light. On the side of the light there are a couple of factions: the Aes Sedai, the women who can control the one power, and the Whitecloaks, who appear to be their own kind of self-contained military organisation.  Strangely, although they are in theory on the same side, the Whitecloaks have a problem with the Aes Sedai.

On the side of the dark you have the usual collection of troll like figures, who are controlled by evil figures known as ‘fades’, who all ultimately serve ‘The Dark One’.  Thrown into this mix is then the usual messianic figure of the ‘Dragon Reborn’, the latest version of the initial figure who battled ‘The Dark One’. The focus of this first season is essentially the search for who may be this new ‘Dragon’.

Therefore, the key figures we deal with during this season are the Gandalf like Aes Sedai, Moiraine (Rosamund Pike), her Warder, Lan (Daniel Henney), and a group of villagers much like the hobbits, but a little taller.  Amongst these we have Nynaeve (Zoe Robins), the ‘Wisdom’ of the village, Rand (Josha Stradowski) – the Luke Skywalker, Egwene (Madeleine Madden) – a potential Wisdom, Perrin (Marcus Rutherford), and Mat (Barney Harris), who is sort of the kind-hearted scoundrel of the group.  It’s a fairly standard fantasy lineup, and the kind you’d get in any group in a D&D game, but one of these will be revealed as the ‘Dragon Reborn’.

It’s this familiar setup that works to Wheel of Time’s advantage but is also its Achilles Heel.  On one hand going into this series, viewers will be familiar with the lay of the land and will recognise the standard ‘heroes journey’ elements as well as the character types.  On a more negative slant, the general plot of the series will be unfavourably compared to the Lord of the Rings, but without the innate recognition of some key details.

What doesn’t help in this series is that there isn’t enough time given to exploring the depths of the characters and basing the story solidly.  While there has been some time given to showing hints at the past for a couple of them, some of the characters we know nothing about. This is especially egregious as this ongoing mystery of who the new dragon will be is therefore undermined by the lack of detail.  There are even then some pointed scenes that make who it is a little too obvious.

In terms of the narrative there is a serious problem and much of the drama could have been resolved had people just been more open, or not lied about certain aspects. This crops up all too often on TV, where a whole show bases its whole running time on something which could be easily solved by one utterance or someone acting naturally.  While in some circumstances you can imagine that people would do this out of caution, quite often in this narrative it just seems to be there for no apparent reason.

What this does is make the whole plot seem less plausible especially when the stakes are supposed to be so high. For instance, at one point one of the characters and Moiraine enter a major battle, but she does not prepare that character for any of what is about to happen and decides to keep being mysterious instead of actually helping their cause.  This kind of thing happens more than once, alongside questions that never get asked, even though in reality they would be the first things discussed!

Despite all its flaws The Wheel of Time somehow remains entertaining throughout. It has to be said that even though there were problems in each episode, you do end up wanting to return for the next.  This watchability is an intriguing part of the series especially as many of the main characters are remarkably bland or uninteresting.  You have to dig a little deeper for the gold, and some of the more interesting aspects and characters are in the smaller parts of the show with the secondary characters or side lines to the main narrative. It is therefore difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that draws you back in though, given the issues here.

The most likely reasons are that there are a couple of good performances in there, and there are enough hints at a much deeper lore that keep you interested.  We never really get any significant time spent on finding that lore though, which could have been the ace up its sleeve.  On the plus side, the show does look pretty good, but then you’d expect that given its reported $10 million price tag per episode.  These visuals alone can’t explain it though, so we know there is more untapped potential here.  If you’re currently waiting for the Lord of the Rings series, or Game of Thrones prequel – House of the Dragon, then this might just tide you over til then.