Deadline Hollywood reported today that actor Dónal Finn, known for various acting roles including in The Witcher, will replace Barney Harris as Mat Cauthon for season 2 and beyond of Amazon Prime's upcoming Wheel of Time TV show. This news has been confirmed by Amazon Studios.

This is a major surprise because it's almost unheard of to re-cast a main character before season 1 of the show even airs. As of this time, there's no reason given for Harris' departure. It's highly unlikely that it was due to a poor acting performance. If that were the case, then that would've likely been identified very early on during the production of Season 1 and corrected. Harris finished the entirely of season 1. The acting performances of the entire cast were highly praised by showrunner Rafe Judkins and the rest of the team.  

In situations like this, it would probably take a major reason for the young actor to be unavailable for season 2. We will not speculate at this time, but overall, the thoughts and well-wishes of the entire Dragonmount community go out to Barney. We hope he is healthy and well. 

This re-casting likely caused major headaches for the production of Season 2, which is currently being filmed in the Czech Republic and other European countries. 

For more thoughts on this re-casting, check out our TV blogger Adam Whitehead's article on this topic. 

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai

Deadline reports that Sanaa Hamri will be a director and executive producer for half of season two of Amazon Prime's The Wheel of Time. 

Hamri started her career directing music videos before moving to directing movies and television. She has recently been the executive producer and director for the series Empire from 2015-2020. Her films include Something New, Just Wright, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.  A 2015 Vulture article highlights Hamri's production skills coordinating the elaborate musical pieces in Empire. 

Season one director Ute Briesewitz also held the executive producer title for the first season. Hamri will likely be managing the creative vision for season two. 

The other director confirmed for season two is Thomas Napper.

And the wheel keeps weaving... Filming for Season 2 of our series kicks off today! #TheWheelofTime pic.twitter.com/Dpj26qabMW

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) July 19, 2021

To catch up on the first season's directors, check out Adam’s article: Meet the WOT directors.   

We also recently had an update on the composer for season one. During a Q&A after the teaser trailer release, Showrunner Rafe Judkins revealed that Lorne Balfe will be the composer for the show. 

pic.twitter.com/H3MHFkdCCc

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) September 2, 2021

We heard Balfe's work during the title logo reveal a couple months ago. 

A little musical tease ……Amazing to be part of the family #wheeloftime pic.twitter.com/VfxVWdu7Zk

— Lorne Balfe (@Lornebalfe) September 3, 2021

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai

Mark your calendars for more The Wheel of Time TV show content! New York City Comic Con will host a virtual exclusive Q&A with the cast and showrunner on Oct 8th at 2:30 pm ET. The Wheel of Time twitter account confirmed that this is an exclusive streaming/virtual event for the NYCC. If you are in the area, you can buy in person badges, here. For the rest of us, there are digital tickets for $20, here. The digital tickets cover 4 days of show, access to live video panels streamed during the event for most major panels, audio streams for smaller rooms, and VOD access to the recordings for 30 days after.

BREAKING: #TheWheelOfTime is headed to @NY_Comic_Con! Join us Friday, October 8th at 2:30pm ET. More details coming soon! pic.twitter.com/SKa4hhb8C3

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) September 13, 2021

Quote

THE WHEEL OF TIME: Exclusive Q&A with Cast & Showrunner (Virtual Screening)

Based on Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy novels of the same name, The Wheel of Time is set in a sprawling, epic world where magic exists and only certain women are allowed to access it. The story follows Moiraine (Rosamund Pike), a member of the incredibly powerful all-female organization called the Aes Sedai, as she arrives in the small town of Two Rivers. There, she embarks on a dangerous, world-spanning journey with five young men and women, one of whom is prophesied to be the Dragon Reborn, who will either save or destroy humanity. Join the series cast and showrunner as they discuss bringing this stunning world to life and what fans can most look forward to when the series premieres Friday, November 19th, exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.

Friday, October 8

This year @NY_Comic_Con is a mix of in-person and virtual attendance and we're excited to be part of Amazon's virtual panels! Luckily, that means that, like @rgoddes here, anyone can buy a ticket and watch the full panel from anywhere! https://t.co/o7WfBXdwNe

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) September 13, 2021

Who's planning to buy tickets & attend the panel? Also, Let us know in the comments below which cast members you think we'll see on the panel. 

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.

The first Wheel of Time trailer has gotten a lot of people excited for our first look at the characters, the One Power and our first hints of how the sprawling, massive story will be adapted (and compressed) for live-action television.

It’s also our first chance to see the world where the action takes place. Robert Jordan’s worldbuilding has been acclaimed as among the best in the genre, maybe not quite on J.R.R. Tolkien’s level (and Tolkien might have taken especial exception to Jordan’s lack of different languages) but certainly still remarkable in its detail, depth and breadth.

A closer look at TV-Tar Valon. From the location of the Ogier grove, which is on the south-eastern side of the city in the books, we can be reasonably sure that this visual is looking south along the River Erinin. Aside from its physical size, the city and island adhere fairly close to the maps in the books. Striking in its absence here is Dragonmount, which is located south-west of the city in the books.

At the centre of Jordan’s world – figuratively and thematically, if not quite geographically – is Tar Valon, the great city which serves as the stronghold of the Aes Sedai sisterhood. The city is located on an island in the midst of the River Erinin, roughly sixteen hundred miles north of where it flows into the Sea of Storms in the vast delta known as the Fingers of the Dragon, and acts as a meeting point between the four kingdoms of the Borderlands to the north and the great southern nations of Cairhien, Andor and Tear. The city has famously withstood siege numerous times (on four occasions in the Trolloc Wars alone) and never fallen in battle, although fighting has raged on the streets of the city during both the Trolloc Wars and the War of the Second Dragon against Guaire Amalasan, when Artur Hawkwing saved the city from the false Dragon’s followers to the humiliation of Bonwhin, the Amyrlin Seat.

By comparing the two images, we can be sure that in this image we are looking more or less due east, with Dragonmount now visible in a different direction to in the books. Assuming the island has not been flipped 180 degrees, which would make this looking west instead.

Tar Valon serves as some of a hub for events in the novels, with news and events flowing into the office of the Amyrlin Seat, first Siuan Sanche and later Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan, and various characters base themselves in the city at different times. For the TV show, Tar Valon’s importance seems to have been bolstered even further; all of the shots of contemporary cities in the trailer are exclusively of Tar Valon, with the other major cities from The Eye of the World – Fal Dara and Caemlyn – completely missing. Only ruined Shadar Logoth gets comparable screen time. Whether this means that Tar Valon is replacing Caemlyn as the geographic hub of the early story remains to be seen.

A recreation of the book map of Tar Valon.

What we can do is compare and contrast the book and TV versions of Tar Valon, and immediately we can see some major differences. Tar Valon in the books is substantial in size: the island is eight miles long and over two miles wide at its widest point, making it almost a ringer for Manhattan Island. The White Tower is located almost at the geographic centre of the island, in a position almost comparable to the Empire State Building in Manhattan. The White Tower is 600 feet tall, just under half the height of the Empire State, but given it was constructed by human and Ogier hands (with some help from the Aes Sedai) without 20^th Century cranes or construction materials or techniques, that’s still very impressive. The White Tower was designed to house around 3,000 Aes Sedai with room for expansion, via the cavernous Ajah quarters making up almost the entire northern half of the Tower and the huge number of training and teaching rooms in the southern half, not to mention the extensive store rooms below ground and the two wings radiating out from the Tower itself, designed to hold many hundreds of Accepted and novices. However, with the Aes Sedai reduced to around 1,200 in number, with maybe a third of that in the Tower at any one time, the building feels largely empty when the series begins.

An approximate floorplan of the White Tower, based on the descriptions provided in the novels and the Big White Book.

The White Tower is surprisingly “stubby”; Robert Jordan described the Tower as 100 spans (600 feet, or 183 metres) tall and 300 feet wide at the base, narrowing to 200 feet wide at the top. The width of the Tower at the base is thus around half the total height of the Tower. Despite these descriptions, both fan and professional art from the series often depicts a much slenderer, more ornate tower. The TV version seems to get the relative dimensions of the Tower pleasingly correct.

The White Tower as it appears in The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. Although the art in the Big White Book is not great, this image seems to reflect Robert Jordan's vision of the Tower relatively well, despite the absence of the wings on either side holding the novice and Accepted quarters and more ornate windows than are described in the books.

However, the TV version does seem to vary from Jordan’s description in several other respects. In the books the White Tower is described as smooth and polished, with no seams visible in the stonework thanks to the One Power being used to fuse the stone into a single structure. Clearly the TV version has visible steams and seems to have been made using more traditional techniques. The Tower in the TV show also has a much more extensive superstructure, with pipes laid over the exterior structure and various sections of the tower extending outwards with viewing areas visible. One promo image has Moiraine standing on one of these areas, looking out across the city. In the book, whilst the Tower has windows it doesn’t have a described viewing area apart from the rooftop viewing platform.

Moiraine gazing out across Tar Valon from the White Tower, in a publicity image released by Amazon.

The TV version of the Tower pleasingly still has the two wings extending out from the side, the home of the Accepted and novice quarters respectively. Several other buildings are shown tightly clustering around the base of the Tower, presumably including the stables, the Warder garrison and the White Tower Library. The complex is walled away from the rest of the city, as in the books.

There are several very big differences here, though. In the books, Tar Valon is flat whilst in the TV show it is hilly, with the White Tower sitting on a massive hill in the middle of the island which simply doesn’t exist in the books. The White Tower grounds in the novels are much bigger, with more space around the buildings, which are spaced further apart, and a large plaza extends out from the walls on all sides, which is clearly not the case here.

The immediate environs around Tar Valon.

There are also some interesting changes to Tar Valon itself. The biggest one, immediately obvious, is that the TV version of Tar Valon appears to be significantly smaller than its book counterpart. A building half the size of the Empire State Building sitting on an island the size of Manhattan would still be big and clearly visible from across the city, but it would not dominate the entire skyline the same way the White Tower does here. The White Tower does appear to be around its size in the books (by counting the number of windows, around forty levels can be discerned, the same as in the novels), so its much greater dominance of the landscape can only be explained by the island and city being significantly smaller.

It’s an interesting choice, and at first glance mildly disappointing: Tar Valon is a huge medieval metropolis of around half a million people, the economic heart of the northern half of the continent and the seat of Aes Sedai power. It should be huge, grand and imposing. Obviously from a budgetary point of view, the bigger the city is, the more expensive it is in terms of CGI design and render time, and in making sets that integrate with the CG backdrops well.

More to the point, I expect if they did a test render based on the book scale, they decided that the White Tower looked too small and unimpressive compared to the rest of the island and that using the polished white stone look in the novels did not look appropriately awe-inspiring (the occasional complaint raised by artists doing a faithful take on the White Tower is that it can turn into a lighthouse rather easily). Rather than make the White Tower preposterously huge – if the city dimensions were kept the same and the Tower expanded, it’d be over a mile tall in the TV show! -  they seem to have elected to shrink the city and make the Tower more impressive in contrast.

Another interesting change is that the location of Dragonmount seems to have shifted. Dragonmount was located between twenty and thirty miles south-west of the city in the novels, but here it appears to have moved directly east instead (in the promo image the mountain lines up with the wings, rather than 45 degrees to them as would be the case in the novels). A minor change, but a curious one.

Looking in detail at Tar Valon, many different kinds of buildings can be seen, including European-style towers and bastions, Arab-like minarets and ornate domes. There’s no immediate sign of skybridges, but we only see small chunks of the city in these shots. The city’s parks do seem present, including one that might be the huge Ogier grove, and the general shape of the island seems to have been retained (indicating we are looking due south in the first image). Southharbor also seems present and correct, and several of the bridges over the Erinin can be seen, with clusters of buildings on the other end which correspond to the bridge towns.

Tar Valon and the White Tower may stand in miniature for the TV show’s relationship with the books as a whole: similar, familiar and impressive but differing in many small details. It’ll be interesting to see what other changes have been made. A second, apparently longer trailer will apparently hit screens before The Wheel of Time itself does on 19 November 2021, on Amazon Prime Television.

 As usual, follow our casting and news pages, and let us know what you think of the latest developments.

Rajiv Moté is Dragonmount’s book blogger with a lens on the craft of fiction writing. When he’s not directing software engineers, he writes fiction of his own, which can be found catalogued at his website.

Amazon Prime released the much anticipated teaser trailer for its series based on The Wheel of Time, and watching it (with the Dragonmount crew!) was joyful and cathartic. And, of course, we watched it on repeat, frame by frame, to see what had changed and what had stayed the same in the adaptation to the screen. A great deal has changed. While the set locations are familiar as old boots, the trailer features many scenes that were never in the pages of The Eye of the World.

The Wisdoms of Emond’s Field

In the books, the women who dispensed herbal cures and “listened to the wind” to predict the weather were called Wisdoms. The cures and predictions of the best Wisdoms work uncannily well because, unknown to even them, they’ve figured out a rough, unconscious way to channel the One Power. In the adaptation, Nynaeve the Wisdom shoves her apprentice Egwene into a river (0:02), and we see Egwene calmly floating (0:33). This looks like a visceral (and visual) representation of the Aes Sedai exercise to channel the Power: imagine it as a river, but if you fight it, it becomes rapid and wild. Surrender, and you can control it. Egwene is learning to ride the currents of saidar, the female half of the One Power. This has further implications. In the books, Nynaeve blocked herself from channeling unless she was angry out of fear of the One Power, which was taboo. She eventually breaks through her block when she sinks with a damaged boat, and is forced at last to surrender to saidar. This mirrors the initiation she provides Egwene here. Nynaeve finds her power in going back to her roots.

The False Dragon

In the books, the false Dragon (a man who can channel the cursed male half of the One Power, doomed to go insane, who declares himself the world’s savior) Logain is captured by Aes Sedai out of scene. We only hear about it, and see him from a distance in a cage. In the adaptation, we see him, perhaps with his followers, fighting against the Aes Sedai trying to capture him and their Warders (0:49, 1:19, 1:31). Showing the taking of Logain is a good way to demonstrate to viewers the danger of a man who channels. It remains to be seen if we’ll see the disaster that Lews Therin wrought in the book’s prologue (maybe they’ll just insert Winter Dragon?), but if they save the Lews Therin flashback for later, the taking of Logain would be a good thematic prologue for the show.

The Aes Sedai and the White Tower

The White Tower and Aes Sedai other than Moiraine and Elaida don’t appear in The Eye of the World. But they feature prominently in this trailer. If, as the interviews suggest, the adaptation centers Moiraine, then we are probably looking at the Aes Sedai deliberating about how to solve the problem of false Dragons (0:46, 1:24), and some are also wondering about the real Dragon.

The Attack on Emond’s Field

In the book, we only see the aftermath of the attack on Emond’s Field. The in-scene action is at the al’Thor farm. The adaptation appears to center the action in Emond’s Field, and it looks like Rand is there too. We may lose the iconic scenes of Tam retrieving his sword, the Trollocs breaking down the door, and Narg the Talking Trolloc--not to mention Tam’s revelations in the Westwood. But the story will move faster if everyone is together, and we’ll actually get to see Moiraine and Lan mop up the Trollocs.

Scene Breakdown

0:02/0:33 Nynaeve pushes Egwene into a river

This is new, and a striking way to introduce us to the show. It’s familiar but different--a sign of what’s to come. The Wisdoms of Emond's Field are no strangers to using the One Power.

0:08 Emond’s Field

With the exception of the tiled roofs (poor Cenn Buie!) and the lack of stone foundation around that big tree, Emond’s Field is much as I imagined it. The three ta’veren lads seem to be enjoying themselves at the Winespring Inn rather than shirking their chores, but the adaptation has aged them up. The colors are warm, people are smiling, and the atmosphere is cozy. A good status quo to be shattered by the Trolloc attack.

0:17 Crying over a ring

The man crying over a Great Serpent ring is most likely a Warder grieving for his Aes Sedai. We see this man in other scenes, wielding a pair of axes, standing with a pair of Green Aes Sedai and other Warders against a volley of arrows, and leaping to attack someone who is channeling. This is most likely the taking of the false Dragon, and it suggests their effort will carry a terrible cost.

0:20 Egwene rises in a pool of colored stripes

The colored stripes that cover Egwene as she rises from the pool clearly point to her fated rise to the Amyrlin Seat. But here, are we seeing Egwene’s prophetic Dream (perhaps as she floats down the river), or Min’s prophetic Viewing?

0:25 Tar Valon

The city of Tar Valon, with Dragonmount in the background, is breathtaking, even if it seems Jeff Bezos’s rocket engineers designed the White Tower. Moiraine makes an entrance, pushing open the doors like Aragorn.

0:33 Floating on the river

We revisit Egwene’s trip down the river with Moiraine’s voiceover saying that “all over the world there are different names for [the One Power].” This reinforces the idea that Wisdoms are aware, to some degree, that they are channeling saidar, and this initiation is to teach Egwene how to control it.

0:37 The White Tower

I always pictured the Hall of the Tower to be longer, but to accommodate the Ajah Sitters and the Amyrlin Seat, it’s as big as it needs to be. Its presence in this first season suggests that we’ll be privy to the White Tower’s deliberations over Dragons, false and true, and the fact that Kerene Nagashi is among them indicates that the 20 year secret search for the Dragon Reborn may be condensed into this season’s plot.

0:39 Moiraine is Healed?

Is Kerene Nagashi Healing Moiraine? And if so, is this during the taking of Logain (which didn’t involve Moiraine in the books) or the attack on Emond’s Field (which, in the books, did not involve any other Aes Sedai than Moiraine)? If Kerene makes it to Emond’s Field, that changes the tone significantly--she’d be the senior member of the secret contingent tasked with the Dragon Reborn.

0:43 Power over Emond’s Field

Look at that! The One Power being wielded over Emond’s Field, where the buildings are burning. The Eye of the World only showed us the aftermath of the Trolloc attack; but the adaptation will show us the action.

0:45 The Red Ajah

Elaida was the only Red Ajah sister in The Eye of the World, but these stern-faced Aes Sedai look ready for business. That business is probably the false Dragon, Logain.

0:46 The Keeper is mad

Leane Sharif angrily pounds her Keeper’s staff, calling for order. There is clearly a disagreement in the Hall of the Tower, and given what we’ve seen, it likely involves how to deal with Dragons, False or otherwise. In the books, the Reds tend to act as judge, jury, and executioner, but Siuan knows that if they accidentally sever the real Dragon Reborn from the True Source, the world could be doomed.

0:49 Aes Sedai and Warders do battle

A pair of Green Ajah sisters (including Alanna Mosvani) and their Warders defend against arrows from an unseen opponent. The Trolloc attack in the Two Rivers happens at night, so this looks like the fight against Logain and his followers.

0:57 Rocky hills

While these rocky hills look like where I imagined Perrin, Egwene, and Elyas hid from the Whitecloaks, Tar Valon is visible in the distance. It’s a different location. This is probably the slopes of Dragonmount, though not a flashback to the birth of the Dragon Reborn, since there’s no snow on the ground.

0:59 Shadar Logoth

Shadar Logoth is recognizable and creepy.

1:06 Wolfbrothers-to-be

I’m glad the adaptation didn’t go with the Bearbrother idea.

1:08 Sexy times?

Rand and Egwene en déshabillé? Well, the adaptation has aged the characters up, and it seems that they’ve tossed out the wide-eyed innocence of these country folk with community-governed moral codes. It changes the character of their relationship in the book, which was more of friends who cared for each other, but who, when freed from the expectations of their community to marry, pursued different dreams.

1:12 Dancing, Death, and Politics

The images seem to juxtapose dancing at the Beltine festival with the aftermath of the Trolloc attack at Winternight. The overhead view of the Hall of the Tower completes the third circle, all references to the Wheel, of course.

1:15 The attack on Emond’s Field

It looks like Rand will be in town during the attack. I’m a little disappointed if that means we won’t see the attack on the al’Thor farm and the lonely, frightened trek through the Westwood. But it looks intense.

1:19 Lan fights human soldiers

During the sunlight, Lan fights human soldiers in the woods. This isn’t the Trolloc attack (unless there are now Darkfriend soldiers too), so it must pair with the arrows flying in 0:49, and the very next shot suggests that this is the taking of Logain, and that Moiraine and Lan were involved, another departure from the books.

1:20 Logain

We never see Logain channel in The Eye of the World, but the adaptation shows him breaking his shield and doing some damage. Putting Logain “on camera” is a good strategy for illustrating how dangerous and unpredictable a man channeling can be. He radiates danger, even locked in a cage.

1:24 Moiraine in the White Tower

This scene wouldn’t be out of place in the adaptation of The Great Hunt, but Kerene’s words indicate this is setting up the search for the real Dragon Reborn.

1:26/1:39 Trollocs

The silhouettes of these Shadowspawn look like the Trollocs on the original book covers which, though they’re not book-accurate, are still iconic in many minds. I look forward to seeing them in detail. They do appear to be more bestial than the book covers, and true to the descriptions.

1:31 Dual Axe Guy versus a channeler

This must be a Warder attacking Logain. Is he shielded, or can we see male weaves? Is that darkness oozing along the weaves? This looks to be the same Warder who was crying over a Great Serpent ring.

1:32/1:39 Lan and Moiraine versus the Trollocs

In the books, we only heard about how Lan and Moiraine were a whirlwind of death for the Trollocs at Emond’s Field. Now we’ll see it.

1:33 Seven ride to the Waygate

As commentary on the show’s poster image confirmed, this is a Waygate. There seem to be seven riders gathered to venture into the dark. Lan, Moiraine, Rand, Perrin, Mat, Egwene, Nynaeve, Loial… Are we missing someone, or are they just not on screen?

1:38 Fade

Myrddraal are scary in the book. They’re horrifying in the show.

What did you notice in this first trailer for Amazon Prime's The Wheel of Time?

Amazon Prime Video released the first trailer for the upcoming the Wheel of Time Television series.  The trailer also announced the official release date of Friday, November 19th 2021. Amazon will premiere the first three episodes together, then weekly release each Friday until the season finale on Friday, December 24th, 2021. The countdown begins! Only 77 days until we see the first season premiere.

Yesterday, Rosamund Pike and the official Twitter account for The Wheel of Time announced that we would see a trailer this morning. They also released a photo of Moiraine standing at the top of the White Tower looking over the city of Tar Valon.

Brb, screaming. pic.twitter.com/JLXd2syVyL

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) September 1, 2021

This is the moment so many of us fans have been waiting years to see. It’s actually happening!

Updated: here's our reaction video!

Who’s organizing a watch party for November 19th? What do you think of the trailer? Let us know in the comments or on our forums!

Dragonmount wants to see your reaction to the trailer! If you’ve recorded yourself, send it over here.

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.

As the release date for The Wheel of Time moves closer, Amazon have started ramping up their marketing by releasing several images from the series.

We’re going to discuss what the images may signify, and how that relates to the books. Note that spoilers for the books and The Eye of the World especially will be present here.

The first image is a “hero shot” featuring the seven regular actors from the first series walking towards the camera. This is a publicity still taken to market the show, not an actual shot from the series (though if there was a cool explosion behind them, it’d probably work fine). From left to right, Zoë Robins as Nynaeve al’Meara, Barney Harris as Mat Cauthon, Daniel Henney as al’Lan Mandragoran, Rosamund Pike as Moiraine Damodred, Madeleine Madden as Egwene al’Vere, Marcus Rutherford as Perrin Aybara and Josha Stradowski as Rand al’Thor.

Other actors will recur in the first season (such as Hammed Animashaun as Loial, Alexandre Willaume as Thom Merrilin and Kae Alexander as Min Farshaw) but these seven will presumably be in every episode, or almost.

Weekly Wheel News, doing the Creator’s work, unearthed the metadata for the shot, confirming it comes from the sixth episode (of eight in total in the first season) and depicts the gang journeying to the Waygate, where they meet Loial (either out-of-shot in this picture, or lacking the CGI needed to insert him in the frame). The metadata asks the question “who is the Dragon?”, confirming that one goal for the TV show is to make the identity of the Dragon Reborn far less obvious than it is in the books, where it’s fairly obvious from the first page.

The second shot takes us to the ruined city of Shadar Logoth, once known as Aridhol, and depicts Lan and Moiraine taking refuge in an ill-advised location. This shot also features Mandarb, Lan’s horse (fear not! Bela is cast and will also be in the series!).

The metadata tells us this is indeed Shadar Logoth, featuring Lan escaping “a temple” with a wounded or exhausted Moiraine in his arms. Interestingly, it appears from the data that a dummy is used in this scene for Moiraine, although whether that’s a dummy or the real Rosamund Pike in the actual picture is unclear (good dummy work, if so).

The third shot features Egwene and Rand enjoying a quiet moment on their journey. It looks like this is part of a sequence for the early episodes filmed in Slovenia, depicting the countryside in the Two Rivers and western Andor.

The metadata for this shot states that it is from the very first episode and features the keywords “couple,” “mountains,”, “Soca River,” “Slovenia,” and “jump,” as well as saying that Egwene is going to do something and Rand knows what it is (jump?). It is possible this scene is from later in the episode when the gang are on their way to Taren Ferry. The word “couple” is interesting, as in the book Rand and Egwene seem to consider themselves, if not betrothed, then at least likely to become betrothed by their families, but they’re not actually together romantically. This may factor into the subplot in the books, as Rand and Egwene become aware they’re not actually going to hook up, or might indicate a change that Rand and Egwene are already together when the story opens and perhaps break up later on (since Rafe Judkins has confirmed that Rand will have his relationships with Elayne, Min and Aviendha in the show as in the books). This would be a subtle shift in the book dynamic, but might also avoid early viewers “shipping” Rand and Egwene and getting disappointed when that never comes to pass. Having them already together and then break up gets that idea out of the way. It sounds minor, but the popularity of “ships” on a show can substantially drive discussion about a show (not always for the better, but still).

The final shot is from the biggest change from the books to the TV series, a new storyline that follows the misadventures of Logain Ablar, a false Dragon. This story is referred to in the books and takes place off-page, but will be front-and-centre in the TV series. In this shot, Logain (Álvaro Morte) is held prisoner by sisters of the Aes Sedai, most notably Alanna Mosvani (Priyanka Bose) on the left and Kerene Nagashi (Clare Perkins) on the right, both sisters of the Green Ajah. In the background are two sisters of the Red Ajah. Eagle-eyed book fans will note that Kerene only appears in the prequel novel New Spring and dies long before the events of the series proper; it’ll be interesting to theorise and then see what purpose is saved by moving Kerene’s story into the main saga.

The metadata for this shot, amusingly, is incorrect and points to a shot from the third episode with Egwene and Perrin on Caralain Grass. We don’t know when the Logain shot is from, but based on other information it might be from the fourth episode.

We’re now three months or less from The Wheel of Time hitting the air, and we’ll be likely to see a trailer in the near(ish) future. As usual, follow our casting and news pages, and let us know what you think of the latest developments.

We finally have our first extensive look at Amazon Prime upcoming TV show, The Wheel of Time. The Entertainment Weekly September issue features an exclusive article with photos of the main cast in costume. This is our first peek at many of the main characters we all know and love.

Inside the article, showrunner Rafe Judkins describes the process of bringing the book series to life, and the article compares the book length against other popular fantasy series.

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“We literally built Shadar Logoth from scratch just for 15 minutes of airtime, because it’s that important to the series,” Judkins says of the infamous abandoned city, which is haunted by such dark energy that even the monstrous Trollocs hunting our protagonists fear to tread there. “That’s where is becomes very clear it’s not just the forces of good and evil. There are lots of different angles.”

The photos are all stunning and have us fans swooning all over social media.

The shot of the Emond’s Field Five, includes Zoë Robins as Nynaeve, Barney Harris as Mat, Daniel Henney as Lan, Rosamund Pike as Moiraine, Madeleine Madden as Egwene, Marcus Rutherford as Perrin, and Josha Stradowski as Rand. The magnificent seven look travel worn and their costumes look lived in.

We also see a photo of Moiraine and Lan entering the city of Shadar Logoth, with the city feeling especially creepy.

The article includes a shot of Rand and Egwene sitting in the mountains giving us a hint at their complex relationship.

And an incredible shot of Priyanka Bose as Alanna with Álvaro Morte as Logain locked in an elaborate cage.

You can read the article here and the magazine will be on newsstands August 20th, 2021.

These photos are gorgeous and give us just a hint of what to expect from the TV show this November! For more about the upcoming TV show, visit our TV info page.

What do you think of the EW article and the images they shared? Let us know in the comments or on our forums!

Amazon Prime announced today, as part of the Comic-Con at Home online event, that The Wheel of Time TV show will debut in November of this year. This comes in the wake of last week's announcement at JordanCon where show runner Rafe Judkins assured us that a full trailer would be coming "by the end of summer."

The poster for the show was also revealed. It features Moiraine, played by Rosamund Pike, standing in front a waygate. The poster declares the show will be released "Nov 2021."

The full Comic-Con event consisted of a pre-recorded interview with Rafe. He spoke of his personal connection to the Wheel of Time books, why they mattered to him, and what sets the series apart. He also said that when he began the process of adapting the books, he "mapped out" 8 seasons worth of material.  It's important to realize that this is not an assurance that he will get 8 seasons, or that it's even still the plan.  That simply shows Rafe's thinking at the start of the process. 

Here's the full video:

So who's ready for November?  What do you think of the poster?  Be sure to follow us on social media for all our updates.

Amazon announced today via their official Wheel of Time Twitter account that production has begun on Season 2 of their upcoming TV show. 

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) July 19, 2021

Season 1 of the show has not aired but a specific release date is expected soon, perhaps as early as this weekend when showrunner Rafe Judkins will be part of the 2021 Comic-Con@Home convention.

No additional details about Season 2 are known yet other than the title of the season's first episode ("A Taste of Solitude"). That episode is written by Amanda Kate Shuman and directed by Thomas Napper. 

It's not uncommon for modern TV shows to begin filming their second seasons before the first airs. Like season 1, season 2 is expected to have a long-running production and lengthy post process in order to accomodate the large number of visual effects.  But the fact that season 2 is now underway shows that Amazon and Sony are confident in what they've seen so far from season 1. 

Are you excited for the show? Tell us in the comments, join us on social media, or start up a discussion in our forums! 

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.

It’s now been confirmed that Amazon’s Wheel of Time TV series is coming in 2021, which means the show should launch in well under six months from now. Excitement is building among the books’ immense global fanbase, but, as discussed previously, Amazon are going to need to get new viewers to watch the show as well. So far all of the teasers, logo reveals and casting information has been aimed at book fans and those already invested rather than complete newcomers to the franchise.

A big moment will come when the show unveils its first, proper trailer for the series. Some are hoping that will come at this year’s virtual Comic-Con event where Wheel of Time showrunner (or “shadowrunner”) Rafe Judkins will be appearing on a panel with several other writers and creatives. This is the only Wheel of Time-related event at Comic-Con currently scheduled. The panel takes place at 11am PT on 23 July.

However, it appears doubtful that this will actually be the case. The panel is a sequential series of relatively brief discussions, first with Judkins and then Evengelion 3.0 showrunner Hideaki Anno, followed by segments on Leverage: Redemption, S.O.Z. Soldiers or Zombies and the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot. The event is relatively low-key. I think if Amazon were planning a launch for the TV show as soon as September or maybe early October, they’d go all-in with a full (virtual) Comic-Con panel with as much of the cast as possible, a trailer launch and so forth. The fact they are not doing that, in a year when the absence of big-hitters DC and Marvel means they’d get more publicity than normal, is telling.

There’s also been a change at Amazon in how they approach marketing, in contrast to competitors Netflix and HBO. Amazon used to tease shows very early in development, sometimes whilst filming was underway or even before it had begun. The earliest marketing teasers for Good Omens and The Boys aired almost a year before the shows aired, and The Man in the High Castle and The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel both benefited from having their first episodes shot and released separately as pilots before the rest of the season was filmed. However, from Carnival Row onwards, Amazon originals have switched to a much more focused campaigns, described by some in the business as “global saturation marketing campaigns,” or for those familiar with movie Aliens, “nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.” The idea is to not get people to watch at trailer six or twelve months from release and then they forget about it until the week before the show airs, which they might miss (a common Netflix mistake), but instead to bombard audiences and viewers with trailers, teasers and information in a much more concentrated time period, lasting from six to twelve weeks before the release date.

Even with shows where they did show early teasers, Amazon adopted this policy in the lead-up to release with great success (especially for The Boys). Whether Amazon break from this for their vastly more expensive Lord of the Rings show (which appears to have between two and three times Wheel of Time’s already-generous budget, maybe even more), rumoured to launch in the first few months of 2022, is a bigger question.

What that means for The Wheel of Time is that a trailer during Comic-Con is highly unlikely unless they plan to release the show relatively quickly afterwards. We know the show is airing in 2021, so it will start in December at the latest (which Amazon might be trying to avoid, as it will end up going head-to-head with Season 2 of The Witcher), and the recent movements of the publishing dates for the tie-in novels suggest it might start in October or (as long has been rumoured) November. To me that makes a marketing blitz starting in late August or even September is more likely than July.

Hopefully we will get some more information from Rafe’s panel and it’d be great if he could confirm a release date there, but the feeling of myself and the rest of the Dragonmount team is that those hoping for a full-length trailer will likely be disappointed, unless Amazon decide to shift the marketing strategy they have been using for the last three years.

As usual, let us know your thoughts and keep checking our TV news and casting pages for updates.

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai

The news broke early this morning that Zack Stentz has begun working on the scripts for three The Wheel of Time movies set in the Age of Legends.  The Age of Legend movies are independent of Amazon Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time TV show currently in production.

Zack Stentz was a co-writer for Thor and X-Men First Class. He has also written for TV shows like The Flash, and Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous.

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“I’ve been a fan of Robert Jordan’s work for many years, and it is especially his allusions to the origins and backstory of The Wheel of Time that I have always found most intriguing. I’m excited to be bringing this era Robert Jordan conceptualized to life,” said Stentz via Hollywood Reporter. 

Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon of iwot productions are producers on the new movies. Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon also produced the Winter Dragon pilot and are producers for the Amazon TV show.

There’s currently no studio or distributor attached to the Age of Legends movies yet. Amazon and The Wheel of Time Showrunner, Rafe Judkins, are not involved in the movie adaptation of the book material.

If you are curious about the history of The Wheel of Time media rights, check out Adam’s deep dive.

The Wheel of Time fans will have plenty to talk about at JordanCon this weekend. We are also hoping for more TV show news from Showrunner Rafe Judkins at ComicCon next week. 

Zack Stentz confirmed his involvement this morning on Twitter. 

My first and last comments on this. Yes, it's happening. Yes, I'm pumped. To fans of the series, I share your love for Jordan's richly imagined world and incredibly detailed world and am going to be working my butt off to do right by it. Stay tuned! https://t.co/qi57Mf6hlZ

— Zack Stentz (@MuseZack) July 13, 2021

Dragonmount founder, Jason Denzel, provided a bit of context for today's announcement in a Twitter thread. Click through to the first tweet in the series: 

So an Age of Legends movie trilogy?

Let’s chat about this. (thread)#wheeloftime #twitteroftime #WoTcommunity #robertjordan #wot #thewheeloftime #dragonsworn

— Dragonmount.com (@dragonmount) July 13, 2021

Showrunner Rafe Judkins of Amazon Prime's The Wheel of Time will be on a virtual panel at Comic-Con@Home 2021. The Amazon panel will take place on July 23rd at 11am PT and will stream to the San Diego Comic-Con's YouTube. Check back here for the link once we get closer. 

TV presenter Tim Kash will have a conversation with each Showrunner on the panel, and we might even see some announcements or content drops! We are keeping our fingers crossed for some great photos or another teaser, but seems unlikely we will see a trailer quite yet. 

Watch the pattern continue to weave as our Shadowrunner @rafejudkins takes the virtual stage at #ComicConAtHome2021 and shares exclusive details about our upcoming series. pic.twitter.com/4UuThSwYHw

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) July 8, 2021

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.

It’s a sign that Wheel of Time news has been a bit thin on the ground recently when fans get incredibly excited about the reveal of the TV show’s official logo.

Up until now, Amazon has been using a derivation of the logo from the novels. However, it was clear that they’d want to create their own logo to easily differentiate the TV series from the books, the tabletop RPG and other takes on the same franchise, and they could put on their own merchandise.

Intriguingly, they’ve decided not to include a literal Wheel in the image. Although they might be an obvious choice, it might also feel a little too on-the-nose. Instead, the primary image in the logo is a variation on the ouroboros symbol, of a snake eating its own tail. In mythology, the ouroboros is a serpent eating its own tail, a symbol for eternity. It is also used to depict alchemy and the cycle of life, death and rebirth. The symbol is Egyptian in origin (one adorns the tomb of Tutankhamun, dating from c. 1323 BC) before being picked up on by the ancient Greeks, who massively popularised its use. It also later appears in Norse mythology as the World Serpent, Jörmungandr, and in the Bible as the Leviathan. Variations on the image also appear in Hinduism. All of these sources were used by Robert Jordan during research for the Wheel of Time novels.

In The Wheel of Time novels, the ouroboros is depicted as the Great Serpent, a symbol of eternity even older than the Wheel itself. Aes Sedai wear a Great Serpent ring to depict their rank and status, and the Great Serpent is sometimes used as a metaphor for time in lieu of the more familiar Wheel.

More careful examination of the logo and its animated opening shows the scales initially being contrasted between light and shadow, forming a representation of the Aes Sedai symbol. The Aes Sedai symbol is, of course, the yin and yang symbol of Chinese philosophy. The yin and yang represent dualism, the idea of how opposite and contrary forces may actually be complementary and even interdependent. This is a key theme of the series where the dualism of male and female, order and chaos, and good and evil are core ideas. At the start of the books the two are separated out, with the white symbol being presented as the Flame of Tar Valon, standing for order, female power and good, and the black symbol being presented as the Dragon’s Fang, standing for chaos, male unpredictability and evil (a result of the male half of the One Power being cursed, dooming male channellers to insanity and death even as the fate of the world hinges on the success of one of them, the Dragon Reborn). This is actually the inversion of the traditional Chinese use of the symbol, where yang is white and yin is black. The traditional Chinese version of the symbol also has a tiny dot of white in the black half and vice versa, to show that nothing is entirely one way or the other; Jordan omitted this possibly to make the symbol less immediately obviously the same thing as the yin and yang.

The ring itself is also interesting, as it is made up of a serpent that coils downwards to infinity. This hints at the other worlds/dimensions that come to play a major role in the story. The surface of the ring is also rippled and coils back in on itself in unusual ways, like a Möbius strip. Such a strip is unusual in having only one side and one boundary, meaning that though it appears to have two sides, it only has one, the result of an elaborate optical illusion. The Möbius strip is sometimes used in science fiction and fantasy to represent matters related to non-linear time; Avengers: Endgame visualises its time travel technology with a 3D holographic version of a strip (which gives Tony Stark the clue he needs to make time travel possible).

Eagle-eyed fans also caught that the logo has messages in the Old Tongue – the language of the Age of Legends – hidden in the corners. “Kodome calichniye ga ni athan’an aman hei” means “here is always a welcome for the People of the Dragon.”

Amazon also revealed variations of the logo in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, French and Japanese, as well as a scaled-down version of the logo using the major initials “WT” (rather than the more common fan-abbreviation “WoT”).

The unveiling of the logo is possibly the start of a more concerted marketing push for the series, which as we speculated last time may launch in November (and the logo reveal does confirm a 2021 release date). In an intriguing development, the release of the TV tie-in editions for the Wheel of Time novels has moved up to 16 September in the UK, 28 September in the USA for the mass-market edition and 5 October for the trade paperback edition. Although these dates seem to be in flux and should be treated with caution, it may hint that Amazon is now considering an earlier launch for the show, in October or early November, rather than the previously-hinted late November/December launch date.

Hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll see a full trailer and start seeing things spooling up for the show’s long, long-delayed launch.

As usual, let us know your thoughts and keep checking our TV news and casting pages for updates.

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai

The Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime shared a short video to social media confirming the show will be released in 2021. The video also reveals a new logo for the television show. 

This is the first confirmation from Amazon that we will see the TV show before the end of THIS year. The new logo is the serpent eating its tail, or the ouroboros, without the seven spoked wheel. Sharp eyed fans noticed a lot of small details inspired by the books in the new logo. 

Light shines on a silvery scale of the great serpent, briefly creating the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai. A circle, divided by a sinuous line. Half light and half dark. The serpent spirals around into a twisting Mobius strip like the dream ter’angreal and comes to rest eating its tail. A circling serpent like the rings worn by Aes Sedai. Then words appear: The Wheel of Time. 2021.

Cue excited cheering from us fans!

Find Dragonmount on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and then let us know what you think of the new logo in the comments below. 

Even legends can have a beginning. #TheWheelOfTime Coming to Prime Video 2021 pic.twitter.com/72Wg0lSiSt

— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) June 30, 2021

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai.

Amazon Prime Video Australia and New Zealand released a promotional video for their shows coming to Australia in 2021  including Amazon Prime’s The Wheel of Time television show. The video features actor Madeleine Madden who plays Egwene al’Vere.

This is the first recorded promotional material that we’ve seen for the upcoming TV show, and just a hint of what to expect from Amazon in the months to come.

The clip also includes footage of the table read previously seen on The Wheel of Time’s Twitter account back in October 2019. There is no other new footage but it’s great to see her so excited!

With season one wrapping up filming in May, we are keeping our fingers crossed we get to see Madeleine as Egwene this year!

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.

News from the Pattern

A flurry of news and rumours have swept Wheel of Time TV-land in the last few weeks, and it’s probably a good idea to take a look at the situation and see what’s what.

Season 1 is a wrap! (probably)

WoTSeries, who’ve been keeping their finger on the pulse of the latest developments, reported last week that behind-the-scenes crew were celebrating wrapping on the first season. They later clarified that a few more pick-ups needed to be done, but for all intents and purposes work on the first season has been completed. Rafe Judkins, Wheel of Time showrunner and unstoppable Narg-teaser, also confirmed this news in an Instagram Q&A yesterday.

No time for a rest though, as per our report work on Season 2 is due to begin almost immediately, with production rolling into the second year after a break for a couple of weeks for set building and table-reads.

November might be the month!

Orbit Books, who publish the Wheel of Time novels in the UK and Commonwealth, have listed a new, TV tie-in edition of The Eye of the World for publication on 4 November. Tie-in editions of novels are typically published between a week and a month before the show or movie debuts. WoTSeries, doing a lot of hard work, have reported 26 November – Black Ajah Friday? – as one of the dates currently being batted around at Amazon. Assuming Amazon replicates their recent release schedule from shows like The Boys, that would put maybe three episodes out on 26 November and then one a week for five weeks afterwards, ending on New Year’s Eve. I wouldn’t mark that on calendars as confirmed just yet, but it’s a good sign that Amazon are at least envisaging a launch date this side of Christmas.

Tor Books, who publish the novels in the United States, have not yet confirmed their own plans for a TV tie-in edition.

Give us the Daughter-Heir!

An unconfirmed report (from a NSFW site we won’t be linking here) has Amazon casting for a “young actress to play a princess and future queen,” with reportedly the maximum number of legally-allowed years being asked for (six). That suggests that Amazon are looking for their Elayne Trakand (whose casting for Season 1 has not been confirmed) and that they also envisage the show lasting for (at least) seven seasons in total. Both of these facts are only conjectural; if Amazon wanted to be smart and had sneakily cast Elayne for Season 1 without announcing it, they might be casting for a different role. If you really stretch the definition, this could also be casting for Faile if they want to introduce her early, or Berelain, or even Tuon if they envisage major changes to the Seanchan storyline. Asking for six years might also simply be Amazon covering their bases for future renewals; if the show comes out and bombs, then we won’t be getting a third season, let alone a seventh.

Into the desert

Ondrej Nekvasil, the production designer for The Wheel of Time, was interviewed by a Czech periodical (translation courtesy of WoTSeries) and confirmed that the show will reflect the 16^th/17^th Century cultural setting of novels, rather just a generic medieval fantasy design. More intriguingly, he indicated Season 2 will shoot in Morocco, where productions such as Kingdom of Heaven and Game of Thrones have filmed in the past. The dry, dusty locations that Morocco provides relatively cheaply and within easy travel of Europe makes the Aiel Waste a likely candidate for the location, but I would not expect them to reach The Shadow Rising so early in the series. It’s possible we will instead be seeing flashbacks of some kind to the Waste, or perhaps from Seanchan characters to a dry and dusty part of their home continent. It may also be that part of the main continent has been re-envisaged as a more desert-like biome, or that it might be standing in for the Great Blight, or one the worlds reached by Portal Stone. Time will tell on this one.

A new title!

We have our first episode title for Season 2. The first episode will be called A Taste of Solitude and will be written by Amanda Kate Shuman. The title comes from a chapter in Lord of Chaos, indicating that Amazon will be drawing on the entire book series for ideas for episode titles, and the episode titles will not automatically correspond with the events of the chapter of the same name (unless Season 1 is way more compressed than we first thought).

Interestingly, we still don’t have confirmation of the titles for the final two episodes of Season 1 yet, something we’re endeavouring to find out as soon as possible.

Q&A with the Showrunner

Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins hit up Instagram on Thursday 20 May for an impromptu Q&A. It’s worth reading the full session in his Instagram stories, but the pertinent highlights follow:

• In the edit, episodes of the series have been clocking in between 50 and 65 minutes in length.
• The “EF5” (Emond’s Field Five, namely Rand, Mat, Perrin, Nynaeve and Egwene) have been doing most of their own stunts.
• Rafe is very excited by a character who appears in Book 1 but not Season 1, but who will appear in Season 2. To help us narrow it down he has given us the first two letters of their name: “EL.” So Elayne or Elaida. Or maybe Elyas. Or the oft-missed merchant, El’Steve of Elmora? I guess we’ll find out.
• The writing team assembled between Seasons 1 and 2 and developed an outline for how to break the entire fourteen-book series into a reasonable number of TV seasons (i.e. less than fourteen).
• Whether we “see” someone channelling in a scene will depend on which characters are in the scene and which ones the scene has been focusing on.
• A shift from the books is that Season 1 is an ensemble piece, whilst the first novel is more tightly focused on just a couple of characters (Rand, predominantly). The season will try to give more equal weight and screen-time to different characters, presumably as part of their plan to obfuscate the identity of the Dragon Reborn a bit more than in the books.
• Narg has been confirmed as appearing. Rafe also confirmed they have unofficial names for other Trollocs. One is referred to as “Betty.”
• At least two of the actors were in a race to finish all of the books and one of them has won, but he didn’t reveal who that was.
• The show will have to condense and merge storylines and characters from different books, otherwise the youngest castmembers will be 45 by the time they finish.
• Perrin has been the most challenging main character to write for because so much of his characterisation is internal in the novels (where Perrin appearing “slow” when he’s actually just thinking hard is a regular plot point), but they have been helped by Marcus Rutherford’s performance.
• Lan’s colour-changing cloak has been reluctantly cut from the show, with the vfx requirements and costs being high for something which is a relatively minor part of the series.

Warders teasing their Aes Sedai

It’s not dumping a duck pond on their Aes Sedai’s head, but one Wheel of Time Warder was spotted high-tailing it off the set with a strange and powerful angreal known as a “Golden Globe,” with Moiraine Damodred in hot pursuit. Further developments as they come in.

As usual, please continue to follow developments on our casting and news pages and stay tuned for more info as we get it.

The news broke yesterday that Amazon Prime officially renewed The Wheel of Time for a second season!

Rafe Judkins, the showrunner, hinted that the writing staff had already begun writing scripts for season two some time ago, but the confirmation was appreciated.

The filming of season one wrapped as well, and there’s speculation the release date may be sometime in the fall of this year.

Amidst all the celebration, Rafe Judkins hosted a Q&A session on Instagram.  You can read the questions and his responses below:

Q: What’s the average running time of each episode?

A: Amazon is great because each ep doesn’t have to hit an exact time like you do in network TV. And these eps are epic, so we are clocking in between 50-65 minutes each.

Q: Congratulations on S1 wrap!! Blink twice if a trailer is coming soon…..

A: (A blushing, wide eyed emoji)

Q: Do EF5 actors perform stunts on their own or do they have stunt doubles?

A: Everyone on the show has a stunt double, but most of our actors are really amazing with the physical stuff and doing their own stunts. I’m the only one who’s always falling.

Q: How are you feeling having wrapped S1?

A: To be totally honest, it hasn’t fully him me yet.  There’s still so much to be done to get the show ready to air and get S2 shooting, that while I was drinking my celebratory champagne on set after the last shot Tuesday, someone grabbed me to tackle three new problems that had come up and I had to leave ha

Q: What character that doesn’t appear in S1 & does appear in S2 are you most excited about?

A: Starts with an EL

Q: Do you have the plot of all the seasons roughly mapped out?

A: Yeah, between Season One and Two we made a rough map of how the series could break down into seasons. It can always change obviously, but important to know where we are going and how we are getting there so we build it right if @amazonprimevideo keeps us around for the long haul ?

Q: Will we see the actual weaves of just the end result of channeling?

A: You’re going to see if all if you’re a woman who can channel

Q: Most difficult part of creating TWOT during a global pandemic.

A: The human aspect. We’ve built a family here in Prague with cast and crew and keeping everyone safe has been top priority. Everyone’s ability to adapt and meet the stresses of a time like this has been amazing to watch.

Q: How far should we get into the books if we don’t want Season 1 to spoil things for us?

A: This question is so cleverly worded to trick me that I have to respond to it out of sheer respect

Q: How are you balancing the numerous POVs in the book vs focusing on Rand?

A: I’ve always said, we are adapting the whole series not just Eye of the World, and I really think this is an ensemble series, so the first season is as well

Q: Will we see forsaken in season 1?

A: Some people see Forsaken everywhere

Q: Will we see Narg? (crossed fingers emoji)

A: Yep

Q: Did any of the actors end up becoming fans of the book series after getting cast?

A: I’m not going to spoil who, but two of the core cast are in a read off right now, and I think one of them may have finished the series

Q: How many “brands” or trollocs did you create for the show?

A: We leaned into the books and tried to have the trollocs have as much individual character as possible. My favorite is the one we call Betty

Q: Will S2 take us to a lot of new locations? How big can the world get?

A: Best thing about Wheel of Time is the world keeps getting bigger and deeper. And we’ve gotta deliver on that in the show

Q: Please ask Amazon Prime if they’d do a sweepstakes for a fan to be an extra on the show.

A: @amazonprimevide and @thewheeloftime (thinking emoji)

Q: Loved the first look at the Trollocs! When are we getting more?

A: Sadly there hasn’t been a first look at the Trollocs yet.  That was some accidently leaked raw footage. We work so hard to make the show it’s always a shame when you guys see stuff outside the way we have it planned. I’ll tell you one thing, when I met with directors for S2 who’d seen the pilot, they all had one thing to say – “THOSE TROLLOCS???”

(Small text to the side: Why does Instagram make the text so skinny. This is driving me crazy)

Q: Excited to progressively spiral downwards into raving madness?

A: It’s so funny that you think I’m not already there

Q: Are you planning a book per season or are there adaptations and inclusion from multiple?

A: We have to combine. @madeleine_madden and @joshastradowski would be 45 when we finished otherwise.

Q: Will Lan’s cook cloak be featured in the show?

A: I love Lan’s cloak in the show. But much like Aes Sedai agelessness, if  it’s an effect that’s going to cost a fortune every time a character is on screen, it’s a bad use of our money. Unless you want to see all of S1 in the Winespring Inn.  Then you can have color changing cloaks  ?

Q: Who has been the hardest character to write for so far?

A: Perrin is the hardest. His interior monologue in the books is the biggest part of his character, so bringing him out in the show is always something we have to build really consciously. Luckily @marcus_rudda just exudes Perrin every minute so it makes our lives a lot easier

(text at the bottom: And thank you @sarahenakamura for teaching me about the text slider. Just in time for the last question)

Q: Have you started writing S2?

A: Yeah! The awesome S2 writers have been working throughout the year and we already have a bunch of great scripts ready to go.

It appears that we’re going to be getting a lot more Wheel of Time in the future. According to industry bible Deadline, Amazon has renewed the TV series for a second season and production will commence as soon as the last scenes for Season 1 are completed in the coming weeks. Like the first season, the second is expected to consist of eight episodes.

We heard a while back that the writers had started work on scripts for the second season, and Amazon traditionally greenlights two seasons before airing the first, often starting shooting the second year before airing a single episode (they did this with The Boys and The Expanse and it sounds like their Lord of the Rings prequel show is going the same way). This way they can air the seasons with just a year’s gap between them, unlike competitors Netflix and HBO who frequently have 18-24 month gaps between seasons. However, with Wheel of Time they never formally announced a Season 2 greenlight, leading some to believe they were taking a different approach with this show.

Whatever the original plan was, it was derailed – as with so much else – by the COVID19 pandemic. Season 1’s original eight-month shooting schedule has been dramatically extended to at least twenty-one months due to two shutdowns caused by the coronavirus. Six episodes were completed in the first batch of filming and most of the last two were completed in the second, but several scenes were left unfinished. Fortunately, the cast and crew recently regrouped in the Czech Republic and shooting is now reportedly underway on the last few scenes. Taking Deadline’s statement literally, they could potentially roll into shooting Season 2 as soon as this month or next. This means that, hopefully, in the coming weeks we should start hearing about cast and crew hirings for the second year.

Of course, it would help if we knew what was going to happen in the second season. Season 1 is predominantly based on The Eye of the World, the first book in The Wheel of Time, though it will also incorporate some original storylines and characters from the prequel novel New Spring (widespread reports that Season 1 will adapt the first two books in the season have proven erroneous, based on the known filming locations and casting for the first season). Season 2, logically, should be mainly based on The Great Hunt. However, The Wheel of Time consists of fourteen novels and the TV show is very clearly not going to last for fourteen seasons, so a degree of compression for future seasons is to be expected. Season 2 could well incorporate more material from the third book in the series, The Dragon Reborn, or take a different tack.

We know from showrunner Rafe Judkins that the show will feature the Seanchan (allaying some fears they’d be cut altogether), so it’s possible in the second season we’ll meet characters like the High Lord Turak, Lady Suroth and ship captain Egeanin. If Book 1 characters did not appear in Season 1, it’s possible they’ll appear instead in Season 2, and characters in this bracket could include Elayne, Galad, Gawyn, Bayle Domon and Elaida. Other characters fans might be keeping their eyes open for include Lord Ingtar, Hurin the sniffer, King Galldrian, Lord Barthanes, the redoubtable Child of the Light Jaichim Carridin, and Selene, the noble lady who is more than she appears. There’s also the fan-favourites, the Fal Dara squad of soldiers including Ragan and Uno (and the less-popular Masema). Fans may also be keen to get their first glimpses of the Seanchan exotic creatures (like grolm and raken), which could be a fresh challenge for the CGI team.

Let us know what Season 2 elements you’re looking forwards to, and we’ll have to see what news breaks in the next few weeks. In the meantime, keep an eye on Dragonmount’s news page and casting page for the latest developments.

Amazon Prime revealed a first glimpse of actor Daniel Henney as the Lan Mandragoran in the upcoming Wheel of Time TV show. They revealed a 6-second video via their official social media accounts and YouTube:

Official Video description:

Quote

 

The video opens on darkness as we hear ominous sounds in the background. A man’s voice says "You think you know this world… you know nothing.” He comes into focus, turning his face of stone towards something, a fire burning behind him.

 

This is Daniel Henney as Lan Mandragoran, Warder bonded to Moiraine Damodred. He turns around and strikes a creature that we can only see from the back with his sword, as the video smashes to black.

 

This is the second official character reveal that the show has provided. Back in March they revealed Rosamund Pike as Moiraine through a brief video.  

Tell us what you think of the video in the comments below or on social media.

Learn more about Amazon's Wheel of Time TV show.  

For those of us waiting for the Wheel of Time television series to arrive, the wait is starting to feel a bit interminable. Production on the first season began almost two years ago and we still don’t have a final air date or even a full-length trailer, although Amazon have started recently posting very short clips to kick off the marketing excitement for the show.

At this point a recap of the status of the show might be in order.

A Wheel of Time adaptation, based on the fourteen-volume book series by Robert Jordan (published between 1990 and 2013), has been in the works for over twenty years. NBC, Universal and a Japanese animation company all took various tilts at the idea before finally Sony Television brought the project to life in conjunction with Amazon. Showrunner Rafe Judkins, a veteran of shows such as Agents of SHIELD and Chuck and a lifelong Wheel of Time fan, has adapted the show with a team of scriptwriters from the fields of television, film and stage plays. Robert Jordan’s widow and editor, Harriet McDougal, and author Brandon Sanderson, who completed the novels after Robert Jordan’s sad passing in 2007, are advising on the project, as is Wheel of Time superfan Sarah Nakamura and Maria Simons, one of Robert Jordan’s researchers and assistants.

Production of the show is based in the Czech Republic, with filming studios in Prague serving as the primary base for shooting. Location filming has taken place across the Czech Republic and also in Slovenia and Spain.

The first season consists of eight episodes and will adapt the first novel in The Wheel of Time series, The Eye of the World, although some story elements from other novels may be introduced earlier than anticipated, and some storylines, locations and characters from The Eye of the World have been dropped for time or cost reasons, or delayed until later seasons and storylines when they have more to do. With the show unlikely to last fourteen seasons, it is likely that the show will take a somewhat looser approach to adaptation than, say, the Lord of the Rings movies or the early seasons of Game of Thrones.

The show’s production has been, regrettably, extended by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Six of the eight episodes had been shot to completion when the Czech Republic imposed a lockdown on filming in March 2020. Shooting was able to resume in early September, but shut down again in November when a second wave – and, for the Czech Republic, a much worse one – of the pandemic hit the country. Some additional filming did take place in December in Spain.

The current status of the show is that the overwhelming majority of footage needed for the first season has been shot and is in the bag, and the vfx and post-production teams are hard at work on inserting music, sound effects, CGI and graphics for the final product. However, several scenes from the last two episodes remain to be shot and it sounds like they need to be finished off before the season can be said to have fully wrapped and a release date set. There are some rumours that the production team may be able to shoot the last footage they need in the next couple of months, opening the way for the show to air in late 2021 through to early 2022, but that has not yet been confirmed.

Of course, The Wheel of Time is not the only fantasy show to be adversely affected by the pandemic. The second season of Netflix’s The Witcher had a similarly protracted filming period, with repeated shutdowns due to COVID outbreaks in the UK and even among the cast and crew (a problem that Wheel of Time at least seems to have dodged). Fortunately, that show was able to conclude its filming last week and now seems firmly on track to air later in the year.

The Wheel of Time does have a slight issue in terms of internal competition. Amazon Television is also producing a Lord of the Rings TV series based on the forging of the Rings of Power, set in the Second Age of Middle-earth (roughly five thousand years before the events of The Lord of the Rings itself). Filming in mostly COVID-free New Zealand, the show has largely escaped the delays and problems that have beset Europe-based productions. Filming is expected to continue for some months, but some reports and rumours suggest that the show is filming its first two seasons back-to-back, and filming of the first season material may have already concluded and be in post, with a view to airing in very late 2021 or early 2022. That could lead to a time issue where Amazon are perhaps reluctant to air two superficially-similar epic fantasy TV shows in the same window (and with both shows likely to air weekly, maybe simultaneously), resulting in further delays to one of the projects. That’s only a theoretical issue for now, but one to keep an eye on if the delays continue.

The wait is of course frustrating, but we can hope that the end product will be worth it. In the meantime, keep an eye on Dragonmount’s news page and casting page for the latest developments.

Amazon Prime revealed a first glimpse of Rosamund Pike as the iconic character Moiraine Damodred in the upcoming Wheel of Time TV show. They revealed a 5-second video via their official social media accounts and YouTube:

This is the first official character reveal that the show has provided fans. 

Tell us what you think of the video in the comments below or on social media.

Learn more about Amazon's Wheel of Time TV show.  

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.

At some point in the hopefully-not-too-distant future, Amazon Prime’s Wheel of Time TV series is going to hit the airwaves, and the question arises on how are they going to get the show before as many eyeballs as possible?

The current television market is glutted with more network, streaming and cable shows than ever before. More than five hundred scripted series – that’s not episodes, that’s series – will air in the United States alone in 2021, and that’s not counting English-language shows from Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere. Getting eyeballs on the show is going to be essential to ensure it survives, but that’s harder than it ever has been before.

Fortunately, The Wheel of Time has some help. Almost 100 million copies of the books have been sold worldwide since 1990. The Wheel of Time is one of the highest-profile and best-known fantasy series in the world, with a vast, international fanbase. Fans have already been talking excitedly about the series for around eighteen months, ever since the first casting and production information began to trickle out, and various Wheel of Time-related phrases and hashtags have been trending on social media. Multiple, high-profile booktubers have been discussing the adaptation for over a year, and high-profile geek websites like Tor.com and io9 have been spreading news as it breaks. Like Game of Thrones before it, Wheel of Time benefits from a passionate fanbase keen to spread the word of the TV show before it even airs, with the bonus that Wheel of Time has a much larger reader base than the Song of Ice and Fire novels had in 2011.

But for the show to be a hit, it has to reach out beyond the core fanbase. Some of the high-profile casting will help. Rosamund Pike (Moiraine) has had a long career in hit films from Die Another Day through Pride & Prejudice, Jack Reacher and The World’s End, through to her massive hit role in Gone Girl (which garnered her an Oscar nomination), and she has plenty of fans willing to check out any project she’s involved in. Rosamund's profile has risen even higher thanks to her Best Actress (Musical/Comedy) win at the Golden Globes last weekend for I Care a Lot. Daniel Henney (Lan) likewise has a keen international fanbase of his work in both American and South Korean cinema and television, particularly his popular stint on Criminal Minds, whilst Maria Doyle Kennedy (Ila) has a strong fanbase from her work in The Commitments, The Tudors, Outlander and Orphan Black, as well as her singing career (among many other projects). The high-profile end of the casting will certainly draw eyes onto the project. Álvaro Morte (Logain) also has a strong following from his work, and recently spoke about his role.

Amazon’s relatively small slate of original programming, at least compared to competitor Netflix, will also help with this: Amazon can afford to put more resources into marketing the show and making people aware it’s on its way, rather than risk the show getting lost in a morass of other shows coming out at the same time. For a long time, it looked like Amazon was lagging a little in the streaming race with Netflix, but recent breakout hits like The Boys and the hugely increased viewership and awareness of The Expanse after it moved over to Amazon have shown it can now produce great shows with large audiences.

One question we’ve touched on before is whether the show will launch weekly or all at once. Given Amazon’s move to a weekly release schedule for many of their original shows, I think it’s probably more likely than not that Wheel of Time will hit the airwaves one episode at a time, possibly after the first two or three episodes are released at once. That will give The Wheel of Time more than a month of having people talking about a new episode every week, that will hopefully get people excited and willing to watch more.

Amazon has already, of course, started drip-feeding us some marketing already, with a short look at the Winespring Inn, a look at the show’s swords, a tease of an infamous dagger and a brief glimpse at Thom’s new musical instrument, as well as unveiling some impressive concept art. At the moment these sneak peeks are aimed more at book-readers than a general audience, but that will change.

I suspect a short teaser of some kind will be aired first, maybe 3-6 months out from airing, with a longer and more substantive trailer a few weeks out from transmission. These trailers will have to nail what makes The Wheel of Time different from other fantasy projects like Game of Thrones or The Witcher, or Amazon’s own upcoming Lord of the Rings show, so I’d suspect some display of the One Power in full force and a focus on Rosamund Pike’s star power as Moiraine (especially since early blurbs suggest the show will re-focus on Moiraine as a protagonist to keep the identity of the Dragon Reborn more in question than it is in the books).

What will be interesting is if some kind of supporting website is launched as well. The world of The Wheel of Time is complex, with fourteen distinct nations in the Westlands alone, numerous competing factions and a detailed backstory unfolding over almost 3,500 years. Existing references are heavy on spoilers for the books, so a TV-specific website with maps, histories and descriptions of factions like the Aes Sedai, Tuatha’an, Aiel and Children of the Light could be a great reference, especially if it’s only updated to the latest episode to avoid spoilers.

It’s also likely we’ll get some kind of aftershow to discuss the latest episode in detail with guest stars and comparisons to the books. There’s certainly plenty of Wheel of Time talent out there knowledgeable enough to make such a show engaging. There may also be featurettes and documentaries expanding on what happened behind the scenes on the making of the show.

There’s also merchandising to consider. We’ll likely see The Eye of the World at least – if not the entire series – reissued with a TV tie-in cover, and we already know that Valyrian Steel are working on replica swords based on the TV designs. We’ll also probably see the soundtrack released commercially. More detailed merchandising – statues, action figures, a pop-up guide book to Tar Valon, and, of course, the inevitable Narg’s Cooking Masterclass cookbook – may wait on people seeing how successful the first season has been.

One thing that is for sure is that when Amazon decide on a release date for the show, they’ll make sure as many people as possible know about it.

As usual, hit us up in the comments with your thoughts and keep an eye on the Wheel of Time TV News page here on Dragonmount.

It's #WoTWednesday and @WoTonPrime didn't disappoint.  A new video released today showed us our first look at Mat's ruby-hilted dagger.  Here's the clip:

Where the Shadow waits. pic.twitter.com/Y1WS0HFwqr

— The Wheel of Time (@WOTonPrime) February 17, 2021

The script says: "He moves toward it, blowing dust away.  The iron is rusted and decayed, and CRACKS away as he OPENS the case -- 

-- and inside, he sees something protected from the ravages of time -- A RUBY-ENCRUSTED DAGGER.  It must be worth more than anything he's seen before.  He picks it up, looks at it, and then --"

Here's an image of the dagger from the clip:

Jason Denzel posted some commentary on Twitter, outlining the differences between the description in the book, as well as the chapter icon featuring the dagger.

Images of the officially-licensed ruby-hilted dagger. Photos courtesy of @WilsonGrooms, Robert Jordan's cousin. Also an image of the book icon and @WOTonPrime dagger. Thread about the differences...!#TwitterOfTime #dragonsworn #wheeloftime #RobertJordan pic.twitter.com/n2yZzQU5Iq

— Dragonmount.com (@dragonmount) February 17, 2021

We can see some changes in the designs.  This is the Museum Replica, approved by Robert Jordan:

And the chapter icon looks very similar:

Jason's arguments for the changed position of the ruby make logical sense.  The thing that gave me chills was the voice of Barney Harris--who plays Mat Cauthon--saying "Alright, let's make a deal."  Who is he talking to?  Mordeth?  If so, he doesn't sound scared.  Also, it seems the dagger isn't in the treasure room as it was in the books, and it wasn't grabbed almost by accident when Mordeth blows up.  Mat taking the dagger here is more calculated and intentional.  And what type of deal is he trying to make?  Is he willing to give up something in exchange for the dagger?  Does he know the dangers that come from it in this turning of the Wheel?

I think I speak for a large portion of the fandom when I say how much Mat grows on the reader.  Hearing his voice makes the television show so much more real to me.  I will die on the hill of worshiping Daniel Henney--I'm a Lan girl, through and through--but Barney Harris is an incredibly close second.

How do you anticipate Mat's taking the dagger will change events of the story?  If he knows the cost of the dagger, would he still take it?  Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.

Welcome to 2021, the year that, all things being equal, we should see the Wheel of Time TV series finally hit our screens. It’s been a long road, both in terms of the thirty-one years the series has been in print and the sixteen months that have passed since shooting of the first season began on location in the Czech Republic and Slovenia.

As transmission draws nearer, Rafe Judkins and the Wheel of Time publicity team have started teasing images and videos from the series, such as the show’s version of a heron-marked blade and Thom Merrilin’s musical instruments.

These have been useful for showing the series’ production values and also hinting at creative decisions that are being taken which will mean things are different to the books.

Differences between books and their screen adaptations are of course nothing new, often driven by a combination of budgetary restraints, time pressure and maybe the TV scriptwriters spotting good story changes that the original novel writer may have done themselves if they’d had the luxury of writing the entire story before publishing it (as George R.R. Martin has recently said, “Five Kingdoms” sounds as good as seven, and would be a lot less work). In some cases, some of the biggest changes from book to screen have been carried out or approved by the original novel author themselves: J.K. Rowling signed off on all the Harry Potter movie scripts and Frank Herbert approved of the idea of the “weirding module” sound weapons for David Lynch’s version of Dune, when Lynch rejected the original novel’s hyper-fast kung fu as being too difficult to realise with 1984 technology.

Such changes can take place even in very faithful adaptations: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is, by normal movie standards, very close to Tolkien’s novel, but fans to this day debate the merits of changes such as removing Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire, having Legolas shield-surf into combat, over-using the Army of the Dead or having Aragorn randomly knocked off a cliff by a warg. Game of Thrones started off extremely faithfully to George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels, but even in those early days fans still questioned the lack of violet eyes for the Targaryens, not showing a major battle sequence or casting a short actor as the supposedly-towering King Robert Baratheon.

The Wheel of Time finds itself in a difficult position in that it is entirely possible that the series will have less time than Game of Thrones to tell a story almost twice as long (so far). The Wheel of Time tops out at fourteen volumes (not counting the prequel) totalling almost four and a half million words, compared to A Song of Ice and Fire’s projected seven volumes and around two and a half million words. The Wheel of Time’s first two seasons are expected to come in at eight episodes apiece (as compared to Game of Thrones’ first six seasons of ten episodes apiece). With the show unlikely to last more than Game of Thrones’ eight seasons, that means Wheel of Time will almost certainly come in with a fair few less hours to tell a much longer story. And yes, The Wheel of Time has a lot of descriptive passages which can be skipped over with simple visuals, but that’s not going to be enough to make up such a huge difference.

That means changes, and compression and a substantial number of changes are coming to the story we all know and love. Some of these changes will likely be widely well-received – it’s a rare Wheel of Time fan who won’t admit to some subplot or tertiary character that doesn’t feel totally necessary to the story’s narrative, or eagerly asking for more scenes of Faile as a captive of the Shaido – and others will be more controversial.

In a recent Q&A, Rafe Judkins addressed the issue of changes. He notes there are no 100% original-to-the-show characters, but some book characters and character names may have been repurposed, and some characters combined so one character is now doing the role of three or four smaller roles. He also noted that in some cases, extras or background roles may not speak or be identified in dialogue, but will nevertheless be based on character descriptions from the novels.

Rafe also notes the perennial weakness of book-to-screen adaptations. In novels we can spend time inside characters’ heads and hear their thoughts and learn their motivations. On screen we can’t. The few times that shows or movies have tried doing this, it hasn’t really worked: the awkward voiceovers to describe character thoughts in David Lynch’s Dune comes to mind. As a result character motivations now have to emerge naturalistically through action and dialogue, and that can often be difficult and more time-achieving to show.

Changes in the show also have a vetting committee of sorts, starting with Rafe himself and creative consultant/superfan Sarah Nakamura and then going to Brandon Sanderson (who completed the Wheel of Time books after Robert Jordan’s sad passing), Harriet McDougal (Jordan’s widow and editor) and Maria Simons (one of Jordan and Sanderson’s assistants and researchers). This won’t stop major changes being made where necessary, but will ensure that each change has at least been stress-tested by a number of book experts to see if they are at least in the spirit of Robert Jordan’s writing.

There are several key changes likely for the first season. The first is that major characters who make their first appearance in The Eye of the World but then do not return for a long time, will not appear in the first season for simple practical reasons. The season already has an enormous cast with the characters who play a major role and adding in other characters who only appear for one scene and then don’t show up again for two or three seasons would risk being confusing as well as dangerous, since the actors might get other gigs in the meantime and not be available when they need to come back (this problem blighted Game of Thrones repeatedly, resulting in two actors playing Lord Beric and three playing the Mountain). Fans seem already resigned to key characters like Queen Morgase, Gawyn and Galad, and possibly Elayne, not appearing in Season 1 (although it is still possible some more roles will be announced), and other characters such as Elaida, Elyas and Mordeth have not been confirmed yet either.

Another problem that epic fantasy often has is the travelogue aspect. Fantasy novels often have characters travelling from place to place to have adventures, rather than staying put in one location. This is great for a novel but bad for television, which likes to have a relatively small number of regular standing sets the characters can be based around. Game of Thrones was lucky with the source material which often established bases of operations for characters, such as the Red Keep in King’s Landing, the northern court at Winterfell, the Night’s Watch stronghold of Castle Black and the various cities Daenerys conquers in the distant east. Wheel of Time does not do this for a long, long time. Eventually the story settles down and the royal palaces in Caemlyn and Cairhien, the White Tower in Tar Valon, the Stone of Tear and various inns in Ebou Dar become such bases, but not for a long time. Filming a travelogue is very expensive and challenging even for big-budget films.

The Eye of the World is a constantly-moving travelogue which moves from the Two Rivers to Taren Ferry, Baerlon, Shadar Logoth, Whitebridge, Caralain Grass, Arien, Four Kings, Breen’s Spring, Market Sheeran, Carysford, Caemlyn, Fal Dara, the ruins of the Seven Towers, the Eye of the World and Tarwin’s Gap. The TV show sounds like it will be adding scenes set in Tar Valon as well. Rafe has indicated that not all these locations will appear on screen, necessitating some changes to the story. The cost of building an elaborate, expensive outdoor set which is going to be used for a single ten-minute on-screen sequence may not be worth it when you can set those scenes elsewhere at a cheaper cost. Rafe’s answer to this does seem to add fuel to the widespread rumours that Baerlon will not appear in the first season, and that we will be meeting Min and the Whitecloaks (who have been cast) elsewhere, as an example of a practical change that may be unavoidable but will no doubt have some fans declaring the story to be “ruined forever” before seeing a single second of footage.

Other changes will come from casting. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins is 50 years old and a mature Hobbit by the time the adventure starts, but Elijah Wood was only 18 when he was cast in the role. Hardcore fans complained about the casting, but Wood’s performance was later widely praised and is now considered iconic by many people. In Game of Thrones, the writers and casting producers realised that casting thirty-somethings for the roles of fathers and family men didn’t look quite right by our modern sensibilities and thus aged up characters like Robert Baratheon, Catelyn Stark and Eddard Stark to their late forties or early fifties, and this was widely accepted.

For The Wheel of Time, the producers decided that Alexandre Willaume was the best actor they’d seen for the role of Thom Merrilin, even if he was around twenty years younger than Thom in the books. Casting an actual sixty or seventy-something for the role of Thom was unlikely to happen given the vigours of long-term, location filming. It also seems to have influenced the decision to change Thom’s instrument of choice. A harp is a large and unwieldy instrument to be lugging around a continent, and reducing the instrument to a half-sized harp or even a lyre may have felt a bit demeaning given Thom’s exacting standards. Switching to a guitar had several advantages, since it was more portable, better hinted at the setting’s more modern aesthetics (The Wheel of Time looks like a medieval fantasy, but more accurately is a 17^th Century-style setting, lacking gunpowder) and it allowed Alexandre Willaume, who is a professional guitarist (even booking his guitar its own seat on the plane to the start of filming), to play the instrument live on set. These advantages were weighed as being more worthwhile than sticking to book accuracy.

There is of course a sliding slope when it comes to such decisions. Terry Pratchett fans are very unhappy with The Watch, a TV adaptation of the Discworld novels that has abandoned event the vaguest pretence of adapting the novels faithfully in favour of creating an original story with almost no influences, characters or settings from the book even present. Many adaptations have suffered death from a thousand cuts, where small changes for good-intentioned reasoning has led to massive shifts over time that made people wonder why the writers even bothered adapting the story in the first place. These are valid concerns but, so far, it appears that Rafe Judkins and his team have made changes and choices for the best. We can – hopefully – judge how successful they’ve been later this year.

As usual, let us know what you think and stay up to date with the latest news right here at Dragonmount.