It’s a big adaptation of even bigger fantasy novels, an attempt to beat HBO’s blockbuster hit at its own game and give Amazon a prestige genre series of its own.
But for all the money and effort that’s gone into the show, Amazon hasn’t made a Game of Thrones successor, try as it might.
To understand the difficulty of what Amazon and showrunner Rafe Judkins are attempting, you need to understand the sheer scale of the source material, which spans 14 novels and a prequel.
Women, on the other hand, were still spared that disaster, leading to a group of powerful magic-wielders known as the Aes Sedai, who hold considerable sway — both sorcerous and politically.
The Wheel of Time does its best to ease viewers into all that, paring down some of the more esoteric names and concepts and spreading out the minute details of how the world and its magic works over time.
One of the Aes Sedai, Moiraine , the village’s healer — any of whom could be the Dragon Reborn.
Egwene and Nynaeve are given bigger roles, in particular, whereas Rand, Perrin, and Mat tend to take up most of the spotlight in the books.
One male character, for example, is paired up with a spouse that’s created from whole cloth for the series solely for the purpose of fridging her in the first episode so that he can have something to be sad about over the course of the season.
That’s not a bad thing, given that Pike is both one of the most recognizable members of the cast and one of the best parts of the show.
The depiction of the primary form of magic , where characters are meant to be drawing in power from the world around them and weaving it into blasts of fire or bursts of air, is more hit or miss.
The Wheel of Time is also a much grimmer show than its source material, having excised nearly all the levity and humor in an effort to be more mature, to its detriment.
There are few, if any, grey areas; the big bad of the world is literally “The Dark One,” served by his army of bestial, unthinking Trollocs who literally eat people.
And Amazon is definitely confident that it’ll be able to find some success; the company has already renewed the show for a second season, out of a planned eight that Judkins has envisioned.