The books have been adapted for the screen by Rafe Judkins, a veteran writer of nerd-friendly shows like Chuck and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.(*), and a professed lifelong fan of the Wheel of Time series. (*) It’s pronounced more or less like “I said hi,” and is one of many names that will make closed-captions feel essential.
WHEEL OF TIME CHARACTERS PLUS
In the first episode, she arrives in a small river community and is surprised to find four potential candidates - stoic archer Rand (Josha Stradowski), warm bartender Egwene (Madeleine Madden), mighty blacksmith Perrin (Marcus Rutherford), and the rascally hustler Mat (Barney Harris) - plus a local healer (or “wisdom”), Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) with intriguing abilities. So the powerful sorceress Moiraine ( Rosamund Pike) travels the countryside with her bodyguard (or “warder”) Lan Mandragoran (Daniel Henney) looking for this new Dragon, in hopes of harnessing its power for good instead of evil. The Aes Sedai witches have fixed things as best they can, but no one knows whether the new Dragon will be a destroyer or a healer, or even what gender it will be.
Mostly, this is fine, but one of those on track for returning is a figure called the Dragon, who in its last iteration broke the world. The titular Wheel refers to a civilization-wide belief in reincarnation, with people being reborn again and again in different circumstances. Wheel takes place in a world where magic - frequently referred to as “the one power” - exists, but is largely the province of a group of women known as the Aes Sedai(*).
We’ll have to see next year how effectively House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings have used their budgets, but the underwhelming Wheel of Time is a reminder that money alone does not make a fantasy world go around. First to market, though, is another Amazon fantasy adaptation, this time of Robert Jordan’s beloved, massive (more than a dozen books, several of which were completed after Jordan’s death) Wheel of Time series, with a reported $10 million budget per episode - more than the comparatively modest $6 million-per-episode cost of that first GoT season with Ned Stark, though less than the $15 million of that last batch of installments, with all their CGI ice zombie and dragon battles.īlack Sabbath on the Making of 'Vol. Tolkien books, never mind how much they’ve spent actually making it.
WHEEL OF TIME CHARACTERS SERIES
Next fall, Amazon is introducing a Lord of the Rings series for which they spent a quarter of a billion dollars just to acquire the rights to the J.R.R. HBO has an expensive prequel series, House of the Dragon, coming sometime next year, and their execs are no doubt hoping that the 300-year time gap between the events of the two shows will allow viewers to forget how much they disliked the GoT finale. You remember Game of Thrones, right? Epic fantasy drama adapted from a beloved (but still unfinished) book series, kicked off a new blockbuster era in television in terms of both scale and audience size, then alienated most of its audience by the end? Ring a bell? When you play the game to be the next Game of Thrones, you win, or you waste a whole lot of money.
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