Wheel of Time, Season One – Looking Back Now That the Wheel Has Stopped Turning

Back in the late 90s, long before streaming giants ruled the world, fans of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time spent countless hours dream-casting our hypothetical TV series. I imagine it was a fun exercise precisely because no one genuinely believed it would happen. The sheer scale of the world, the sprawling cast, and a plot that twisted and meandered for fourteen books made it seem almost impossible to adapt in any satisfying way.

Then A Game of Thrones arrived and rewrote the rules. Suddenly every fantasy property with even a hint of brand recognition was being eyed for adaptation. The Witcher, Shannara Chronicles, and The Wheel of Time all rode that wave—each one an attempt, to varying degrees, to capture their own version of HBO’s lightning in a bottle.

Now, with the Wheel of Time show apparently dead after its third season, I find myself revisiting that first season with mixed feelings. The show had started to find its footing—even while diverging more and more from the source material—and it’s a strange thing to see it end just as it was beginning to feel like its own creation.

The Mountain of Expectations

I’ve always approached adaptations as separate works. Even the best ones—The Expanse being a rare exception—tend to fall short when compared page-to-screen. Still, somewhere deep down I hoped the series might recapture a bit of the wonder I felt when I first read The Eye of the World now close to thirty-five years ago. Not because the books were flawless (they were absolutely not great literature, even teenage me knew that), but because they were formative.

So when Season One arrived in 2021, I watched with cautious optimism.

Early Choices: Some Sensible, Some Strange

Some adaptation choices made perfect sense. Aging up the main cast was understandable, if only to avoid continuity nightmares when young actors age faster than their characters.

But other changes were harder to swallow. Perrin being married—and then killing his wife in the first episode—felt like manufactured drama rather than meaningful storytelling. It was jarring, unnecessary, and added nothing to his character beyond shock value.

The Mat situation didn’t help either. With Barney Harris leaving mid-production, the show rewrote his arc on the fly, and it showed. I don’t envy the writers here; there was likely no good solution available, but the result was messy and fans noticed.

On the positive side, I agreed with the need to streamline. Cutting travel bloat and simplifying subplots helped the pacing considerably. The books were notoriously uneven in places, especially early on, and trimming the fat made sense.

What Season One Got Right

Up until the finale, I was genuinely enjoying the season. It balanced nostalgia with a more modern pace, and it kept enough of the spirit of the books to feel familiar. The decision to merge The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn later (in Season Two) was also smart—those novels dragged in ways that didn’t add much to the core narrative. If only we could have seen the Stone of Tear on screen.

But for the first season specifically, the show’s strongest achievement was unquestionably the Children of the Light. The books often portrayed them as cartoonishly rigid; the show gave them nuance, menace, and presence in a way Jordan never quite did.

And yes, I’m happy to say goodbye to certain things: the incessant braid-tugging, the battle-of-the-sexes banter that aged badly, and the trio of boys endlessly assuming the others understood women better. None of that needed to survive the transition.

The Finale: The Wheel Stumbles

Then came the last episode.

The pacing collapsed, major plot beats were rushed, and the internal logic seemed to evaporate. After a surprisingly strong run, the finale felt like a patchwork of ideas forced together without enough time or clarity. It wasn’t unwatchable, but it was deeply unsatisfying—and it overshadowed much of the careful work that led up to it.

Now That the Wheel Has Stopped Turning

Knowing now that the series won’t continue past Season Three adds a bittersweet layer to the whole experience. Just as the show was beginning to carve out its own identity—separate from the books but increasingly confident—it seems we won’t see where that path was leading.

I’m left with mixed feelings. Season One was uneven but promising. It stumbled at the end, but there was enough there to give me hope. And now, with the show’s turning cut short, that hope will have to remain unresolved.

Maybe I’ll revisit Seasons Two and Three in future posts. For now, Season One stands as a reminder of how difficult it is to bring a world like the Wheel of Time to screen—and how, even when the result isn’t perfect, part of me is still glad someone tried.