Wheel of Time: Finding the Thread In an Adaptation

A long time fan’s journey toward embracing a new version of a story

Falling in love with a piece of media can be deeply personal. We can’t always control what we connect with, but after a while, you start to notice trends-- ideas that either reflect or challenge our worldviews and sense of self. We gravitate towards certain types of stories, themes, or characters. Once you figure out the winning combo of elements, you tend to seek out more of those to revel in. In some exceptional cases, we start digging deeper into it, looking for more bits of truth hidden within. I think that’s where fandom comes from, the need to dig deeper and we do that through connecting with other fans. We play with the characters in our fiction sandboxes, make videos and graphics that highlight some idea or parallel that is central to the art’s core truth. Well, the truth as we see it at least.

And this is why we get excited and nervous when we see our comfort media being adapted to account for updated ideological and narrative sensibilities or expressed through an entirely medium. The prospect of not only getting to relive it for the first time all over again, but to be able share it far and wide with others? The joy of seeing someone new fall in love with that moment that hooked us? They allow us to recapture a bit of the sweet ignorance we had when we were just meeting this new work, and get that welcome serotonin boost of rediscovering the newness.

Or at least, that’s how we feel in the best case scenarios. There is also a fear of adaptations. Some of it is rooted in being burned in the past, while some is the vulnerability that comes from something so personal to us being put in front of a new audience to be judged and possibly dismissed. One of the hardest things to experience when you’re a fan of something is seeing others criticize it . Afterall, most of our media loves hold some sort of connection to our key inner belief structure, and who wants the mushy inner bits to be exposed and ridiculed or misinterpreted?

When it was announced that The Wheel of Time, a behemoth of a book series, was finally being given the chance to make its proper big screen debut, I was ecstatic. I harassed everyone I’ve ever met about it, and with each casting announcement, filming announcement I did a desk chair dance. Then came the promo shots, the stills, and finally the teaser trailers. My little fanatical heart was absolutely delighted. On premiere night, I sent my children to spend the night with their grandparents, prepared a themed charcuterie board and cocktails, and snuggled down with my favorite stout wool blanket. I was ready.

Or rather, I thought I was ready.

I started out wanting to pull together my thoughts regarding an episode of The Wheel of Time, and after seven hours in the car, with nothing better to do than talk to myself and work through my complicated feelings regarding how I approach the show, I’ve had a breakthrough. “Blood Calls Blood” was the episode I personally needed to help break through the last bit of seeing this story through the lens of the books.

Credit: The Wheel of Time - Amazon Studios

Confronting a New Version of a Story

I’m good at compartmentalizing when it comes to adaptations. It’s a skill I’ve always found pride in because in the end, I’m gifted with more things to enjoy. These two stories or these two characters are different. This means that I get more character analysis to dig into, more meta to consider, more ways to appreciate the different flavors of these journeys. Sometimes, it means I love two versions in vastly different ways; sometimes it means finding comfort in one version when the other fell apart for me; and sometimes it simply means not liking one adaptation but still loving the original work and other adaptations. I get to love them both in different ways, and any criticisms come from the actual material I’m engaged with, rather than being a reflection of how I enjoyed the original.

But while watching The Wheel of Time, I have realized that maybe I’m not as good about compartmentalizing as I had thought. The fiercer you love a story, perhaps the harder it is to embrace changes to it.

Growing within me has been a seed of discontent regarding the handling of a certain character. I’ve made no secret of my love of this particular character and their arc which for the purpose of this essay, I choose not to name. A few years ago, being the kind of person I am and with the burning desire to avoid folding laundry, I made a list of my favorite fictional characters of all-time. The list has morphed and changed over time, but even as the lower half of the list shifts, the top ten are steadfast. Maybe a character will drop to eight from six, while another raises from nine to five-- incremental changes that really don’t change the overall shape of the top tier. So, when I tell you that the character in question rocketed up the chart and settled in at number three, tied with the great Buffy Summers, you understand how much I adore and feel connected to them.

And now, I’m getting to see this complex, wonderful character being portrayed on screen for the first time. They’re only at the beginning of their journey, and I get to live over each painful and each beautiful moment alongside them. It truly is the dream, or it should be. I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the handling of this character with each episode, and it came to a head in episode five, “Blood Calls Blood” when one of my favorite scenes from the entire book series was altered. It’s the only thing I could talk about since the episode aired, and each conversation was filled with annoyance and frustration. They took something that meant a lot to me and crumbled it up, or at least that’s how I felt at first-- that compartmentalizing wasn’t working this time.

I vague-tweeted my anger. I started and deleted a dozen threads and posts. I had so many words and questionable gif reactions to these writing decisions. I was unhappy and I needed people to know. Then I spent most of Friday driving across the Midwest and back again, so I had time to think and yes, talk to myself. As my discussion continued, I started seeing things differently-- there are no conversations deeper or more enlightening than those that take place with yourself while sitting in a never-ending traffic snake on a Friday afternoon. First, I saw the limit on my ability to disconnect source material from adaptation, and then I started to realize how my anger was stemming from not only the pushing of those mental boundaries, but also the recognition that I *am* reacting negatively based upon the source material. I don’t like when my long held self beliefs are turned on their head. Then, after several heated arguments with myself, I finally comprehended that all my focus on that one scene and one storyline meant I wasn’t spending as much time considering the rest of the story.

And that was what I needed to come to terms with. I didn’t fall in love with this magnificent, expansive, engaging world due to one scene or one character or one storyline. It was the blending of hundreds of characters and thousands of little scenes-- a weaving of countless moments, and honestly, there were a lot of things that I did not like, but being able to look beyond those snippets to see a bigger picture is what allowed me to completely fall in love with The Wheel of Time books. Following this line of thought I arrived at the natural conclusion: hyper focusing and criticizing this one aspect to the neglect of consideration (and critique) of the rest of the threads being pulled together was denying me the chance to fall in love with another flavor of this amazing world.

The show is a story on its own. I need to either accept that or accept that I can't accept that and move on. I choose the former. There are still things that rankle, writing and directing choices that I’m not fond of and would bother me on any show. I also feel much of my original criticisms about said character and scene are reasonable, valid, and based in more than a knee jerk reaction. There are some characters/arcs/scenes I love too much to just shrug if I feel they weren't given the weight, care, or development they deserve, and it hurts to see them not get the deserved love and exploration. But what I really came to see more clearly was that at the end of the day, I’m not the only person who’s been touched by this world. If you asked 100 people what the one scene that must absolutely be in the show with no changes from the books, you’d get 100 different answers. Why should I expect the showrunner and writers to elevate my specific taste over the 99 others? That’s what fanfic is for.

I can either choose to focus on that above all else or I can embrace this new version of the story. And so I choose the latter.

Credit: The Wheel of Time - Amazon Studios

Revealing the Pattern or The One Where I Dug Deeper into the Story

At the end of my exhausting and emotionally charged solo debate across the cornfield-lined Indiana highways I realized that I’d simply been staring at the surface, looking at a watery mimic being cast down from the story above. After taking a moment to find my breath, I dove in and uncovered the architecture of a beautiful new story, one that pulls the original motifs, themes, ideas, and names--a new world created with new goals and visions, but built upon the spiritual core of the original.

The first thing I saw, that anyone sees when a story makes the jump from page to screen, is how effectively visuals can be used to share information and evoke powerful reactions. The detailed descriptions of clothing and locations that take a not insignificant percentage of a book’s length can now be conveyed in moments. Yes, if you’re one of those people who can paint magnificent scenes in your head, of which I am most definitely not, you might feel it eliminates some of the fun or intellectual work that comes with reading a book. I see it as more of a transference of intellectual load. Rather than me attempting, and failing, to illustrate the pages in my head, the work is going into focusing to find the details that are pulled from the text. Looking for the little details that costume designers painstakingly work to sew into each and every piece, seeking out the character relationships being painted in color schemes and lighting techniques, exploring the expanding world through hairstyles, food choices, and body position.

Just as the original writer took their own mental image of a scene and carved it in stone to share with us, these other artists have molded their own works incorporating their own tools of artistry. Performers use their bodies and voices to share far more information than is coming from their mouths. Directors use composition and staging to build out the complexities of a scene. Costume and set designers physically create the world.

Then the soundtrack begins, filling the space, sharing a deeper understanding of underlying emotions and stakes. Music, like storytelling, is one of those quintessential human experiences that many feel connected to as a natural extension of themselves, so when these things are combined, they have the power to leave us with an enduring guide, leading us to a specific emotion or moment. Certain songs will leave me teary eyed before the lyrics kick in, and others have me reliving being seventeen at a midnight movie premiere with my best friend. Music has the ability to reach into my heart, give a good squeeze, and rip it out, and a good adaptation uses that power. It can be a cheat code for emotional reactions and understanding of others’ emotions and motivations, making it the perfect accompaniment to a screen adaptation's visual shorthand.

With all the time that has been saved from eliminating the detailing of lace styles, sword forms, and aggressive braid tugging, this adaptation can spend time with new characters and relationships or give more depth to them.

Upon further inspection, I realized what these new characters and moments brought was so powerful and big. It was foundational to building characterization and worlds. You know, the stuff I claim is most important to me. While the lost moment was dear to me and I will always be a bit sour about it’s loss, what I gained was a whole new understanding of an entire theme. A single character moment and scene cut to give life to dozens of others. This is a more compelling argument, but as I continued down the diving metaphor, I reached the buried gold revelation-- It’s not a zero sum game between character moments. No, rather the ability to build on newly created space and produce entirely novel ways to delight and destroy through deepening relationships, grants the audiences a solid foundation for a powerful story, full of vision and emotional truth. All those descriptions, cues, and inner monologues being condensed into layered, complex visual and auditory beats, allow a path to be cut for more focus on the humans, their interpersonal relationships, their hierarchies, and their belief structures.

Expansion of relationship dynamics allows for more nuance and growth, not only for the characters within, but also for the world. As we all know too well, the politics and values of a world are reflected in how its people interact with themselves, each other, and the great, abstract truths of life such as love and death.

I thrive on rolling around in the same stories for extended periods of time. I reread the same books dozens of times, rewatch the same movies and shows over and over. When I was four, I watched The Wizard of Oz so many times I wore out two videocassettes and so family members started keeping extras on hand for me, which, in retrospect, does explain a lot about me. Over the years, my tech game has improved, but my need to frolic with the same characters time after time has remained strong. The other side of that coin is, unfortunately, I struggle with giving works a second chance. Occasionally, I have come back to something discarded and discovered a new point to connect with it that I had found before, but most of the time, I’m more on the Mr. Darcy side of things-- my positive inclinations towards something are hard to win back if I’ve already dropped them. I need good reason to revisit an old castoff.

But an adaptation has a second chance to make a first impression. Those characters I don’t connect with, scenes that leave me wanting, themes and ideas that I fail to find the depth--they are deeply woven into my original perceptions. Yes, I might shift my thoughts over time as I gain new context or wisdom, but typically, that first beat, that first interaction, is often the one that guides not only how I see and respond to that specific character or idea.

I realized though, that I’m able to engage with these pieces again for the first time. This is not the character I was bored with for half the series; it is someone new, with their own context and motivations, which might parallel the original. By the nature of an adaptation, details will take on a new sheen or role. It’s not the ideology that I struggled to understand and grew to find increasingly irritating but rather one born from the pressures and gifts of a new world. Each of these old frustrations and annoyances have been stripped of my original thoughts and presented to me in a new form. I might enjoy roasted Brussel sprouts, even if I didn’t like steamed ones.

An adaptation is a chance for the story to evolve. The world changes. Audience sensibilities or expectations change. Sometimes social and cultural taboos limit the original creator’s ability to explore off-beat themes or sometimes a creator just had an outdated view on a concept. Language is rapidly changing, giving words and phrases to concepts that used to be whispered or alluded to rather than spoken about. As I’m sure any of us geriatric millennials and older will tell you, the words of today are not the words of yesterday and will not be the words of tomorrow, neither are audience expectations, trends within style, or important societal conventions.

The original story is solid, an impression chiseled on the world forever.. Yet this adaptation allows a translation for the core of the story for a new audience. Those who come to this world later might not be prepared for the aged concepts, or they aren’t able to fully see the context from which it was originally built, thus leaving them soured on the whole experience. Being able to bring these older pieces forward and shape them for this new world is a powerful tool. It feels good when I can share what I love with others, and if this adaptation makes that easier through adjusting itself for the era it was reborn into, then how can it be a problem?

Differences will take on shades, tones, and possibility depending on medium expectations, audience sensibilities, and budget constraints, but what is created with these boons and under these pressures begins to take on its own identity, one that will eternally be connected to its forebearer, but that will, with care and creativity, stand as its own story. When I started doing my own exploration, slowly allowing myself to loosen the tether between myself and the anchor of the books, I exposed the richness and complexity found growing in the new emboldened characters, the moments of power and of silence, the crevices between all the little changes.

The reflection in the water is not what we should be focusing on, rather the new city that sits below.

Credit: The Wheel of Time - Amazon Studios

Mending the Pattern or The One Where I Finally Saw

~Show Spoilers Ahead Through 1x05~

Wheel of Time has started to truly find its feet, not only in pacing but also in creating its own identity. Much like Eye of the World, the book that most of the show’s content has been based on so far, the episodes leading up to ”Blood Calls Blood” dwelled in a Tolkienesque redux before veering off to forge ahead on its own narrative path. Now I find myself drawn to different aspects of the story.

When reading the books, I struggled a lot with caring about the Aes Sedai as an institution. I asked the question, "What gives you the right?" a lot. Naturally, there were Aes Sedai throughout the books that I loved, I hated, I loved to hate, and hated that I loved, but Aes Sedai, the political body, never fully connected for me. Often the characters’ devotion to it left me struggling to understand their motivation and perspective. The show, on the other hand, has given me so much more connection that I can see why women who can channel are drawn to it. The bond and sisterhood is tangible and powerful, even if it is frayed or fractured. The scene of Alanna and Moraine simply lying around, gossiping and eating, felt so warm and real. It was a pair of old friends catching up after being parted for a time. I am invested in their friendship, and by extension, I am interested in the rest of the Tower.

That one scene, something that's not in the book, worked to overcome a block I had going into this show regarding Aes Sedai. This book change was powerful and important for me, just as the one I disparaged earlier was for someone else.

Scenes devoted to deepening characters, developing their relationships, and revealing their ideologies are the fastest way to pull me into a world. Assuming the writers keep the beats of the story the same, I can already see how I'm going to enjoy the complexity of things that come later, and how I might see both sides of arguments, something I often struggled with in the books. One scene, one moment, pulled not from the books, but rather the show writers’ minds, did much to build and strengthen one of the central concepts of the books and give it a nuanced depth I had been searching for.

The episode’s care to build out the Aes Sedai sisterhood is seen doubly in the show’s work with the Warders and their bond with the Aes Sedai. Within the books, there was a lot of tell, not show, when it came to the Warders and their bonds. Often, I was left feeling apathetic towards that connection. I think the root of this is in how little Warder point of view we get. Beyond Lan and [redacted], we’re not introduced to many Warders. We might hear their name in passing, or we might get the occasional line from them that was simply about how much they cared and worried for their Aes Sedai, but we rarely got to know them as people. Despite the importance the Warder/Aes Sedai bond plays in the overall series, there is very little time spent digging into that.

Credit: The Wheel of Time - Amazon Studios

The focus on Stepin, his grief over the loss of Kerene, and the ripple effect of pain and fear between Moiraine and Lan, make the Bond feel powerful and important. These are relationships of affection, respect, loyalty, and connection. They are deeply intimate and compelling partnerships, not the master/servant relationship I felt the books often fell into portraying them as. The writers accomplished this by creating new scenes, new moments, while staying true to one of the core tenements of The Wheel of Time world--death means something.

Something that stayed with me throughout the books was the weight death carried in both the story and for the characters, far more than most stories I’ve encountered. Death is used as a motivator, as a character developer, and other classic plot mechanics, but it is also given gravity. The characters carry the pain and grief of loss. It shapes them and their journeys; it shapes the world. This is a series about war and battle, but most of all, people and choices. Much of the rightful focus is on those who are lost during these times-- the innocents used as tokens and pawns, the career soldiers whose lives and ideologies have been defined by battle, the leaders who must confront the death that follows their wake. There are characters who keep a list of every person who has died by their hand or for their cause, and they grieve for each one, even those who were trying to actively kill them. We are told time and time again that each of these lives meant something, that each one lost is a loss of humanity. Death is common, but it is not flippant.

And the show delivered on that premise in this episode. The bookending of funerals, the time spent showing different forms of grief, the varying cultural approaches to mourning-- it all adds to establish the power of death in this story. While funerals on television aren’t rare, they aren’t particularly common either. We might see the moment standing around the gravesite or we might see characters putting on black or cleaning the mascara off their eyes, but to see not one, but two funerals in the same episode, to show the grief, shock, and weight that hangs over those moments was incredibly moving. It’s added to by the fact we are shown two vastly different types of funeral proceedings. The first is very militaristic in style, there is honor and duty wrapped up into it. The shots are wide and pulled back. We are looking at the overall scene, the action. Emotions are raw, but controlled, befitting an Aes Sedai. The closing ceremony, on the other hand, is about intimacy and facing grief head-on. Characters are physically close to each other, while the shots are tight and narrow. Each moment of anger, pain, grief, confusion, shock is captured. The scene ends leaving you with that breathless feeling that comes after a long, hard sob. There is an imperfect emptiness. These scenes capture not only the weight of death and bereavement the series holds, but the vastly different approaches in style, color, directing, and acting help expand the size and scope of the world.

These brilliant scenes were not in the books.

Credit: The Wheel of Time - Amazon Studios

While giving us difficult, painful moments, the show also exhibited us the other side of life--friendship, love, connection. The moment when Nynaeve follows Loial into the room to find Mat and Rand in there is beautiful. Nynaeve and Rand’s friendship is one of the books’ strongest relationships, and one of my favorite friendships in all of fiction, and the show nailed it.

Nynaeve acts arrogant and uses anger as armour, but beneath it, she cares deeply for people. She has been pulled away from a place she’s only marginally comfortable in to somewhere completely new, unknown, and potentially dangerous, by an ogier, which we saw in the earlier conversation between Loial and Rand, are not common in the Two Rivers. She has experienced a heap of trauma and tragedy over the last month already. Yet, she followed Loial in hopes of seeing her friends, and the first thing she does after hugging Rand, clinging onto him as if she were afraid he was going to disappear again, is ask after the rough-looking Mat. She follows that by immediately jumping into action to try to help. Even after he snaps at her, she shows him kindness and affection, something the television version of Mat hasn’t seen much of from older figures in his life. Then when she’s done what she can to triage him, she sees the worry and concern in Rand and immediately sets out trying to help him, which leads us to the truth of Rand’s character. Where Nynaeve weaponizes anger to hide the fear, Rand uses stubbornness to hide his helplessness, and at the end of the day, he’s just a scared kid who has watched as everything and everyone he knew was shattered and stripped away, while he was unable to do anything about it. Every day that Mat gets worse, every day that another innocent family is slaughtered, every day a kind innkeeper is drawn to the Dark One, is another day he can’t save someone. There are no characters in all of fiction who are more stubborn, unmoving, and completely soft-hearted than Nynaeve al’Meara and Rand al’Thor.

This set of short scenes between the two tell you so much about their characters, show you the heart of each, and further strengthens the bond between the Two Rivers characters. These weren’t scenes as visually stunning as the funeral scenes or as painfully evocative, but they were equally effective. If one of The Wheel of Time’s strongest points is how it gives gravity to death, then another powerful asset is in the importance shown to love of all types. This episode reveals how love and relationships bind and give us a sense of duty, a sense of community, and a sense of power. Rand and Nynaeve are moved by love of their friends, their home, and those around them; Lan is powered by passion for his duty and brotherhood; Moiraine finds strength in her partner and her Sisters; Egwene taps into her acceptance of her true self; Perrin is pushed forward by his love of a friend. It also demonstrates the devastation left behind when those relationships are severed or broken, and this is made more impactful by the love shown between characters because how can loss matter, if love doesn't?

Nearly all of this beautiful, complex character work and world building was created through moments and scenes vastly different from the books or completely original. I nearly missed it because of tunnel vision that I didn’t even realize I had developed. Despite the emphasis the books put on the importance everyone has to this world, that every loss and every love is coming from a complete person with their own ambitions and journey, I found myself being myopic and narrow in my watching of the television series.

“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills” is not just a tongue-twisting catchphrase. It is the series’ thesis. Each of these threads, these moments, these scenes, these bonds, these characters, are woven together to create a beautiful tapestry of story. My deep dive into the complicated thoughts I had regarding the episode revealed something I had almost forgotten, but the show writers have kept close: it was never about one character or one scene or moment.

Now, I welcome this new version and the chance to fall in love with a story I adore all over again. I hope to see you along for the journey.

“It was about all of them.” -- A Memory of Light, book fourteen in The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

You can find Verdant here: @verdantdreaming on Twitter