Hello and welcome to this website’s first update of 2021! And it’s only… (checks watch) …October? Yikes. Well, let’s get to it then. Next month, my all-time favorite fantasy series, Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, is coming to Amazon Prime Video. In late August, the first teaser trailer dropped and bit by bit, hype has been building up outside of the usual Twitter and Facebook groups. The full trailer was finally released yesterday and we’ve already got IGN’s reaction, a recent GQ article discussing the show’s production, and more detailed looks coming each day.

Amazon is breaking this thing into the mainstream and while WOT is a beloved series among its fans, it is still relatively unknown compared to a fantasy epic such as The Lord of the Rings or recent hits like The Witcher or Game of Thrones. You’ve undoubtedly got questions and I’m prepared to be on call as your guy to answer them! See, unlike your typical Rando Q. Blogger who will surely be doing an episode recap each week, I’ve got some credentials here. I’ve read all the main books (14, mind you!), read the prequel and the graphic novel version of it, and even gotten the tattoo. What do you have to say about THAT, IGN?

So let’s dive into some of the most pertinent and thought-provoking questions that *I* think you’d ask if we were in a room about to start binging-watching season one together.

Ok Rob, here’s my first question: What the hell is this thing all about?

Glad you asked! At its heart is a conflict of good versus evil where the latter is the almost godlike Dark One who has been in an eternal war against our protagonist, the Dragon, a (human) figure who has been reborn countless times throughout history. When the two battled a millennia ago, the Dark One was sealed away but in a final counterstroke, managed to corrupt the male half of the One Power, an energy source which the world’s magic users (known as Aes Sedai) are able to draw from. This caused all male Aes Sedai to go violently insane and shifted the world’s power dynamics to women who were still able to channel the One Power safely.

Despite this, at the start of the series ALL Aes Sedai are looked upon suspiciously by commoners and nobles alike, and men who develop the ability to channel are usually stilled (blocked off from the One Power) or simply executed. It is at this time that the the seals on the Dark One’s prison are weakening, the Dragon has been reborn again, and one Aes Sedai named Moiraine must find him or her and prepare them for the prophesied Last Battle.

Along the way, the Dragon and everyone else on the side of the Light will face a series of struggles and enemies ranging from the Dark One’s most powerful lieutenants, his army of Shadowspawn creatures, an invading nation from overseas which enslaves One Power users as weapons of war, a fanatical religious order who see the Aes Sedai as witches, schisms within groups who should be allies, and much more.

Wow! That sounds cool and all but will there be boobs? I’ve come to expect gratuitous nudity in my fantasy shows!

Yes, Game of Thrones and The Witcher have certainly set that bar, haven’t they? While WOT’s show runner, Rafe Judkins, has clearly stated that this is not a young adult show, I’m wagering that, violence aside, it’ll be a fairly clean one. While the books were written for thinking adults, they weren’t written for adults in a George R.R. Martin kind of way. Curses are in the vein of “Blood and bloody ashes!” as opposed to… let’s just say every quote from Ser Bronn of the Blackwater.

You say there’s no nudity but what’s this I hear about there being an island shaped like a vagina where women rule from?

So… from a certain point of view, maybe? Yes, there is an island city called Tar Valon which is the Aes Sedai stronghold. Not unlike Manhattan (which nobody seems to think looks like a vajayjay), it’s a narrow island between two rivers. Maybe that’s what Robert Jordan had in mind as a metaphor or maybe not. He’s dead now so I guess we’ll never get to ask him. Oh well, next question.

I’ve been told that there’s a long slog in books 7, 8, 9, and 10. I don’t like the sound of that!

You would be referring to “Perrin and Faile’s Sideplot of Doom,” as even I have come to call it. And yes, it gets rough after a while. However this is not the first fantasy series to be adapted for the screen and between GOT and The Witcher, showrunners are (hopefully) getting a good idea of what works and what doesn’t. I’m going to go out on a limb here and stake my reputation that this sideplot will be reined in. After all, the entire series was 15 books and surely there is going heavy trimming here and there throughout the show.

Also, there is plenty of good stuff that happens in those “sloggy” books that keeps the plot going, albeit at a slower pace than the rest. It’s not like they’re unreadable by any stretch.

Alright, I think you’ve convinced me. Let me pick up one of the books and YEE-GADS WHAT IS UP WITH THAT ARTWORK?

Ah, it seems like you’ve found one of the pre-eBook paperbacks. I honestly have no idea what was going through the artists’ and publishers’ minds when those were submitted and somehow printed. Some of them are just poorly staged and stiff, like The Fires of Heaven, where if you zoom in, you could make the argument that the artist didn’t know how to draw a woman’s face and got around it by making her look away for some reason. However the eBook artist may as well be saying, “Welcome to my MasterClass on how to draw a mystical woman at the height of her power!”

How about this one from The Gathering Storm? We get Rand shaking his fist at the sky as if to say, “I’ll get youuuuuuu, Dark One!” Contrast that with Egwene at the defining moment of her arc as she rallies the Aes Sedai factions and defends the White Tower against a brutal Seanchan attack (don’t worry about spoilers  – this is 12 books in and I’m assuming you’ll have forgotten about this sentence by then).

Finally, both covers of The Great Hunt depict the EXACT SAME SCENE where Rand holds up the Horn of Valere and the group is immediately set upon by Trollocs. And yet the original looks like something a C-team Dungeons and Dragons illustrator turned in for a bootleg 3rd Edition guide. Thankfully for the eBook, a different perspective, color palette, and some grit turned that ALL THE WAY THE HELL AROUND.

That should do as a start and I’m positive that do a few more of these as the series progresses. To quote Robert Jordan, “There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But there was a beginning.” Season two has already filmed and we in the fanbase are crossing our fingers that it’s successful. Until then, enjoy the show and don’t let the (presumed) lack of F-bombs and incestuous siblings turn you away!