Wheel of Time Season 3 - Full Season Discussion

[Elglin]

7 hours ago, Morridin said:

First off he goes to Tear before the waste and for me that’s quite a major thing, with that comes the whole Moiraine getting Sammael (where’s Asmodean!) to teach Rand.
Sammael dead means we’ve now lost one of what I thought one of the most epic battles of the series!

Mat has to go with Rand to the waste where he was hung. I feel they’re going to push Min to Mat not Rand.
Also, the killing of Siaun!? What the hell!? Will it now be Leanne teaching Egwene? 
I watch it because I love the book series but I honestly believe HBO would’ve been the better option and would e stayed closer to the actual story. 
 

Lastly, they rushed the whole Thom and Elayne thing too. 

Rand was largely offscreen during TDR and he's not as important as Moiraine (mostly offscreen in TGH) to invent something for him, so skipping Tear largely makes sense in the adaptation.

Asmodean either appears later or is cut or whatever. Moiraine gets Sammael to teach Rand as opposed to Rand getting this idea himself (with inspiration from Lanfear) because Rosamund Pike is the show headliner while Rand is largely a supporting character in the show.

If we lose the siege of Cairhien, that also means major savings as battles aren't cheap to film. Also, remembering what they did with Falme, it's probably for the better that we are not getting another major battle.

Pairing Mat with Min is pretty fine both temporarily (Min/Rand isn't a major thing in the books till LOC or even ACOS) or even permanently - I'm not sure we are getting Tuon and the Seanchan invasion remotely close to the original.

Killing Siuan off makes sense - actors aren't cheap, and with Gareth Bryne possibly cut, she wouldn't have much to do anyway. Also, Egwene does not need any major teaching from Siuan/Leanne, no more than she needed anything but basic instruction from Bair/Melaine. She's the showrunner's favorite, she has new knowledge/powers as befits her.

The show has to rush things terribly given the sheer volume of the books, and it sometimes means that events are sketched out rather than shown. I can't say they did anything wrong with Thom/Elayne yet.

 

All in all, the show does a reasonably decent adaptation job, and this season saw a marked jump in quality. There are still chronic issues (Moiraine, Egwene, Alanna/Maxim), but at this point it's either drop the show or make your peace with them. There is a snowballing problem in this show which so far hasn't reared its head in its full ugliness, but I feel is still a ticking time bomb.

Jordan's narrative, for all its wordiness, was logical and cohesive. That got cut, merged, cut again, rearranged etc. ad infinitum. This means that there is a growing discrepancy between where a character was (and I don't mean just the location) at a certain point in the books and in the show, which means, in turn, that if he/she continues acting more or less as it was in the books, it becomes increasingly weirder, and if they try to preserve the show logic, the story morphs into a Jordan fanfic.
Time will tell if they manage to handle it properly.

[Morridin]

37 minutes ago, Elglin said:

Rand was largely offscreen during TDR and he's not as important as Moiraine (mostly offscreen in TGH) to invent something for him, so skipping Tear largely makes sense in the adaptation.

Asmodean either appears later or is cut or whatever. Moiraine gets Sammael to teach Rand as opposed to Rand getting this idea himself (with inspiration from Lanfear) because Rosamund Pike is the show headliner while Rand is largely a supporting character in the show.

If we lose the siege of Cairhien, that also means major savings as battles aren't cheap to film. Also, remembering what they did with Falme, it's probably for the better that we are not getting another major battle.

Pairing Mat with Min is pretty fine both temporarily (Min/Rand isn't a major thing in the books till LOC or even ACOS) or even permanently - I'm not sure we are getting Tuon and the Seanchan invasion remotely close to the original.

Killing Siuan off makes sense - actors aren't cheap, and with Gareth Bryne possibly cut, she wouldn't have much to do anyway. Also, Egwene does not need any major teaching from Siuan/Leanne, no more than she needed anything but basic instruction from Bair/Melaine. She's the showrunner's favorite, she has new knowledge/powers as befits her.

The show has to rush things terribly given the sheer volume of the books, and it sometimes means that events are sketched out rather than shown. I can't say they did anything wrong with Thom/Elayne yet.

 

All in all, the show does a reasonably decent adaptation job, and this season saw a marked jump in quality. There are still chronic issues (Moiraine, Egwene, Alanna/Maxim), but at this point it's either drop the show or make your peace with them. There is a snowballing problem in this show which so far hasn't reared its head in its full ugliness, but I feel is still a ticking time bomb.

Jordan's narrative, for all its wordiness, was logical and cohesive. That got cut, merged, cut again, rearranged etc. ad infinitum. This means that there is a growing discrepancy between where a character was (and I don't mean just the location) at a certain point in the books and in the show, which means, in turn, that if he/she continues acting more or less as it was in the books, it becomes increasingly weirder, and if they try to preserve the show logic, the story morphs into a Jordan fanfic.
Time will tell if they manage to handle it properly.

Thanks for the reply. 
 

I do think it’s got a lot better, the new actor for Matt is better, and he is showing more of his ‘rascalness’ however the one thing I looked for straight away that I was looking forward to seeing was the Ashendai staff

[Kaleb]

7 hours ago, Morridin said:

the one thing I looked for straight away that I was looking forward to seeing was the Ashendai staff

It's there when he exits the doorway, have a look at what he's hanging from.

[Skipp]

9 hours ago, Elglin said:

Rand was largely offscreen during TDR and he's not as important as Moiraine (mostly offscreen in TGH) to invent something for him, so skipping Tear largely makes sense in the adaptation.

Asmodean either appears later or is cut or whatever. Moiraine gets Sammael to teach Rand as opposed to Rand getting this idea himself (with inspiration from Lanfear) because Rosamund Pike is the show headliner while Rand is largely a supporting character in the show.

If we lose the siege of Cairhien, that also means major savings as battles aren't cheap to film. Also, remembering what they did with Falme, it's probably for the better that we are not getting another major battle.

Pairing Mat with Min is pretty fine both temporarily (Min/Rand isn't a major thing in the books till LOC or even ACOS) or even permanently - I'm not sure we are getting Tuon and the Seanchan invasion remotely close to the original.

Killing Siuan off makes sense - actors aren't cheap, and with Gareth Bryne possibly cut, she wouldn't have much to do anyway. Also, Egwene does not need any major teaching from Siuan/Leanne, no more than she needed anything but basic instruction from Bair/Melaine. She's the showrunner's favorite, she has new knowledge/powers as befits her.

The show has to rush things terribly given the sheer volume of the books, and it sometimes means that events are sketched out rather than shown. I can't say they did anything wrong with Thom/Elayne yet.

 

All in all, the show does a reasonably decent adaptation job, and this season saw a marked jump in quality. There are still chronic issues (Moiraine, Egwene, Alanna/Maxim), but at this point it's either drop the show or make your peace with them. There is a snowballing problem in this show which so far hasn't reared its head in its full ugliness, but I feel is still a ticking time bomb.

Jordan's narrative, for all its wordiness, was logical and cohesive. That got cut, merged, cut again, rearranged etc. ad infinitum. This means that there is a growing discrepancy between where a character was (and I don't mean just the location) at a certain point in the books and in the show, which means, in turn, that if he/she continues acting more or less as it was in the books, it becomes increasingly weirder, and if they try to preserve the show logic, the story morphs into a Jordan fanfic.
Time will tell if they manage to handle it properly.

 

It is certainly Truth that the storyline in the show is going to start to deviate much much more from the books as the show progresses.  Or rather parts of the storyline, depending on what they decide to cut, what they decide to rearrange and what they decide to merge. 

 

 

[Scarloc99]

On 4/24/2025 at 11:06 PM, Morridin said:

Hi guys,

 

Been a long time!

Surely I cannot be the only one that doesn’t like/understand some of these insane changes??

First off he goes to Tear before the waste and for me that’s quite a major thing, with that comes the whole Moiraine getting Sammael (where’s Asmodean!) to teach Rand. 
Sammael dead means we’ve now lost one of what I thought one of the most epic battles of the series!

Mat has to go with Rand to the waste where he was hung. I feel they’re going to push Min to Mat not Rand. 
Also, the killing of Siaun!? What the hell!? Will it now be Leanne teaching Egwene? 
I watch it because I love the book series but I honestly believe HBO would’ve been the better option and would e stayed closer to the actual story. 
 

Lastly, they rushed the whole Thom and Elayne thing too. 

Ok while yes in the books RJ had him go to Tear in book 3 at that point RJ thought he only had one book left to write. 
 

As I have said repeatedly I am convinced that had RJ known from book 1 he had 14+ books to tell this story the opening trilogy would be very very differently paced. 
 

Now I love the way the taking of tear happens in the books but part of the issue RJ created was overpowering Rand in the first 3 books and then having to deport him and power up his enemies to put him in peril. 

I am perfectly happy talking about what I think Rafe got wrong, but the actual changes he made to pacing and the order things happen for me is not one of them.

[Scarloc99]

On 4/25/2025 at 4:41 PM, Skipp said:

 

It is certainly Truth that the storyline in the show is going to start to deviate much much more from the books as the show progresses.  Or rather parts of the storyline, depending on what they decide to cut, what they decide to rearrange and what they decide to merge. 

 

 

I mean it already has. 
 

I keep going back to what Peter Jackson said about adapting lord of the rings. 
 

he started at the end, what are the key things you need to deliver to complete the story. Then you work

backwards and identify the things that happen in the book key to getting to that end. 
 

Then you fill in the space around with other things in the books you know the fans will love and fill in gaps in prose that are left to the readers imagination but will need a scene on screen. 
 

Now LOTR that is fairly easy to do because in reality the books are short and have 2 linear story threads at the end of Fellowship, and also in the book you can argue there is not much of a character arc for many of the characters (Frodo and Sam yes, but in the books the rest of the main characters remain pretty static). 
 

But WOT was always going to be much harder to do, you start at the last battle and the characters you decide need to be there (on both sides), and then you have to map backwards the character arcs of how they progress from

where they are at the start to the end. 
 

Add to that the fact Rafe didn’t know how long he had to tell the story, and the fact that Amazon are refusing to give him a budget that the show deserves (wheel of time should have ROP money), and you can forgive some of the choices made as artistic differences. But for me he has missed far far more than he has hit. 

[Sabio]

9 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I mean it already has. 
 

I keep going back to what Peter Jackson said about adapting lord of the rings. 
 

he started at the end, what are the key things you need to deliver to complete the story. Then you work

backwards and identify the things that happen in the book key to getting to that end. 
 

Then you fill in the space around with other things in the books you know the fans will love and fill in gaps in prose that are left to the readers imagination but will need a scene on screen. 
 

Now LOTR that is fairly easy to do because in reality the books are short and have 2 linear story threads at the end of Fellowship, and also in the book you can argue there is not much of a character arc for many of the characters (Frodo and Sam yes, but in the books the rest of the main characters remain pretty static). 
 

But WOT was always going to be much harder to do, you start at the last battle and the characters you decide need to be there (on both sides), and then you have to map backwards the character arcs of how they progress from

where they are at the start to the end. 
 

Add to that the fact Rafe didn’t know how long he had to tell the story, and the fact that Amazon are refusing to give him a budget that the show deserves (wheel of time should have ROP money), and you can forgive some of the choices made as artistic differences. But for me he has missed far far more than he has hit. 

WOT doesn't have a bad budget, it's something like 10 - 12 million an episode.  GOT was around $8 million an episode.  Which is why I can never understand why the CGI in WOT always seems so poor.  Supposedly ROP is around $58 million per episode.  Amazon could never afford to pay ROP price for the Wheel of Time.

[Turin Turambar]

Tbf, Game of Thrones had relatively little CGI. Especially early in its run. Also inflation is a thing. I think if Amazon had even just doubled WoT budget ( still less than half RoP), it could have done so much more.

Even better would be to slightly increase per episode budget and do more episodes per season. 

[SinisterDeath]

11 hours ago, Sabio said:

WOT doesn't have a bad budget, it's something like 10 - 12 million an episode.  GOT was around $8 million an episode.  Which is why I can never understand why the CGI in WOT always seems so poor.  Supposedly ROP is around $58 million per episode.  Amazon could never afford to pay ROP price for the Wheel of Time.

 

2 hours ago, Turin Turambar said:

Tbf, Game of Thrones had relatively little CGI. Especially early in its run. Also inflation is a thing. I think if Amazon had even just doubled WoT budget ( still less than half RoP), it could have done so much more.

Even better would be to slightly increase per episode budget and do more episodes per season. 

To account for Inflation, just look at House of the Dragon as an example.

 

They had a $200M budget for 10 episodes -> or $20M per episode for the first season.

 

This aligns with its prior GoT seasons growing budget starting at around $10M per episode, and ending around $15M in 2019.

 

Toss in 2-5 years of Inflation, and increased demand across the industry and... Yeah. 

[Jaysen Gore]

I agree on the budget issue, but think that the individual episodes and special effects (barring the lack of Trollocs attacking the Two Rivers) has been well done. The only thing I think a bigger budget would give us is more time, and that would be critical in a number of ways.

[Jaysen Gore]

okay, some time is passed, I had a bit of a break, and am now ready to pass judgement:

 

overall, I think this season was a massive step up in quality from the first two, and while I dislike the rather large holes created in the book plot by losing Siuan and Loial - and to a lesser degree Sammael - I'm okay with the cuts for time. I'd give it a solid B for good TV, and a C for adaptation

 

I think they went a long way in getting the boys positioned where they should be, although there is some trepidation around this Faile / Perrin rescue arc, and with getting Mat to form the Band.  I guess they could do that against the Seanchan instead of the Shaido.

 

I still think the girls are overpowered, but am loving the fact that I'm enjoying Faile and Elayne more than I did in the books.  And they still haven't been rescued yet. "I don't need no man" as Character, Theme and Plot, I guess

 

The Forsaken (and the rest of the villains for that matter) are worlds more interesting and effective in the show than in the books.

 

While I wish the writers would take more care with the lore - the 3 oaths are flexible, can men see women channel or not, Mat's memories - only three things really annoy me about the series, since they are the mistakes the writers are consistently making:

1. Maksim taking a lead role; he's had much more screen time and done more than Lan has. 

2. Super Egwene - they are robbing her of her hero's journey. It's not as bad as Rey, but it's getting there.
3. The healing - this is the biggest complaint. it removes a lot of drama, and creates questions about whether or not people are actually dead. So much that the writers make fun of it.

 

In closing I guess I'll leave it at this - it's good enough to get me to keep watching it, but it's not good enough to make me want to rewatch it. Which certainly wasn't true for the books, or the first few seasons of GoT. So they still have room to improve. Assuming people let them continue at all

 

[Mailman]

7 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

 

To account for Inflation, just look at House of the Dragon as an example.

 

They had a $200M budget for 10 episodes -> or $20M per episode for the first season.

 

This aligns with its prior GoT seasons growing budget starting at around $10M per episode, and ending around $15M in 2019.

 

Toss in 2-5 years of Inflation, and increased demand across the industry and... Yeah. 

Especially with GoT I imagine a large amount of the increase would be to cover increasing cast wages. Largely unknowns at the start of the run eight seasons in they would be getting a bigger paypacket.

[SinisterDeath]

16 hours ago, Mailman said:

Especially with GoT I imagine a large amount of the increase would be to cover increasing cast wages. Largely unknowns at the start of the run eight seasons in they would be getting a bigger paypacket.

Even with cast getting larger budgets as the series went on, Just looking at House of the Dragon's Budget, shows us it's pretty much grown at the same rate, and that show has an entirely different cast.

 

Instead of me guessing which cast members get paid the most, here's what this website says. Basically, if all of those highest paid actors were in every single episode, for all 10 episodes, that would account for ~$2M of it's $20M per Episode Budget. I'd guess that they could easily keep it's total staff budget under 1/4th of it's total episode budget, and still spend $15M on CGI.

[Mailman]

7 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Even with cast getting larger budgets as the series went on, Just looking at House of the Dragon's Budget, shows us it's pretty much grown at the same rate, and that show has an entirely different cast.

 

Instead of me guessing which cast members get paid the most, here's what this website says. Basically, if all of those highest paid actors were in every single episode, for all 10 episodes, that would account for ~$2M of it's $20M per Episode Budget. I'd guess that they could easily keep it's total staff budget under 1/4th of it's total episode budget, and still spend $15M on CGI.

“These are real numbers, I’m not making this up. 270 shooting days, 2500 crew members, 9000 extras, eight visual effects houses in seven countries, 2600 arrows, 2000 pairs of boots, 114 wigs, and 33 gallons of blood — to give you an idea what it takes.”

 

This is for season 2 so I am not sure of its per show budget. Damn I look at the number of extras and think how tiny WoT looked for extras.

[SinisterDeath]

1 hour ago, Mailman said:

“These are real numbers, I’m not making this up. 270 shooting days, 2500 crew members, 9000 extras, eight visual effects houses in seven countries, 2600 arrows, 2000 pairs of boots, 114 wigs, and 33 gallons of blood — to give you an idea what it takes.”

 

This is for season 2 so I am not sure of its per show budget. Damn I look at the number of extras and think how tiny WoT looked for extras.

I haven't seen a budget for Season 2 of House of Dragons yet, have you? The only figures I've found were for the 1st season. 😉 

[Mailman]

2 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

I haven't seen a budget for Season 2 of House of Dragons yet, have you? The only figures I've found were for the 1st season. 😉 

Nope just thought it was worth seeing a breakdown of the numbers of crew and extras

[Fiona_12]

On 4/23/2025 at 12:57 PM, first when not last said:

Couldn't agree more with what you have written here. Agdashloo by the way seems to me to be perfect for the role.

 

I had never seen her in anything before (I don't watch much TV) and wow, is she good!

[Fiona_12]

Has Season 3 changed anyone's opinion of the show? I started out only watching it just to give it one last chance, and it wasn't until I watched episode 8 for the 2nd time that I gave a hoot whether or gets renewed.

 

I have still had problems with some of the writing, but S3 was such a remarkable improvement over the first 2 seasons I now feel like they actually may be able to continue making it a good show, even if it's not the show I originally hoped for.

[Sabio]

Season 3 was the best season so far,  but the quality to me was all over the place, they would make a good episode then follow it up with a dud seemingly repeating many of their past mistakes.

[Elder_Haman]

27 minutes ago, Sabio said:

Season 3 was the best season so far,  but the quality to me was all over the place, they would make a good episode then follow it up with a dud seemingly repeating many of their past mistakes.

I can’t think of an episode this season that I would consider “a dud”. I can’t point to a truly weak episode this season the way I can with the first two. 

[Mailman]

3 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

I can’t think of an episode this season that I would consider “a dud”. I can’t point to a truly weak episode this season the way I can with the first two. 

I can.

[Elder_Haman]

3 minutes ago, Mailman said:

I can.

Well don’t leave us in suspense. Which episode was weak and why?

[Mailman]

18 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Well don’t leave us in suspense. Which episode was weak and why?

Well let me think S3e1 and S3e2 and S3e3 and s3e5 and S3e6 and S3e7 and S3e8 where all weak, if you are keen to know why (which I don't think you are) you are more than welcome to revisit the individual episode threads to examine my analysis.

[Elder_Haman]

28 minutes ago, Mailman said:

Well let me think S3e1 and S3e2 and S3e3 and s3e5 and S3e6 and S3e7 and S3e8 where all weak, if you are keen to know why (which I don't think you are) you are more than welcome to revisit the individual episode threads to examine my analysis.

You’re predictable, I’ll give you that. 

[Mailman]

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

You’re predictable, I’ll give you that. 

As are you.