I’m not labeling anyone. They are labeling themselves. I don’t believe you. Nonsense. There’s no reason to believe the IP will get another shot. Who is lining up to do something “better”? Sony is likely to sit on the rights until they lapse. Nobody is talking about rebooting His Dark Materials or Shadow & Bone or Carnival Row. No way!!

I felt that Rand was well developed from a thematic perspective. I think I understand what the plan was going to be and I appreciated what they were trying to do. I didn’t feel like he was “unimpressive” and I wasn’t bothered by the absence of the things that you find so important, not bothered by the things you find so awful. This is what is called a difference of opinion. Having them is okay. I understand your perspective. You don’t need to continue to try to convince me that you’re correct.

Do you dispute that there are people in this forum and others who hate the show? Do you dispute that those people got what they wanted? “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”

Correct. Because the people who hated the show and wanted it cancelled got what they wanted. They literally campaigned for it. It is not “high and mighty” to point out the fact that people who hated the show (“haters”, if you will) got what they wanted.

You didn’t like it. I did. Your opinion is not superior to mine because you restate it in sarcastic, condescending language.

Oh stop pretending to be some high and mighty arbiter of what constitutes “quality”. No one believes you.

I agree that he favored Egwene. I do not believe that he “made Rand as unimpressive as possible”. I quite liked Rand, thought Josha was an amazing actor, and felt that Rand’s arc was very well done.

I don’t understand the need to hate on people or exult in others’ failures. It’s a very petty mindset.

This is a pretty limited way of thinking about a series like the Wheel of Time. It’s so vast that many people love certain aspects and dislike others. I have no doubt that Rafe loves the Wheel of Time. And I have no doubt that you do as well. It’s just that you each love it for vastly different reasons.

Cool. Didn’t say you were.

There is absolutely no evidence supporting this statement. The issue was money. That’s it.

Looks like the haters got their wish: https://deadline.com/2025/05/the-wheel-of-time-canceled-prime-video-1236409657/

IMO we should worry if there’s no announcement by the end of Q3. (End of September)

Me too. S1 really should have had a two plot arc; The “A” plot should have been a suspense/thriller/chase mostly mirroring Book 1; the “B” plot should have been the Tower capturing Logain. And there was no need for these plots to overlap until Rand sees Logain captured and stilled.

Right. But this goes back to the fact that you don’t have time to do everything. The Wolf Dream is a difficult concept on the page, much less to put on screen. The medium prevents us from being able to be directly in Perrin’s head the way we are in the books. So they did an okay job of establishing something about it in S2 and have given us glimpses of the heightened senses and so forth. I think the wolf dream needs basically its own season to be laid out. There needs to be a plot reason for it. So while I would have liked more of it, I just don’t know where they would put it.

Yeah. I agree that Perrin and Mat's stories haven't really been fully realized. I feel like they will be fully developed given time though. Maybe that's where you and I diverge. I understand what you mean about Rand, and I don't disagree, but again I feel like it is in service of a larger narrative goal which is to make him the FOCUS but not the protagonist.

I'm not "defending" any particular scene, nor am I saying that any of the scenes you mentioned were "great". I'm arguing that the fact that those scenes didn't land for you is not compelling evidence that Rand and Perrin's stories are "rushed and half-developed." By your logic, all of the characters in the show (with the possible exception of Moiraine) are 'rushed and half-developed.' After all, we only got a tiny glimpse of Egwene's accepted test; we spent an entire season and a half with Nynaeve being incapable of channeling with no explanation; etc.

But that's a totally different issue from what you were saying before. What I was reacting to is the notion that they've ignored Rand and Perrin's stories. They haven't. They've put focus there. Whether that focus worked for you is inherently subjective.

I don't think any of your points are inherently invalid. In fact, I tend to agree. The problem is that we can't really know whether these things will pay off (or be remedied down the line) unless we get more content. I think that presents a pretty substantial problem in the overall production of the show. You have to rush some elements for world building purposes, but if you rush too much the whole thing collapses under the weight of too much world building and not enough story. On the other hand, if you try to slow roll your world building (the Wolf Dream is a good example), you run the risk of never getting to it at all because the show is cancelled. It feels to me in general that the writers know how to pay off something they've set up, teased, or foreshadowed. So I feel like some of these things you see as holes have been teed up for further development. Problem is that they are really unsatisfying unless there's a further opportunity to pay them off.

I think this is pretty unfair to the last two seasons. In the first season, they made the extremely dubious choice to make the identity of the Dragon a mystery. The problems with that decision were then compounded by COVID and the actor leaving in the middle of filming. Since that point, they have absolutely been interested in telling Rand and Perrin’s stories. I think the decision to write mostly from the perspective of the people around Rand is smart (if the series continues) because the question of whether Rand will choose the Light or the Dark is the most compelling question in the series and the most obvious source of dramatic tension for later seasons. As for Perrin, they hardly ignored him. He had a full arc this season (granted, it was diluted by the Alanna/Maksim stuff which I don’t like, but I get why they’re doing it). They’ve slow rolled Perrin’s wolf abilities - but I think this is mostly a function of time constraints. And at least it my mind, they’ve started to do Mat correctly this last season. Yes, there has been a focus on the Tower politics. But the Tower is significant both to the story and to the storytelling. Without it, it becomes very difficult to do much in the way of showing the One Power in a way that isn’t all exposition. The choices make sense, even if you don’t like the product.

That was the only point I was arguing. I’m glad you and I agree that the quality improved. We can agree to disagree on the rest. Although, I would say “the (apparent) death of Loial”. Like it or hate it, if we don’t see a corpse, we can’t be sure a character is dead.

You've read very selectively then. The consensus among nearly everyone is there was obvious and consistent improvement season over season. Whether that was 'good enough' is a matter of taste, obviously.

I could be mistaken, but I don’t think Nielsen exists outside of the US. For that matter, it’s a pretty imprecise source for US viewership numbers. The Nielsen methodology was far better suited for the pre-streaming world where shows fit into neat time slots. Not that the numbers are useless, of course. They just really aren’t the be all, end all of the analysis.

If Jon’s information is correct (Jon being the producer of the WoT Up! YouTube channel), then Amazon and Sony are currently in active discussions. Jon’s information has been reliable in the past, so I have no reason to doubt him now. If there are active discussions, the show will likely be renewed. I’m guessing the issues being discussed are the number of seasons to be greenlit and the specifics about length of run and length of episodes. I will be very surprised if the show is outright canceled.

So the US market is the only one that matters in your mind?