It became a vehicle for Rafe Judkins to bring to life his own perspectives. It's one of the most selfish and narcissistic tv/film creations ever made. It was made for him personally. His actual words... discussing fantasy novels... I never met or saw myself in those worlds until I read Wheel of Time. A lot of it also — this is the ’90s and early 2000s — was very coded. It’s always, women are pillow friends. They’re not lesbians. But it’s all there. When you’re reading it, it felt like big billboard signs of: These are queer stories; these are queer characters, especially in comparison to all the other fantasy I’d been reading. For me, it was very important to find that in the show today. I feel like part of our job as artists who are adapting something is to bring it to life, not just word-for-word but to also bring its context to life. And the context of Wheel of Time in the ’90s is very different from the context of reading the books today. I wanted to infuse that into the show and hopefully let people who weren’t seeing themselves in other fantasy shows see themselves in Wheel of Time. When you go into it with that as a clear intention then there was never any chance that this was going to work. He is the ONLY person to blame for the failure and I am happy it was cancelled before his pathetic narcissism could be expressed further on film.

Agree. Judkins messed it up so badly, it won't be touched again in live action. Animated series in planning - apparently. Hopefully that happens and we get good people leading the effort. As for AI , it's accelerating exponentially in terms of capability. Won't be that long before you won't be able to tell the difference from an animation made by AI and post processed / edited vs the top animated films today.

I read that some of the people involved in the live action cancelled show will be involved , but fortunately NOT Rafe Judkins, and that the animated series will be true to the books. Animation and AI is the way to go. Not all AI , obviously, but much of what is needed can easily be handled by new AI models and if they mix it well with more traditional animation techniques, this would be great not just for keeping costs down, but covering the full story. Whether it gets made now or in the future - it WILL be. It's the perfect story to be handled with new tech. Vast and detailed that is impossible to bring to the screen with traditional film making due to the costs involved.

It’s my intent to make the Wheel of Time as an animation. Not for commercial reasons obviously or for sharing publicly but to use it as an anchor for my continued deep dive into animation and AI, both areas i have been involved in for years. I am confident it will be far better than the TV show. i plan to complete the first few chapters of the EOTW by next summer as a POC.

I would have started the show with Tam and Rand making their way to town. Just leave out the prologue and it's all there in the books in terms of unfolding the story.

I tend to agree with you on that decision being the root cause of the shows failure. I distinctly remember my own excitement level being 11/10 when I first saw the show announced - and then I remember vividly the sinking feeling when I saw the opening scene of season 1. I was still interested in watching, but I was from that point on - perhaps unfairly - looking out for stuff that was being injected into the story to align with modern life and societal issues/hot topics.