Seems like spring 2025 release for Season 3 is looking more likely!

Fain, Dain and the whitecloaks tried to paint him as a known Darkfriend and wanted criminal in the books, right? They'll do the same thing in the show, and there'll likely be some combination of Perrin's actual guilty conscience and Congars/Coplins looking for a way to ingratiate themselves to the whitecloaks with rumors of things he might have done that could very easily lead Perrin to confess, or at least fuel suspicions. Adding that if Fain plays a similar role as in the books, he might know about Laila from Ishy's messing around in Perrin's dreams, and could just straight up make an accusation. I don't care for the site either, just starved for content and those articles highlight a few things that are definitely coming in season 3 that haven't been discussed much from what I've seen.

A couple ScreenRant takes I agree with, quick blurbs. https://screenrant.com/wheel-of-time-season-3-logain-siuan-team-up/ https://screenrant.com/wheel-of-time-season-3-perrin-wife-laila-two-rivers-conflict-setup/

Or you could just do this on your own like other long-time book fans who also love the TV show are doing, and not expect some awkward shoehorning of "This is the Wheel Of Time, but different!" from the production team in the promo materials. As you note, the WoT is particularly well-adapted to interpretation with our whole "legend fades to myth and even myth is long forgotten..." theme explicitly repeated in Chapter 1 of every book. The theme of personally and ideologically agenda-driven narratives is foregrounded throughout the entire series, so it continues to surprise me when long-time fans act as if their reading of the story is the correct one, as if that's even possible in the face of the confused web of misunderstanding that is at the core of WoT.

Y'all have already heard this before, but I really like several things about the Stepin arc, so... It highlights that in addition to turning men into wolfish killing machines, the warder bond also introduces an extreme vulnerability in the form of a suicidal impulse. Stepin was a likable guy who was offered what seemed like reasonable options to move on with his life after Kerene died, and he instead invested a lot of effort to fool his companions and kill himself. Getting that up front makes the audience understand the risk it poses to Rand later in the story. Best choice of how to spend limited time? I doubt it, they probably could have cut 5-10 minutes from Stepin's 25-minute arc and still gotten what was needed from it. But worthwhile worldbuilding that will pay off later? Absolutely. His arc also introduced the Forsaken totems and a lot of exposition about general Aes Sedai culture that needed a place to be told. Really, Stepin's arc is mostly about giving depth to Lan and his relationship to Moiraine (and why Nynaeve shakes him up so much), what kind of man he is beyond just the granite carving that is all Rand perceives in the first couple books.

Isn't Fallout based on a video game? Is there millennia of lore? Contradictory and cryptic Prophecies? Multiple cultures spanning the entire globe? Over 2,000 named characters, including over 100 with their own distinct POV narratives? Obviously I know nothing about Fallout, but it sounds like you're asking "Wouldn't a WoT TV show be better if it was based on a simpler story?"

As Ali on the Wheel Takes podcast is fond of saying, unanswered questions are the lifeblood of television writing. Answer a question definitively and any plot points related to it can quickly become far less compelling. For one famous example, David Lynch never wanted viewers to know who killed Laura Palmer, and when Twin Peaks was forced by the execs to reveal that answer early in the second season, it left the show reeling until they re-focused on the Black Lodge by the end of that long and weirdly boring season. As you note, Robert Jordan's books are full of that same dynamic. The unanswered questions about the history and lore, and some of the loose character threads that never get resolved, are part of why re-reads are so much fun. As it is, we readers perk up (in annoyance, perhaps!) when we hear the show refer to LTT as The Dragon Reborn: We're asking "why?" again, just like the new show-only audience. To be clear, I'm not suggesting using this terminology was necessary or a good choice, I'm just explaining why it might have been made, and why it doesn't bother me or give any kind of indication that the writers don't know the book story.

That's exactly the kind of thing that smacks of exec non-reader decisions. "This world is all about reincarnation, right? And everybody knows there's always a Dragon that will save the world, right? So that's always the Dragon Reborn!" Again, saying that the writers don't respect the source material is so insulting at this point. They're taking an incredibly complex story and putting it on screen amid all kinds of real-world considerations like expat detailed above, and one obstacle is clearly questionable storytelling decisions imposed by people well above the showrunner level. There's so much love and deep knowledge of the books visible throughout every episode that the personal insults to the creative team seem just petty. Also again, nothing in what I wrote above means people shouldn't critique the show. Just do it without insulting the commitment of the people who are making it happen, please?

It's not just relative to their paygrades, it's that WoT has always been widely judged to be unadaptable to film/tv by virtually anybody who has any expertise in that field. We're getting a valiant effort at it from Rafe and company, and you can see where they succeed and where they fail. A different team would have faced different pitfalls, assuming there's even another team that would have put in the effort to make this show happen. Red Eagle hasn't been very successful in courting projects that get beyond the "we had a great meeting!" phase. This is the bit I wanted to highlight, it's the focus that matters. Yeah, these writers and producers have made choices that I question, but I love how they've always made an obvious effort to ground those divergences in the story and world shown in the books.

Brandon Sanderson tried (very hard) to change one character arc on the Wheel of Time show "Sorry about Perrin on the show," he told the massive crowd of people, "It's not my fault. I tried. Oh, how I tried..." "There are certain things," said the Stormlight Archives scribe, "Certain forces moving. You know that Jeff Bezos, at one point, said, 'I want Game of Thrones, buy it for me.' And they were like, 'You can't have Game of Thrones,’ and he was like, 'Buy me something that is my Game of Thrones' And there are certain forces at work." Apparently, those 'forces' made choices about the character of Perrin Aybara ("my boy Perrin," Sanderson calls him), that Sanderson didn't agree with. So when he found out about the show's intentions, Sanderson came up with an idea of his own and brought it to showrunner Rafe Judkins. "Rafe really went to bat for me," Sanderson says. "I presented a completely different thing to do with Perrin that would still get what they wanted. Minor spoilers for the television show’s first episode - but instead of the first big event that happens, [my idea was] what if he wounds Master Luhhan? He's worried about the rage inside of him - you can get all the same beats without doing the thing that you did, and then he also won't be traumatized for the entire first season. And he can actually go on fun adventures with friends." But despite all of Sanderson's credibility with the Wheel of Time series (not to mention the fantasy genre as a whole) and the fact that the showrunner was on his side, his idea was scrapped. "They took it all the way to the higher-ups and fought for my version of it," Sanderson told the crowd, "and they said no."

https://www.wotseries.com/2024/04/26/thandi-sebe-joins-season-3-of-the-wheel-of-time/ LIGHT BE PRAISED!!! Can't wait to see this episode, I re-read those Rhuidean columns chapters just on their own like 20 times. "Actor Thandi Sebe joins the cast of The Wheel of Time for its third season. According to the actor’s resume, she will play the role of Solinda, an Aes Sedai from the time of the Breaking of the World." Spoiler for those who haven't read The Shadow Rising

Reductio ad hitlerum, really? Godwin's Law now in play!

This bit is basically the definition of gatekeeping, the equivalent of challenging someone wearing a band t-shirt you don't think they actually listen to to name their top three songs. "Modern audiences" are indeed watching WoT on Prime, and in turn the books are selling more than they have in years. Yes, there's social media content that's part of the pop culture churn with hot takes and takedowns and culture-war rage-bait, but this adaptation is clearly resulting in many show-WoT fans who go on to read the books. Navigating all this hype can definitely be exhausting, but if we want lots of new people to engage with the story, it's one of the most effective ways to hook them.

Ok, cool, all good. The real genesis of Perrin's guilt over the axe in the books is the chapter where he wrestles with mercy-killing Egwene if the ravens catch them, immediately after he and Egwene leave the Tinkers with Elyas and before they meet the Whitecloaks in the stedding. In the books, his guilt emerges immediately after Perrin learns of the Way Of The Leaf, but as I remember it the focus is at least as much on Elyas' warning about being comfortable with the axe as it is about pacifism. It's one of those entirely-internal things that people have so frequently noted makes him a difficult character to script. Bringing that axe-related guilt earlier in the story so it's a clear subtext to his discussion with the Tinkers makes a lot of sense for that reason. Definitely a change though, and it's clear the show didn't stick the landing with their execution. Big-picture, I love the books because Jordan himself drew from such a wide variety of literary and mythological sources that so many themes are seriously investigated and developed, it's a joy to pick up any of the threads from lost innocence to feminist egalitarianism to moral absolutism to the relative importance of individualism vs community-building and consensus. There's the Arthurian symbolism including the sword in the stone for sure. Telling a compressed story visually necessitates choosing to emphasize some themes more than others and at different points in the story, and it's not an easy task. I think the show's production team has shown they're well-versed in all of the themes and are making an effort to engage every important thread seriously, even when other book readers would legitimately prioritize and emphasize them in other hierarchies. It's a big messy story, and that in itself is beautiful and worthy of multiple celebrations. I genuinely hope the Prime adaptation is successful because it will set up the next generation's adaptation, maybe even sooner than that.

I'm also responding to this sentence in a previous comment: "The original Wheel of Time story from the books isn't engaging any new perspectives because it isn't contained in the show." So, a big part of the reason I'm reticent to discuss potential deal-breaker events in future episodes is because you are arguing that a show that has already included these key scenes and events somehow doesn't qualify as The Wheel Of Time: Winternight Shadar Logoth Rand channeling his way out of a darkfriend trap at an Andoran inn A guilt-ridden Perrin becoming enamored of the Tinkers and their Way Of The Leaf Rand meeting Loial in a library Moiraine healing Mat from the Shadar Logoth dagger Taking the Ways to Fal Dara Rand battling Ishamael (who he believes to be the literal Dark One) at the Eye Of The World Novice training in the White Tower Perrin and the Shienarans tracking Padan Fain and the Horn of Valere, including a Fade nailed to a door Nynaeve's Accepted test Elyas and Hopper Liandrin delivering Nynaeve, Egwene and Elayne to the Seanchan, with Nynaeve and Elayne escaping Damane training for Egwene Nynaeve and Elayne learning about the a'dam and capturing a sul'dam Mat blowing the Horn Of Valere to summon an army of dead heroes The show has included all of these book scenes (and many more!) and you have the nerve to argue that it's not WoT? That it's actually some different story? This is why it feels like we're talking past each other, like a bad-faith argument. I fervently hope and am confident that Season 3 will bring us Rhuidean and the revealing of Rand as the car'a'carn. I believe that we will see the Battle Of The Two Rivers, with Perrin and Dain Bornhald as antagonists, and including Aram choosing the sword. What details will you need to see to accept it as the story of The Wheel Of Time? Or has that ship sailed? And if it has, what is your purpose in challenging my view that this adaptation of the story clearly deserves its name?