Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD for The Wheel of Time Season 1! Be sure to come back once you’ve caught up!
After years of false starts and failed adaptations, fans of Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy The Wheel of Time (which began with the 1990 novel, The Eye of the World) finally got a chance to see the author’s vision come to life on Amazon Prime. The series aired its Season 1 finale on Christmas Eve, and did a lot in its first eight episodes to give fans exactly what they’d been hoping for. Now, audiences are already wondering what Season 2 might bring, and showrunner Rafe Judkins says that our not-so-merry band of travelers will have a lot of work to do when dealing with their own dark tendencies.
The Wheel of Time connected well with fans when it hit Amazon on November 19, with the viewership for the show proving that people are digging the dangerous adventures of Moiraine, Lan, Nynaeve, Egwene, Perrin, Mat, and Rand. Now that the first season has come to a close (with a twist of an ending), what might we see happen in The Wheel of Time Season 2? Rafe Judkins told Entertainment Weekly:
Season 2, for all our characters, will be about peeling back the surface and trying to understand what balance between dark and light they're all trying to find within themselves.
Oooh. Sounds like even tougher times are ahead for our crew, doesn’t it? Season 1 saw several of the group deal with some dark thoughts/impulses, but none more so than Mat. Things for the rogue took a dire turn when the group had to spend time in the doomed (and now very abandoned and spooky) city of Shadar Logoth, and Mat stole a bejeweled dagger he found in the wreckage (even though they’d all been told not to touch anything while there). While the group eventually had to flee the encroaching evil that began to spread in the city, Mat still had that damn dagger, which started to corrupt him.
It took well over a month for the group to be reunited, and by that time, Mat was nearly completely lost to his dark side because of the dagger. Moiraine managed to remove the evil caused by the object, but by the final minutes of Episode 8, he still seemed more influenced by darkness than anything else.
Now that all of the Two Rivers group have tasted their own power and some of what they’re capable of doing with it, it makes total sense that The Wheel of Time cast of characters will have to figure out how to use those gifts well, and not succumb to any desires to abuse what they can do. And, this comes at a time when Moiraine’s ability to channel the One Power has been taken away by the Dark One, so it’s also understandable if she has to deal with her own darkness as she (likely) attempts to regain access.
Judkins continued, saying that they’re on top of trying to adapt a novel series that ran for 14 books and 23 years, and noted that viewers who are also book fans will see a fair amount of “compression” taking place so that the series can deliver what’s most important for the full story. About Season 2, Judkins added:
Fans of the books will see that some characters are diving more into their Book 2 story in Season 2, and some of them are diving more into their Book 3 story in Season 2. We have to tell stories so efficiently on the show because we're trying to do 17,000 pages.
I haven’t even read the books, but I’m already wondering what Book 2 stories will be left out or shortened, for which characters, and what those stories will end up being. Luckily, The Wheel of Time Season 2 is already filming, as the show was renewed in May, so we might get to see it by early 2023. In the meantime, check out what you can watch in the coming weeks with the 2022 TV premiere dates!
