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Pre Modern and Post Midlife - Volume 2


My credibility as a Wheel of Time fan should be indisputable as I have read the books many times, and later down the road owned the audiobooks so that I could listen to them several times more. The factory I work in has a couple dozen people that all listen to fantasy and science fiction audiobooks, and we all listen to the same authors and series. We discuss the books like at one time we used to discuss movies, and The Wheel of Time series was what basically started it all with us. We were all superfans of Robert Jordan and then moved onto Brandon Sanderson from there. We all of course looked forward to the Wheel of Time series on Amazon, the minute we found out they had bought the rights to it. 

We weren’t unfounded in our thoughts that Amazon may do a good job with the series. This was long before the dumpster fire that was The Rings of Power, and we were all superfans of The Expanse, which I still contend is one of the best streaming series ever created. It was still a long wait from then until the series finally hit Amazon Prime, and yes, the show was painted with a WOKE brush. It was obvious that they were going to ruin some things when they started the whole promotional ads with “Any one of these kids from the Two Rivers could be the Dragon Reborn,” and we were groaning a bit about that. No matter how far you stretch the narrative of the source material the Dragon Reborn had to be a man, and there was no way to go past book one in any other narrative. 

I’m not all that shocked that the first season was not exactly good, but not completely bad. When the Trollocs showed up in the first episode I was really stoked, because they were impressive and the fight situations with the Aes Sedai Moraine were pretty good, so I stuck around. Having read the books as many times as I had, I knew that the characters weren’t as race-swapped as most people cried about and so did my co-workers, so we generally had interesting discussions about what we liked and didn’t like without going crazy about it. Don’t get me wrong, the first season was bad story wise, but the effects and the character building were good enough to warrant another season in my opinion. 

The second season was more accurate in its telling of the second book, but of course the eight episodes would make it hard to tell everything in the book. It was interesting enough, but I want to point out to anyone that dropped out there that you missed a season finale that was what a real fan of the books would have gripped onto. I and my friends were all extremely impressed with how they reigned it all back in and hit the high point of the second book. Without spoilers I would just point out that if you are a vibrant reader the series ended better than my mind saw it reading it. I found myself looking forward to the third season. 

All my blasphemy aside, having the nerve to speak highly the series, I am not a purist. I never have been. I am looking forward to the next Superman movie because it is a fresh start. I liked the Snyder-verse, and right up until “The Flash” I thought they were all good. I think they went bad with the theatrical version of Justice league and should have done a Flash and Cyborg origin story first, but it was at least ok. Black Adam I even thought was great. I am not looking forward to any of the Marvel garbage that comes out because they killed the golden goose and will have to convince me to buy a ticket after Antman & the Wasp Quantomania. That was horrible and they have all been getting worse since. Heck I even liked Shang Chi for God’s sake and gave The Eternals a pass as the occasionally horrible movie. Ant-Man was different though, as it was an intentional destruction of guaranteed IP, and now, here we are. 

I assure you all that if you could like things, then the third season of the Wheel of Time I have been watching each episode as they come out. I am not usually that dedicated to anything on TV, so that is my endorsement. I realize there are a lot of people out there that can’t get over things or find the entertainment value of something that is different than what you expect. That’s ok. I just figured that while I am going over the way I saw it and the way I see it today this is another one of those things that is what it is, and it is perfectly ok to like the book and the portrayal of the book. It worked with Harry Potter after all, and sometimes you must give something a chance or at least have an open mind to maybe even enjoy it. The next episode will be the season finale, and it may be hard to top the last one, but I can’t wait to see if it does. 

Wheel of Time, Third Season Trailer

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