The Wheel of Time Season 2 Finale Wove a Bigger, Better Future for the Series — Grade It!

Jon Negroni
·7 min read
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Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time has finished weaving its second season, with a bombastic finale that tied up the surprisingly stellar string of episodes that followed an uneven premiere.

FULL SPOILERS AHEAD…..

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Despite some hiccups along the way, Rafe Judkins’ vision for The Wheel of Time has finally settled into a satisfying, cohesive groove. He and his team have so far managed to condense several of Robert Jordan’s early novels in the series, while laying the necessary groundwork for how events should reasonably play out in Book 2, The Great Hunt.

Early on in this second season, a lot of the creative choices were baffling. Mat (now played by Dònal Finn) stuck in a cell doing pretty much nothing with Liandrin (Kate Fleetwood) breathing down his neck? Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and Lan (Daniel Henney) waffling around green pastures with a Green Aes Sedai and her warders? Barely a hint of Rand (Josha Stradowski), at least in that first episode, and so on, and so on….

You could reasonably assume Judkins had to course-correct some off-kilter plot developments from Season 1, and it took a few episodes for all the pieces on the board to finally click into place. And somehow, some way, the method to his madness has actually worked. These last few episodes have likely been the peak of the entire series thus far, delivering comprehensive entertainment value for newcomers to Jordan’s original novels but also genuine fantasy intrigue for longtime fans who might’ve balked if this ongoing adaptation had been overly faithful.

One of the only major drawbacks of The Wheel of Time, as the show currently stands, is that the barrier to entry for the novels is far higher than it ever was for shows like Game of Thrones. The show has veered so off course from what the books were up to that it’s simply not feasible to expect anyone to pick up the third book, The Dragon Reborn, once they’re done with Season 2 — something that Game of Thrones fans never really had to deal with until the show finally just ran out of book material in the first place.

For that reason, anyone who does want to keep going with the story has to start from square one at this point, or perhaps read a condensed summary of the changes in Season 1 before picking up The Great Hunt. And it’s not too much to argue that they’ve been well-spoiled on plenty of plot details going all the way through The Shadow Rising (Book 4) and beyond. In that sense, maybe Game of Thrones really can relate.

Anyway, back to that incredible finale….

In “What Was Meant to Be,” which Judkins co-directed with Timothy Earle, the assignment was clearly to evoke some of the truly impressive, sprawling set pieces of Game of Thrones, particularly “Blackwater,” in which we witness a complex but understandable war sequence from multiple perspectives and vantage points. Funnily enough, the “Battle of Falme” is one of the most book-accurate reimaginings in all of Season 2 (though that is certainly not saying much), down to its triumphant ending with the public proclamation of Rand as the Dragon Reborn, and even Mat blowing the Horn of Valere.

But beneath the surface of these exciting sword fights, impressive bouts of channeling, and that crowd-pleasing moment where Egwene (Madeleine Madden) overcomes her collar with a bit of cleverness and subsequently holds her own against the seemingly insurmountable Ishamael (Fares Fares), is the culmination of smart character parallels and believable arcs finally reaching a head. (A Toman Head, perhaps?)

Contrasting the journeys of both Rand and Egwene, but also the entire Emond’s Field Five with Lews Therin and his Forsaken — plus, arguably, the Heroes of the Horn — adds the sort of depth and nuance Jordan carefully built an entire fandom around. Though in the case of the show, Judkins wisely avoids how coy Jordan liked to be with these obvious comparisons, frequently allowing the characters to point out connections in the lore and their real implications when appropriate. What did it mean for Lews Therin (Alexander Karim) to betray his closest friends as the original Dragon Reborn? The finale wisely begins with this scene, and one of the best aspects of Season 2 has been the show’s willingness to tackle that question from the perspective of the actual Forsaken and their competing values. Actually spending time with them and digging through their character quirks is particularly helpful in landing the punch of that final scene, too, when the rest of the “Chosen” are unleashed upon a world that isn’t ready.

And yes, it turns out Ishamael and Lanfear (Natasha O’Keefe) have logical reasons for why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why don’t they just kill Rand and be done with it? Same for his friends? Because The Wheel of Time so often relies on the mechanics of its metaphorical wheel to contemplate ideas about destiny, the show can allow these overwhelmingly powerful villains to have specific, understandable schemes that don’t just come down to violence. As much as anyone else, they’re victims of the strong patterns of “destiny” that put them in a cage. What makes Rand and his allies so different, and therefore so dangerous, is their ability to defy these strings of fate.

These character interactions, along with some key moments involving Mat, Perrin (Marcus Rutherford), and Nynaeve (Zoë Robbins), round out the best aspects of “What Was Meant to Be,” but the finale isn’t without its notable qualms. The season is desperately missing an epilogue episode — to decompress after all this mayhem and answer some pressing questions about where we’re at with Liandrin, Logain (Álvaro Morte), Siuan Sanche (Sophie Okonedo), Min (Kae Alexander), and the Maidens of the Spear. There’s something odd going on with the utilization of Elayne (Ceara Coveney), whose involvement here receives only the most sparing script justifications and some awkward set up for what’s to come with a character who should honestly be far more interesting, even at this early stage.

Still, we had to wait so long for a Season 2, at least the budget has had time to flourish in post-production, especially when it comes to how the show depicts channeling, which is rapidly growing in its status as an underrated TV magic system that electrifies otherwise dull scenes whenever implemented. It helps, too, that the show pays close, detailed attention to how “weaving” the pattern usually looks different depending on the person doing it, a subtlety that shouldn’t be overlooked.

As it stands, The Wheel of Time’s second season serves more as a “Part 2” to the first season than it does a typical second chapter in a trilogy, and for obvious reasons. This isn’t the “darkest before dawn” moment or that penultimate battle before all is lost. It’s a reshaping of what the show can be if it continues even further with the journeys of its respective main characters, and it’s nice to see how deftly the showrunners have confidently handled weaker aspects of the story, such as the damane subplots with the Seanchan, a dicey story element that could’ve gone disastrously wrong.

And sure, watching The Wheel of Time doesn’t hold a candle to sitting down with the novels for the first time and breathing in this story as Robert Jordan intended. But if it keeps up this momentum, who’s to say that pattern won’t change?

Grade The Wheel of Time Season 2 below and share your thoughts on the improvement over Season 1!

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