Thread by @Delafina777

The most recent episode of The Wheel of Time was the best episode of *TV* they’ve done and also the most successful at conveying Jordan’s worldbuilding and that is not unrelated to it also diverging the most from the plot of the books.

(It’s also the first that’s had so much of a glimmer of fun in it.)

I could watch another hour just of Nynaeve hanging out around the fire with the Warders.

I’m not fond of every change they’ve made, but Nynaeve’s character is a VAST improvement.

The other thing that's interesting is I think they're doing something very different with the books regarding the gender of the Dragon, which I want to talk about for a moment. There's been a lot of talk about the idea that Moiraine thinks that Egwene might be the Dragon.

And, like, how does that make sense since the Dragon has to be a man otherwise why would anyone be worried about him being reborn, the whole scary thing is that he's going to go mad like other men who can channel and break the world again, etc.

And to talk about what I think the TV series is doing there, and its implications, we have to back up a moment and zoom out.

One thing I'm always interested in with SFF series is "what is this story ABOUT?"

I don't mean in the sense of "What's the plot?"

I mean "What's its central concern?"

WOT is getting compared to GOT a lot, which is ironic, since WOT is interested in *exploring* a lot of the tropes GOT is subverting. It's fantasy from an older era; it's what GOT is *reacting* to.

So GOT is asking "What if nobility and chivalry and all the virtues that make you the hero in high fantasy actually just got you screwed over?"

WOT is asking, "What if being the Chosen One actually just full-on sucked? What if everyone hated and feared you for it instead of seeing you as a hero?"

And that's actually a very interesting question. It's got a sub-question to it, which is "what if the very power that is going to let you be the one to save the world also makes you do horrible things and actually kills you?"

I've always really respected Jordan for asking that question, even though I feel like he ultimately got distracted from it and after the first 5 books, he's no longer saying anything interesting.

But those are also *different questions.* And sometimes I feel like he stacked the deck by conflating the two.

I think the central question the TV series is asking is a different one than the books were asking, and I want to wander around with what it seems to be interested in a bit.

Initially my read on it was that it was going to be like most of the Prime originals I've tried to get into: handsomely produced, almost *painfully* competent, and ultimately kind of boring and directionless.

The first three episodes are really beautifully produced TV! Everything is polished, everyone's doing a great job.

and they seem completely lacking in confidence.

They seem *terrified* that if they let up on the action for even a moment, people are going to lose interest.

But above all else, they looked like they were going to try to be as faithful as possible to every element of the books, with just a handful of changes to add more pathos or tension.

And as we all learned from the first two Harry Potter movies, that's a mistake.

But the fourth episode started hammering home something that the books largely ignore--or maybe it even changed it.

In the books, Rand's a reincarnation. Mat probably is. Elayne might be. But other than Rand and to a lesser extent, Mat, RJ doesn't touch the implications of that

Sorry, also the Heroes of the Horn.

The point being, *important, world-changing people* are sometimes obviously reincarnated, but it seems divorced from the lives of ordinary people.

The TV series leans HARD into what it means for everyone to be reincarnated, and it does it a lot more thoughtfully than the books ever did.

In the books, all Rand being the reincarnation of Lews Therin does is have an annoying ranty guy in his head who every so often drops a useful hint.

There's mention that the Dragon and the Dark One fight each other over and over again, but the only other Dragon we meet is LTT.

And in the books, Logain is kind of a selfish jackass who wreaks destruction and little else in his time as a false Dragon. It's really hard to understand why anyone would follow him.

The TV series does an *incredible* upgrade on that character. He's got the king of Ghealdan on his knees, wounded, and he heals him and tells him the Dragon is just as likely to save the world as break it.

And you *get* in that moment why a king would follow him.

A little later, after he's captured, Moiraine asks him why she should believe that he's the Dragon.

He tells her it's because he can hear the voices of all the previous Dragons, telling him *how to do better this time.*

And he asks her, isn't that the point of coming back, over and over and over again? Figuring out how to do better?

In the books, Rand being a reincarnation seemed to be primarily a reason to be afraid of him, and something that was confusing him (and us!) about whether he was mad yet.

The characters in the TV series--and the series itself--actually take the concept *profoundly seriously* in a way it doesn't seem like the books did, and only paid lip service to when it did come up.

It's explained poignantly by the Tuatha'an. It made me like her and I HATE it because I HATED the Tuatha'an.

Damn hippies.

(The series is leaning hard into them being damn hippies to try to move them away from very problematic Roma-coding, and good on it.)

The Tuatha'an leader's daughter got killed for sport by bandits. She's devoted herself to building a world of peace so that when her daughter is reincarnated again, she can have the life

and oh god does the actress SELL this

"she should have had--with me."

This is ultimately a much more hopeful series than the books, and in the fourth episode, it suddenly got the soul Prime series never seem to have, and HOW.

This is a series about people who *don't* just see the cyclical nature of their reality as a grim inevitability.

And they don't necessarily even see being reincarnated as a wheel to be broken or a cycle to be escaped.

They see it as a chance to ultimately get it right: both individually, and on a global scale.

It's about people saying, "maybe I fucked it up last time, but this time I'm going to do better."

And people painstakingly trying to build a better world to leave as a gift for the loved ones they've lost.

And they're doing this, or at least the Tuatha'an lady is, with no hope or expectation that they'll be reunited with the loved ones they've lost in another life. Just an attempt to make sure that when that person lives again, they find a better world. That's profound selflessness

And it's not hard to read this on a meta-level, as the makers of this series tacitly acknowledging that there was some stuff the books didn't do well--the transphobia, the gender essentialism, the misogyny--and saying, hey, we have a chance to do better with this story.

After all, adaptations are sort of reincarnations of stories.

But back to the Dragon and gender.

I think Logain's statement that the Dragon is as likely to save the world as break it again is really the key to understanding what the TV series is doing with the expectations around the Dragon.

In the book, it's both, you know? The Dragon is DEFINITELY going to fuck up the world, and maybe if everyone's lucky, he'll also save it, and a remnant of a remnant (probably not just of the Aiel, but of everyone).

That's why everyone's so ambivalent about the Dragon. He broke the world last time, and even if he does save it this time, it's still going to royally suck.

(Side note, I forget the exact line, but Moiraine says the Dragon could be a man, a woman, or...? which sort of made me think about how in Christianity, the messiah is a dude. In Judaism, it could be a man, a woman, an entire generation, or even an idea.)

In the tv series, I *think* what they might be going for with the either-or is that everyone's probably *hoping* it'll be a woman because then she won't be wielding tainted saidin, and will be doing the saving rather than a man doing the breaking.

I think the question the TV series is interested in asking is "what if you're the messiah everyone thinks is the wrong person to be it?"

It'd also be a neat inversion of so many narratives about disappointment that the Royal Baby is a girl.

What if the Miracle Child, the Baby in the Manger, the Infant Ruler of the World that everyone wants is supposed to be a girl? Associated with peace and healing?

And not a boy, associated with violence and destruction?

And then they get born and they're a boy.

(and there's another hint with Logain, even though we know he isn't the Dragon--he *heals,* which in the books is something only female Aes Sedai can do

he offers hope amidst all that destruction by doing something associated with women)

Dunno for sure, but the TV series feels like it wants to say something both very different from the concerns of the books AND I think, very needed at this particular cultural moment, abt masculinity and our expectations about it and breaking not the world, but those expectations

I think ultimately the thing the series is interested in is "what if we tried again with how we think about men and gender and expectations and what we expect of them, and did better this time?"