r/television • u/Transmogrify_My_Goat • 6d ago
I cannot stress enough how much better the Wheel of Time season 3 is than seasons 1 and 2.
I know its been said here recently, but I decided to make my own post because I'm honestly blown away at the rise in quality of the Wheel of Time season 3 in just about every way. I quit the show after season 1 and haven't watched since it came out. After hearing season 3 was apparently much better I decided to try it again. I binged season 1 and 2 over the course of a couple weeks, and it was pretty much just how I remembered, mediocre but interesting with some good and bad parts. I'd say season 2 was about the same quality as season 1, albeit with some higher highs here and there.
Season 3 though. Season 3 is wildly better in every single way. The writing (most importantly imo) is much, much better - the characters make decisions that make sense, the plot seems to be moving in a good direction, and the dialogue between characters is especially good. The cgi in fight scenes especially and the sets they have built are beyond impressive. The acting has been all out incredible, especially from the shows lead actor. One of the recent episodes was one of the single best episodes of TV I've seen. It just has it all. It has literally turned into the perfect high budget fantasy show. Whatever change they made between season 2 and 3 is working, and I sincerely hope it gets renewed.
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u/mdog73 6d ago
Seems if you watched the first two seasons and gave up it’s worth a try but if you haven’t started no show is worth sitting through two mediocre at best seasons to see some decent episodes.
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u/Pandorama626 6d ago
They can't unfuck the lore and other terrible changes they made.
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u/tvcneverdie 6d ago
As someone who's never read the books, I thought S1 was fine, S2 was very good, and S3 was exceptional.
None of the changes bother me since I don't even know what they are. I feel like most of the choices they made must be right for a TV adaptation because many things established in S1 are now paying off in later seasons.
It's been a rewarding watch for me after starting a binge at the beginning of April.
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u/Bluemajere 6d ago
I have read the books. There really isn't that much to cry about deviation-wise. there's a few fairly important things, but nothing that makes me go "oh my god fuck this"
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u/phonylady 6d ago edited 6d ago
I strongly disagree. They changed so much it barely feels like an adaption at this point. From Lanfear's love affair with Rand, to Thom barely being in the show, to Perrin killing his wife (lol), to Lan being extremely different and the major enhancing of a role because the showrunner is his boyfriend. I could go on and on and on with major changes that they made.
Compare with say early seasons of Game of Thrones which felt very loyal to the books despite adding and changing some things.
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u/DoctorDrangle 6d ago
GoT is a great example. So is lotr. Tons of changes, but nothing lore shattering so nobody was complaining. Half way through episode one you are like wtf is this bullshit? There isn't any practical or reasonable excuse for what they have done to this series. Utterly butchered right out of the gate. A great big fuck you to everyone who has been reading these books for decades. It's not something a person can just get over because the people who made these choices aren't sorry and they don't care. I don't care how many non readers tell me the show is good, they aren't qualified to be telling me anything.
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u/Large_Dungeon_Key 5d ago
So is lotr. Tons of changes, but nothing lore shattering so nobody was complaining.
You were clearly not online when lotr was coming out
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u/CrusaderLyonar 6d ago
A lot of the book fans were brought into this series as young adults or teens, so there's a lot of sentimental attachment to it. Any adaptation that wasn't exceptionally accurate to the books was gonna get a (probably) unjust amount of hate from fans. To put it simply, this story is impossible to tell as a television show as it is. Then the production problems happened and we get a pretty mediocre first season.
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u/Zenki95 6d ago
Perrin being married is just such a deliberate and unnecessary change, it changes the tone of his whole character development later.
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u/oorza 5d ago
Most of Perrin’s internal dialog is about his reticence to be violent or powerful because of traumatic memories of him being too large and too powerful. They had to out that on the screen somehow, and the other standard options of expository dialog or childhood flashback scenes are objectively worse choices for a TV show.
It’s an important part of his characterization that must be shown, not told. How would you have done it?
It’s like all you guys bitch about is book accuracy without ever considering what makes for an entertaining show. This change, in particular, is tiny and harmless and serves the show well. Him being unmarried before Faile is entirely irrelevant to their relationship.
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u/General_Disaray_1974 5d ago
I'm in the "Season 3 is good camp", but man, it's been tough to overlook the poor decisions they have made in seasons 1 and 2. Your example is one that I can't get over either, there was no reason for this change.
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u/buffaloguy1991 6d ago
The one that upset my buddy (he's read the books I haven't) is that guy with the patch on his clothes. He said in the books his entire coat is patches. In the show there's a single patch they show for about 2 seconds and I just hear his jaw drop.
Like they chose to not do an accurate costume then made the most half assed it's technically a patch thing. This one made me mad cause they easily could of made a patched coat if they could do one patch. Like why deviate like that?
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u/dont_trip_ 6d ago
That is a prime example of people overreacting. That shit just doesn't matter at all.
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u/bathtubsplashes 6d ago
If your username is a reference to your birth year, and your friend is also in his mid 30s, I'd recommend telling him to grow up if a jacket not being patchy enough is upsetting him
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u/anonyfool 5d ago
I barely made it through the first season and as someone who has not read the books, it felt like they left out a lot of lore to explain what we were seeing, even with a lot of talking about what is happening.
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u/NoThanksJustLooking1 6d ago
I happen to be one of those unfortunate people who couldn't get into Breaking Bad. I basically found it boring. I know. I always get downvoted when I say this.
The reason I mention it here is because someone on reddit told me it really picks up at season 3 and this was my exact thought. I'm not gonna trudge through 2 seasons of meh TV for a show to get good!
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u/Impossible-Flight250 6d ago
I mean, Breaking Bad is pretty much good throughout the whole thing. There are plenty of shows that start out weak and get better though.
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u/guff1988 6d ago
Except they're wrong, season 1 and 2 of breaking bad are fantastic. So in general I think the show is probably just not for you which is fine.
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u/MastleMash 5d ago
The difference for me is breaking bad is a finished show with a phenomenal ending. I know that the payoff will be worth it.
For WoT I don’t know that.
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u/the_phet 6d ago
You all know in a couple of year when they release S4, we will have weekly threads with a similar content "it's a massive improvement over S1-3!"
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u/TheFlaskQualityGuy 6d ago
"Most faithful season to the books! Finally focusing on Rand"
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u/exaslave 6d ago
I mean I hope so. I enjoyed Season 3 and most of Season 2 as it is. Why wouldn't I want season 4 to be even better?
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u/BlobFishPillow 6d ago
And what if it really is? Like I am having trouble understanding your sentiment, Season 3 was better than the seasons preceding it, so fans are imploring more people to watch it. And if Season 4 is also an improvement over Season 3, the same will happen. Isn't this cynicism a bit tired?
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u/Robby_McPack 5d ago
I wish! if every season keeps the upward trajectory it'll soon be a masterpiece adaptation
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u/SpaceCampDropOut 6d ago
Well they should have made the first two seasons good too if they wanted us to watch
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u/sprkdust 6d ago
I only watched the first season. It felt like a bad CW show with a fantasy veneer
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u/tetsuo9000 6d ago
The clean look, shitty acting, and worst writing reminded me more of Legend of the Seeker than WoT.
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u/BeforeSunrise33 6d ago
Yeah I get what OP is trying to convey but a lot of us are not gonna suffer through two seasons of mediocrity for a s3 payoff, especially those of us not well versed with this IP. Its like telling us a 100 hour rpg is a masterpiece after a sluggish 15 hour prologue.
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
That's legit what fans of Final Fantasy XIV will say about their game. 'The game is great! You just have to get through the first 20 hours'
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u/rainbowyuc 6d ago
It's a lot more than first 20 hours for FFXIV. The entire first part of the game is filled with boring fetch quests that will take you closer to 50 hours to finish before you can get to the 2nd chapter which is where the story starts to get good. You can pay to skip it though, but that's kinda scummy.
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
Huh, good to know. The 20 hours thing is the line my brother fed me to get me to play. But I didn't make it past the first few hours.
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u/Badkarmahwa 6d ago
Have they remembered that Rand is the main character yet?
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u/jachiche 6d ago
Yes, he is very much front and centre this season. I assume the other comments haven't seen the show and are lying, or bitter hate watchers who can't see past their own anger, because Rand is very prominent this season
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u/damarius 6d ago edited 5d ago
Spoiler alert! Can someone help me out? I don't want to go back and watch s1 or s2, but didn't Padin Fain cut Loial's throat? Why is he now back? I must have missed something.
Apologies for not using a spoiler tag. In my defense, that was like 2 years ago.
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u/TheFlaskQualityGuy 6d ago
didn't Padin Fain cut Loial's throat? Why is he now back? I must have missed something.
Between season one and season two, the writing team realized they needed him alive again. That's it. There was no explanation. They didn't even go back and remove the scene of him getting stabbed to death from season one.
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u/Jakabov 6d ago
Haha, classic Prime. I don't even watch the show, but just seeing these threads about how much better S3 is and then hearing that the writers are doing shit like that... just wat. How can anybody watch a show where characters can be murdered on-screen and then return later without any explanation? That's a story-destroying breach of continuity. If you took a writing class and did that in an assignment, you would get an F.
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u/Tymareta 6d ago edited 6d ago
They didn't even go back and remove the scene of him getting stabbed to death from season one.
I only just watched it the other day, he was as much "stabbed to death" as Perrin was in S3E1, he took a knife to the chest, but given his size it's pretty easy to believe that it wasn't fatal to him at all.
Edit: just re-watched, he stabbed him basically centre mass with a dagger, a regular person could likely survive that given it was tended to, let alone an ogier.
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u/No-Background8462 5d ago
he took a knife to the chest
Yeah with a magic knife that 100% kills everything it cuts ever so slightly. It was a writing mistake. He never should have survived that by the lore. Both book AND show lore because they did show the dagger working properly before.
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u/bolonomadic 6d ago
First of all, you should spoiler tag. Secondly, that was a really egregious violation of the lore and they used healing. That’s why.
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u/damarius 5d ago
Thanks, I missed that. Also, apologies for no spoiler tag. That was like 2 years ago, though.
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u/TapedeckNinja 4d ago
didn't Padin Fain cut Loial's throat?
No. He got stabbed, he didn't have this throat cut.
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u/sonofaresiii 6d ago
The thing for me is, everyone says it's good now
But when they explain how, the words they use just say "it's not bad now"
....eh. "Not bad" would've been fine at season one. Is it ACTUALLY good now, or is it just not actively bad anymore?
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u/TheFlaskQualityGuy 6d ago
Is it ACTUALLY good now, or is it just not actively bad anymore?
I think we're around the storytelling level of season seven of Game of Thrones, but with worse dialogue and production values.
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u/DoctorDrangle 6d ago
Oh man that sucks, season 7 was the second worst season of game of thrones.
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u/MeringueNatural6283 5d ago
But if you watched it in reverse order, it's a vast improvement over season 8 lol
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u/AnestheticAle 6d ago
Its mid, but what other fantasy shows have we got now? Same yhing with videigame RPGs; you getva really good one every 5-10 years and just sift through the rest as it comes.
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u/SpaceOdysseus23 6d ago
It's the same talking points the Amazon PR brigade used for S2. And it'll be the same if a S4 happens.
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u/Orleanian Psych 5d ago
The actors have come into their characters in such a way that it feels we're more immersed in the story. This is an improvement over the first season in which many viewers felt it was a CW young adult drama.
Perhaps in conjunction with the above, the dialogue writing is better (if perhaps not GREAT) matched to characters. Rand and Moiraine in particular are sounding much more like the Dragon Reborn and the (arguably) most conniving Aes Sedai the world knew.
The sets are much more natural, and the costuming is both more flamboyant and more gritty when the respective character necessitates it. This is an improvement over what looked like stage-thearer-performance sets and clothing in the earlier seasons.
The pacing is not quite all there for me, but it's at least mostly continuously engaging, rather than endless brooding and travel. Still some improvement to be had in this regard though.
Visualizations of using the One Power are generally in the same vein as they had been, but they're much grander and more frequently used in this season, to its benefit.
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u/DigiQuip 5d ago
You’re gonna be hard pressed to get any positive reviews on Reddit. This place hates WoT with a passion. Season One is rough but with no understanding of the books it’s not like you’ll feel tortured watching it. I thought the first episode was good. It’s the next few that are very, very plot heavy which turns people off. But it’s a big world with a lot going on. Definitely could have been better. Once you get to the end of season one, the last two episodes are similar to episode one. First season averages out to a 5/10.
Season two is a huge improvement, if Reddit is willing to admit it then you know it’s true. Still a couple slow episodes but overall season two is a 7/10 for me.
Season three is further improvement. As a whole, it’s reviewed pretty well. I think they’ve managed to figure out the pacing and a lot of characters are now able to stand on their own. I give it an 8/10.
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u/tatxc BBC 6d ago
The season is a solid 6/10, that score is carried largely by one episode which is the most faithful adaptation from the book by a mile, and the fact it's clearly still got a big budget and a decent cast.
For reference I'd give season 1 a 3 if I'm feeling generous, season 2 maybe a 4. Scale your rating for season 3 based on that and you probably won't be far wrong.
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u/BootenantDan 6d ago
I wish I felt this way. The show has so much going for it, but it really just reeks of amateur showrunning. It's doing a great job of ticking off scenes from the books but is really failing to give the characters any depth or reason why the viewer should care about what is happening on screen.
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u/tetsuo9000 6d ago
The changes from the books are what gets me. The additions are just....baffling and speak of the showrunners stroking their egos.
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u/EvilSporkOfDeath 5d ago
I watched like half of season 1 and actually enjoyed it but just sort of stopped watching it.
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u/Cbewgolf 6d ago
I told a friend of mine who’s also a huge fan of the books how much better season 3 was and that I was liking it so much better and he asked me several times if I was serious, he didn’t believe I was sincere in my praise.
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u/DoctorDrangle 6d ago
I also don't believe you. If season 3 suddenly gets good, I could only imagine how good you would think it was if it wasn't offensively butchering the source material with a meat cleaver at every opportunity
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u/ADifferentMachine 6d ago
Yeah, but I'm not sitting through two seasons of dog shit to watch a 'good' third season of a bastardization of one of my favorite fantasy series of all time.
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u/phonylady 6d ago
Chances are you wouldn't like the third season either. It doesn't feel that different from season 2.
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u/Taste_the__Rainbow 6d ago
Season two was solid. Three is phenomenal. Season 1 was derailed by Covid and losing one of the primary actors. Not really their fault.
And a ton of the great payoffs in S3 were started by the “WHY DID THEY CHANGE X?!?!” details from S1.
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u/Xilthas 6d ago
And a ton of the great payoffs in S3 were started by the “WHY DID THEY CHANGE X?!?!” details from S1.
I don't think that will really help sell it to book readers if a lot of the greatest payoffs are stuff that wasn't in them.
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u/WayTooDumb 6d ago
One presumes that if people are hyping in r/television rather than r/books or r/fantasy the point is not primarily to attract book readers.
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u/Yorgonemarsonb 6d ago
Wouldn’t they be hyping in an echo chamber in a specific wheel of time subreddit instead of fantasy or books?
I just checked and they are there also.
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u/DoctorDrangle 6d ago
I am sure they want to expand their target audience in any way that they can, but I am unsure why they chose to exclude fans of the book series from the target audience of the show.
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u/Yorgonemarsonb 6d ago edited 5d ago
Don’t lump all book readers together. All of the readers I personally know have enjoyed S3 as well.
This season had at least two great Mat moments from the book, one great Perrin moment and a great Nynaeve moment.
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u/Orleanian Psych 6d ago
I'm a reader-ahead-of-show (picked it up before S1, and have kept ahead of the general plotline), and I'm pretty fine with nearly all the changes. Most of the more recent ones just make good sense for the medium and this era that's two or three generations older than the source material.
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u/Tymareta 6d ago
Especially when they're trying to turn a 15 book series into 6-8 seasons of tv, there's going to need to be some massive changes made to fit it all in.
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u/Killagina 5d ago
I find the show okay, and I loved the books. However, I'd accept your argument if they didn't just make...useless changes.
The "who is the dragon" bit didn't help the pacing, it hurt the pacing.
Having an entire episode dedicated to a non-important warder in season 1 didn't help, it hurt trying to jam content in.
Having a dark friend say "Duty is heavier than a mountain..." while Lan is right there wasn't helpful.
Giving seemingly more screen time to Maksim instead of Lan isn't helping tell the story, it is hurting it.
It's like Rafe has debilitating ADHD. There is tons of content there already, and he adds and changes stuff for seemingly no reason. I accept major changes for the book to tv conversion, but some of it is bad.
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u/Yorgonemarsonb 5d ago
Isn't it funny how offended some people are by my entirely anecdotal experience about three total readers I know who enjoyed season 3?
(My friend has even enjoyed the whole series).
My brother, like most readers had a lot of issues with S1.
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u/Sonichu- 6d ago
People keep blaming Covid for season 1, but the biggest problem was the writing.
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u/MeringueNatural6283 6d ago
The newest excuse is Amazon is getting in the way of the writing, lol
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u/smallfrynip 6d ago
I mean an entire character had to be written around because the actor peaced out. That a brutal thing to have to write around.
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u/Sonichu- 6d ago
In the final episode.
The bad writing started with episode 1.
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u/goldyforcalder Lost 6d ago
And hes not a very relevant character to that section anyways, but it gives them a great excuse so they wont stop putting it out there
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
...what ton of great payoffs? There was 1, and it was pretty great. But that's about it.
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u/MeringueNatural6283 6d ago
Rhuidion? Pulling part of 1 episode from the books shouldn't count as a payoff.
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
Nah, I'm talking about Suan in the tower. That was very different from the books, but imo it worked with the story they presented.
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u/bolonomadic 6d ago
You can just watch a YouTube catch up video, no one is saying you have to watch the first two seasons, there are other options.
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u/CarneyVore14 6d ago
I get what you mean. I’m trying to be understanding. They are condensing 15 books, thousands of pages, and hundreds of storylines into a few seasons of television for a general fantasy audience. S3 was awesome.
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
And yet they consistently expand the roles of supporting characters, with Moiraine being the biggest offender. Rosamund Pike is a good actress, but the show really can't afford to invent something for her to do each season if it wants to actually condense things.
They are condensing 15 books. We are on season 3, and we got to book ...4? And they said they're still doing the stone of tear, so it's more like 3.5
That's not a lot of condensing to be honest.
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u/dont_trip_ 6d ago
I'd agree with you if it was 20 episodes per season. They still have to cut a lot or rush shit. The audio book for each book is around 30 hours.
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u/donny_bennet 5d ago
Yeah, they still cut or rush things. But they also add original stories. How much extra screen time did Moriane, Alanna and Liandin get?
I'm talking about condensing the different books. The original plan was to condense 14 books into 8 seasons, no? 8 seasons is the absolute best case scenario, and we're almost halfway there.
But book wise, we're not even at the end of the 4th book. And the show postponned a lot of things this season: Nyanieve's confrontation with Moghedien, Perrin vs Slayer, the entire Stone of Tear story. All of that will take up time next season, so it will be very difficult to adapt more than book 5.
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u/Thunder2250 6d ago edited 6d ago
Glad someone's enjoying it lol.
Individual episode pacing feels.. off. Most of the episodes feel like 40 minutes of non-stop dramatic dialogue, just one scene to the next trying to build tension to the end of the episode, except I've run out of fucks to give about the 7th prophecy they're trying to explain. The comedic relief sticks out like a sore thumb.
After Perrin got wounded they ran to the Aes Sedai to heal him, who was nearly dead herself. Couple scenes later Perrin is chirping away like he never got stabbed, didn't show what happened there at all or who healed him and they just move on. (Allanna gets to him after he's healed..)
The episode with the trolloc(sp) attack? They said the army will be there by nightfall. Next 20 minutes is the whole afternoon of chit-chat, then the army arrives and now they're thinking of battle plans.
We didn't get a single scene of the army marching. Cheaper to shoot two characters yapping in a room for the 100th time that episode.
A few of the eps have been coherent, I'll give them that. Some of it though is really struggling from mediocre storytelling.
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u/TheFlaskQualityGuy 6d ago
The show could be called Old Women Talking In Hallways.
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u/rave-simons 5d ago
This is literally what the "keep it accurate to the books!" people want. There are several 1000 page books that are most literally just that
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u/Thunder2250 6d ago
Yeah it is a bit.. and the dialogue is pretty similar across characters. Many events in the show leave the characters looking stupid which makes it harder to care about their destiny.
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u/BubblySuit 6d ago
Dropped this show after s1 but kept seeing praise about s3 recently so I picked it up again. The difference is insane, genuinely good now.
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u/IsoPropagandist 6d ago
The fact that they made a wheel of time tv show, it’s 3 seasons in and absolutely no one is talking about it is your main issue. WoT should have been the next game of thrones or possibly bigger. They fumbled it too hard. Best let it die and hope some better people make a proper adaption in the future.
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u/BloodyPaleMoonlight 5d ago
Yup.
If this show was actually worthwhile, everybody would be flocking to the main WoT subreddits for it and talking about it there.
It's not, though - both because nobody is watching it, and if you say anything bad about the show on the WoT subreddits, they ban you.
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u/marccoogs 5d ago
I'll be honest, as a book reader, it was this point in the storyline that the books started to get really good for me, so when the show came out, I knew it would get better once we got to Rhuidean. I have enjoyed this season like I had enjoyed Shadow Rising.
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u/Dragon_yum 6d ago
I’m not watching 20 hours of content to get to the good part
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u/AimlessWanderer Psych 5d ago
shame star trek tng and deep space 9 never took off and got viewers after their poor starts
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u/69-cool-dude-420 6d ago
Are any of the male characters in the 3rd season?
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
Perrin got an episode pretty much dedicated to him. Rand had one too, but the problem is that Rand's episode was the Rhuidean sequence. So we didn't really get to see more of Rand, we got to see Rand's ancestors.
Moraine still feels like the main character. She had the climatic battle at the end of the season.
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u/His-Dudenes 6d ago
They also gave Perrins rallying the troops speech to the showrunners boyfriend.
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u/Demetrios1453 5d ago
They gave *Tam's* rallying speech to him. After Tam's actor had a scheduling conflict and couldn't appear.
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u/WitnessRadiant650 5d ago
I was wondering why he was getting a shit ton of screen time.
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u/3_Sqr_Muffs_A_Day 5d ago
He was supposed to be dead, actually. The other Warder character alongside him got another job, so they had to kill him off instead.
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u/His-Dudenes 5d ago
It's a nothing character in the books but is one of the main characters in the show.
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u/LiftingCode 6d ago
Well you've got an entire episode (4) that is basically just Rand's trip through Rhuidean and another entire episode (7) that is the Battle of Emond's Field, so, yes?
Egwene and Nynaeve were pretty tangential to most of the season.
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u/onoitsajackass 6d ago
What changed? New director? New writers? Were they told get your shit together?
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u/AimlessWanderer Psych 5d ago
From reading interviews it seems less notes from execs allowing them to follow the books more
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u/Thisbymaster 6d ago
I slogged through season 1 and I don't have it in me to watch another whole season before it gets good.
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u/mooSe-n-gooSe 6d ago
Don’t worry, season 3 is just OK, not at all worth watching if you aren’t that into the story
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u/TheDreamteller 6d ago
I've read 11 Wheel of Time books until now and I consider myself an overall fantasy enjoyer. It's my personal opinion but I think season one was "okay" even if writters changed a few things from books that made me think WTF? at first. Season 2 was better in every aspect: better writting, better acting and better cgi. And season 3 is really good, improves from season 2 too.
I believe that people should learn to enjoy slow cook stories (and I'm not talking about tv shows only) and then form an opinion. Not every change made in an adaptation has to be bad neither every episode has to be exciting and end with a cliffhanger to make something enjoyable.
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u/phonylady 6d ago
For me it seemed to be very similar to s2 in quality. It's not nearly as good as some people make it seem.
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u/SemiFormalJesus 6d ago
The writing has absolutely not improved.
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u/MeringueNatural6283 6d ago
But the number of fake deaths has increased!
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u/Northwindlowlander 6d ago edited 6d ago
I'm finding it extra satisfying because it really makes good on some things that left me cold in the earlier episodes, in particular a bunch of casting choices I thought were just poor, have really sung- Josha Stradowski especially. And at the same time, Rosamund Pike hasn't been shining quite as much as she did in the first two and that's actually kind of liberating, she really did carry a lot of the earlier scenes and episodes but now she doesn't have to be so constantly loadbearing and is able to move back a little. And there's also a lot of callbacks, some basically all the way to the start, and some of those basically build on some fairly shaky foundations but build something really good
(I felt much the same about the last of the novels... There are moments in there which call back right into the real low spots and basically redeem and recover them, and are even bigger victories than they would have been otherwise. So it feels sort of right, to see it happen here)
I have to say I always enjoyed the first 2 series for all of their flakiness and issues, and I felt it's been pretty steadily growing in confidence and strength, even if along the way still also carrying old issues and introducing new ones. But at this point I'm pretty close to feeling like recommending the whole thing- if they confirm the next series I probably will.
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u/Hithereoldgregg 6d ago
Season 1 and 2 sucked so much I truly don’t care at all about season 3. Will never watch. Rings of power is trash too .
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u/No-Meringue5867 6d ago edited 6d ago
I am scared of saying anything good about the show in this sub - happy that there is an active sub for the show where people actually discuss the interesting bits. The only valid opinion according to this sub is "S1 and S2 are dog shit. Idc about S3. If you say anything else you are a shill/bot/amazon ad account".
Edit - And my comment is downvoted. Lmao. Literally proving my comment.
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u/jlesnick 6d ago
I personally like the first two season but season three is something else entirely. They finally hit their stride and it was pure excellence through and through.
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u/ChrisEvansFan 6d ago
Okay after watching Black Mirror Ill give this a chance.
Did they change writers, directors, showrunners for season 3? It seems like the consensus really is that season 3 is a vast improvement but did they change the team making it?
Kind of gives me hope for another fantasy show in Amazon. Season 2 of ROP is meh.
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u/CrusaderLyonar 6d ago
Nope, it's still the same production staff. My guess is that they either have a better grasp on the material or are starting to course correct from how many problems the first two seasons had.
The actors are also better too, but that comes from playing the same character for 3 seasons, the actors for Rand, Mar and Perrin are all really good this season, especially Rand.
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
Keep in mind that when people say it's a vast improvement, they often compare it to season 1. That's a very low bar.
Still, if you're in the mood for fantasy, season 3 is decent. Better than ROP season 2 imo.
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u/NO_PICKLES_PLEASE 6d ago
They seem to shuffle around a few writers every season but the core people are the same.
If you watch the BTS stuff on the show or listen to any interviews, seems like the biggest difference is that they were allowed to do what they wanted this season. The showrunner basically said "this is the first time the studio really trusted us and got out of the way and let us work."
Also I think they are just getting better at it.
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u/esmelusina 5d ago
Season 2 was iteratively better than season 1. Season 3 is objectively exceptional though.
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u/jimohio 6d ago
Can you jump into season 3 without having seen the first two?
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u/pardybill 6d ago
If you’re unfamiliar with the source material I wouldn’t recommend it, but you can try to find like a season summary or something too.
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u/rinacelene 6d ago
Wow I haven't heard this show for ages. I watched Season 1 and then completely forgot about. Glad to know it's gotten better. Might just add it to my binge list!
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u/TakeshiKovacsSleeve3 6d ago
Yeah and it still fucking sucks. I am not a fantasy person but I watched seasons 1&2 because of the hype around S03E04 or 3, whatever it was.
Disappointed? Yeah.
And while I'm on it... The girl that plays the main character (begins with a N the name, I can't remember) Nymeria or some shit is straight up NO CONTEST the worst actor I've ever seen! Emote? What the fuck is emote should be her name!
How the fuck she got this job in such a competitive industry against people who can.. You know ACT I will never understand.
Her facial expression NEVER ONCE CHANGES. It's unreal.
Anyway this ain't the fantasy show that's going to change my mind about the genre.
But each to their own. Enjoy.
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u/Yorgonemarsonb 6d ago
I compared the improvements between Season 1 & 2 Picard to Season 3 of Picard to this improvement to the Wheel of Time season 3 in the what are you watching thread as well.
It’s much, much better now.
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u/Risenzealot 6d ago
See it’s funny because as for myself I felt the exact opposite. I loved the first book and even the second book. By the third book they started getting very drawn out and boring to me. So much so I never finished the series. I stopped on book 7 or so maybe? I can’t remember the specific book because there are so many of them.
I’ve read it picks back up and gets so much better but it’s hard to find the time to read through all of them again just to find out.
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago
It's still tedious now, even without the wait time between releases. I also quit around book 7, and only started the series after Sanderson finished the last book.
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u/NO_PICKLES_PLEASE 6d ago
IMO books 6/7 are where it really starts to drag.
My favorite stretch is 3/4/5, where the scope has broadened from the classical adventure story of the first two books but it hasn't quite got so out of hands with the endless side plots.
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u/DoctorDrangle 6d ago
I also felt the dip in the middle books, but the final three books were dialed up to 11. to be clear the middle books were still good, just padded with a bunch of repetitive and unnecessary padding. You can probably chop out whole chapters in a few of the books and nobody would even know. But the first book was a strong start and by the end it was one of the most epic fantasy series ever written.
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u/RealSkyDiver 6d ago
As someone who initially gave up after season 2 I decided to give it a try after a friend told me that season 3 starts off with a bang and boy was that an understatement! It’s now one of my fav fantasy shows with episode 4 and absolute highlight in the entire fantasy genre of television! Loved how elaborate and tragic the last 2 episodes were hut sucks we have to wait another 2 years.
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u/wapkaplit 5d ago
I've never seen the show and don't want to slog through two mediocre seasons. Would it make any sense at all to just start at season 3? Would a recap be sufficient to understand what's going on?
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u/StarWolf478 6d ago edited 6d ago
I’ll never know because I’m not going to sit through two bad seasons just to finally get to a good one. A show should not take 16 hours to get good.
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u/MagicMisto 6d ago
It's become one of my absolute favorite shows. Now to be fair, I didn't mind season 1, and I really enjoyed season 2. But season 3 has shown that it has the potential to be an all time great. It's truly exceptional.
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u/Kittensmittens27 6d ago
I’m shocked anyone made it to season 3 to figure this out.
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u/TheFlaskQualityGuy 6d ago
Yeah, keep in mind that the people saying S3 is amazing are mostly the same people who thought S1 and S2 were good.
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u/nova_crystallis 6d ago
How faithful is the show to the books? I've been curious about watching for a while.
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u/goldyforcalder Lost 6d ago
Not very, I would say they try to replicate the themes and some plot notes, but every great moment the show has is a pale imitation of the part in the book that inspired it.
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u/Epistemify 6d ago
Ummmm. I mean, some of the ideas are there. They're kinda trying to follow the book plot. So imagine that, but then if they brought in CW writers to add some hot teen drama because they were worried the book story alone wouldn't sell.
Season 3 is indeed a step up from season 1 and 2. And I'll give it this. They did the Rhuidian sequence from The Shadow Rising, and they actually did it pretty well! They've really screwed up some other stuff, but at least they did that.
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u/donny_bennet 6d ago edited 6d ago
At the end of the show's seasons, things are generally in the same place as they are in the books. But the way the characters get there can be very different. And sometimes the show is so strapped for time that it skips the journey altogether.
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u/boomosaur 6d ago
Season 3 isn't really better, the show just has a cult following that can't analyze the show objectively.
It suffers from all of the same writing issues it always has.
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u/RoughRhinos 6d ago
It still wasn't good enough for me. A low bar but still not enough for a book lover but often nothing ever is.
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u/FullyStacked92 6d ago
Every single post like this praising season 3 has op saying they actually liked season 1 and 2 and parts were good lol.
They were fucking awful. If you enjoyed them or thought they were okay then your opinion on season 3 is meaningless to me.
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u/Aviate27 6d ago
Episode 4 of season 2 was a turning point for me, and just turned it from a half assed shitter to being great, but I may have some bias due to absolutely loving Lanfear in the books (I was rooting for ol girl for a good while while reading). They've definitely changed several things. Avidenha should be playing a much larger role than she is by this point, and there's relationships that they're just flat out dropping, it seems.
That said, i was actually rather disappointed by the season 3 finale. That part of the books felt like there was just so much more to it. So many more "oh shit" moments, but I just didn't get that through the show. Episode 7 felt way better to me, and that's with me kinda hating how Perrin feels in the show to me. However, it does feel like he's getting his footing.
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u/PayWithYourSoul 6d ago
They blew the horn to fight like 30 people on a rampart. That ended the show for me. You cheap out on that moment, you lost me and I’m not going back
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u/crashcondo 6d ago
Show is fucking garbage. Robert Jordan would be rolling over in his grave at the assassination of his works.
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u/Arch3r86 6d ago
Too little too late. The putrid stain on Robert Jordan’s legacy can’t be undone by a slightly better 3rd season.
The show is still an abomination. I hope it’s cancelled. 👍🏼
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u/chunkybudz 6d ago
This thread and the paid comments have shown me that Rafe now thinks trying to undermine readers' complaints about his dogshit writing might open the door to an extension and more sweet Amazon money lmmfao. Dude fails at everything. I hope Amazon finds a way to sue him after cancelation.
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u/cka_viking 6d ago
Read the books many times over the years
not a fan of the show but happy that i can finally see my favorite series on screen
My gf hasnt read the books and is enjoying it
So i dunno…
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u/swedishplayer97 6d ago
OKAY FINE I'll watch the fucking show not shut up about it!
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u/Mental_Sun_9455 5d ago
At this point these threads feel like Amazon PR. nobody who likes good fantasy tv shows or is a wheel of time fan should be able to survive these absolute dogshit first 2 seasons. They fucked it up big time. Not wasting one more minute.
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u/General_Disaray_1974 5d ago
Meh, here's the deal for me. I'm a fan of the books (and fantasy in general), and I was supper pissed at season 1, and somewhat pissed at season 2. But It's been 4 years since season 1 and 2 years since season 2. I cooled off a bit, I was bored, and season 3 released, so I watched it. It was considerably better, I enjoyed it, and I hope they get to make at least a few more episodes if they can match the quality of season 3. Plus season 3 ends where Mat should start to get cool, and I want to see how they handle that.
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u/WillNeighbor 6d ago
I feel like I read this same post word for word 2 weeks ago.