Since the writing of this review, Amazon Prime announced The Wheel of Time’s cancellation. While this review acknowledges that the third season is now the show’s last, I felt that discussing the reasons for the cancellation, the relationship between the show as a whole and its fandom and network, was beyond the scope of what this review of season three originally sought to be.
In accordance with that, below you’ll find a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of The Wheel of Time’s final season, but not an analysis of why the show wasn’t renewed for a fourth season, or of the fandom’s reactions to that news.
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The third season of Amazon’s The Wheel of Time was perhaps its most ambitious yet—richer in emotional nuance, bolder in its thematic stakes, and messier in its storytelling. But, as someone who’s come to this world only through the show, not the books, I’ve often found myself oscillating between fascination and frustration, and this season was no exception.
At its best, the third—and we now know final—season leaned into the show’s strengths: complicated characters facing impossible choices, the high fantasy politics of a sprawling and complicated world, and an ensemble cast that actually feels distinct and layered. At its worst, it still fell prey to clunky writing, terrible pacing, and some frankly baffling storytelling choices.
But let’s start with the good: For the first time since it began airing, WOT managed in its third season to make me care about its central plot point, the Dragon Reborn. Rand has had arguably the greatest glow-up this season, from a wide-eyed boy stumbling through his very special destiny, pushed around by more powerful forces and yearning to be a simple sheepherder again—he’s grown into a far more interesting character.
Over the course of the season, Rand learns to let go of his fantasy of normalcy and embrace his promising but terrifying future. Yes, he has great power and great potential, he’s Important with a capital I, his destiny is to lead armies and save worlds. But the flip side of that—and supposedly the reason Rand has been so desperate to hide from his powers—is that he’s just as likely to lose his mind, murder his loved ones, and destroy everything. Season 3 is the first time Rand actually deals with this fact and decides to move forward despite his fear of and potential for disaster. The ambiguity of his power is the true theme of the show as a whole, and it’s great to see that finally, finally become a focal point.
The last shot of the season rests on this tension: Will Rand be able to stick to the Light, or will he lose himself to the Dark? And for me that was a perfect thematic ending. It’s the only major question that can sustain a sprawling story like this, and I wish it had become central even earlier.
Another enjoyable aspect of this is how rare it is for a man at the center of a story about immense power to be presented as someone to be feared and controlled. It’s a well-known fantasy and superhero trope that when men gain special powers they’re a source of empowerment and agency, and when women get the same the powers they are a dangerous burden. For me, perhaps the most iconic example of this is Jean Grey from the X-Men. While Professor X’s telepathic powers are what gives him authority and importance, Jean Grey—even more powerful than him—has to struggle to keep herself in check. In the Dark Phoenix storyline (which has been adapted on-screen three separate times in the last twenty years) her immense powers destroy everything she loves.
It’s rare to see a character like Rand, then: a boy who struggles with being the chosen one because the source of his power could also be the source of his destruction. Yet it’s Rand’s lack of control that’s particularly compelling. He knows he probably won’t be able to tell when the dark side of his powers starts to take over, when the “madness” descends; he knows the people who love him will be the ones who’ll have to kill him if it comes to that. And so he’s faced with an impossible choice—drive everyone away for their own safety, or look into their eyes every day praying they’ll be able to murder him when it counts.
Another piece of this puzzle that received an overdue upgrade in this final season was Egwene. After two seasons of being a fairly straight-forward character, she becomes more complex, in part through her relationship with Rand, her childhood sweetheart from their small Two Rivers town. In the latest run of episodes, they are reunited after missing each other and yearning for each other ever since their lives were first turned upside down by Moiraine, who in the first season came to the Two Rivers to find the Dragon Reborn.
Until now, Egwene’s moral compass was based on the idea that her friends, and her beloved Rand, represent everything that’s solid and true in the world, and that if she can just reunite with them the world will make sense and all will be well. But in this season, when she finally gets her wish, Egwene realizes Rand is not actually the boy she remembers, and that simply sticking by his side won’t necessarily lead her down the right path. In short, she discovers Rand has been keeping secrets from her. Where Egwene saw their relationship as them against the world, Rand has actually been playing a very different game.
This gives Rand and Egwene’s relationship texture. They love each other but they hurt each other; they lie to themselves and each other about where they’re headed. It allows Rand to be morally gray, again playing into the show’s larger stakes, and allows Egwene to be her own person, to process the complex reality she’s living through.
That concludes the things I think the show did a really good job with in this third season, and leaves things that were done somewhere between moderately well and utterly terribly. In the moderate camp I would put everything that happened away from the central quintet of adolescents—Rand, Egwene, Perrin, Nynaeve, and Mat—with the adult cast, most especially Moiraine’s delightful collaboration with the dark magic-user Lanfear. This seemingly fated to end in a violent confrontation, but in fact concludes in a non-resolution. The entire season seemed to be leading up to Moiraine’s death, including the wonderful scene in the final episode in which Rand finally thanks her for being both the only person who truly wants to see him succeed and “the knife at his throat.” But then, instead of a final sacrifice, we were given a battle that ends with Moiraine and Lanfear merely injuring each other—injuries from which we know they can both recover. Instead, it’s Siuan, the leader of the Aes Sedai, who dies violently.
I’m torn about that narrative decision, because while I understand its value in both raising the stakes of the light-vs-dark fight and for Moiraine personally, it also feels far too rash and unsatisfying. Siuan goes from someone struggling to keep the Tower together to a leader who allows herself to be deposed, beaten, and murdered within the span of an episode. This is mostly how rushed and clunky another of the season’s stories also turns out to be. The character of Elaida, another member of the Aes Sedai, is set up throughout the season as a schemer and planner, but the details of her plan actually happen mostly off screen in the final episode. It feels abrupt and sudden, just like Siuan’s end.
Make no mistake, I love all of the adult cast in WOT; they’re the main reason I keep coming back to the show. Daniel Henney, Priyanka Bose, Natasha O'Keeffe, Meera Syal, and of course Rosamund Pike—they’re all wonderful and I wish they’d been given more screen time. But this season most of them were given lukewarm storylines and not nearly enough space to shine.
Which leaves us with the things the show flat out failed at. Let’s start with the decision to introduce so many new magical elements, places, and creatures without giving a proper explanation about any of them for non-book readers: the magic orb Moiraine uses to enhance her power, the wish-granting creatures that appear conveniently to solve a plot hole in the final episode, the references to obscure things said or done in the first season. A different show, with more nuanced, captivating writing, could afford to give its viewers so little context, but WOT has so many scenes and storylines that are lackluster, it simply can’t expect that level of attention to detail and digging through lore from most of its viewers.
If I had to pick the highlight of this season, for me it would be the fourth episode, in which Rand and Moiraine go to Rhuidian. This episode is paradoxically what the show needed more of—making its vast extended universe more accessible and emotional for the viewers, instead of using it up in throwaway references—while also being an episode that didn’t move any plot forward. But the beautiful visuals and limited dialogue I think actually played to the show’s strengths, which always played to more emotional showing, and less dry telling, of how its world was built and why.
For example, the show continues to place a huge battle at the end of each season, and it’s always a disappointing endeavor. (At least this time they didn’t save it for the finale.) But if I had to pick a lowlight it would be either the scene where everyone sings in a tavern, which was an unforgivable waste of precious airtime given the eight-episode limit, or the entirety of episode seven, which stayed rooted in the Two Rivers and could actually have been condensed into about three scenes.
Ultimately, I think the third season was an improvement over previous seasons, both in production values and in the quality of the storytelling. But I wish it had managed to make an even higher proportion of what was on screen compelling and interesting, and not merely vaguely entertaining. It’s a shame there won’t be another season that would allow the show to continue to improve. The potential is very clearly there, and in the third season it felt more palpable than ever.