

Moiraine telling the Two Rivers folk the story of their own ancestors, that they had entirely forgotten until she brought it back to life for them, was one of the earliest scenes in The Eye of the World that gave hints of the sheer depth of its world-building, and it was also what firmly hooked me into reading further, and I love that the show kept it in. This may seem a little opaque to non-book fans, but: Moiraine told the story of Manetheren! She didn’t tell it in quite the same way as she did in the books, and it was edited down to some extent, but that doesn’t matter. The Wheel of Time brings to life important plot points from the book series

In my opinion, it’s an authorial oversight that I was very pleased to see corrected, and am interested to see how the decision ends up reverberating through future events.Ī more passing but still appreciated correction is that where the books rarely mentioned homosexuality, the show has made a point of establishing that same-sex relationships are both acknowledged and common early on. In the books, only the three boys were explicitly named ta’veren and Egwene was not, a thing which was bitterly argued over by fans of the books as being contradicted by the events of the story. In the opening voiceover, Moiraine Sedai says directly that while the Dragon is reborn, they do not know whether they were born as a girl or a boy, and she also tells her Warder Lan that there are four “ ta’veren” (a term expected to be made clear for non-book readers later) in the Two Rivers: Rand, Mat, Perrin, and Egwene. By casting people of color in key roles and overtly erasing some of the gender lines installed and maintained by the source material, the showrunners have updated the story for the 21st century. The first three episodes deliver on the show creators’ promises that they would update the story in terms of diversity and equality. The Wheel of Time ’s showrunners update the story in terms of diversity and equality The Wheel of Time’s opener, on the other hand, actually portrays the central themes of the story, with imagery of weaving tapestries and depictions of the Aes Sedai and the seven Ajahs (references that will become clearer as the series goes on). But while A Game of Thrones’ opening credits were mesmerizing to watch, it was never clear how the clockwork map thing was supposed to be symbolic of the series’ themes. And, yes, they definitely share some elements. The Wheel of Time’s opening credits have been criticized for somewhat copying the credit sequence to A Game of Thrones.

The opening credits, while similar to A Game of Thrones ’, symbolize the plot
