They nailed the characters, the story beats, the villains, costumes, everything. I was skeptical after season 2 though I’m not a book purist, but they really know what they’re doing. Even constrained by the stupid 8 episode per season limit by Amazon.
And that episode this season is probably one of the best episodes of fantasy television.
I really wish I had watched what you did. What I saw was not that. Glad you are enjoying it though.
Curios what you didn’t like this season? For myself, I went with the expectation that it’s not gonna match the story/character beats from the book 1:1 and they’re not gonna be able to incorporate many characters from the books for brevity’s sake. What I did care about was if they would be able to preserve the soul of the main characters and villains and how compelling is their development. I have not found a single main character or villain (heck even some side characters) that is not hitting it out of the park in that respect. I see Lan, I see Siuan, I see Egwene, I see Lanfear, I see moggy etc. My mind fully accepts these are the same characters I read in the books. Some even enhanced.
I guess I just see it differently. I keep on saying that I have to view this as a separate turning of the wheel, where everyone has been sniffing paint.
I don’t really feel that anyone encompasses the character they are portraying, maybe if we are really lucky they take the most obvious surface level characteristic and make that the entirety of the character. They are so busy cutting content out to make door stopper books fit in less than 8 hours of TV while cherry-picking the exciting scenes that there is an increasing amount of disconnection and disjointed story telling. Instead of deliberate action the characters are just stumbling around having things happen.
It feels to me like they are adapting from chapter summaries not the books. Which would maybe be acceptable back in the 1990s/2000s but these days we have stellar adaptations like the Expanse to show how it can be done correctly.
From where I am (was) sitting, my partner watched it straight through and I enjoyed sampling. Each scene appeared to be largely identical from a plot-delivery perspective. Just a bunch of people sitting around some table (or other appropriately sff contraption), talking about what characters who aren’t present were/are doing, and never showing those characters doing the things. Everyone seemed to be constantly looking for someone else, whether in dreams or futures or what have you, and it felt like the opposite of compelling.
Granted, I’m sure that it’s better than seasons 1&2… but those are extremely low bars.
To dig deeper, it sounds like this is a season where people who read and liked the books got to see their favorite characters not making fools of themselves. As this is rare enough in drama these days, I’m loathe to critique the sentiment (looking at you Netflix Witcher).
I think the show varies from the books so much that they can only be considered loosely related. That said I mostly enjoyed this season, though I do occasionally struggle to remind myself to keep it separate from the books so that I can enjoy it .
I liked season 1 well enough but by 3 episodes into season two I was done. How much better does it get?
Lowkey same about season 2. It took me a minute to get into and it was mostly cuz of wanting to see how they developed Mat. They mostly nailed the main arcs that season (a few characters were stagnant but ig with only 8 eps it’s bound to happen especially in early seasons). Season 3 I’d say is a vast improvement partially because the story/character setup of the last 2 seasons is finally paying off and they’re fully leaning into the high fantasy element of the show and not hand holding the audience. And partially because how it looks and feels. They switched to cinemascope (21:9) aspect ratio, to achieve a more “cinematic” look and it shows.
Oh and this season has some of the best moments from the entire series so it has that going for it, but credit to them, they nailed it.
Yeah they’ve really figured it out, I think. Perrin’s actor is still terrible, though. Rand’s isn’t much better.
I don’t mind Perrin’s actor that much since the character itself is mostly stoic. Rand’s actor seemed fine to me apart from a couple moments here and there.
I enjoyed it. But I also have low standards for slop and only half remember the books. I shotgunned them one July in the 2010s, so I don’t have the strong sentiment of a lot of folks that grew up reading them.
i should download it perhapsSo now the question is will there be a season 4 of TWoT? Because it wasn’t announced by Amazon yet. And that is usually a bad sign.
The viewing numbers this season were great across countries and the critics reviews are on par with best seasons of GoT. It’s as good a foundation as any to get renewed. Here’s hoping.
I hope the show gets renewed as well.
But I’m seeing the same thing I saw with regard to The Expanse. There was one more book to adapt in the series and Amazon drug its feet before giving fans and the cast an answer. Ultimately, The Expanse was cancelled. History seems to be repeating itself.
EDIT: My bad. There were 3 more books to adapt with The Expanse.
