The Wheel of Time will be compared to Game of Thrones for as long as it lasts, and for good reason: It wouldn’t exist without HBO’s blockbuster serving as a sort of proof of concept for Jeff Bezos’s bottomless pockets. But Wheel is an unapologetic and effects-heavy epic fantasy from the jump. While GoT’s initial cold-open sequence featured a White Walker, that was pretty much it in terms of magical stuff until the dragons hatched in the season finale; Wheel has already shown us more of the admittedly awesome-looking Trollocs than we’d see of the White Walkers in, like, three seasons.
Wheel is also marching us through a lot of exposition about many different lands and cultures in very short order, as opposed to the comparatively easy-to-grasp “Seven Kingdoms governed by Great Houses” world-building of early GoT. The filmmaking follows suit. No sooner are our heroes split up in that shadow city in the last episode than they wind up in three completely different landscapes, facing completely different threats and encountering completely different allies. What it lacks in recognizable human emotions and drives, it makes up for — or tries to, anyway — in sheer storytelling scope. Will this ploy be successful? Only (the Wheel of) time will tell.
Tags: fantasy, reviews, the wheel of time, TV, TV reviews, vulture