The good news is that due to one of those cockamamie streaming-service release schedules, the first three episodes of The Wheel of Time’s third season have all dropped at once. Chances are, therefore, that you didn’t have to wait much longer than an hour and ten minutes in real time between starting the premiere and arriving at the deliciously nasty opening scene of episode two. The bad news is that you probably shouldn’t have had to wait even that long. I get that the battle with the Black Ajah in the heart of the White Tower is probably the necessary starting point for this segment of the WoT saga, but 15 minutes of characters whose names you only sort of remember shooting digital fingertip fire at each other can be a little off-putting as a welcome back. A brand-new evil-queen character, played by Olivia Williams, with a Robespierre-type Red Ajah Aes Sedai adviser, played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, executing a bunch of rival nobles even after they literally bend the knee? Brother, I’ll take all of that ya got.
I reviewed the second episode of The Wheel of Time Season 3 for Vulture.
Tags: the wheel of time, TV, TV reviews, vulture