The night that follows is kind of a CliffsNotes version of great Game of Thrones calm-before-the-storm moments, like the pre-battle portion of “Blackwater” or the entirety of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” before the Battle of Winterfell in season eight. Rand gets mad at Egwene for thinking poorly of Mat. Nynaeve gets mad at Rand and Perrin for fighting over Egwene. (Yes, apparently Perrin has it bad for Egwene, a fact that had in no way been communicated by anyone’s dialogue or performances until this episode.) Rand and Egwene make up and have sex off-camera. Nynaeve trails Lan to his adoptive family home, and later on they have sex, also off-camera.

Honestly? Other than some smooches and Moiraine’s terrific delivery of the command “on your knees” last week, the sexual relationships on this show are bizarrely sexless. The actors involved may be hot, but there’s no heat in their chemistry at all. In Lan and Nynaeve’s case, it’s not clear from the episode’s editing that she so much as removed a single garment in pursuit of her partner. It all feels like an embarrassing overreaction to the embarrassing overreaction to Game of Thrones’ use of sex and nudity, a discourse I hope and pray I never see the likes of again.

I reviewed this week’s lackluster calm-before-the-storm episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

Moiraine, drinking tea. Moiraine, talking shop with a colleague in a sauna. Moiraine, letting down her hair in front of a mirror at the end of a long day. Moiraine, sneaking off for a late-night assignation with her secret lover and confidante, who’s also her boss. Moiraine, standing on the balcony, admiring the view one last time before she leaves, perhaps forever.

If nothing else — and believe me, there was plenty else — this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time (written by Justine Juel Gillmer and directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield) established the vital but straightforward fact that Moiraine, the powerful sorceress at the heart of the narrative, has a life. She enjoys simple and not-so-simple pleasures. She has co-workers she trusts and some she doesn’t. She has an office romance on the down-low. She’s into sexual power dynamics. She likes tea, and she occasionally spills it to keep her position secure.

In short, Moiraine is a human being, not just a wizard or a plot device. So even when, at the end of the episode, she reunites the five potential Dragons Reborn, you don’t simply have a picture of a questing witch in your mind — you envision a woman, in full. She’s fulfilling a quest, yes, but she’s been a person the whole time.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

Minas Tirith. King’s Landing. And now, Tar Valon. Despite its pastoral roots, fantasy filmmaking has long counted upon its practitioners to nail the look and vibe of its fictional capital cities. And so, from Middle-earth to Westeros to the world of The Wheel of Time, these ancient and ornate metropolises have played a major role. So kudos to TWoT’s team for making the city of the Aes Sedai’s White Tower such an intricate and impressive milieu — a staging ground for the human drama taking place within its beautifully patterned columns and corridors.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture. It’s the definition of “if you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you’ll like,” but guess what—I like this kind of thing.

I’m quoted in writer Christian Holub’s feature on The Wheel of Time, Fire and Blood, The Lord of the Rings, and the future of fantasy TV for Entertainment Weekly. Give it a read!

In a way, storytelling is The Wheel of Time’s biggest storytelling problem.

The world Rafe Judkins has brought to the screen feels boundless, replete with different cultures and subcultures, sects and sub-sects, thousands upon thousands of years of history, of wars won and lost, kingdoms risen and fallen, songs and languages learned and forgotten and learned again. (Dip your toe in the book series’ wiki, I double-dog dare you — you might fall in and never come out again.) From an epic-fantasy perspective, this is an impressive feat.

However, from the perspective of a television drama, it’s almost an obstacle because virtually every new development requires someone to tell someone else a story about it. Every time a character sees another character praying, a conversation must ensue as to what the prayer means and to which deity or ancestor or metaphysical concept it’s directed. Each time a phrase from a lost language is uttered, someone has to explain what it means, who originally said it, and what context it was said. Each new enemy requires one of the heroes to tell one of the others what the enemy is and what its powers might be, and how best to defeat or defend against it. And so on, and so on, and so on, for fifteen novels and however many seasons of those novels’ adaptations Amazon deigns to make.

In short, The Wheel of Time is a show that’s almost all fantasy worldbuilding, at least so far. If you’re a mark for that sort of thing — as, frankly, I am — then hey, great! Worldbuilding out the wazoo!

If you’re not into it, though, hoo boy, I can imagine this is quite a slog. For every recognizable moment of human connection — Rand struggling to communicate to his best friend Mat that he doesn’t need to keep any secrets, Nynaeve’s raised-eyebrow reaction to the polyamorous lifestyle of some of the Aes Sedai — there’s great gobs of exposition about the Way of the Leaf or the Song before the Breaking or the Kingdom of Minethrin or the will of the Amyrlin Seat or what have you.

To paraphrase I Think You Should Leave, suffice to say, The Wheel of Time is a lot.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

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.

I reviewed the third episode of The Wheel of Time—the last in the batch of three that went live today—for Vulture.

It’s not always the case — no piece of Hollywood visual shorthand is truly universal — but in general, a close-up on a character’s mouth as they eat with gusto is shorthand for evil. It’s a way to communicate a character’s acquisitiveness or hedonism. (Sometimes it’s just plain old fatphobia.) In the case of Eamon Valda (Abdul Solis), the Whitecloak “questioner” who gives this episode of The Wheel of Time its cold open, it’s intended to show his indifference to human suffering.

As he tucks into what is, for all intents and purposes, the Billions/Succession/Hannibal forbidden delicacy ortolan, a woman dies in front of him. Her hand has been chopped off, and she’s being slowly burned at the stake. Her crime? Membership in the Aes Sedai, the powerful order of magic-wielding women whose representative Moiraine is leading our heroes off into the unknown. Clearly, they’ve got some dangerous rivals in the do-gooding department; the collection of stolen Aes Sedai rings Eamon wears on his belt indicates that he’s been down this bloody road many times before.

Solis’s chillingly cheery portrayal of this Captain of the Whitecloaks appropriately introduces Wheel’s second episode. Much more so than its predecessor, it’s concerned with the question of what it really means to be one of “the good guys.” In the war against the dark that both the Aes Sedai and the Whitecloaks consider themselves waging, are “good guys” even a thing?

I reviewed the second episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

There’s a Monty Python bit from Holy Grail — and forgive my presumptuousness, but there once was a time where if you were a person familiar with The Wheel of Time, the chances were good that you knew your Monty Python — where a sparkling-clean King Arthur trots past the heavily soiled peasantry.

“Who’s that then?” asks one man.

“I dunno,” responds a collector of dead bodies. “Must be a king.”

“Why?”

“He hasn’t got shit all over him.”

The premiere episode of The Wheel of Time isn’t quite this direct in terms of its visual signifiers. From background extras to leading ladies, everyone gets their hands dirty in this thing. But still, there’s a definite sense that the episode, titled “Leavetaking,” exists primarily to let the main characters know they are, in fact, the main characters. By the end of the hour, written by showrunner Rafe Judkins (who wrote for Agents of SHIELD) and directed by Uta Briesewitz (one of The Wire’s ace cinematographers back in the day), four lowly peasants have been told by a powerful sorceress that one of them is a messianic figure and that they must accompany her on a journey away from home as she tries to figure out which one it is. In essence, the protagonists of the show, adapted from Robert Jordan’s eponymous series of fantasy novels, are also the protagonists of the world it depicts. King Arthur, eat your heart out.

I’ll be covering The Wheel of Time for Vulture, starting with my review of the series premiere.

Gretchen Felker-Martin and I discuss the role of the smallfolk—peasants, soldiers, slaves—in Game of Thrones in the latest episode of our TV podcast, available here, here, or wherever you get your podcasts!

In our two most recent Patreon-exclusive mini-podcasts, Stefan Sasse and I discuss how shows with bad first seasons sometimes wind up with great second seasons, and everything we didn’t like about Game of Thrones! Go subscribe and listen!

Stefan Sasse and I discuss the role of magic, the very lifeblood of fantasy, in A Song of Ice and Fire in our latest BLAH podcast—listen here or wherever you get your pods!

Also, our $5/month Patreon subscribers can hear us talk about the characters who surprised us most in a Boiled Leather Audio Moment mini-episode!

Stefan Sasse and I address the role of monsters—the inhuman kind, I mean—in A Song of Ice and Fire in our latest episode, available at the link or wherever you get your podcasts!

And if you’re a $5 subscriber to our Patreon, you can hear our take on the role of Hizdahr in the story. Go subscribe!

It’s me and Stefan Sasse on the future of the Westeros Cinematic Universe—multiple spinoffs and prequels, an animated series, and even a stage play—in the latest episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour, available here or wherever you get your podcasts!

In our latest mini-podcast at the Boiled Leather Audio Hour patreon, Stefan Sasse and I discuss our favorite A Song of Ice and Fire characters. There’s lots more where that came from on that patreon, so do consider subscribing!

I’ve joined my illustrious co-host Stefan Sasse for a brief, Patreon-exclusive conversation about the depressing discourse surrounding Game of Thrones Season 8. It’s sure to make us a lot of friends and it’s available right here!

Who taught Bran Stark and future media superstars Dunk & Egg how to do what they do? Find out in part three of me and Stefan Sasse’s series on the Teachers of Ice and Fire in the latest episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour, available at our Patreon or wherever you get your podcasts!

Who taught Sansa and Arya Stark to do what they do? Stefan Sasse and I examine this question in the first part of our series on the teachers of Ice and Fire in the latest Boiled Leather Audio Hour episode—available here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Stefan Sasse and I tackle the Tyrion sample chapter(s) from The Winds of Winter in our latest BLAH episode, available via our Patreon or wherever you get your podcasts!

In the latest episode of BLAH, Stefan and I discuss the Barristan sample chapter(s) from The Winds of Winter. Available at the link or wherever you get your podcasts!

The Winds of Winter keep blowing as Stefan Sasse and I tackle the Arianne II sample chapter—available here or wherever you find your podcasts!