Amazon has decided not to proceed with a fourth season of its fantasy adaptation, The Wheel of Time. The decision came after significant deliberations at the streamer, as the show's commercial performance had left it right on the edge of being cancelled or renewed.
The Wheel of Time TV series adapts Robert Jordan's immense, 14-volume fantasy series of the same name, published between 1990 and 2013 (with Brandon Sanderson completing the series after Jordan's untimely passing in 2007). The books have sold over 100 million copies and for many years, until the success of Game of Thrones, were the biggest-selling epic fantasy series after only J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books. The series had been optioned for both television and film several times, by NBC, Universal and Warner Brothers, before Sony Television and Amazon finally got the project across the line.
The show aired its first season in 2021 and subsequent seasons in 2023 and 2025. The show initially attracted mixed reviews from newcomers due to its exposition and lore-heavy approach to storytelling, and from book fans for the large number of changes and compressions from the books, particularly the decision to give one of the characters a wife (who doesn't exist in the books) and immediately killing her to engender sympathy. Despite a strong cast, led by Rosamund Pike as Moiraine, the first season suffered significant production problems resulting from COVID (including one castmember not returning after lockdown and severe limitations on production due to social distancing) and the finale was heavily criticised for not being very clear in its storytelling and an overuse of unconvincing CGI.
The second season saw a marked improvement in critical reception, mainly due to the addition of compelling new actors including Ceara Coveney as Elayne and Natasha O'Keeffe as Lanfear, and a more successful adaptation of the Seanchan storyline from the second novel. Again, a muddled finale attracted criticism.
This year's third season saw a large improvement in the critical reception, particularly the fourth episode which was able to hyper-focus on just a few crucial chapters from the book and delivered them on-screen with skill. The seventh episode was also well-received for concentrating on a single huge battle sequence.
The show's commercial fortunes were more mixed, with Season 1 seeing a very strong performance that dropped off for Season 2. Season 3's performance seemed to be on the level of Season 2's, with a slight dip but then signs of a longer tail developing (the show returned to the Top 10 streaming charts this week, almost two months after the season had concluded). Pre-release commentary suggested that a renewal for Season 4 would be dependent on a marked improvement of the show's Season 2 performance, which did not happen. This is ironic as Amazon apparently considered renewing the show for Seasons 3 and 4 together, but ultimately decided not to proceed.
Even without that, it appears that Amazon were still looking for ways to renew the show. There seems to have been creative affection for the project inhouse at Amazon, and it is a significantly cheaper investment than The Rings of Power, whose second season drop-off in viewers seem to have carried it below Wheel of Time's level, which may spell uncertainty for that show's future after the forthcoming third season (despite an expensive pre-purchasing of the rights to make five seasons). The show also seemed to be a solid performer in several overseas territories, including India (likely thanks to the presence of Indian actress Priyanka Bose in a key role). It appears that Amazon held discussions with Sony on paying a lower licencing fee or reducing the show's budget. However, the show was already seen as a relatively low-budget project shot with fiscal efficiency in custom-built studio facilities in Prague. Lowering the budget further was likely not deemed possible without compromising the show's production value and making it impossible to deliver the massive battles and magical displays from later books.
Sony will also be ruing the cancellation, having paid eight figures to secure the television rights in a 2016 deal with Radar Pictures and iwot (a rebranded Red Eagle Entertainment, who secured the Wheel of Time TV rights in a 2004 deal with Robert Jordan). Sony may shop around the project to other venues but it's very unlikely to find a new home in the current, more fiscally conservative TV environment. Additional Wheel of Time projects including a proposed prequel feature film and video game are in development from iwot, but the cancellation of the TV show is not likely to help their prospects either.
Some may celebrate the end of the TV show as it means a future adaptation can be more faithful to the source material. However, with streamers and studios looking to cut costs and reduce episode counts further in the future, and a faithful Wheel of Time adaptation requiring a much higher number of episodes (at a much greater cost overall), this is an unlikely outcome.
One good piece of news is that the TV show resulted in improved sales of the novels, with more than five million additional copies of the books being shifted since 2021.
5 comments:
That's too bad. I felt it was really coming around, and I was looking forward to season 4. I gave up on Rings of Power after struggling to finish the first season.
I actually found the show to be considerably better than the books, which are bloated and rambling. I am really disappointed by this news.
The show was a disaster - thank God it’s been canceled!
That's too bad. The first season was pretty rough, but it has gotten better and season 3 had a couple of very good episodes
I actually liked the show better than the books, particularly from season 2 on.
I know how popular it is, but I have always considered WoT kind of a poster child for rambling inefficient storytelling that some authors are prone to when they lack a clear plan, self discipline or are simply trying to milk a series (it was never entirely clear to me which applied in the case of WoT, maybe all three). Entire books would go by without the central storyline budging a bit.
It became so clear to me that the storyline was in no danger of resolving any of the threads in play that I dropped the series altogether around book five. However, when Sanderson completed the series, a friend of mine talked me into at least reading the last two books. When I picked up book 13 I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover that I had zero trouble at all following the story. Whatever happened during the seven books I missed had made zero difference to the overall narrative. I honestly believe you could read books 1-3 and 13 and 14 and miss almost nothing of any real importance.
I am not opposed to long fantasy series. Malazan is excellent for example. What I am opposed to is an author obviously stringing me along and expecting me to be happy about it.
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