It feels like it’s been a million years since Amazon started doling out cryptic, minuscule teases of its lofty adaptation of Robert Jordan’s iconic fantasy saga, The Wheel of Time. Back at Comic-Con, we got a vague release date and a similarly vague poster, but now, with the show just a few months away, we’re starting to get a better picture of it.
Quite literally, in that today Entertainment Weekly revealed four new images that give us our first actual look at the series. Developed by Rafe Judkins for the streamer, the series will adapt the epic 15-volume series (which was concluded by fantasy icon Brandon Sanderson from Jordan’s notes after his death in 2007) over at least two seasons, if not presumably many more beyond those two confirmed runs so far.
Starring Rosamund Pike as Moiraine Damodred, a powerful magic user known as a member of the Aes Sedai — an order of all-female magic users, after a cataclysmic corruption rendered most men incapable of using the magical energies of the One Power — the series follows Moiraine and her allies as she tracks down Josha Stradowski’s Rand al’Thor, who turns out to be a prophecised champion of light against the primordial cosmic evil known as the Dark One.
“Wheel of Time is the first fantasy series that really dove into the political and cultural worlds of all these different characters,” Judkins told EW about why now was the time for Jordan’s saga to finally make it to live action, after years of attempts (the show isn’t even the only upcoming project, a prequel movie series is currently in the works).
“It was also one of the first to dive into multiple POV characters, so you’re following an ensemble, with each of them having their own agendas and approaches to everything. That’s always felt to me like the missing piece of the fantasy-literature landscape that hasn’t been brought to TV or film yet.”
As well as glimpses of Moiraine and the band of refugees she saves from an attack on the village of Two Rivers — among them Rand al’Thor, who Moiraine doesn’t yet realise is the prophecized champion she’s been seeking — the images also give fans some fascinating looks at characters like Álvaro Morte’s Logain, a rare man still capable of using the One Power, as well as the sinister shadow city of Shadar Logoth, where Moiraine is hunted by a mysterious entity known as Mashadar.
Hopefully this is just the start of us seeing some more comprehensive looks at the show, as we draw closer to The Wheel of Time’s first season dropping on Amazon Prime Video sometime in November. Head on over to EW to see the rest!