THE WHEEL OF TIME
Keep Spinning
SFXGOES BEHIND THE SCENES ON THE WHEEL OF TIME TO WITNESS JUST HOW BIG THE SHOW ’S THIRD SEASON IS
WORDS: JACK SHEPHERD
HEN SFX JOINS THE Wheel Of Time’s showrunner Rafe Judkins on a Zoom call, we’re both wistful for the South African sun. Almost a year ago, we visited the series’ Cape Town set to explore the pirate-invested harbour of Tanchico and cavernous caves of the Aiel Waste (read our set report in the last issue). In almost every aspect – costume, make-up, set design – the attention to detail was exquisite, every department working at the top of their game.
“Everyone was contributing their piece and making it better,” says Judkins, who, as we speak, is deep into completing season three. The result, he continues, is “better than what we put on the page”.
Those involved with the show’s third season attest to it being the most ambitious set of episodes yet, and much of that comes down to the scope of what’s being adapted: not only elements of the third book, but the fourth and fifth too.
Anyone who’s read Robert Jordan’s 14-volume book series will anticipate visiting a vast array of locations, but none perhaps as interesting as the Aiel Waste, the desert land home to the Aiel people, famous to outsiders – known as “wetlanders” – for their fighting skills. At the conclusion of the second season, one of the Aiel, Aviendha, comes to believe that our hero Rand, the Dragon Reborn, is the “Car’a’carn”, a prophetic man destined to lead the Aiel.