Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My fears for this show have, unfortunately, been realized. Having read the novels multiple times I am well aware that adapting such a property for a TV show is a monumental undertaking. However, that fact does NOT excuse the pile of dreck that we got. So many bad decisions were made by the showrunners that I cannot list them all without this review becoming unreadable. A few highlights though: 1. The ethnicities of the five characters from Emond's Field: One of the best examples I've yet to see of sacrificing story for forced "diversity". The idea that a (somewhat) isolated mountain village would contain four (one of the five was born elsewhere) families of such different racial characteristics after hundreds of years is ludicrous. After that many generations all the villagers would look much more similar in terms of skin tones and facial features. The only reason for this is to check boxes that proponents of wokeness and diversity champion. While this is not inherently problematic or bad (does it really matter if Matt and Perrin are racially different?) it does speak VOLUMES about the priorities of the showrunners. 2. Men are always The Problem: "Many, many years ago, men who were born with great power, believed they could cage darkness itself... The arrogance." I'm not going to go into the backstory from the books here, suffice to say that this is a dramatic departure from the original. However, the aforementioned quote rather neatly sums up the opinion that the showrunners seem to possess regarding men. Nearly every male character is portrayed as weak, cowardly, or evil. Those that aren't are soon killed or shuffled offscreen for the remainder of the season. Female characters are generally portrayed as the opposite; and can often be counted upon to perform incredible feats of magical or physical prowess with little to no training or instruction. Think Rey from Star Wars VII-IX. The mechanic in play is one where women are shown to be strong by making men weak in contrast. And when I use the term strong/weak I mean in terms of fortitude, skills, morals, etc. Not simply physical or magical strength. 3. The Mary Sue Problem: Mary Sue is a term used to describe a fictional character, usually female, who is seen as too perfect and almost boring for lack of flaws, originally written as an idealized version of an author in fanfiction. Rather than put in the effort to craft a compelling arc for each female character, the writers have resorted to giving them powers and abilities that take YEARS (and many boooks in the series) to achieve and/or master. Instead, characters simply get emotional enough and they can do anything they want (or that the story "needs"). It is the worst sort of deus ex machina that I have seen in a while and exposes the ineptitude of both the showrunners and the writers. I can give more examples but I won't. As a whole, shows are generally greater than the sum of their parts and WoT is no exception to this. Taken separately, my objections don't measure up to much but when you put them together they magnify each other. In summation, this isn't The Wheel of Time. It is really bad fan fiction written and run by politically motivated hacks who apparently prize diversity and wokeness above writing compelling characters and stories. The showrunner literally threated to rewrite characters as being homosexual if he received any more negative feedback! My advice to you is go watch The Witcher instead.