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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
21
Mixed:
21
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
ColliderNov 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The result is a show that satisfyingly deals more in intimate moments rather than overly relying on big action set pieces or CGI'd mythical creatures to conjure excitement. ... Like any good fantasy epic, The Wheel of Time is one that promises very impressive returns, provided audiences are willing to settle in for the long haul.
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ColliderAug 31, 2023
Season 2 Review:
The Wheel of Time Season 2 continues to embrace the riches of its source material's lore and worldbuilding, diverting from the books when it makes the most sense to but never sacrificing depth of character and overarching plot — and continuing to offer one of the best fantasy adaptations on television.
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ColliderMar 11, 2025
Season 3 Review:
Three seasons in, The Wheel of Time only continues to top itself through riveting performances, stunning new locations, well-defined worldbuilding, and an arguably timeless fantasy narrative that more than deserves to play out for as many renewals as it takes to reach the very end.
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PolygonNov 19, 2021
Season 1 Review:
After so many years of waiting, there’s certainly a lot for fans to chew on with this adaptation. The Wheel of Time is a very strong start to a much-awaited series and created by someone who has a clear understanding of how adaptations can soar when complementing their source material rather than just copying it.
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Mar 11, 2025
Season 3 Review:
Season 3 is a marked improvement over the series' second outing, and genuinely fun in a way some of our current moment's other sprawling fantasy adaptations can't seem to manage. Perhaps the Wheel will never weave this show into the version some of us (read: me) want it to be. But there's certainly still plenty to enjoy about the one we have.
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Radio TimesMar 11, 2025
The TelegraphMar 11, 2025
Season 3 Review:
The Wheel of Time is coming into its own as the slow and steady saga that could well finish top of the class. It (finally) looks great, and the cast has committed to the silliness. True, the weird names and labyrinthine mythology will put many viewers off – but for those open to the show’s grandiose charms, it might just cast a spell.
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Radio TimesAug 31, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Only time will tell as to how the rest of the season will play out, but the first four episodes provide a promising start, setting up bigger stakes – not an easy feat when you consider what happened in season 1. Tearing our heroes apart was a risk but it gives them time to shine on their own and even more of a reason to fight – to find their way back to each other.
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The TelegraphNov 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It instead serves up a vast tableaux of plucky heroes and heroines, homicidal wizards and curly-haired ogres. Game of Thrones buffs may very well be devastated by the lack of nudity/ incest/ Kit Harington looking sad. For everyone else this fantasy saga has the potential to cast a spell entirely of its own devising.
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Aug 31, 2023
Aug 31, 2023
Season 2 Review:
I want to love The Wheel of Time. There’s so much potential in this world, from its complex history and politics to its unapologetically feminist worldview. The show’s strange reluctance to let its characters become more than people-shaped plot points is so frustrating precisely because it’s so darn easy to see how much more it could become.
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Nov 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
While Martin’s gritty, skeptical, and brutal look at the genre appealed to an HBO audience, I’m not sure Jordan’s romantic, mystical, and hopeful version will be as ubiquitously embraced. The Wheel of Time can’t be the next Game of Thrones. It’s just not in the source material’s DNA. But Prime Video’s series has the chance to be the first true Wheel of Time, and that excites this all-too-earnest nerd to bits.
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The TelegraphAug 31, 2023
Season 2 Review:
The Wheel of Time goes too far and often obscures much that was great about the original. That said, the cast acquit themselves well. Female characters are especially vividly drawn – including junior Aes Sedai members Nynaeve (Zoë Robins), Egwene (Madeleine Madden) and their new fellow student, Princess Elayne (Ceara Coveney). These performances save Wheel of Time from complete disaster.
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Aug 31, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Episode 4 ends on a major cliffhanger that indicates things are poised to kick up several notches once the back half of season 2 begins rolling out, and it’s to the immense credit of the creative team that anybody with even a passing interest in The Wheel of Time will be desperate to see how it all shakes out.
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Nov 18, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Despite the weak characterization, I still found The Wheel of Time rather watchable. It definitely isn't lacking in incidents. The writers keep the plot wheel turning as characters are chased from one location to the next, action is adequately sequenced, and magic is performed (albeit rendered goofily).
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Nov 18, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Wheel of Time” is very self-serious, which makes it easy to mock, particularly if you’re apt to make comparisons to other fantasy franchises: One screechy villain has Voldemort’s nose; an Army of horned beasts are this show’s version of Orcs. It’s all slathered on thick with an over-reliance on special effects-heavy battle scenes.
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Mar 11, 2025
Season 3 Review:
This time around, the expansions of this world come off like a ticked-off checklist, an assuage-the-readers inventory of settings, cultures, and villains, with our hero’s journey feeling certainly designed but not entirely earned. Rand’s story can either save this world or break it—and right now, The Wheel Of Time has a few spokes loose.
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TV Guide MagazineNov 22, 2021
Season 1 Review:
While the lavish first season is eventful, it's burdened with clunky exposition, a deficit of whimsy and wonder, and thinly developed characters. [22 Nov - 5 Dec 2021, p.9]
Nov 18, 2021Nov 18, 2021
Nov 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The result is a show that may well please Jordan’s core fandom from the first but which makes for a frustrating watch for viewers who care less about whether “The Wheel of Time” outdoes “Game of Thrones” for spectacle than about whether the show they’re watching is coherent and well-crafted on its own terms. ... There is potential here: The sixth episode, of six provided to critics, is the strongest of the show’s early run.
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IndieWireNov 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Fantasy die-hards may be too frustrated by the adaptation’s clumsy follow-through (if they loved the books, whatever they imagined has to be more convincing than this), while casual viewers may find deeper satisfaction in other shows. But if you can channel just the right spell to find its wavelength, “The Wheel of Time” has its charms.
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RogerEbert.comAug 31, 2023
Season 2 Review:
It's those conversations, and the nagging feeling these conversations aren’t going anywhere interesting, hamper any momentum “The Wheel of Time” wishes to build. Even at the end of the four episodes provided for review, the characters still seem like they’re licking their wounds from the first season, the writers shuffling characters from place to place in a kind of narrative fantasy limbo.
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iDec 3, 2021
Season 1 Review:
For such a potentially rich series, The Wheel of Time is curiously flat. Little time is spent on character development or exploring the politics, social hierarchy and cultural touchstones of its world. Instead, there are many beautiful, but unnecessary, sweeping shots of scenery and overdramatic, overextended fight scenes.
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Nov 17, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It’s definitely like watching somebody else film their visit to a Wheel of Time theme park on an iPhone. It’s not the real thing, and you’re not really there, and, in and of itself, it’s almost shockingly devoid of artistry or narrative momentum. But its adjacency to a thing that lots of people love is likely to prove sufficient for many of them.
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Nov 16, 2021
Nov 18, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It’s an epic with little sense of grandeur, populated by characters with missions but no personality. ... There’s just too much portent, exposition and bad writing where engaging characters should be. Despite her most dedicated efforts, Pike’s no match for marijuana-friendly but limply grandiose lines.
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