The Wheel of Time is in its Two Towers era

polygon.com:

We are living through peak Lore Explainer TV. The twin successes of Game of Thrones and the MCU have given rise to an explainer industrial complex, one that thrives off high-profile genre adaptations and the curiosity they inspire. There’s nothing wrong with this; I, for one, owe at least part of my career to this phenomenon, and I can’t be too mad about something that pays my rent.

However, as time has marched on, the work of adaptation has started to creep more toward the realm of expansion, as genre epics increasingly exist to complement each other more than they stand alone. This can be obvious, like the way nearly every frame of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is crafted with the assumption of Tolkien expertise (or proximity to it), or less so. House of the Dragon, for example, was frequently compelling television, but structured in a way that pushed viewers back to George R.R. Martin’s text to understand the finer points of its political maneuvering.

The Wheel of Time exists somewhere between these two extremes. Much of its first season echoed The Rings of Power in both its plot (finding a Good Guy and a Bad Guy with Important Destinies and their identities obscured at a pivotal point in their fantasy histories) and in the way they played primarily to a knowing audience, trying to outsmart book readers with their ultimate destinations when they might have been better off focusing on the journey.

Season 2 of the show, which premieres with its first three episodes today, focuses on that journey. To continue the Tolkien comparison, it’s The Wheel of Time in The Two Towers mode. Its cast is spread to the wind, their motivations interrogated, while the nature of what they’re fighting against is reevaluated.