The Wheel of Time

• 1. Introduction

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  The Wheel of Time, a high fantasy series by the American author Robert Jordan, opens with a sentence that sounds like scripture: "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend." Everything that follows hangs on that image of time as a circle.

  Jordan first meant to write a trilogy. The story instead swelled to 14 volumes, and it grew a cast so large that readers still argue about who counts as a main character. Its world has its own nations, monsters, prophecies and rules of magic.

  This documentary asks how a universe built on endless return is organized. It asks who holds the power in that universe, and who fears them. It asks what lies behind the shadow at the center of the plot. And it asks how a work this large carried on once the hand that began it could no longer write.

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• 2. Eternal Return

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  The Third Age is the setting for the story, and in that Age human existence is woven by the Wheel itself. The Wheel produces the Pattern of the Ages, and individual men and women serve as its threads. A rare few people, called ta'veren, can bend the Pattern around them. Even they can move only within limits the Pattern allows.

  That tension between fate and free will runs through the whole series. The books take the familiar fantasy setup of an ordinary boy on the edge of adulthood who learns he must lead a great struggle. Then they follow its implications in unusual detail.

  The One Power is what turns the Wheel. Reaching for it is called channeling, and only women can do it safely. Objects called angreal increase what a channeler can draw, and the strongest of them are the sa'angreal. A ter'angreal, by contrast, performs one narrow function and nothing else.

  Jordan was open about where his ideas came from. He acknowledged J. R. R. Tolkien, and he modeled the setting of the opening chapters on the Shire from The Lord of the Rings. Arthurian legend, Norse and Irish mythology and real history all fed into the books. So did Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

  Unusually for Western fantasy, Eastern traditions mattered just as much. The idea of a wheel of time came from Hinduism, which knows the Yuga cycle, and Buddhism offers a version called Kalachakra. Reincarnation and balance appear throughout, and the emblem of the Aes Sedai resembles the yin and yang of Taoism. Zoroastrianism contributed its dualism, and Judaism contributed the idea of Watchers.

  The world is simultaneously the distant past and the distant future of our own, since time here is a circle rather than a line. Even the name of the great enemy is borrowed. Shai'tan echoes an Arabic word that Islamic contexts use for the Devil.

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• 3. The White Tower

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  From the city of Tar Valon, a ruler called the Amyrlin Seat governs the Aes Sedai out of the White Tower. These women are channelers organized into a matriarchal order, and the wider world both respects them and fears them. They say their purpose is to serve and protect humanity. They also prepare for the return of a malevolent entity they call the Dark One.

  The order divides into seven Ajahs, each with its own calling. The Blue Ajah pursue justice, which inevitably draws them into intrigue, and they keep extensive networks of spies. The Brown Ajah preserve knowledge and history. The Gray Ajah mediate and practice politics, while the Green Ajah train as warriors and strategists.

  The remaining three have grimmer or subtler duties. The White Ajah concern themselves with logic and truth, and the Yellow Ajah are the great healers. The Red Ajah watch over anyone outside the order who uses the One Power.

  A secret eighth faction, the Black Ajah, hides inside the others. Its members pose as sisters of other Ajahs while serving the Dark One.

  The Red Ajah also hunt the few men born able to channel. They regard these men as a standing danger, and they "gentle" them, which severs a man permanently from the One Power. The disparity in who can safely channel shapes the whole world. Familial, communal and political life are all affected, and many societies in the books are ruled by women.

  Every Ajah except the Red allows its sisters to bond with a Warder, a male protector. The link grants the Warder heightened senses, strength, stamina and unusual resistance to injury.

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• 4. Peoples of Randland

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  The Westlands hold 14 nations, among them Andor, Cairhien, Illian, Shienar and Tear. Four city-states sit beside them: Falme, Far Madding, Mayene and Tar Valon. Caemlyn is the capital of Andor, and Fal Dara is the northernmost city of Shienar. Within Andor lies the Two Rivers region, where the village of Emond's Field is the home of five of the series' main characters. Fans sometimes call the whole world "Randland", after the lead character Rand al'Thor.

  The Ogier are enormous, hairy and wide-featured, and they are famous for woodwork and masonry. Despite their size they are peaceful, and they love historical and genealogical study. They can sing to plants and trees to make them grow and heal, an ability called treesinging. They live in sanctuaries called steddings, where the One Power cannot be reached.

  After the Breaking of the World, male channelers who found refuge with the Ogier thanked them with a gift. They built the Ways, paths through an alternate dimension linking Ogier communities, entered through stone Waygates outside each stedding. Over the following millennia a malevolent force called the Machin Shin, or Black Wind, corrupted the Ways and began attacking travelers.

  Some peoples live by wandering or by water. The Tuatha'an travel in brightly colored wagons and follow the pacifist Way of the Leaf. They now search for a lost melody they call "The Song", which they say they will recognize when they hear it. The Atha'an Miere, or Sea Folk, live on ships and islands in the Sea of Storms and come ashore only to trade. Their delicate porcelain sculptures are prized by mainlanders. Only the Sea Folk know that the porcelain is actually made by the Amayar, island dwellers whom they have protected as a solemn duty since the Breaking of the World.

  Not every culture bows to the Aes Sedai. A vast empire developing far from the main continent, the Seanchan, enslaves female channelers because it considers them too dangerous to be free. Such a captive is called a damane. She is collared with a ter'angreal named the a'dam, and a woman called a sul'dam uses the other end of the device to control her.

  The Children of the Light, known as Whitecloaks, are a quasi-religious military order. They believe anyone who channels serves the Shadow, and they mean to destroy them. In far-off Shara, channelers are called Ayyad and live in sealed communities. The women secretly rule the monarchy and breed a line of channelers, using male Ayyad as uneducated breeding stock and executing them by age 21.

  Between the Westlands and Shara lies the harshest land of all. The Aiel call it the Three-fold Land, and outsiders call it the Aiel Waste. The Aiel are tall warriors with pale eyes and red or blond hair, divided into 12 clans. The extinct Jenn Aiel built Rhuidean, a city that preserves the people's history and culture. The Maidens of the Spear are a society of female warriors, and Aiel women who can channel become Wise Ones rather than Aes Sedai. All the clans await a prophesied Chief of Chiefs, called the Car'a'carn, who is destined to unite them.

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• 5. The Shadow and the Breaking

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  A hole called the Bore lies behind everything frightening in the series. At the dawn of time, a deity known as the Creator forged the Wheel and the universe, and in the same act imprisoned the Dark One. The One Power was split into a male half, saidin, and a female half, saidar. In the Age of Legends both men and women could wield it, and the Aes Sedai included both.

  Then an Aes Sedai experiment accidentally drilled the Bore into the Dark One's prison, and his influence began to seep out. The Wheel responded by producing the Dragon, a channeler of immense power named Lews Therin Telamon. Lews rose to command the Aes Sedai and their allies. Seven Seals were made from an unbreakable substance called cuendillar, to serve as focus points for resealing the prison.

  Lews and 113 male channelers succeeded in locking the Forsaken away with their master. At that moment of victory the Dark One tainted saidin, and the men who touched it lost their minds. Lews killed his friends and family and then himself. Other male channelers shook the world with earthquakes and tidal waves, the event called the Breaking of the World, before destroying themselves. A prophecy remains that the Dragon will be reborn. He is humanity's only hope, but in saving it he will break the world a second time.

  The Dark One has servants of every kind. Humans lured by promises of power and immortality are known as Darkfriends. His growing influence also created the Shadowspawn. Trollocs are brutal humanoid monsters that kill with pleasure and eat all meat, including human flesh. They are led by the Myrddraal, or Fades, eyeless creatures who can vanish into shadow but will not cross running water.

  Other horrors hunt more specifically. Gholam are constructs built to target channelers. They are impervious to harm and to the One Power, and they feed on blood. Gray Men are humans who gave up their souls to become assassins nobody notices. Draghkar are flying, vampiric creatures that devour souls. Darkhounds are otherworldly beasts the size of small horses, with acidic poisonous saliva. They regenerate when wounded and can be destroyed only by balefire, a weapon that erases its target from existence, reaching backward through time.

  The most dangerous servants are the Forsaken. They were powerful male and female channelers from the Second Age who called themselves "Those Chosen to Rule the World Forever". In return for pledging loyalty, they received access to the True Power, the Dark One's own version of the One Power. It is not divided by gender, and it is more chaotic. Anyone using it shows saa, black flecks in the eyes that multiply as the channeling grows stronger. The thirteen are Aginor, Asmodean, Balthamel, Be'lal, Demandred, Graendal, Ishamael, Lanfear, Mesaana, Moghedien, Rahvin, Sammael and Semirhage. The strongest of them compete to become nae'blis, the Dark One's second-in-command.

  They were sealed away with their master at Shayol Ghul at the end of the Second Age. Three thousand years later, near the end of the Third Age, the Aes Sedai learn that the Dragon has been reborn. The Seals weaken, and the Forsaken begin to walk the world again.

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• 6. Out of the Two Rivers

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  The Eye of the World, published in 1990, begins when a mysterious noblewoman arrives in Emond's Field. Soon afterward, Trollocs attack the village. She is Moiraine Damodred, an Aes Sedai, and she warns that the Dark One's servants are hunting one of three young men: Rand al'Thor, Perrin Aybara and Matrim Cauthon.

  They leave with Moiraine and her Warder, Lan Mandragoran. Egwene al'Vere joins them because Moiraine sees in her the makings of an Aes Sedai, and so does the gleeman Thom Merrilin. The village Wisdom Nynaeve al'Meara follows later, a healer who discovers that she too can channel. Fades lead growing numbers of pursuers, and the group is scattered while fleeing the cursed, abandoned city of Shadar Logoth. At the Eye of the World, a sacred pool of untainted saidin, Rand defeats the Forsaken Aginor and the figure called Ba'alzamon. Moiraine becomes convinced that he is the Dragon Reborn.

  After that the story fans outward. Rand and the other heroes are repeatedly split into separate groups, sometimes thousands of miles apart, each chasing a different mission. The friends from the Two Rivers make allies, gain experience and rise to positions of influence. They try to unite the western kingdoms against the Dark One, but proud rulers will not surrender their authority. The Whitecloaks reject the prophecies altogether.

  The Seanchan are the people of a long-lost colony of Artur Hawkwing's empire across the western ocean. They return convinced that it is their destiny to conquer the world. The Aes Sedai themselves split over whether the Dragon Reborn should be tightly controlled or should lead them into battle, as he did in the earlier war.

  The widening cast made the scale of the struggle easier to see. It also drew criticism. Some readers felt it slowed the pace and shrank the original heroes to extended cameos.

  By the sixth novel, Lord of Chaos, published in 1994, the Last Battle looks imminent. Only three Seals remain intact, and when the rest break the Dark One will be free to touch the world. That climax, called Tarmon Gai'don, is finally depicted in the fourteenth and last novel, A Memory of Light. Jordan did not live to write it alone.

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• 7. Jordan and Sanderson

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  In 1984, Jordan began writing The Eye of the World, and he did not finish until late 1988 or early 1989. Characters and storylines changed considerably along the way. One early version centered on an older man who discovers late in life that he is the chosen one who must save the world.

  Jordan then decided to move closer to the tone of The Fellowship of the Ring by making his characters younger and less experienced. After that choice, the writing went much more easily. He finished the second volume, The Great Hunt, at about the time the first book was published.

  For several years he wrote full-time at breakneck speed, until he completed the seventh volume, A Crown of Swords. After that he slowed to a book every two years. Fans objected when he paused to expand a short story into the prequel novel New Spring, so he shelved plans for more prequels in order to finish the last two volumes.

  Jordan rejected the charge that later books slowed down by focusing on minor characters. He did concede that the structure of the tenth volume, Crossroads of Twilight, had not worked as planned. In it he showed a major scene from the previous book, Winter's Heart, through the eyes of main characters who were absent from the scene. The eleventh volume, Knife of Dreams, was received far more warmly. Jordan then announced that the twelfth, titled A Memory of Light, would end the series. According to Forbes, he intended it to be the last book "even if it reaches 2,000 pages."

  In December 2005, Jordan was diagnosed with primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy, a terminal heart disease. He still meant to finish at least A Memory of Light, but he prepared for the worst: "I'm getting out notes, so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end."

  Jordan died on the 16th of September 2007. On the 7th of December that year, the publisher Tor Books announced that Brandon Sanderson would complete the book. Sanderson was a longtime fan. Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal, chose him partly because she liked his novels and partly because of a eulogy he had written for Jordan. The extensive notes Jordan left made the job possible.

  On the 30th of March 2009, Tor announced that the finale would be split into three volumes. Sanderson cited timing and continuity. By his early-2009 estimate, a single book would have run to 800,000 words and taken several years. McDougal doubted Jordan could have finished it in one volume. The volumes appeared from 2009 to 2013 as The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light, the last keeping Jordan's title.

  The notes did not stretch further. Jordan had often discussed two more prequels and an outrigger sequel trilogy, but after the finale Sanderson ruled them out. For the sequel trilogy Jordan had left only two sentences. In a 2023 blog post, Sanderson said that writing more would have gone against Jordan's wishes.

  Two cut portions of the finale were released in Unfettered anthologies, a charitable project to support authors and artists with medical debt. "River of Souls" appeared in 2013, and it is canon. "A Fire Within the Ways" appeared in Unfettered III in 2019 and is not canon.

  In November 1997, Tor published The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, co-written with Teresa Patterson. It gave the first maps of the whole world and of the Seanchan home continent. Jordan called it broadly canonical, but he said it was written by an in-world historian prone to bias and guesswork.

  The Wheel of Time Companion appeared on the 3rd of November 2015, written by McDougal and Jordan's editorial assistants Alan Romanczuk and Maria Simons. The authors had begun compiling it as early as 2005. In 2022, Michael Livingston's Origins of the Wheel of Time traced Jordan's influences, citing Jordan's personal notes held at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  Seven consecutive novels, the eighth through the fourteenth, each reached number one on the New York Times Best Seller list. After its completion the series earned a Hugo Award nomination. By 2021 it had sold over 90 million copies worldwide, which places it among the best-selling epic fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings.

  In 2004, Jordan sold the comic rights, among others, to Red Eagle Entertainment. The Dabel Brothers began adapting the series in July 2005 with New Spring. After the fifth issue the monthly schedule stalled for three years, and Red Eagle cited delays and creative-team changes. The final three issues came out in 2009-10. Dynamite Entertainment's The Eye of the World ran for 35 issues until March 2013.

  Asked about a continuation in 2013, McDougal answered: "Well, eventually, we'll do the whole thing, unless it stops selling in a dreadful way. In other words, I don't really know." The comics lay dormant for a decade. An adaptation of The Great Hunt began serialization in November 2023.

  Games arrived early. A text-based multiplayer world known as WoTMUD has run almost continuously since 1993, with the author's written permission. A computer game appeared in 1999. Jordan was consulted but did not write its storyline. Precedence Entertainment released three sets of a collectible card game from 1999.

  In 2001, Wizards of the Coast released a roleplaying game using the d20 rules from third-edition Dungeons & Dragons. Its one adventure module, Prophecies of the Dragon, appeared in 2002, and no further products followed. Jordan objected that the module's storyline details contradicted the books.

  In early 2009, EA Games said it had bought the rights for a massively multiplayer game, and Obsidian Entertainment was named as developer. The project seems to have been dropped around 2014. In April 2025, iwot Studios, formerly Red Eagle Entertainment, announced an open-world action RPG. The Montreal studio is led by Craig Alexander, with a projected three-year development cycle.

  Musicians took notice too. A Soundtrack for the Wheel of Time, with music by Robert Berry, appeared in 1999. The German power metal band Blind Guardian wrote two songs for their 2010 album At the Edge of Time. The American black metal band Shaidar Logoth took its name from the cursed city of Shadar Logoth. In 2011 the composer Seth Stewart premiered his orchestral work "Age of Legends" at the Beall Concert Hall.

  Fans gather in person as well. Dragon Con ran a dedicated Wheel of Time track from 2001 through 2012. JordanCon has met annually in Atlanta, Georgia since 2009. The 2020 edition moved online, partly through Zoom, because of the pandemic. A separate convention, WoTCon, met in Dublin, Ohio, from the 8th to the 10th of July 2022.

  The road to the screen was long. In a 2000 chat on CNN.com, Jordan said NBC had optioned a miniseries of The Eye of the World, though he doubted it would be made. Universal Pictures optioned film adaptations in 2008. Neither project emerged.

  In February 2015, Red Eagle Entertainment paid the cable network FXX to air Winter Dragon, a low-budget 22-minute pilot based on the prologue of The Eye of the World. Max Ryan played Lews Therin Thelamon and Billy Zane played Ishamael. It aired after midnight with no publicity.

  McDougal said she had not known about it, and that film rights were due to revert to her company on the 11th of February 2015. Her comments led to a slander lawsuit with Red Eagle, which was dismissed during settlement talks that July.

  A new adaptation was announced on the 20th of April 2017, produced by Sony Pictures Television with Rafe Judkins as showrunner. Amazon Studios joined in February 2018, and the series was formally greenlit that October. Principal photography began on the 16th of September 2019 and was halted in March 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic. It had resumed by April 2021.

  The Wheel of Time premiered on the 19th of November 2021. The second season began on the 1st of September 2023, and the third on the 13th of March 2025. Amazon canceled the series on the 23rd of May 2025 after three seasons. The third season held a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, up from 81% for the first season and 86% for the second.

  Smaller screens did not end the story. In July 2023, iwot productions and Squeeze Animation Studios announced The White Tower, an animated feature set before the television series. In December 2023, iwot announced The Age of Legends, the first of a planned trilogy of live-action films directed by Kari Skogland. It is set millennia before the novels, and it will show the Dark One's emergence and the fall of the Forsaken.

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