The Wheel of Time

no.

No, I'm reading the next one I've got to read for the Wheel of Time series.

Oh my god, you're still slogging through that?

Well, I can't do just, I can't just do one after another after another, so...

also really interesting about the list that's been given, this is supposed to differentiate Rings of Power to being something unique or special amongst the fantasy genre.

Yet every single thing, every point is brought up, can be applied to the Willow TV show, the Wheel of Time TV show, the Witcher TV show.

Yes.

And unique world.

Her name is Lanfear.

And she is a character from The Wheel of Time.

And she is...

How do you explain her? She's lived like a thousand, thousand lifetimes.

My team of baddies that you're going to now draft a team to fight off is Rotwing, Nosferatu, the thing from the Shifting Alien thing, Dickie Delacroix from The Lottery, Arnold Tote from Indiana Jones, Tucker from...

the Fullmetal Alchemist, who might be the worst person ever, and La Llorona is my team.

And you have Walternet from Fringe, Hans Beckert from M, Swarm from Marvel Comics, that's the Nazi swarm of bees, Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal from the books and films, Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist, Agatha from Agatha All Along, and Lanfear from The Wheel of Time.

Now, I went first on drafting a team of villains, so you get to go first on your counterinsurgency here.

Mm-hmm.

I will say, I did try The Wheel of Time series.

It was not for me.

Um, [laughs] the show.

Exactly.

And to map out this ecosystem, we are digging into an exclusive report from Variety, dated March 19th, 2026, and this report details a sweeping, just unprecedented new strategy for the Wheel of Time franchise.

Which is a massive property.

Oh, huge.

We need to look at the inciting incident that forced this whole strategic evolution.

Exactly.

And the catalyst here is the very public cancellation of Amazon's live action Wheel of Time TV series that happened in May of the previous year.

Which was a huge deal.

Right.

Then they also have The Wheel of Time, which is this massive globe-trotting adaptation of Robert Jordan's legacy IP with three seasons already in the bank.

Huge budget on that one too.

Massive.

Now, Schumann's background is fascinating here.

Because the source notes she wrote for the epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time.

Which seems like a massive mismatch on paper.

It really does.

Uh, I've had, you know, some of my issues with some of the epic fanta- fantasy things that have come out, but I've never had a problem with the casting.

Uh, in fact, like The Wheel of Time show-

Mm-hmm

... which I was, uh, just very tangentially involved in, the casting was amazing.

Uh, and so I believe in letting people who are really good at their jobs do their jobs, but I wanna be there in the room.

I do wanna agree, that was the one thing I liked about The Wheel of Time.

Well, there's two things.

Like-