Review for Season 3 of The Wingfeather Saga

Know how when you watched the first film out of the bloated The Hobbit trilogy and wondered how they were going to make two more movies when the first film took you more than halfway through the book? I didn’t see a problem squeezing the On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness into one season, but I was wondering about why they needed to stretch out the rest of the books. Plenty happen in Books 2 and 4, but 1 and 3 are like the cozy titles where the characters kind of just hang out.

               Making up the latter half of the second book North! Or Be Eaten, Season 3 shows most of our cast finally arriving in the Winter City of Kimera, where they think they’ll be safe because the Green Fangs, lizard men, are kind of useless in the ice and snow. Low and behold, we’re introduced to the grey fangs, men who have been merged with wolves.

               Tink and Artham are captive almost this entire season, but their tales are still interwoven into Janner and the other’s fairly well considering how passively heroic they have to be for most of the episodes. Most of the episodes are pure action, from Maralee and Janner Ice sledding with Gannon and battles, to divulging into the past as well as not having Sarah’s rebellion take place in the last book, which I thought was nice. I enjoyed the books, but I sometimes thought the pacing was a bit much and it was hard to enjoy Book 3’s shenanigans when I know Sarah and the others were left behind. Overall, I thought it was well paced. All in all, it feels like the second half of the second season, but from a technical POV I was impressed. I’m not in that aspect of the industry but the visuals remain strong given the relatively modest budget the show has.

               Given all of this, I think if you like the series thus far, you’ll like it. The character designers went hard before on their green fangs just around Glipwood, but now we’re starting to enjoy more and more of the human designs. In particular, I adored some of the character designs of Podo’s privateer crew during the flashback in the second last episode.

               Anyway, unlike other seasons where we have a big battle send off, this one there’s more of an emotional climax of having everyone reunited, the battle of Kimera was bigger than Sarah’s rebellion and happened several episodes before the final one. Overall the battles are fantasy style violence and care is taken to not scare younger viewers too much, while still emphasizing high stakes.

Heroes, Antiheroes, and Villains Ahoy!

I was going to include antagonists in the title, but the definition of antagonist is they oppose the protagonist. Go see the last post if you need a quick refresher.

For the sake of this article a hero is someone who behaves in a virtuous way according to the author’s intent. I think it goes without saying that not everyone agrees as to what the highest virtue is, or that virtue is universal – for instance, a Viking may have no problem mowing down a weaker foe, for his culture the virtue is strength and adventure, whereas perhaps a samaurai might not wish to defeat a wounded foe because they are at a disadvantage. That samaurai holds honor as his highest virtue.

You can have lots of fun imagining cultures where they have very different virtues than ours, and science fiction is full of examples. I just finished watching Season 3 of Invincible two nights ago, and the Viltrum Empire value strength and commitment to the Viltrum Empire above attachments. I can chat about them in another post, but you feel the subtextual criticism of Eugenics and for the most part it’s handled well.

In A Fable of Wood and String when I was coming up with an Accolade Ceremony, I knew most people knew what knights were, but I wanted to include more than, “Be thou a knight”. I already knew about chivalric orders and seen plenty of media deconstructing knights, but this was a new fantasy world where I could make knights how I wanted. I looked up traditional knightly virtues and settled on seven. These were:

Valour

Liberality

Justice

Truth

Diligence

Temperance

Sagacity

Most of those are straight forward, but for the sake of brevity, Liberality refers to treating all folk fairly, Temperance is to not be bloodthirsty (no torturing or vengeful behaviour), and sagacity is to uphold all of this with prudence or cunning, depending on who you ask.

Reading them you may say, “Well, yes, those are all good.” The knightly virtues of my Copper Hawks in the Rogue Healer series is quite different – they’re more of a religious military order that’s lost power over the past few centuries. Another society of knights may have a very different set of virtues, if you’re curious, in Gawain and the Green Knight the Five Knightly Virtues were:

Fellowship (Friendship)

Purity

Courtesy

Piety

Generosity

Others I have seen in the list of knightly virtues include (but are not limited to) Faith, Mercy, Chastity,  Courage, Fortitude, Honor, and Hope. There’s overlap in several of these, but that isn’t to say that the word choice isn’t intentional; a knightly order that emphasizes one of these over others or takes additional vows may be seen as a different organization then another brotherhood that emphasizes other virtues within the same culture.

An antihero is someone who goes against the grain of what that author/world would consider heroic. We’re not talking about a flaw so much as something like motivation, or going against what most people would consider traditional/common hero behavior. There’s sometimes a little leeway as to if they’re true antiheroes as cultural norms shift, but the first example I think of is Vin Diesel’s character Riddick. He’s not the main character in Pitch Black, but I think everything else he pretty much is, but he’s not really a villain protagonist – he’s killed people and will kill again, but he has an honor code that usually means he doesn’t put up with people mistreating the good townsfolk going about their business.

A Villain is someone who does something bad. I think this is fairly straight forward, but sometimes we as a society assume that because we’re following a character, they’re supposed to be sympathetic. Villain-protagonists became popular thanks to  Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (probably because of the play, but I’ve only read the book) but there’s many examples, such as Walter White from Breaking Bad or Light Yagami from Death Note.

Heroes and villains don’t have to fit a certain mold. They can be stoic, they can be impetuous. Heroes can be friendly or standoffish, villains can be confident or uncertain. Certain types become more popular in certain subgenres; as when I was talking about why Heroic Fantasy came to surface was that antihero figures are a fairly common staple in Sword & Sorcery.

None of this is to say that a given characterization is good or bad, so much as understanding a given character role.

As some of you know, Champagne Books changed hands again. Information to come when I know it, but honestly not much is going to change on my end so far.  If you want books, I’m selling books at the Caboto Center on Saturday in the Games’ Room (Pokemon and other popular games) for the Comic Con. Come say hi if you have a chance, there’ll be other local authors and artists.

Thoughts on Season 2 of Rings of Power and Wheel of Time

I’m not going to analyze episodes. In my opinion, the problem is both had bad writing. No shame if you’re enjoying them so far.

More than twenty years ago the Peter Jackson The Lord of the Rings Trilogy came out (2001-2003) and there were a bunch of copy cats which resulted in failed franchises. There were also other projects coming out around the same time that were their own thing (Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Harry Potter)and I don’t mean failed franchises in that they didn’t make money or we didn’t start going in the right direction. I mean I remember a friend of mine complaining at work that he saw Narnia (TLTW&tW), that, “It was a kid’s movie!” There was a market for fantasy franchises as well as the rise of the Marvel MCU and the Nolan Batman trilogy, some stuff worked other things felt like they were trying to jump aboard an IP with a drastically different tone.

Fast forward HBO adapts A Song of Ice and Fire (Premiering 2011), and now there’s a bunch of copy cats again, including a spin-off I haven’t watched (House of the Dragon) it works in some media (The Witcher, when it tries to actually adapt the media; I only saw the first season) but I think ultimately the Grimdark Phenomenon has lost its way both in visual media and in print.

Trends come and go in literature and for a while there in the bookstore and libraries it was all about dystopians, then when I looked into what was popular it was about vampires and werewolf boyfriends, and then it seemed like we were on a zombie kick. Some of it’s still going strong, as I have friends who have been reading series that are more than 12 books, so assuming putting out a book a year this is obviously popular enough to warrant a trend that lasts beyond the current cultural one.

Amazon procured the rights to Wheel of Time and Some Parts of Tolkien’s Universe which I won’t get into here. They have a ton of money, so the visuals look great in both shows, I could nitpick about a random costume but I’m going to give most of the visuals and special effects a pass. Surely they can get the stories down and both be riveting fantasy series in their own right, right?

Wheel of Time Season 2

I’m not the biggest fan of the series, but I did finally get around to reading it I want to say 2021-2022. I listened on audiobooks, so pardon me if I get a spelling error here or there.

I watched the first season and was like: Okay, they had to make some changes, the climate of having male and female halves of the power can’t be easily explained away. I didn’t think having a mystery box of Who is the Dragon? or killing off Tom Merrilin was a wise choice, but hey I’m also not one of those people who refuses to have media adapted.

Season 2 felt like it was trying to ignore half the book and focus instead on the girls, which fine they were on an adventure too but it felt like it was trying way too hard at the expense of everyone else.  

What season 2 got right was when Liandrin explained to Nyneave why magic is more powerful than learning the sword, not that she couldn’t summon a blade out of a weave of air but it makes a lot more sense to immobilize her foe in the first place. The female half of the one power was designed around flexibility, and honestly one of my favourite parts of the final book was showing a guy who really only had one trick – making teeny tiny, almost insignificant portals – but damn if he doesn’t put one right behind your skull and shoot your own spell back at you. Creative use of magic IMO is more interesting than arguing about whether Nyneave or Lanfear are better if we consider training or use of an angreal.

What it got wrong was it tried to push Rand to the background, making it all about Moraine’s loss of power and how much this effected her when she got her powers back.

If it was me and I knew I couldn’t possibly make everyone happy, the best I could say is “We’d like to make it about Rand, but we really have to narrow down the scope. He’s also the most absurdly powerful character besides like, 3 guys who also have to be used sparingly. We’re going to follow ________.”

IMO Matt would have worked the easiest because he’s the least touched by magic, honestly he kind of shifts into more of a trickster character after the first few books and I’m pretty sure he’s a fan favorite. Magic and power is a fascinating topic and honestly I find it hard to manage well, so following the one who can’t wolf into the dream world or be among the most powerful spellcasters of their generation is maybe the obvious choice for someone like me. The other obvious would have been Egwene, but unfortunately the current political climate for female characters is to make them empowered but usually it just makes them have Plot Armor instead of focusing on character growth.

Wheel of Time thought it was going to empower Egwene by making her resist the Seanchan better than a woman with much more training and discipline, then have her straight up murder Renna. I’m not going to talk about the ethics of the situation, but Egwene’s situation was designed to be impossible to break out from. That doesn’t make her lesser; Rand gets collared later on in the series, showing us what happens to Egwene sets us up for what the Seanchan does to not only him, but other characters. Egwene is a powerful channeler by contemporary Aes Sedai standards, but where she excels is understanding the nature of the female power; learning the ways of the Aiel and risking everything to reunite the tower, channelers are more powerful when linked and she excelled at bringing people together. She spends most of the rest of the series despising the Seanchan for how not only how she was treated but seeing how others are treated still, at one point repelling their direct assault on the white tower and allying with them to win the last battle. She doesn’t need to show how much of a badass she is she needed to grow.

The Seanchan I could make an entire post about. Their culture taught them “all channelers must be collared” so them capturing Egwene and not collaring her immediately was bizarre. The choice to have one Demani per collar and have them perpetually linked was also an odd choice, hopefully the writers didn’t back them into a corner.

In my opinion the whole bit with Moraine losing her powers then getting them back was a waste of time. And I feel like the only male character who got much development was Lan. It felt like the story was more interested in Lanfear than Rand, but to be fair once her cover was blown she was always interesting, so at least she was handled well.

All in all, it was watchable but felt like a let down from the first season except for anything involving Liandrin.  I think I was leaning towards it’s passable until Lanfear got threatened by Moghedein in the final episode – Moghedein is the weakest of The Chosen/The Foresaken, and Lanfear is among the strongest (Women were almost always weaker than men in terms of raw power, but because of the nature of magic she was potentially the second strongest after Ishmael). Moghedein’s nickname is The Spider, she usually sits on the sidelines and watches and waits for other people to screw up before being an opportunist and striking. She’s a great character, so I’m disappointed that they were so uncreative in how they presented her first appearance.

Rings of Power Season 2

Rings of Power starts with a chase – Galadriel chasing Elrond from Eregion(?) to Lindon with the three elven rings, which is shown to be quite the journey in every other instance going from city to city, and then we see The High King demand, “Is it true?”

I know what he’s talking about, or at least I thought I did. We soon find out that he has no idea about Halbrand being Sauron. The elves are saved by the power of the three rings, but argue about if it’s worth it, and a messenger is dispatched to tell Lord Celebrimbor not to treat with Halbrand – that he is Sauron.

We see in a flashback and after the defeat of Melkor, Sauron was ‘killed’ by Adar and a legion of orcs and after an unknown amount of time, consumed enough cave-dwelling critters to become slime then take form. He wandered around aimlessly and didn’t seem to be blinded by pride or revenge until he chanced upon Galadriel, who he fell in love with and then decided he was going to take back Middle Earth for.  He wanted to rule with her at his side, and so after she rejected him at the end of the first season, he’s gone to Mordor and let Adar know that Sauron lives, and where to find him. He then goes on to Eregion to convince the great jewel smith Celebrimbor to craft rings for dwarves, then men.

The message never gets to Eregion, Gil-Galad eventually sends Elrond and Galadriel to talk to Lord Celebrimbor. En route they are circumvented and detour and meet the approaching armies of Adar. Apparently it’s Sauron’s scheme to have an army come attack the city where he’s forging the seven then the nine rings before their completion. The orcs no longer seem to be effected by sunlight and go to war with the elven army, who can now teleport and… I don’t know.

There’s also a side tangent about Gandalf wandering with Norri and we get to see the aftermath of what’s going on with Numenor politics, most of which hardly effects the plot on the mainland. Isildur wanders and basically… it’s a meandering romp which would have been fine if the main plot was handled better.

I try to be positive so the characters I do like are Durin and Deesa, the dwarf parts still felt contrived in parts, but if you were to ask me what the show got right, it was the stubbornness of the prince to his father. I think I’m the only one that liked how that the orcs had a chance. I’ve seen many others complain that orcs are monstrous and without pity, intrinsically evil, but RoP showed that was mostly because of the effects of being under the will of Sauron. Under Adar, they had a chance to become something else but, again in the hands of a better writer or at least someone who made an attempt to understand Tolkien’s worldview and philosophies.

Before anyone says, “Leia, it takes time to get these stories going” the average episode of Rings of Power usually is just over an hour long, and there’s sixteen so far. The LotR extended edition is about 12.5 hours, I’d have to look up The Hobbit but it’s probably similar. I let my dad and nephew into my account to watch the shows and, both who wanted to like the shows stopped probably around 3 or 4 episodes into season 1 and show zero interest in season 2. I may be an anal writer who overanalyzes everything, my family enjoys stories like this and they aren’t interested because the stories aren’t compelling.

If you were to ask me, writing characters like elves and super powerful channelers is hard. I’m not saying they can’t be handled well, but remember what I said about following a weaker character in Wheel of Time? Rings of Power should have had a more narrow focus– no harfoots and no Numenor – or just focus on just those characters and really get into the politics of Numenor and its fall – but use the elves sparingly so they do seem ethereal and otherworldly. When Gil-Galad okays Galadriel to set out with Elrond, they make a stink about, “You misunderstand, you’re under Elrond’s leadership.” She is supposed to be a wise being, not some petulant child. Plot makes it a point to show how she’s always right, so don’t tell me it’s about character growth I was bemoaning before. Unlike Egwene, Galadriel is thousands of years old and is very experienced beyond her little backwater village. Again, she feels like a power-fantasy character and more time is spent making her a badass than relatable. Maybe relatable isn’t the right world for a Tolkien elf, but if I were to take her traits and stuff them on a villain, she’d be more believable.

That’s my take on these two shows. What did you think?