The Wheel Of Time Season 3 Will Focus On This Novel

Based on Robert Jordan’s best-selling 14-book fantasy series, Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time has enough source material to keep the adaptation churning for years. Unsurprisingly, the streamer wasted no time announcing a Season 3 renewal in July 2022 — more than a year before the second installment even dropped.

The Wheel of Time Season 2 covers the second and third books in the series, The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn, tracking the Two Rivers friends battling new (and some very old) threats. Sharing how “thrilled” he was to be making a third season, executive producer and showrunner Rafe Judkins confirmed that the next season will cover the fourth novel, The Shadow Rising, which Jordan published in 1992.

“The Shadow Rising has always been my favorite book in the series, so being able to bring it to television and introduce new audiences to the stories that made me fall in love with these books in the first place is such an honor, and something I’ve been working toward since I first pitched the show years and years ago,” Judkins said during the show’s Comic-Con presentation, per Deadline.

What Is The Shadow Rising About?

In The Shadow Rising, which clocks in at 960 pages, Rand al’Thor (played by Josha Stradowski) now wields the sword Callandor and is both the Champion of Light and the Dragon Reborn. He’s also seeking answers to another prophecy that lies with the warrior people known as the Aiel.

Accompanied by Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike), Rand arrives at the Aiel Waste and is granted permission by the Wise Ones to enter the sacred city of Rhuidean. After passing through a doorframe ter'angreal, Moiraine gains foresight while the Aiel await if Rand will return with arms marked by dragon symbols, which would confirm his identity as He Who Comes With the Dawn, the Chief of Chiefs of the warrior people.

Judkins, who has made significant changes to the source material so far, is unlikely to follow the book’s plot exactly. On X, formerly Twitter, he further teased that Season 3 is “even more sophisticated and rich and deep” than Season 2.

“I’ve always said that people grew up with the books. That the tone and storytelling and emotions of the first book progress and mature until you reach the incredible depths of the final books,” he wrote on Sept. 27. “I hope the show is the same.”

Though a Season 3 cast list remains forthcoming, The Wheel of Time has also starred Daniel Henney (al’Lan Mandragoran), Zoë Robins (Nynaeve al'Meara), Madeleine Madden (Egwene al'Vere), Marcus Rutherford (Perrin Aybara), Dónal Finn (Mat Cauthon), and Ceara Coveney (Elayne Trakand).

The Wheel of Time Season 3 Premiere

Amazon Studios has yet to reveal a Wheel of Time Season 3 premiere date, but filming reportedly began in April. (In an August interview with Looper, Stradowski noted that he’d “just come from set.”)

There might be a bit of a wait before it premieres, though. Season 2 production wrapped in May 2022, and the episodes premiered in September 2023. That timeline suggests Season 3 might not return until 2025.

The team has promised it will be worth the wait. “It’s amazing to see how the show is finding its form,” Stradowski said, adding that The Wheel of Time’s next chapter will evolve like the book series. “In the first season, we established the [people and world], and now we can be a bit more funky and get into it.”