It’s Wheel of Time Wednesday, and this week, the Wheel of Time show is offering up a first look at the heron mark blade! On Twitter, the show shared a nifty little video tracing the evolution of the sword from page to concept to set, as the blade rests in an autumn wood full of golden leaves.
Crafting the blade. #WOTonPrime pic.twitter.com/fD4X9n7Ocn
— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) December 2, 2020
The heron mark indicates that a sword is the weapon of a Blademaster—a fact that Rand al’Thor doesn’t exactly know when he first acquires his signature blade from his father Tam.
“I got it a long time ago,” Tam said, “a long way from here.”
— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) December 2, 2020
At the end of November, a local newspaper reported that The Wheel of Time would be filming this week in Segovia, Spain, at the Alcázar de Segovia palace, rumored to be a stand-in for the palace in Caemlyn. Earlier in November, production reportedly shut down due to the pandemic.
The production has been teasing fans with the tiniest of tidbits: a bit of the score one month, a quick peek at the set another. The last round of casting news came in August, with the addition of Sophie Okonedo as Siuan Sanche, Kae Alexander as Min, Clare Perkins as Kerene Sedai and Peter Franzen as Stepin, her Warder.
Showrunner Rafe Judkins answered questions on Twitter following the reveal of the heron mark blade, including one that should soothe anyone concerned about divergences from the book:
What's really important to me is that when we're diverging from the books, that we KNOW we're doing it. So, every piece of production design from shoes to swords to the White Tower itself begins with pages of quotes from the books about that place/thing…
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
The designer then takes it from there to build something that makes sense in our world, with our production concerns, our cast, our aesthetic, etc. But at the end of the day, it all stems from that first document and it's something we can always go back to
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
Other production specific questions follow:
You can not even imagine the number of hours that goes into each person's weapon. I was in at least 20 meetings about the dagger that Egwene has, and that's not even a major weapon in the books. There's a whole team of people (and we have a few BIG book fans on the props team)…
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
many, many different styles
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
Yes. Our costume team, lead by the amazing Isis Mussenden, started by building a map of the entire Wheel of Time world, carving out what each nation/culture looked like to make sure they're differentiated (and honoring what's in the books) and then diving back into Two Rivers
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
I want things to be as real as possible, so in any place that we possibly can, we've built things instead of trusting to effects. Our show could be all green screen, all CGI, but I think you'll be surprised by how much of it was actually built, and touched and held by our actors
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
Of course! An amazing team has been picking up as much as they can of the process so that after the show's aired you can see all the work and love that went into creating these details large and small :)
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
We're approaching this as an adaptation of the entire series, not just each book individually, so hopefully Season One will feel more like the entire book series of Wheel of Time than it does like Eye of the World. With that in mind — no Moiraine staff. Let chaos ensue, ha.
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
We have a fight time and swordmaster on the show who has built a fighting style unique to each weapon and culture. So, if you see a Borderlander fight with a heron mark blade it may feel different than a Seanchan. That's merely hypothetical of course ;)
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
When the books came out they felt so blazingly fresh and different and new, so we want that same thing to be true of the show, and if you see us leaning away from certain elements in the books, often times it's because audiences have now seen them before!
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
This is not music from the show itself. When it is, I'll make sure you know it, and it will hopefully feel very uniquely "Wheel of Time" :)
— Rafe Judkins (@rafejudkins) December 2, 2020
These are some exciting damn answers. Our fingers remain crossed that the show will arrive in 2021.
i am SO incredibly excited for this!
Yes, but is it functional? I bought a heron-marked sword many, many years ago that was an actual, sharpened sword. And it was no joke. My brother (not using his best judgement) swung it at a heavy linen window curtain and sliced a long, vertical tear as easily as a knife through butter.
As someone who practices both western (HEMA) and eastern (Chinese dao) swords, I am disappointed to see the heron blade being shown as just another generic katana. A very average looking weapon for a very typical tv production of books that are nothing but generic fantasy.
Any of the weapons from LK Chen would be a far better weapon in hand than this.
If that’s their idea of one of the signatures of the show, I can see I’ll not need to bother watching it.
@3 they literally showed the passage from the book where Rand’s sword is described and then took pains to mention that not all the swords will look alike.
It’s also noticeable that they’re only showing the left side of the sword – the right side is where the heron is on the hilt as well, and that design is what will be burned onto his palms.
Tam’s sword is supposed to be fairly generic though – it stands out as a simplepower wrought blade rather than a fancy sword like Turak’s. I vaguely recall a line about how many were made like it during the War, though Lan has the common soldier’s one with no heron.
@3: Both Tam and Lan’s swords are described, quite specifically. From the very first time we see Tam’s sword on the page, I quote you:
IIRC, Laman’s swordblade is similar. It seems to be the conventional form for swords from the Age of Legends. If anything doesn’t match its that the shown sword has a basket handguard instead a bar, and the gold heron. This one might well not even be Rand’s specifically.
@3 – Not telling you what you should and should not enjoy as far as spending your free time the WoT show or not. BUT…. Are you seriously going to completely boycott an ENTIRE series based on the fact that one, I repeat, ONE picture of a prop sword doesn’t meet your personal expectation??? That seems like the most egregious hot take/over reaction ever. As other commenters have also posted, Rand’s blade (if indeed this is even supposed to be his) was written as a very basic, generic blade anyway.
The fact that they have made a point to more faithfully adapt the text into a visual medium through little details like this actually gives me more hope that this show can be the WoT show I think so many of us have always hoped for but were worried would be impossible to pull off.
I will admit to still being both encouraged by Mr. Judkins’ definite passion for the source material and also dubious of anyone’s ability to pull off this series of books in a way that is satisfying without completely gutting the source material to fit a visual medium. That said I’m going to give it a fair shake as soon as it comes out and draw my judgment based on the actual show vs a single prop still.
I am also rather disappointed that they have portrayed this sword as a katana, with a typical tsuba instead of quillons.
an LK Chen style dao or a kriegsmesser would be closer in form to the standard Randland sword.
@7 I’ll admit it simply makes an excuse. I found the books dull, derivative and all in all a story that should have been edited to a single long book so I’m not the target market anyway.
Also being very aware of the historical development of bladed weapons just shows me how little the author knew about the subject to begin with which also did not help my appreciation much to begin with.
The description of the blades do not fit the cultures they were supposed to be made by. There would have been significantly different styles both of weapon and use based on armor and the lack there of as used by those cultures. The description above is closer to a western renaissance era side sword than to a katana but most westerners think – OHHH Katana! Super Duper Magic Cutter! rather than have any concept of the compromises between blade design, hilt design, steel quality and most important of all the heat treatment available to the smith.
Hope this clarifies where I was coming from.
@9
Seinfeld Is Unfunny, too, I bet.
@10 With friends like his, who needs enemies? :D
OTOH, it you want to see how it’s done when it’s done right, watch this video by a couple of the sword people for The Witcher.
https://youtu.be/kVeUQnlXYFw
I’m disappointed they just put a little wedding cake topper on the tsuba and called it a day. There’s supposed to be art etched in the actual blade. That looks like a cookie cutter blade with a fancy tsuba.
@9
It is pretty nonsensical to make very specific comments informed by – actual or imagined – real world smithing knowledge on a sword used in a fantasy series one isnt paritculary familiar with. If the Katana shown is Rand’s sword, then it was not made in a smithy but shaped with the one power. The guard obviously does not match the describtion in the book so boasting how “faithfull” it is might not be overly smart, but for a TV show it is not actually a bad effort. It is a mostly functional sword at least…
I’m cautiously optimistic about this show. But I don’t expect it to be much like the books at all. It’s funny when people mention things like the characters’ height or eye color as important when I bet by episode 4 it will have derailed from the book plot. That doesn’t mean the show still can’t be good though.
You can’t figure out a real katana from an exercise iaito except from a very short distance; and normally on old blades the tsuka is relatively new. The nice and important parts in a katana, the hamon, the flowing of the layers, are visible only with a special light. So the other warriors need the heron mark to distinguish it. What bothers me is that Jordan describes a katana, but the description of fighting is much more baroque and the duelling lasts too long. So the directors have to be creative and find a way to reconcile these two aspects.