To the cast and crew of The Wheel of Time,

Here’s to this turning of the wheel.

To the vision of an adaptation for TV, for limited runtime, for a modern audience. By taking up these challenges, you’ve brought a beloved story to life–no, breathed new life into it.

Here’s to the clever writing. How you take the puzzle pieces of story from the novels and reassemble them into something beautiful and surprising. How you understand the characters to their core and how your perspectives give characters new depth.

Here’s to the cast, shepherds of roles big and small. I’ve seen the interviews and heard again and again about your devotion. Here’s to the music that sounds like nothing else out there. The motifs that will forever paint pictures in my head of characters and events.

Here’s to the crew. The props and costumes chock-full of loving detail. The inspired set pieces. The gorgeous graphics. The incredible amount of hard work, sung and unsung.

Let’s sing to that unsung work. To the great ideas that didn’t work out. To the limitations you faced. To the debates that always come out of collaboration between passionate creatives and the compromises that result.

And most of all to future seasons that we may never see. If it’s true that what once was will be again, then I hope our fortunes will turn, and that we will see a finale to this version of The Wheel of Time.

I write this through ugly tears, but also with a stupid grin, because I’m remembering all the good times your hard work brought. Conversations in the office or online. The looks on my best friends’ faces when they got to experience the story for the first time and loved it. And the Thursday nights when I would come home from a rough day to watch my favorite books become my favorite show.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

-Karen