It starts with the books, of course.

I was a precocious reader as a child. I didn’t have a lot going for me in terms of talents or friends, but people acted impressed when they saw me reading long books, so I leaned into that and leapt into Wheel of Time at age 11, because fantasy books for children had only just started to take off and there weren’t enough to keep up with my reading habits. WoT had everything I was looking for – magic, adventure, an intricately detailed world, a struggle against evil. My favorite was Logain, which was rough since he has about two chapters in each book, but I was fascinated by this character who found out he was not in fact the Chosen One and had to find a new purpose in life.

By high school, a lot of my peers had caught up to my reading habits and I found a little circle of folks to geek out about the series with, sharing our loves and our frustrations alike. It was one of those friends who told me, before I had social media, that Robert Jordan had died.

(Confession: I never actually finished the books. I have mixed feelings about Sanderson, and after high school those friends and I went separate ways. And I was getting frustrated with the books, with the loads and loads of characters and chapters where nothing happens, and I was starting to figure out enough about gender that Jordan’s essentialist take had gone from mildly annoying to unpalatable.)

So naturally I was skeptical when I heard there was going to be a show. I know we’ve all seen so many bad adaptations of books, particularly fantasy, that bear no resemblence to the original work. At most, I figured it couldn’t be worse.

I never expected it to be so much better.

Rosamund Pike turns Moiraine from an inscrutable manipulator to a complex woman navigating power and morals. Daniel Henney turns Lan from Stoic Asian Warrior Guy to a figure of such warmth and dedication, and they make the bond between Moiraine and Lan something truly special without making it weirdly romantic. The moment I fell in love with the show was the bath scene; it was so sweet and intimate in a way that is rarely seen outside of romance.

All my adolescent fantasies and more came true in Alvaro Marte, for how haunted and dangerous and beautiful he is. And Zoe Robins reminded me that Nynaeve was my other favorite, making Nynaeve’s pride and stubbornness something to admire.

The show was clearly made with love for the books, but brings in several key factors that the book always fell short on: it shows women in power as people, neither better nor worse nor more mysterious than men. And it shows people caring for each other – as friends, as lovers, as fellow humans. In today’s world, those are very powerful statements. The books might be a nostalgic problematic fave, but the show has been an unrestrained joy to watch.

(Well, it could use some better lighting. Just saying. Why are shows all so dark now?)

Canceling this show is an absolutely baffling decision. It has fans! It’s making money! So it’s not Game of Thrones. We don’t need another Game of Thrones. We need color, and warmth, and feral middle aged lesbians making unhinged decisions.

(Seriously, I’m loving this new trend of fictional women being middle aged and morally complex, and it would be a shame if it ended here.)