Rosamund Pike, the star of The Wheel of Time, has mourned the loss of the show, the latest in a long line of queer favourites to get the chop.
Led by Pike as the magical Moiraine Damodred, the series told the story of a mystical realm engulfed in a battle between the forces of good and evil. It was based on a series of novels by Robert Jordan.
Prime Video cancelled the series in May after the third season aired. Deadline reported the decision was taken for “financial reasons” but viewership in the US had also dropped.
Pike recently posted a series of behind-the-scenes images on her Instagram Stories, Digital Spy reported. One of them, captioned “How I miss my love,” was of co-star Sophie Okonedo, who played Moiraine’s romantic partner, Siuan Sanche.
Both characters were members of the all-female Aes Sedai who could channel the “One Power.”
Over a still from the show’s third season, showing her character using that power, Pike wrote: “Finding the power of the sakarnen. I will miss the feeling of channelling: Robert Jordan’s idea of connecting so powerfully with the pulse of the universe and having it course through you”.
The Wheel of Time won acclaim from fans, happy to see the books’ subtle queer elements brought to the screen. In 2021, showrunner Rafe Judkins told Nerdist about Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship, citing it as an example of picking up on the source materials’ inherent queerness.
“In the show, we’ve stuck exactly with that story,” he said. “And while it’s only hinted at in the books that Moiraine and Siuan continued their intimate relationship into adulthood, we’ve brought that to the forefront.”
As a queer person, seeing queer relationships “was such a huge moment for me”, he added.
Meanwhile, speaking to PinkNews, Taylor Napier, who played the bisexual Maksim said: “For our fans, it’s been important because they saw those threads while they were reading it. It’s not necessarily something that everyone saw. So, to have that acknowledged has been really meaningful for them.”
The series’ cancellation flew in the face of an 88 per cent rating from critics and a 75 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Season three alone had a 97 per cent rating from critics.
Fans have led campaigns to have the show revived, with one petition already attracting almost 190,000 signatures.
The Wheel of Time is streaming on Prime Video.
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