Billy Zane’s ‘Wheel of Time’ Show ‘Winter Dragon’ is an Unwatchable Disaster

Prime Video‘s The Wheel of Time premiered last week, giving Robert Jordan fans the first live action adaptation that feels like the books they love so much. But Amazon’s Wheel of Time isn’t the first Wheel of Time adaptation. That dubious honor goes to 2015’s Winter Dragon, a half hour pilot that aired on FXX in the dead of night with zero fanfare, all to secure the book’s rights. Robert Jordan’s widow and editor Harriet McDougal spoke out against the pilot and the only place you can watch it now is in fuzzy bootleg quality on YouTube.

Winter Dragon might be one of the most embarrassing page-to-screen adaptations I’ve ever seen. It’s a bewildering half hour of television, full of boring dialogue and actually famous people? Billy Zane stars opposite Max Ryan and the script was written by screenwriter Darren Lemke. The pilot was shot in what appears to be an empty McMansion, with little regard put into the costume design or look of the “world.” It’s just a wild footnote in the history of The Wheel of Time and it puts into stark relief how good the new Amazon series is (flaws and all). The new Prime Video series is an actual TV show.

On IMDB, the plot of Winter Dragon is described as “a madman searches for his family and is forced to confront a dark truth by a mysterious stranger.” And I guess that’s sort of accurate. Winter Dragon is meant to be an adaptation of the prologue of the first Wheel of Time book, The Eye of the World. In just a few pages, Jordan introduces the central conflict of the whole series between good and evil, light and dark, and the one known as the Dragon and the Dark One.

In Winter Dragon, Max Ryan plays Lews Therin Theramon, the most powerful One Power-wielder of the Second Age. Known as the Dragon, he managed to finally trap the Dark One in a prison at Shayol Ghul, but in doing so, he opened up an opportunity for the Dark One to take vicious revenge. The Dark One managed to taint the male side of the One Power, known as saidin. Any man who attempts to use the One Power is doomed to go insane, that includes Lews Therin.

Winter Dragon shows that awkward moment when Lews Therin’s rival Ishamael (Billy Zane) reveals to the Dragon that he has gone insane. His beloved wife and children are dead by his hand. (In the book, the castle is full of dead bodies and Lews Therin clearly has destroyed his own home with the One Power. Winter Dragon takes a decidedly less showy approach to this.) Lews Therin is so overcome with guilt and grief that he taps into the One Power to destroy himself, break the world, and entomb himself in a self-made mountain called Dragonmount. Winter Dragon just fades to the credits.

Everything about Winter Dragon is wild and in the worst way possible, including the fact that its director apparently died right after concluding production? Its existence is a black mark on The Wheel of Time‘s legacy and proof of how hard the current production team is working on the Prime Video show. I still can’t believe it’s real. It’s so bad it boggles all logic. The director’s tragic death even makes me think it’s cursed!

Avoid Winter Dragon at all cost, Wheel of Time nerds. That’s all I have to say on the matter.

Where to stream The Wheel of Time