What Mat Being Recast Means For Amazon's Show

Season 1 of The Wheel of Time series hasn’t aired yet, but the show has already recast a main character for season 2. Here’s what that could mean.

Amazon’s The Wheel of Time show has announced that Mat Cauthon has been recast for season 2 and the news people questioning what that means for the show. The Wheel of Time originally cast Barney Harris (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) as Matrim Cauthon, one of the central figures of the books. While season 1 doesn’t start airing until November, with Harris not returning, the season 2 role will be given to Dónal Finn (The Witcher) instead.

The first of the Robert Jordan book series that the Wheel of Time show is based on is The Eye of the World. The novel sees the Aes Sedai Moiraine arriving in the town of Two Rivers looking for the Dragon Reborn, who she has identified as one of three boys who live in the farming town: Rand Al’Thor, Perrin Aybara, or Matrim Cauthon. As a character, Mat is prone to excessive luck but is not always one to make the smartest decisions.

While an actor leaving a show before the first episode has even aired is never ideal, without knowing the reason that the character was recast it is too soon to say whether this could be a really bad sign for The Wheel of Time series, or potentially a really good one. It could be that Harris was not working out as Mat in season 1 of The Wheel of Time and they wanted to take a new direction for season 2, which might mean that it will be hard for audiences to get into the show if his performance is less than stellar. However, there are plenty of personal and professional reasons that Harris might have wanted to leave. The show deliberately cast actors who were early in their careers so that audiences would not have preconceived notions of who they should be. It is possible that after realizing that the series would be extremely long (the book series includes 14 novels and a prequel book), Harris didn't want to continue on for the second season and commit the next 15 years of his life to the show.

Additionally, there are some complexities to The Wheel of Time that might mitigate the issue of having to recast Mat Cauthon. Relatively early on in the book version of The Eye of the World, Mat picks up a cursed dagger in Shadar Logoth and becomes tainted by it. This turns the fun-loving character into a figure that acts selfishly and aggressively and who has alienated some readers before he is freed of the curse for book two, The Great Hunt. Recasting his character for the second season might mean that audiences who were put off by his character when Mat was tainted by the dagger can come to love Dónal Finn in the role by associating his less-pleasant actions in season 1 with Barney Harris.

This could have negative effects on the show for many of the same reasons, though. The break in continuity for The Wheel of Time show risks undercutting the journey that Mat goes on from Shadar Logoth to rediscovering himself after his sickness. This cost to the character development could potentially be emphasized by the new Finn’s replacement of Harris as audiences have to learn about the figure almost from the ground up again. Ultimately, it is too early to say whether the recasting is a bad thing or a good thing, but it is also too early to write The Wheel of Time off as a bad adaptation of Robert Jordan’s books because of it.

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