Everybody's getting tortured (or re-cast) in the teaser for Wheel Of Time's second season

Amidst all the hobbit-y hullabaloo for Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power at New York Comic Con yesterday, Amazon did take a few minutes to acknowledge that it does, in fact, still have another expensive adaptation of a best-selling fantasy franchise on its TV docket: The Wheel Of Time.

At a panel for the show’s upcoming second season yesterday, series creator Rafe Judkins talked with fans about the show’s already-completed run of episodes which has yet to set a release date. (Although if we had to guess, “Some time after Rings fever has started to die down in the general viewing public” seems like a safe pick, if only not to invite unflattering expectations or comparisons.) Among other things, Judkins talked a bit about the introduction into the show’s world of the Seanchan, an army of magically empowered invaders who pop up in Robert Jordan’s second Wheel Of Time book to upend the ages-old battle between good-aligned magic users and the ominous, lazily named Dark One.

We get a brief glimpse of this new threat (they’re the ones with the long metal nails) in a new teaser for the show’s second season, which also shows off a few other big changes—namely, the replacement casting of Dónal Finn as main character Mat Cauthon, with Finn taking over the part from Barney Harris. (Finn was one of a handful of actors from the show to appear on stage with Judkins; Ceara Coveney, who’s joining the series as renegade princess Elayne in its second season, was another.) We also just get a whole bunch of shots of things getting worse all around, in the aftermath of the general bed-shitting that happened during the first season finale, as Rosamund Pike’s Moraine remains apparently powerless, and Josha Stradowski’s Rand seems to get himself tortured on a big ol’ wheel.

Wheel Of Time has currently been renewed up through a third season on Amazon.