Wheel Of Fortune Major Change Is Confusing Fans

The first episodes of Wheel of Fortune that aired for the new season featured a brand new set to house the board and the all-important wheel, but then something strange followed. The old set returned for Girlfriend Getaway week, confusing watchers, who hoped that perhaps Sony had heard their complaints and switched back to the original design. However, on further inspection, it was noted that the Girlfriend Getaway week episodes were filmed before the set had been replaced, and that the new set was actually there for good.

The change in host overlapping by only a few weeks with the set being redone might have been more change than fans could handle at once. While they seemed to welcome Ryan Seacrest with open arms, they resisted the new set and registered their disapproval on social media. Vanna White said that the new set was kind of like the feeling of renovating your house after 40 years, it’s still the same place, it just looks different, so hopefully viewers of the show will come around.

James Pearce Connelly, the Emmy award-winning production designer who designed the new set for Wheel of Fortune defended the move, asking fans to allow him to earn their trust with his modern revamp.

While fans are very loyal, and very used to looking at the same set for 42 years, the new design is intended to make the show set more functional as well as updating its look. While change can be hard, the new set of Wheel of Fortune is here to stay, according to Sony, and Connelly expressed that the project was a career goal for him.

Among the criticisms launched at the new set of Wheel of Fortune are that it lacks the warmth of the old set and that it’s too bright. Viewers complained that the new set hurt their eyes and made the show unwatchable. The moving graphics that caused spinning motions, sometimes in the background of Ryan Seacrest and contestants, got fans in a tizzy, claiming that the new set is just too much wheels everywhere.

Although there’s been a lot of criticism of the new set, this isn’t the first time it’s changed. Between 1975 and 2003, the set of Wheel of Fortune changed six times, and included some specialized sets as well, making a changing set a relatively normal occurrence on the show.

Then, between 2003 and 2024–a more than 20-year period–the set remained largely the same, save for celebrity episodes. This long stretch of having the same set lulled the Wheel of Fortune audience into a sense of comfort, and made the most recent switch all the more jarring when it happened.