It shouldn't matter. Good stories are universal. George Lucas wrote Star Wars with the Rebels inspired by the Viet Cong, and the other side of the political spectrum saw the Soviet Union in the Empire. The left sees the Downfall of Numenor as the sins of imperialism and colonialism coming home to roost, and the right sees the outcome of a country losing its founding vision and faith and embracing foreign habits of tyranny. A good example of adaptation is "The Expanse" which was already rather progressive, even woke, and some things were changed in it, characters' accomplishments were swapped to others, men written out of the story and their roles given to women, but it worked in a way that did not change the essence of the story. You could see how these things were dictated by the economics of the adaptation and how the priority was telling the story, not the personal satisfaction of crapping on Bull to build up Camina.
My brother likes to say that style is the tension between what you want to do and what you can do. It's in that space that you make your style. A famous example is Steven Spielberg not being able to get enough shark footage when filming "Jaws" due to the mechanical failures of the shark prop, and instead, creating an incredibly tense movie from the hint or threat of the unseen shark. WoT does not get that. All they can see is what they want to do, and they're going to do it, and there is no tension, they'll just crash and burn shooting for the moon and blame the moon for being too far away.
It's the same as bringing your religious preferences into a story and making it all about the story and everything for the preference of those who share your religion. Tolkien was influenced by his Catholicism in writing LotR, but Frodo is not a Christ figure, it's not exclusively for Catholics. By contrast, most overtly Christian film fare is basically unwatchable. The Expanse does 'woke' Tolkien style, and WoT does it Kirk Cameron/Kevin Sorbo style.

And it's not progressivism run amuck that makes it bad, it's stupidity. Like Christians who make a movie where they ineptly undermine the message of their faith, or write the characters in such a way that their values are unchristian. They started by casting the Two Rivers folk with their whiteness in proportion to their degree of special Manetheren Old Blood, they gutted the book one character arcs of the two black characters and cast two more black actors as villainous rapists, and by the time season two had come out, had cast black women in the roles of the three worst tempered female characters. And now they killed their primary black lesbian, and have inadvertently depicted the Children of the Light as much more justified and heroic than in the books, and managed to conflate their institutional wrongdoings with the extremism or treachery of a couple of black guys. It's not because they are trying to be racists, but because this is the outcome of making each change in a vacuum because they think it would be cooler, and then turning them all loose without thinking about how the changes eat one another. Wouldn't it be cool if Morgase was all ruthless and badass? Wouldn't it be cool if the High Seats of Andor were diverse and all women? Oops, Morgase's ruthlessness means we get a massacre of diverse women.

I have heard that they had no choice but to kill Siuan because Sophie Okenodo is leaving the show (the two roles in which I am most familiar with her are as Siuan and as Queen Margaret in "The Hollow Crown" where her role is from Shakespeare's Henry VI: the contrast in writing quality probably has her running screaming), except they don't seem to have realized that Siuan's appearance changes dramatically when she is stilled, to the point that friends of over a quarter century don't recognize her when they meet. If EVER you could recast...(and they have already set a precedent by recasting Mat). But they are just dumb, they heard their actor was not going to be available and their creative impulse began and ended with "badass death scene" regardless of their inability to write one, and the lack of an extant one in the text from which to plagiarize.

Both qualities usually go together. Sticking close to the established plot is an enormous help in maintaining consistency and credible development.
That said, having to make the token genuflection to the needs of adaptation is getting tiresome. The errors and shortcomings of the show are so massive that "things have to be changed in adaptation" is a strawman argument. FFS, I was intrigued by Perrin having a wife, and initially embraced her death, because I thought we were going to get a story out of it, when all it was was a lazy attempt at indicating Perrin is now sympathetic and has Issues with violence. In a lot of ways, the worst crimes of the show are where they do hew closely to the books, because they screw things up by using book material in the wrong context, or devoid of development, or because they forget that they changed things in prior seasons or episodes and are only adapting the on-page incident directly from text to screen, without bothering to work it in as a continuation of their own established story.

One such example was Egwene in the White Tower, stating her motivation to learn was because her lack of ability in channeling meant she could not save Rand at the Eye of the World (remembering that they all believed he died in the S1 finale). But the first season had established that only the Dragon Reborn could go, and anyone else would die (IDK how the forces of fate that were going to kill Mat, Perrin, Nynaeve & Egwene if they went, distinguished between them and Moiraine & Lan, who went to the Eye but did not die). Furthermore, Egwene was the one who most fully accepted that premise. Now in the books, at the Eye, Egwene tried to channel against Aginor and Rand had to stop and pull her away, drawing the Forsaken's attention to himself and leading to a pursuit away from the other characters. Had Moiraine met Rand alone after his confrontation with Baalzamon, and agreed to let the others think he was dead, you could then see Egwene having that belief, that her shortcomings in channeling might have been the cause of Rand's death. But they forgot their own changes to the Eye.

Another example was Perrin using the Ways to Travel to the Two Rivers. He stepped out of the Waygate on the same day that Rand's party arrived in the Aiel lands. In the books, they both took preternatural means to make those journeys, and Rand arrived first. But on the show, Rand & co walked from Tar Valon to the Spine of the World and crossed the mountains. A journey of weeks, if not months. So what was Perrin's party doing in Tar Valon all that time, before going into the Ways for the near-instantaneous journey to the Two Rivers (lacking any camping equipment or bags that would be necessary for a single overnight)? And why WOULD Perrin take the Ways? In the books, he took them, because there was danger in the Two Rivers and he was rushing back to save his family. On the show, he was giving up the mission and going home to retire. So what was the urgency?
Also, on the show, there have been four journeys through the Ways, three originating in Tar Valon. The first of those went to Fal Dara, and required an overnight stay in the Ways. The next went from Tar Valon to Tomon's Head, with Liandrin carrying the Wondergirls' unconscious bodies on horseback (remember how Moiraine & co abandoned their horses before entering the Ways?), with no apparent regaining of consciousness and in the third, they walked to the Two Rivers without needing any additional supplies. The other journey was from Cairhien to the beach of the Far Western Coast, by Moiraine, Lan, Rand & Lanfear, in another very quick journey on foot. Then in the Two Rivers, when the Darkfriends need more troops in the middle of a battle, they send a messenger from Emond's Field to the Waygate, and through the Waygate to, presumably the Blight, from whence the Trolloc reinforcements for the battle come! It makes negative, reverse, opposite sense, BECAUSE they are trying to stick in book material that simply does not belong there. The Ways were a source of strategic reinforcements, not tactical. Closing the gate was a long-term solution, and did not solve the immediate problem of there still being enough foes to overwhelm Emond's Field.

There is also the point that they simply do not understand battle, but keep trying to do it. There is a saying amateurs focus on tactics, dilettantes focus on strategy, professionals focus on logistics. Well the show is a level below amateurs, because their focus in every battle is hand-to-hand combat. Jordan understood this, and most of his military campaigns focus on logistical issues, while scorning hand-to-hand combat as unworthy of generals. But that's exactly what they used to make Perrin the hero of Emond's Field, and utterly forgetting that in the books, the women made valuable contributions to the logistics issues, and Faile brought reinforcements to win the day. They filmed something that was harder & more expensive to do, and promoted toxic masculinity at the same time.

It all just boils down to these people are too stupid to tell a story. It's got nothing to do with adaptational choices, woke choices or limitations. Whatever choices they make are going to suck, because they can't execute them, and are too stupid to understand how or why the original worked.