6 things we don't want to see in the Fourth Wing series (and 6 that we absolutely do)

It's finally real. At its 2026 Upfronts presentation this week, Amazon MGM Studios officially ordered Fourth Wing to series at Prime Video. After years of development limbo and showrunner shakeups, Rebecca Yarros's romantasy adaptation is genuinely, truly happening.

Fourth Wing has become a cultural wildfire, helping define the "romantasy" genre and becoming one of the most-discussed books on BookTok with combined hashtag views crossing a billion. It has two sequels, Iron Flame (2023) and Onyx Storm (2025), as part of a five-book series planned.

Here's what we're hoping for and what we're dreading from the upcoming adaptation.

6 things we don't want to see

1. Xaden Riorson whitewashed on screen

This one is a line in the sand, and Yarros herself has drawn it publicly.

Xaden is explicitly described in the text as having warm tawny skin, dark stubble, and dark features. He is a person of color and Yarros has confirmed this, even referencing the whitewashing of fan art with visible frustration.

At a Q&A, she told the crowd that Amazon "know how staunch I am against whitewashing Xaden." The irony is that despite being one of the most beloved male leads in recent fantasy fiction, a significant portion of fan art and dream-casting has still depicted him as a white man ignoring both the text and the author's intentions.

Given Hollywood's long track record of race-swapping characters of color, this is a legitimate concern. It would strip representation from a character that many readers of color found genuinely meaningful. The show must cast a person of color for Xaden, full stop.

2. Violet's chronic illness reduced to a plot device

Violet's physical fragility is not a quirky character trait. She has hypermobile joints and chronic pain, inspired directly by Yarros's own experience living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Yarros has spoken about wanting to represent people with chronic illness as heroes and not motivational footnotes.

There is a real risk that a TV adaptation turns Violet's condition into a shorthand for early-episode weakness that she dramatically "overcomes." That would betray everything the character stands for.

Her disabilities persist throughout the story. She adapts, she compensates, and she is extraordinary because of who she is. The show needs to portray this with the same unflinching honesty Yarros put on the page.

3. The dragons becoming generic CGI wallpaper

The dragons of Fourth Wing are central characters to the story. Tairn is arrogant and fiercely loyal. Andarna is young and curious. Sgaeyl, Xaden's blue daggertail, is described as ruthless even by dragon standards. The dragon society in the Empyrean has its own hierarchy and operates entirely independently of humans. Dragons choose to bond with riders and they are not tamed beasts in any way.

What would ruin this is precisely what has hobbled other dragon adaptations: shown as creatures that are visually impressive but narratively hollow. If the dragons don't feel like they have interiority and personality, the show loses something irreplaceable.

4. The romance sanitized for a broad audience

Fourth Wing is a New Adult novel. It is not appropriate for children. The book's intimacy is intentional and central to the emotional payoff of the Violet and Xaden relationship. The slow burn, the tension, the push and pull of two people who should hate each other falling desperately in love—all of that needs heat to land.

The concern here is that if the show files off the edges to reach a wider audience or a more accessible rating, it risks turning one of the most talked-about romantic relationships in recent fiction into something tepid and safe. Outlander on Starz, Normal People on Hulu—these are examples of adaptations that understood the intimacy was load-bearing. Fourth Wing deserves the same respect.

5. The political conspiracy buried under action sequences

The book's most quietly devastating element is its slow reveal that Navarre's government has been lying to its people for generations and that Violet's own mother may be complicit in it. The rebellion that marked Xaden and his fellow "marked ones" was not as clear-cut as the official history claims.

Action sequences are expensive and marketable. Political nuance is harder to sell in a trailer. The risk is that the show's writers prioritize spectacle and reduce the conspiracy to a season finale twist rather than the slow-building dread it is in the book. The two must be balanced.

6. A rotating cast of famous faces in key roles

Michael B. Jordan has explicitly said the casting approach will avoid “obvious choices.” This is exactly right, and it deserves applause. But the concern is that if the pressure to sell the show will eventually win.

Violet and Xaden need to be inhabited by actors audiences can fully fall into. The moment you're watching a recognizable celebrity and thinking about their other projects, the spell breaks. Game of Thrones built its early seasons on relatively unknown or character-actor talent. Harry Potter found its trio in unknowns. If Fourth Wing holds its nerve on this, it gives itself the best possible chance of creating stars rather than borrowing them.

6 things we absolutely do want

1. A dark, gothic, lived-in Basgiath

The war college is a castle carved into a mountain. It should look nothing like a contemporary fantasy school or a polished prestige drama setting. Think imposing stone, narrow corridors, training grounds that look genuinely dangerous, the parapet above a deadly drop where first-year riders must walk to bond with a dragon and many don't survive.

The aesthetic of Fourth Wing has always been described as "dark academia" and that specificity matters. When Violet walks across that parapet, viewers who haven't read the books need to feel the same sick fear readers did on the page.

2. The dragon personalities brought to life

More than spectacular visuals, though those are necessary, the dragons need voice, character and presence. Tairn communicates with Violet through their bond, and that relationship is by turns terrifying and comforting. Andarna is playful and secretive. Sgaeyl is genuinely frightening.

If the show finds the right way to convey the inner lives of these dragons, whether through voice acting, sound design, subtle behavioral cues or the way riders react to them, it will separate itself from every other dragon property on television.

3. The enemies-to-lovers arc allowed to breathe

The Violet and Xaden relationship is why millions of people are on a wait list for this show. It is the spine of the entire first book. The tension, the distrust, the growing respect that bleeds into something neither of them chose, this arc requires patience, and patience on television is increasingly rare.

When their relationship finally shifts, it must feel earned by everything that came before it. Bridgerton understood slow burn. Outlander understood slow burn. Fourth Wing should be in that company.

4. Rhiannon, Liam and the found family given real screen time

Violet's relationship with Xaden gets all the press, but her friendships are equally important to who she becomes. Rhiannon Matthias is her best friend and her own fully realized person. Liam Mairi, one of Xaden's childhood friends, is assigned to protect Violet and develops one of the book's most quietly devastating arcs. Ridoc, Sawyer, these are people Violet would die for and they for her.

Television has a tendency to flatten supporting characters into function. The show should resist this. The found family of Fourth Wing's riders is part of what gives the story its emotional stakes. When things go wrong—and they do, badly—viewers need to have lived with these people enough to be gutted.

5. Violet's agency and intelligence centered throughout

Violet survives Basgiath through intelligence and sheer refusal to be beaten. She tutors her wingmates in history in exchange for combat training. She reads the library, decodes the archive, pieces together truths that others miss entirely. Her academic instincts, the scribe she was always meant to be, become her greatest weapon.

The adaptation should resist any temptation to make Violet's arc primarily physical. Her mind is her signet before she ever develops a magical one. A version of this show where Violet wins because she hits hardest would be a betrayal of the character. She should win because she thinks.

6. Magic that feels genuinely original

Signets, the unique magical abilities that develop when a rider bonds with a dragon, are one of the most inventive elements of the worldbuilding. Things like shadow wielding, lightning summoning, retrocognition through touch, the ability to extend protective wards, metallurgy, and farsight are all tied to the individual characters in ways that feel meaningful.

The show has an opportunity to develop a visual language for magic that is distinctly its own, something that doesn't look like Doctor Strange or Game of Thrones or any other reference point.

Fourth Wing follows Violet Sorrengail, a 20-year-old with fragile joints who has trained her entire life to become a scribe. Her mother, the formidable General Lilith Sorrengail, overrides that plan entirely and forces Violet into the Riders Quadrant at Basgiath War College, which is the most lethal of the four military branches where the unofficial motto is graduate or die.

Riders bond with dragons, develop magical abilities called signets and train to defend the kingdom of Navarre. Violet, against all probability, bonds with not one but two dragons: the ancient, terrifying Tairn and the small golden Andarna.

Into this brutal world comes Xaden Riorson, wing leader, shadow wielder, and the son of the rebellion leader Violet's mother had executed. He begins as Violet's enemy and becomes her obsession. Their enemies-to-lovers arc, the dragons with genuine personalities and hierarchy, the political conspiracies buried beneath the war college and the slow unravelling of Navarre's darkest secrets are what made the book so compulsively readable.

Now, with Wednesday season 2 executive producer Meredith Averill as showrunner, Crazy Rich Asians director Lisa Joy set to helm the pilot and Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society producing alongside Rebecca Yarros herself as an executive producer, the talent is promising. But the fandom is watching. Closely.

Given that Lisa Joy is directing the pilot, the same Lisa Joy who co-created Westworld, the pedigree for ambitious visual storytelling is there. The hope is that the magic of the Empyrean feels as distinctive on screen as it does on the page.

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