In the 2010s, the biggest show on TV was Game of Thrones, HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books. The show was like The Lord of the Rings, because it was a tale of epic conflict in a medieval mileu. Only it wasn't like The Lord of the Rings at all, because the characters spent more time fighting each other than they did otherworldly forces of evil. The cast was way bigger, the story more sprawling, and everyone spent a lot more time naked.
Also there weren't any elves. Anyway, Game of Thrones was a monster hit, and other studios took notice. Netflix was the first to get their competitor out there: in 2019, the same year that Game of Thrones ended, it debuted The Witcher, a high fantasy series based on a series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski. Amazon Prime Video went hard on the epic fantasy revolution: in 2021, it premiered The Wheel of Time, based on the beloved fantasy books by Robert Jordan. The year after, it gave us The Rings of Power, a Lord of the Rings prequel show.
Not to be beaten at the game it began, HBO gave us House of the Dragon, a Game of Thrones prequel series set over 100 years in the past. By this point, all of these shows have been on for a couple seasons at least; The Witcher has already set an end point: its filming its next two seasons back to back, and then it's done. This high fantasy battle has been going on long enough to ask the question: who's winning?
Before we get to the rankings, I want to spare a moment for the many shows that we aren't including. A lot of high-budget sci-fi/fantasy shows came on the scene after the success of Game of Thrones, but we're limiting ourselves to the ones that are high fantasy through and thought; we're talking swords, horses, armies, and rival factions competing for domination. Shows set in modern times, like Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Stranger Things, are out. Shows that have more of a sci-fi flair, like The Mandalorian or Dune: Prophecy, are ineligible. Game of Thrones had many children, but we're focusing on the ones that stayed close to home.
And with that, let's get to ranking the four biggest high fantasy TV shows on the air right now!
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime Video)
Of the four shows on this list, The Rings of Power is the only one not based on robust source material, and it shows. I see how Amazon got here: The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-known fantasy brands in the world, so of course they want a show set in that world. But watching The Rings of Power, sometimes you wish the producers had spent more time figuring out exactly what kind of show it should be.
The Rings of Power is nominally based on the appendices to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which sketch out the major events of Middle-earth's history in bullet point form. The show is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, when the dark lord Sauron is first coming into his own. Because the appendices are so thin, a lot of events and characters have to be made up. Sometimes this works; the wandering harfoots (a kind of early hobbit) are charming, especially the adventurous Nori (Markella Kavenagh). But the human characters who live in the Southlands are grey and dull, and the new elven character Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) uninspired.
The whole show is like that. Some plots work — I always smile whenever we visit the halls of Khazad-dûm, where dwell the industrious and relatable dwarves — and others don't; the show has struggled mightily to make the politicking on the island of Númenor feel engaging. We also spend time with characterse we remember from the original story, like the immortal elf Galadriel and Sauron himself. The show has tried to build up a connection between them; sometimes it sparks to life and sometimes it lies there, wet and cold.
Watching The Rings of Power, I get the idea that the producers had the idea to make a big, epic, sprawling fantasy show...but they didn't think about the specifics. The show sprawls, but rarely in a way that feels like it has a bigger purpose. The cast is huge, but too many of them feel disposable. Amazon famously spent a historic amount of money on the series, and it looks great, but the glorious special effects can't hide that the series is missing something.
All that said, I've enjoyed watching The Rings of Power, but it feels like the least substantive of the shows on this list. It's coming back for season 3. Sometimes shows gain confidence and structure as they go on. We'll be watching, but it's not hard to put this one at the back of the pack.
3. The Witcher (Netflix)
The Witcher show has had an interesting journey. The first season was a fan favorite when it dropped on Netflix in 2019. People loved Henry Cavill's performance as Geralt of Rivia, professional monster hunter. The show had a built-in fanbase not only because of Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher books, but also because of the video game series from CD Projekt RED. There was even a song that caught on. Netflix seemed to have found a high fantasy hit.
The second season didn't go over quite as well; fans of the books in particular were annoyed at the show straying further and further from the source material. One of those fans may have been Henry Cavill, who announced that he would be leaving the show. Fan ratings for season 3, Cavill's last in the lead role, tanked.
Honestly, I think those ratings mostly reflect how unsatisfied fans were with the news about Cavill's departure, rather than the quality of the show itself. At least in our opinion, season 3 was the best yet. It stuck the closest to the books, the cast had cohered, and the action sequences were firing on all cylinders.
But it may have come too late. Between Cavill's departure and a couple of shitty spinoffs, there was a sense that Netflix had devalued The Witcher franchise. Even in that first season, the show felt a bit cheesy, but it was fun. Netflix's attempts to capitalize on the popularity of that first season ruined any mystique the show had.
Netflix will round out The Witcher with two more seasons, with Liam Hemsworth stepping in for Cavill as Geralt. With the pressure to become a major tentpole franchise gone, perhaps now the show can just be itself and tell a rip-roaring good fantasy adventure story.
2. House of the Dragon (HBO)
Game of Thrones was a generationally popular show. HBO had never made a spinoff before, but it made an exception for this: House of the Dragon is based on Fire & Blood, a kind of fake history book about the history of Westeros. It drills down on the Dance of the Dragons, a civil war fought between rival factions of the Targaryen dynasty over 100 years before the events of Game of Thrones.
HBO has a reputation for quality, and the first season of House of the Dragon mostly upheld it. I enjoy The Witcher, but there's a pulpy, daytime TV feeling to it, a Renaissance Faire quality; it's like the show is winking at you half the time, reminding you that it's serious but not that serious. House of the Dragon played it straight. The costumes are opulent, the drama is Shakespearean, and the dragons look as good as they would on the big screen. It seemed like HBO's place at the top of the high fantasy mountain was secure.
Then came the second season last year. There were still plenty of highlights, but it was hampered by two things: first, the story strayed further and further from the book series, to the point where some of the characters started to become nigh-unrecognizable to anyone who had cracked open a copy of Fire & Blood. After awhile, George R.R. Martin himself publicly expressed his displeasure at the changes, an extraordinary step for an executive producer on the show to take.
The changes puzzle me. Unlike Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon is based on a completed book, and a very entertaining one at that. You'd figure the showrunners would want to take advantage of that rather than writing their own story.
The other problem wasn't their fault; after planning out a 10-episode second season, HBO reduced the episode order from 10 to eight, leaving the producers scrambling to rearrange things. The result was that season 2 felt weirdly anticlimactic, not leaving fans with much to get excited about during the long wait for season 3.
So after a strong start, House of the Dragon is now facing challenges from within and without. Despite my complaints, the show is still operating at a high level — I think "The Red Dragon and the Gold" may have been my favorite TV episode from 2024 — but they now find themselves in a position of having to win some fans back. Since HBO presumably won't be massively changing the production schedule at the last minute, they should have a chance in season 3.
1. The Wheel of Time (Prime Video)
The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan are one of the lengthiest, most beloved epic fantasy series ever written; there were a lot of people ready for to watch this TV show when it premiered on Prime Video in 2021. Fans had some issues with the first and second seasons, but a lot of them were caused by things beyond the producers' control. The first season was filmed at the height of COVID restrictions, which obviously impacted some of the action scenes. One of the main cast members had to leave partway through filming, which means the writers had to re-imagine his story only for the end of season 1 but for season 2 as well.
Still, by the end of season 2, fan enthusiasm was on the upswing. That trend has continued with the third season, which is airing right now. It's easily The Wheel of Time's best showing so far, with lots of big swings and big hits. The show makes changes to the source text, but whereas the changes in House of the Dragon feel like the writers subbing in their own ideas for the original author's, on The Wheel of Time it feels like showrunner Rafe Judkins is nipping, tucking and streamlining so he can preserve as much of the original text as possible. There's a love for the source material running under every episode, and that's giving the show a glow that more and more people are noticing.
The Wheel of Time isn't a perfect TV show. It's so sprawling that it can get confusing, an occupational hazard when you're adapting one of the biggest book series ever written. But that expansiveness is also exciting. The show has gotten better with each season, and I'm eager to see whether that continues. If anyone at Amazon or Sony is reading this, please renew the show as soon and for as many seasons as possible!
High fantasy brought low
All of these shows got the green light at least in part because the studios behind them wanted to replicate the success of Game of Thrones. Thanks to that show, high fantasy has been enjoying a golden age on TV.
I'm thankful for that, but I think that age is probably coming to an end soon. None of these shows has had the success of Game of Thrones, and as much as I'd love for people to fall in love en masse with The Wheel of Time or to for House of the Dragon to live up to its full potential, I don't think they will; it's hard to recreate a phenomenon.
And that's alright. Trends come and go. Game of Thrones itself restarted an obsession with high fantasy that was beginning to die down a decade after The Lord of the Rings movies hit theaters. Sometime else will come along sooner or later and the cycle will start again.
In the meantime, we have four shows that are all worth watching. I have every hope that The Witcher will finish strong, that House of the Dragon will find its way, and that The Wheel of Time will continue its upward trejectory; if any of these shows is going to become a phenomenon like Game of Thrones, I think that one has the best chance.
The Rings of Power is in a trickier spot, because unlike the other three shows, it's mostly making up its story as it goes, despite having some scant source material to follow. All of these shows exist to make money; it's just more obvious in the case of The Rings of Power. You can tell that Rafe Judkins loves The Wheel of Time books and wants to adapt them very badly. Watching The Rings of Power, I can tell that the producers very badly want a hit show...but I don't think that's enough.
But I'll still happily watch more episodes, because who doesn't want to visit Middle-earth from time to time? I'll watch all of these shows, and I'll be happy about it for as long as I can.
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