The other day, it was announced that Amazon and Sony were cancelling The Wheel of Time, Prime Video's epic fantasy show based on the book series by Robert Jordan. This sucks. Not only are The Wheel of Time books eminently deserving of adaptation, but the show was getting better with each passing season. Season 3 was easily the best yet, and ended in a way that had fans excited to see more. Now, the story is left in limbo...unless some other streamer comes along and saves the show. Apple, can we interest you in a high fantasy epic?
We probably shouldn't put too many eggs in that basket. When Amazon and Sony started making The Wheel of Time, high fantasy was hot. Game of Thrones, easily the most talked-about show of the 2010s, had just ended, and every streamer wanted a high fantasy hit of their own. Amazon picked up two: The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It grates my gears that Amazon has renewed The Rings of Power, a show that started off middling in its first season and continued to whelm audiences in its second, while it's cancelled The Wheel of Time, which was gathering tons of narrative momentum. But The Rings of Power is a famously expensive endeavor, and Amazon may think its sunk too much money into the show to stop now.
Money matters more than it did in the heady days of the late 2010s, when streaming services were throwing money at expensive projects left and right. At the time, it might have seemed like a good idea for Amazon to invest in two pricey, high fantasy epics. But then the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted production, followed by the writers and actors strikes of 2023. While those events stretched studios thin, executives stopped wanting to expand subscriber bases by any means necessary and started to want to see returns on what they had already done. Were this 2019, I have no doubt that The Wheel of Time would have been renewed for a fourth season and beyond; Amazon would have believed that making a high-profile, well-reviewed show like The Wheel of Time was worth its weight in cache and prestige, whatever the cost in dollars. But in 2025, the bottom line matters more, and the show was not meeting their metrics.
Mind you, I still think The Wheel of Time was more than worth renewing. The fan community around this show is passionate and legion; just look at their highly organized efforts to get the show renewed, shortly to be converted into an effort to get it saved. The fans are dedicated because they love the show, and that kind of devotion would have paid dividends over time. With the series improving every season, more and more people would have paid attention. And by the end, after Amazon and Sony had adapted the whole of Robert Jordan's opus, they would have had a massive show that would be enjoyed for years to come, a glittering gem in their catalog accessible only with a subscription to Amazon Prime Video.
And if they want immediate returns, I'm sure The Wheel of Time could have started generating money for Amazon Studios much sooner. Just this week, it was announced that Amazon will start syndicating shows like The Rings of Power and Citadel to run on normal TV. Not only is The Wheel of Time better than either of those shows, but there are more episodes to get people hooked. Amazon has made the worst choice it could make, for fans and for itself.
The fading days of fantasy TV
Amazon lacks both the short and the long-term vision to make good use of The Wheel of Time. Hopefully another streamer can continue the story, but I'm not getting my hopes up. In addition to the industry changing in general, interest in high-end, high fantasy TV is fading, with many of the high fantasy shows greenlit after the success of Game of Thrones in their waning years.
The Wheel of Time has already been cut short, and I wouldn't be surprised if the upcoming third season of The Rings of Power was its last, despite Amazon initially planning for five seasons. Over at Netflix, The Witcher has two more seasons to go. It will be able to finish adapting Andrzej Sapkowski's books, but interest in the show isn't what it was at the beginning. Even HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon hasn't impressed in the way it should; the first season was a worthy follow-up to HBO's megahit, but the second was muddled and unsatisfying, in part because of the writing and in part because HBO cut the season short.
I don't want to be too hard on House of the Dragon; I liked a lot of what the show did in season 2 and am looking forward to season 3. I also want to watch A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, another Game of Thrones prequel show due out early next year. But House of the Dragon isn't the cultural force that Game of Thrones was; none of these shows are, which means that they won't inspire a new wave of high fantasy series. For fans of the genre who have been eating well for the past several years, that's a shame.
It's especially a shame for fans of The Wheel of Time, since the book series is a modern classic; absent someone saving the show, who knows when or if it will ever be adapted again? The timing has to be perfect. This Wheel of Time show was greenlit after Game of Thrones proved that a TV adaptation of a fantasy book series could be a huge success. Now, Hollywood seems to be leaving that trend behind and moving onto other things, like adapting popular video games. That's already yielded some good results, like The Last of Us on HBO and Fallout on Prime Video. But I'm sad that the window to adapt epic fantasy book series seems to be closing.
Although it may open again in the future. When Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies came out in theaters in the early 2000s, they inspired a wave of high fantasy movies like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass. When that trend was petering out, Game of Thrones came along to reignite it. Who knows when it'll come back around?
I was hoping The Wheel of Time could be the show to keep the trend going. And who knows? Maybe it still will be; Apple, take a bite, I'm begging you. But there are other options. Amazon is currently working on an adaptation of the Fourth Wing fantasy books by Rebecca Yarros. That's a very different series from The Wheel of Time, but as long as interest in the genre persists, things can always come back around.
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