Right now, the third season of The Wheel of Time is humming along on Amazon Prime Video, and we are enjoying it thoroughly. Fans of Robert Jordan's sprawling epic fantasy series have waited many years to see a good onscreen adaptation, and while the Amazon show may have taken a while to find its footing, all agree that this third season is racing forward. Think piece authors are pulling for it, fan ratings on IMDb are spiking, and season 3 has a very impressive 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Things are looking up!
But there's a caveat: if the show is doing so well, why haven't we heard about it getting renewed for a fourth season, or even a fifth or sixth? The show is based on a massive, 14-book series; to adapt it properly, showrunner Rafe Judkins will need a lot of time and space.
And in the past, Amazon and Sony — who coproduce the show together — have seemed willing to give it to him. The Wheel of Time was renewed for a third season in July of 2022, over a year before the second season aired in September of 2023. Given the massive size of the story, the more time Judkins and his team have to prepare between seasons, the better. So it's unsettling that we haven't heard anything solid about future seasons. Should fans be worried that the show will get cancelled before it's even halfway through the story?
The forecast for The Wheel of Time
To answer that question, we have to understand that The Wheel of Time show was greenlit back in the waning days of Game of Thrones, the biggest high fantasy hit of the past couple decades. Back then, every network wanted their own big fantasy series. HBO started work on the Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon, Netflix went in on The Witcher, and Prime Video started work on not one but two shows: The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Everyone had visions of a Game of Thrones-size success.
While these series have all found fans, none have been absolute smashes in the way that Game of Thrones was, and enthusiasm for high fantasy on TV has cooled. That puts The Wheel of Time in a precarious position. As fans who have enjoyed the show since the beginning and have been ecstatic about this latest season, we want the show to continue through to the end of the story. So does Rafe Judkins, who understands that the sheer size and scope of the tale is part of the appeal.
"I can see versions of the show that are six or seven seasons, but part of what makes the series great is the length. It's one of the reasons people read it and it stands alone in that sense," Judkins said recently. "But I'm always realistic. I'm sure everyone will be happy if they're like, 'Oh, can you just do a satisfying ending in season 4 because we don't make shows that long anymore.' The truth is, the property doesn't lend itself well to that. My job is to do everything I can to get it to the end and give you Jordan's ending because it's so powerful. It really does stick the landing. If we don't, my job is to make sure we're telling a great story up to that point."
In another interview, Judkins said that he wants to keep exploring the character dynamics in The Wheel of Time "as long as the show gets to continue." He's said before that he has eight seasons planned out for the show, but you can tell by his tone that he's willing to be flexible if need be, and that he isn't 100% sure he'll get to adapt the entire book series. Upsetting as it is to think about, there is a scenario where The Wheel of Time gets cut short.
The Wheel of Time by the numbers
But there are plenty of good reasons why Amazon and Sony should keep going. First up, there's the excellent press that the show has been getting of late. At the end of the day, you can't spend praise, but having a critical darling of a show in your arsenal is something that every streaming service loves; it gives you bragging rights and it shows other creatives that you know how to make a quality series. Also, better shows tend to get watched more, so the money will come.
In fact, the money is already coming. According to data from Parrot Analytics, obtained by The Wrap, The Wheel of Time had brought in around $360 million in subscriber revenue by the end of 2024. According to WoT Series, which consulted financial filings in the UK, the first and second seasons of the show cost $139.7 million dollars and $124.1 million dollars respectively. Put that together and it adds up to a profit of $96.2 million.
That might not be a staggering sum for a company as massive as Amazon, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. It's also worth noting that season 2 cost less than season 1, probably because some of the groundwork for production was already laid. And remember that this tally is from the end of 2024, months before the current third season started to air. With the jump in quality, hopefully profits will be even higher by the end of 2025.
The Wheel of Time vs The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
The Wheel of Time looks like an even better investment when compared to Amazon's other big fantasy show, The Rings of Power. Famously, this Lord of the Rings prequel series is extremely expensive, with Amazon having spent around $465 million to produce the first season alone. In fact, The Rings of Power might be the most expensive series in the history of television; the only thing that rivals it is another Amazon series, Citadel, the first season of which cost Amazon $300 million.
As of the end of 2024, The Rings of Power has generated around $367 million in subscriber revenue for Amazon, slightly more than The Wheel of Time. That's not bad, especially since the first season of The Rings of Power premiered almost a year after the first season of The Wheel of Time. The Rings of Power has made Amazon more money in a shorter amount of time. I chock that mostly up to The Lord of the Rings name having a lot of pull; The Wheel of Time, as beloved as the book series is by its fans, isn't as widely known
However, The Wheel of Time is still the better investment. Amazon has made $96.2 million on The Wheel of Time, and that was before season 3 started. But it's lost at least $98 million on The Rings of Power so far.
Amazon is free to continue with both of these series — The Rings of Power has officially been renewed for another season — but if it had to pick one, The Wheel of Time seems like the clear choice.
The Wheel of Time deserves to tell its story in full
I don't want to constantly make comparisons to The Rings of Power, but given that these are both expensive high fantasy series airing on the same streaming service, it's hard not to. The Rings of Power is loosely based on the appendices at the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books, but much of the content is brand new. You can tell; the show doesn't have the grace and poetry of some of the better Lord of the Rings adaptations, like Peter Jackson's film trilogy. Watching the show, you get the sense that Amazon executives really wanted to make something with The Lord of the Rings name on it and didn't give enough thought to what that thing should be, or if they'd be better off leaving well enough alone.
The Wheel of Time, on the other hand, has never been adapted to the screen before (give or take a weird TV pilot made years ago made because of rights issues). It's a new kind of fantasy epic, and you can tell that Rafe Judkins and his team love making it; the recent episode "The Road to the Spear" was a spellbinding hour of television unlike anything I've seen on TV before. That episode adapts parts of the fourth Wheel of Time book, The Shadow Rising, with the kind of detail and awe you only get from a true fan.
So yes, The Wheel of Time TV show is a tentpole epic that costs a lot of money to make, but it's also a labor of love. That, more than any other reason, is why I think Rafe Judkins and his team should be allowed to keep telling this story for as long as they want, hopefully all the way to the end. If they follow through, Amazon Prime Video will host the fantasy TV epic to end all fantasy TV epics, raising the bar for fantasy shows in the 2020s just like Game of Thrones did in the 2010s. The journey will be long, but it'll be worth it.
New episodes of The Wheel of Time drop Thursdays on Prime Video. Hopefully we'll hear news about a fourth season (and a fifth, and a sixth, and so on) soon.
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h/t Yahoo Finance