Michael B. Jordan’s Fantasy Series On Prime Video Reinvents The Genre, And Some Fans Won’t Like It

While Michael B. Jordan has a massive Prime Video fantasy show on the way soon, fans of the genre should be aware that the show will divide audiences as it relies heavily on a majorly controversial trope. Ever since HBO spent an unprecedented amount of money on the budget of Game of Thrones season 1 back in 2011, every streaming service and cable network has been working overtime to find the next truly gigantic fantasy series.

From Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power to Netflix’s The Witcher, creators spread no expense replicating and even outdoing the ambition of HBO’s A Song of Ice & Fire adaptation. However, while Prime Video’s Critical Role shows The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein share the mature content and fantasy adventure appeal of early Game of Thrones, no single show has supplanted the HBO hit as the biggest fantasy series ever.

Even HBO’s own Harry Potter reboot may struggle to replicate the popularity of Game of Thrones, since the series is a retread of a highly familiar intellectual property rather than an exciting new fantasy project. In contrast, Prime Video’s upcoming Michael B. Jordan vehicle Fourth Wing could potentially become the show to outdo Game of Thrones, but that hotly anticipated series has another issue of its own. The first major romantasy adaptation, Fourth Wing will decide whether this massive publishing trend can translate to small screen success.

Prime Video’s Fourth Wing Brings A Fantasy Book Trend To TV

Credit: Anabel Rossi/Ten Speed

A portmanteau of romance and fantasy, romantasy is a subgenre that mixes romance of varying spice levels with settings, tropes and characters usually found in the world of fantasy novels. Where Terry Pratchett’s books mix fantasy and comedy, romantasy novels mix fantasy and romance, and this blend has become big business in the book world. A Court of Thrones and Roses alone has managed to sell over 13 million copies since the novel series began.

However, as the long wait for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire to reach the screen proves, fantasy trends in publishing aren’t always immediately seized on by movies and TV. Fantasy is expensive and, while Game of Thrones and its spinoffs have proven that there is a mainstream market for mature, R-rated fantasy shows, their tone could not further from the romantic atmosphere of books like Fourth Wing.

Written by Rebecca Yarros, 2023’s Fourth Wing is the first in the Empyrean Pentalogy, followed by Iron Flame and Onyx Storm. Prime Video’s Fourth Wing show will adapt the book’s immersive fantasy story, which follows the 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail as she is forced by her strict army general mother to become a dragon rider at the Basgiath War College, despite a challenging physical condition that makes her prone to injury.

Fourth Wing’s Approach To Fantasy Won’t Be For Everyone

While this set up might remind readers of How To Train Your Dragon, the reality of the books is much more adults-only in nature. The Empyrean Pentalogy is unapologetically adult in its content, with a lot of explicit sex scenes surprisingly early on in its enemies to lovers story. Describing the plot any further would run the risk of giving away who these scenes are between, but it is no spoiler to say the story’s romance elements owe as much tonally similar to Bridgerton than Game of Thrones.

Although Game of Thrones was extremely explicit, the fantasy show’s sex scenes were as apt to be disturbing as they were to be romantic. In contrast, the Fourth Wing books are mainstream romance novels in terms of their sexual content, and this means that the show’s big-budget live-action adaptation will have a markedly different tone from earlier major fantasy shows.

From the PG-rated Percy Jackson & The Olympians to Prime Video’s relatively family-friendly The Rings of Power, all the way to hard-R-rated, adult fantasy shows like House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and The Witcher, a heavy focus on romance and frequent sex scenes simply aren’t commonplace in the genre on the small screen. As such, some fantasy fans will no doubt be put off by Fourth Wing’s style.

Network

Prime Video

Showrunner

Meredith Averill

Directors

Lisa Joy

Cast

• 

•