Prime Video is about to herald a new age of fantasy TV. When it comes to the small screen, the genre has largely been shaped by Game of Thrones. That led to a boom in fantasy adaptations, most of which attempted to capture the same kind of epic feel as that series, from The Witcher on Netflix to HBO’s own GOT spinoff, House of the Dragon. Prime Video has had several of its own as well, most notably the now-cancelled The Wheel of Time, and The Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power, which will return for a third season later this year.
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Those kinds of shows will obviously continue, even if not quite at the same pace as the expansion in the 2010s and early part of the 2020s (Prime Video has a major God of War adaptation lined up, for example), but a bigger shift is coming. Perhaps the dominant trend in the genre in terms of books this decade has been the rise of Romantasy, the combination of, you guessed it, romance and fantasy.
Usually involving tropes such as enemies-to-lovers, and elements like dragons or faeries, it’s become the biggest of business: driven by billions of views on BookTok, Romantasy novels accounted for $610 million in sales in 2024 [via Bloomberg]. In 2025, Onyx Storm, the third book in Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean Series (or Fourth Wing), became the biggest-selling adult novel in 20 years, shifting almost three million copies in its first week [via The New York Times]. The series takes place at Basgiath War College, where students join one of four groups: Infantry, Healer, Scribe, or (dragon) Rider. It follows Violet Sorrengail, who becomes one of the latter and ends up in a bigger, more deadly adventure than she could’ve imagined.
Prime Video’s Fourth Wing Series Will Truly Begin Hollywood’s Romantasy Obsession
Prime Video knows how to capitalize on a trend, as seen with one of 2026’s biggest hits so far, Off Campus, which builds on the success of Heated Rivalry. Those themselves stem from publishing – both are based on book series, and hockey romances have similarly been massive in the past couple of years (even in the UK, it’s driven crowds of women to local ice hockey games, a friend of mine very much among them). And Romantasy is even bigger, and plays even broader (as a longtime fantasy fan, I think Fourth Wing is very good fun, and never underestimate the appeal of sex+dragons to audiences).
The Romantasy arms race has been brewing for a while. Hulu looked to have stolen a march by landing the rights to Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses, which was at the forefront of the genre’s rise, back in 2021. However, after years in development, the series stalled completely, and the rights have since reverted to Maas, with no sign of an adaptation. Netflix has some of the their own lined up, including a seven-figure deal for Quicksilver, the first book in Callie Hart’s Fae & Alchemy series (though it’s not clear if that will be a movie or TV show).
But it’s Fourth Wing that is most hotly anticipated, and making pretty good progress. It has some star power with Michael B. Jordan onboard as an executive producer, and Yarros is closely involved, which is a good sign given we’ve seen many fantasy adaptations go wrong due to not involving the author and making egregious deviations from the source material. There’s no casting or release date yet, so it’s still some way off – perhaps 2028? – but it’s going to be a massive hit when it does. It has a built-in audience, cross-market appeal, will no doubt have a huge budget and be epic in scale, and the chance to run for at least five seasons (there are five books planned).
We’ve seen how trends can take off, especially in these genre spaces. And just like Game of Thrones sparked a dash to find other fantasy books to adapt, and Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings did so a decade before it, so too will Fourth Wing, marking the true beginning of a new era for fantasy on the small screen, and no doubt the big one as well.
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