Unfortunately, tons of fantasy shows have so much potential, only to drop the ball and waste incredible ideas that would have had them firmly cemented in the pop culture zeitgeist for years to come. With everything from Heroes to the scrapped and still-unnamed Game of Thrones prequel set to star Naomi Watts and Jamie Campbell Bower to whatever the hell Riverdale had going on, the examples could literally span pages, especially when you consider that some of these shows had amazing ideas to work with.
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Here we have 5 fantasy series that could have been the best of the best, but instead fumbled their initial ideas so badly that they’re mostly remembered for their failings and thought of both with irritation and a wistful sense of what could have been.
5) Sleepy Hollow
Sleepy Hollow had an insane amount of potential. The stars, Tom Mison and Nicole Baharie, had incredible chemistry, and it was both peak horror television and the optimum comfort show. The series centered around Ichabod Crane, who was raised from the dead thanks to a curse put on him before his untimely demise. Alongside Abbie Mills, Ichabod has to figure out how to stop the Headless Horseman before he brings ruin to the world as we know it as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The show’s failure was two-fold; it fell apart when Abbie was prematurely written off, as well as when the showrunners seemingly couldn’t stick to just one vision for the story, abandoning the original story and leaving fans with a hodgepodge of things that made no sense and didn’t feel at all emotionally or narratively satisfying.
4) Game of Thrones
After a ridiculously strong start, Game of Thrones did everything it could in the final three seasons to wipe itself from cultural consciousness, with showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss throwing away everything that the author of the series it was based on, George R.R Martin, had given them, and sailing full force into batsh*t territory. We went from a story about political intrigue, magic, and the inherent issues with a ruling House to a grim-dark and gritty realist tale that centered around ideas antithetical to the original series (No, Arya would not abandon her family to sail west of Westeros. No, Jon would not actually care about Daenerys being his aunt) and a shocking amount of sexual violence that never took place in the books (we’re looking at you, random addition of Sansa marrying Ramsey Bolton). Benioff and Weiss had the world at their fingertips with everything Martin had supplied them with, and instead chose to go off the deep end in an attempt to make it their own, while also speedrunning their way toward other projects. You know you’ve messed up when people only talk about your show to discuss how badly it ended.
3) Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
This series had set such high expectations, with the first half of the first season bringing to life a spin on witchcraft that we hadn’t seen done particularly well yet, as well as seemingly successfully rebranding a beloved classic and genuinely making it feel unique. The first few episodes of Season 1 gave audiences an irreverent, almost tongue-in-cheek, take on the Devil’s Sacrement, making Satan seem like a genuine threat and a compelling entity all at once. But as the series went on, Sabrina became little more than an audience insert, requiring each plot point to be explained to her like she was 5. Then came some oddly racist narrative points surrounding the Romani people, a late-season conversion to Wicca as a way to “stick it to the man,” and a take on Lovecraftian lore that is almost too bad to even be worth mentioning.
2) Once Upon a Time
Once Upon a Time seemed like a show that shouldn’t have worked, with the idea of bringing all the beloved fairy tale characters to Small Town, USA coming across as more of a piece of fanfiction than a real TV series. But it did work—really well, in fact, and the first season was genuinely magical. The potential for a unique take on all of the fairy tales that we grew up with was so rife with possibility. But then, we somehow ended up with everyone being related to Rumplestiltskin (who is also the son of Peter Pan and the Beast of Beauty and the Beast fame, somehow). Aside from the weirdness of everyone being related to Rumplestiltskin, the show became a vehicle of the Disney Princess machine, with season tie-ins to Frozen and Brave. It got so off the rails that the show eventually tried to do a soft reboot with a time jump resetting most of the fairy tale characters and turning Henry, the main character’s son, who was put up for adoption and then adopted by Regina, the Evil Queen, into an adult. And that, predictably, didn’t last long.
1) The Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries, another CW addition to pop culture, was based on a series of books of the same name by L.J Smith, and ran the gamut of supernatural entities, with everything from vampires to witches to werewolves. It started as a good, campy teen drama set against the backdrop of a town with the coolest name, Mystic Falls. But one thing the entire fandom can agree on is that the writing went downhill after the third season. Elena, the show’s main character, became more of a plot device than a person, death stopped having any meaning, and the writing notably degraded, with plot lines being introduced that made less than zero sense and plot holes appearing every few minutes. The books were notably darker, and had so much potential for an equally dark supernatural fantasy series that would have hinged on much more than Elana shrieking about vervaine or Damon being unable to decide if he’s a villain or a good guy this episode.
What show do you think had amazing, but wasted, potential? Let us know in the comments. And don’t forget to check out the ComicBook forum to see what other fans are saying.
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