Amazon’s Prime Video continues to become a major fandom hub, with hit series in multiple genres, based on popular IPs. Amazon (and its partner, MGM+) seems to be focusing on developing content within the most consistently successful genres: sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. That includes an upcoming fantasy series, based on one of the most successful fantasy book series of the 2020s. Better yet, that fantasy series is getting one of television’s most acclaimed sci-fi creators to direct its pilot.
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Author Rebecca Yarros published Fourth Wing in 2023, the first installment in her Empyrean series. The novel exploded in popularity, largely thanks to its viral popularity within TikTok’s “BookTok” sector. After winning multiple awards in 2024, Yarros continued the series with two more installments, Iron Flame and Onyx Storm, with an additional two books planned to finish the series. Now comes the premium TV adaptation via Amazon, which has tapped sci-fi TV creator Lisa Joy (Westworld, Fallout) to direct the Fourth Wing pilot. Prime Video confirmed as much during the annual upfronts this week; Joy will also join Michael B. Jordan, Athena Wickham, and her collaborator/husband Jonathan Nolan as an executive producer.
What Is Fourth Wing About?
Set in the kingdom of Navarre, Fourth Wing follows 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail, the youngest daughter of General Lilith Sorrengail, leader of the Basgiath War College. Basgaith’s people are split into four military branches: Infantry, Healer, Scribe, or Rider, where they train for three years before joining the war. Although she is physically infirm and more of a Scribe like her father (in temperament), Violet’s mother orders her to join the Riders, who train in using magic and bond with a dragon as their mount. As Violet meets other cadets in her quadrant, she also begins to learn about Navarre’s dark past and how the Rider Quadrant and her recruitment are part of a secret past and a failed rebellion, which her mother put down. The events of the story see Violet find her place as both a Rider and a rebel, kicking off the larger story that follows.
Fourth Wing is steeped in lore. Yarros created a massive Game of Thrones-style world in Navarre, which has multiple Hunger Games-style provinces and an extensive history that directly connects to the present-day action of the story. On top of that, the series dips into so many fantasy tropes and makes them all work together freshly and uniquely. That includes the dragon riding, different “quandrants” of military skill, the “signets” that Riders develop as the core of their magical powers, and the entire ritualistic processes of training to become a Rider or one of the other quadrants. The series also contained a lot of the YA tropes that have made countless other sci-fi/fantasy series profitable, including Violet falling in love with the man who is leading a new revolution, trying to succeed where his father couldn’t.
While film series like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and Divergent were popular in the 2010s, there has long been discussion about how these novels could have played in long form as TV series. Amazon has done well adapting fantasy series like The Wheel of Time for TV, not to mention all the other literary series adaptations (Jack Ryan, Cross, Reacher), the streaming service has turned into multi-season successes. That’s all to say: Fourth Wing is in good hands. Especially with Lisa Joy, who built entire TV worlds out of some of the most difficult sci-fi films (Westworld) and games (Fallout) to crack.
Fourth Wing books are available to purchase; the TV series is currently in development to stream on Prime Video. Discuss the best things happening in fantasy on the ComicBook Forum!
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