Amazon’s best replacement for The Wheel of Time has suffered a major setback in the development phase. Earlier this year, The Wheel of Time, based on the bestselling epic fantasy book series by Robert Jordan (finished by Brandon Sanderson), was surprisingly canceled after season 3, despite the latest outing’s major storytelling improvements and high ratings from audiences and critics alike.

Sadly, The Wheel of Time never managed to overcome the growing pains of its first season, and Amazon canceled the show due to low viewership. Naturally, Amazon Prime Video is now looking to get the ball rolling on another fantasy series, one which has the potential to become a much bigger hit: Fourth Wing, based on Rebecca Yarros’ mega-selling Empyrean romantasy series.

Fourth Wing follows 20-year-old prospective student Violet Sorrengail as she enters Basgiath War College, a competitive, do-or-die setting in which hopeful cadets prepare themselves to be magically bonded to the most dangerous predator of all: dragons. During her training, she meets Xaden Riorson, a dragon rider just as seductive and perilous as the winged beasts themselves.

Amazon’s Fourth Wing adaptation has suffered a major loss, however, as the series’ showrunner, Moira Walley-Beckett, who has worked on critically acclaimed hits like Breaking Bad and Anne with an E, has officially left the project after previously signing on in July 2024 (via Variety). This is especially disappointing as, earlier this year, Yarros revealed that she was incredibly excited about Walley-Beckett’s scripts for the show.

What This Means For Amazon’s Fourth Wing TV Series

When Will Viewers Get To Meet Violet Sorrengail And Xaden Riorson?

As the show has not yet been ordered to series, and a cast has yet to be named, it doesn’t look like fans of Yarros’ treacherous, war-torn, dragon-led world will be seeing their favorite characters on screen anytime soon, though Prime is determined to push forward with the project.

According to Variety, sources report that several new names are in the running for showrunner, including WandaVision and Agatha All Along creator and writer Jac Schaeffer, who recently signed a development deal with Amazon’s MGM studios. Schaeffer could be an exciting choice for Fourth Wing, having created two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most creative, female-led TV shows.

Our Take On Amazon’s Fourth Wing TV Series

The Empyrean Novels Are Challenging To Adapt

Lengthy high-fantasy novels are notoriously difficult to adapt for an on-screen medium, a challenge faced by The Wheel of Time and many of its peers, including Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Netflix’s Shadow & Bone, and more.

The source materials for those shows, as well as Yarros’ Empyrean novels, are full of rich, world-building detail and complicated storylines, and it can be difficult to choose which characters to omit and which subplots to avoid without irrevocably changing the story’s themes and main conflict.

By far the biggest challenge Amazon faces with its Fourth Wing TV series, however, is the casting of Violet Sorrengail and Xaden Riorson. Though the war between the dark magic-wielding venin and the dragon riders is the book series’ primary storyline, the romantic relationship between Violet and Xaden glues the entire series together. If the casting isn’t right – Xaden’s, especially – the whole endeavor could fail before it’s even begun.

Luckily for fans, though, Yarros is serving as an executive producer on the project and has promised that Xaden and Violet’s casting will be true to the books. Hopefully, Amazon will find exciting new actors to helm their upcoming fantasy flagship show, as Fourth Wing could be the launch point for an incredible career, just as The Wheel of Time was for some of its younger, newer actors.

All seasons of The Wheel of Time are available to stream now on Prime Video.

Source: Variety

Fourth Wing