Game Of Thrones ended not with a whimper but with a very flashy shrug back in 2019, and there’s been a kingdom-sized gap in the fantasy market ever since. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of worthwhile, big-budget stories of epic and sprawling proportion, like the beloved Vikings and Netflix‘s lush Shadow and Bone.
But otherwise, we might have been left waiting until 2022 for Amazon‘s extravagant Lord of the Rings prequel series. That is, if it weren’t for The Wheel Of Time, a sumptuous TV series adapting Robert Jordan’s high fantasy novels.
Starring Oscar-nominated actresses Rosamund Pike and Sophie Okonedo amongst its cast, The Wheel of Time will turn for Prime Video subscribers on November 19, dropping its first three epic eps at once. From then, we’ll have to watch week by week until all eight episodes are gradually released, with the first season finale on December 24: a Christmas Eve gift worth waiting for.
The climactic trailer below will definitely get fans of the astoundingly long novel series aquiver, tugging their braids and knuckling their brows and so forth. Pike stars as a member of the powerful Aes Sedai, an organisation of women harnessing a magical force to find a reincarnation of the Dragon; an individual who could either bring peace to a sprawling fantasy world, or destroy it.
With a vast ensemble cast and cinematic production design, The Wheel of Time looks like an extremely expensive successor to the Game of Thrones, well, throne: but is it unique and compelling enough to ascend labels and become its own whole monster of a show?
Fans will have to hold out hope, and the rest of us have time to dig into Robert Jordan’s original fantasy texts. You may only be able to make a start, though: there’s fourteen of the bloody things, with Jordan’s 2007 death meaning that like-minded author Brandon Sanderson had to come on board to squeeze out the final three volumes.
