Prime Video Officially Finds Its Next Fantasy Adaptation To Compete With Rings Of Power & Wheel Of Time

Published Sep 16, 2026, 9:59 AM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

While it is tough for Prime Video to outdo its biggest fantasy shows like The Rings Of Power and The Wheel Of Time, one upcoming series has the potential to pull this off. Even the biggest fans of Game of Thrones could not have guessed just how much the show would redefine the fantasy TV landscape when the HBO show debuted in 2011. The adaptation of author George RR. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire saga broke numerous records with its massive budget, and this gamble soon paid off handsomely.

Game of Thrones became one of the biggest TV shows in history, spawning the equally huge spinoffs House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as well as giving rise to the R-rated fantasy boom more broadly. From Critical Role’s show The Legend of Vox Machina to Interview with the Vampire, The Witcher, Castlevania, Outlander, and American Gods, fantasy TV finally embraced big budgets and mature age ratings alike in the 2010s.

Even within this rush of major fantasy projects, Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power stood out. For one thing, the show was one of the most expensive in history, and for another, it was a follow-up to one of the most acclaimed fantasy film franchises ever. 2021’s The Wheel of Time, based on the book series of the same name by Robert Jordan, proved The Rings of Power wasn’t a one-off, and now Folk Of The Air is set to become Prime Video’s next massive fantasy show.

Folk Of The Air Has All The Ingredients To Be Prime Video's Next Great Fantasy Series

Image via Hachette Book Club

Based on the YA book series of the same name by author Holly Black, the Folk Of The Air series focuses on Jude Duarte, a mortal girl in a faerie world. Trapped in this treacherous world of powerful faeries, Jude adapts to life alongside her sister Taryn while also navigating her relationship with the faerie prince Cardan Greenbriar. While not as explicitly spicy as the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, the bestselling books are beloved among their larger fan base for a unique blend of romance, action, mystery, and fantasy.

Beginning with 2018’s The Cruel Prince, the Folk Of The Air series soon followed its first book with the short story A Visit to the Impossible Lands and the companion novella The Lost Sisters the same year. 2019’s The Wicked King and the same year’s The Queen of Nothing round out the original trilogy, followed by 2019’s Letters from Cardan to Jude in Exile and 2020’s How the King of Elfhame Learned To Hate Stories.

What Prime Video's Folk Of The Air Can Learn From The Rings Of Power & The Wheel Of Time

Followed by the Stolen Heir duology, Black’s fantasy saga is as immersive and lengthy as any in the genre’s long history. While Apple TV’s Brandon Sanderson adaptation The Stormlight Archive aims to replace The Rings Of Power with its epic fantasy scope, the Folk Of The Air has all the right ingredients to be the streaming service’s next massive hit in the genre. Of course, this will mean needing to learn from both earlier shows.

Folk Of The Air must avoid the sprawling storytelling style of The Rings Of Power since, although this works for the Tolkien adaptation, it would feel too diffuse and detached for Black’s more intimate character study. The Rings Of Power has countless major characters and its story spans entire generations, meaning its approach needs to be much bigger in scope than Folk Of The Air’s adaptation.

Meanwhile, the biggest mistake from The Wheel Of Time that Folk Of The Air needs to avoid is its shoddy pacing. That earlier Prime Video hit took forever to get to its real story, whereas Black’s The Cruel Prince drops readers straight into the action from the beginning. Thus, Prime Video’s upcoming The Rings of Power replacement Folk Of The Air must avoid The Wheel Of Time’s excessively slow pacing.