The Wheel of Time is the newest sweeping epic fantasy series to debut on television, and it’s clear that Amazon hopes that they might have a genuine hit on its hands. After all, it does have everything that has made the genre so popular in both its written and screen iterations, including a sprawling cast of characters, a story about the possible end of the world, and a titanic clash of good and evil.
Fortunately for fans of the show who can’t get enough of similar sagas, there are quite a few fantasy and science fiction series that address some of the same issues.
Even before it debuted, Wheel of Time was drawing comparisons to Game of Thrones, arguably the most influential and popular fantasy series of recent years.
However, while Wheel leans into the fantasy tropes, Game of Thrones is far more cynical in its outlook, and it constantly challenges what viewers think that they know about the genre. This HBO series pushed fantasy into the mainstream in a way that it had never really been before.
After the conclusion of Game of Thrones, HBO set out to try to replicate its success, and one of its subsequent fantasy outings was His Dark Materials, based on the series of novels by Philip Pullman.
Like The Wheel of Time, it focuses on young people drawn into an existential conflict that they don’t always understand. What’s more, His Dark Materials is a deeply philosophical piece of fantasy, tackling the big questions, including the very nature of God and morality, as well as life and death themselves.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is one of the most noteworthy science fiction epics in the history of the genre and, in a similar way to Wheel of Time, it probes the big questions.
In this case, it focuses on the specter of civilizational collapse and the efforts of a small group of intrepid scientists and scholars to create a database of knowledge that will help keep the inevitable chaos from being as bad as it might be otherwise. It’s a story that has a grand scope that will appeal to fans of the epic.
Along with Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks is famous for having created a fantasy epic that has legions of fans and readers. Thus, it was not terribly surprising that his Shannara series would receive its own television adaptation in the form of The Shannara Chronicles.
Though it only lasted two seasons before being canceled, this series did manage to capture at least a bit of the magic of Brooks’s world, particularly in its depiction of the invasion of the Demons and the tremendous sacrifice that people make to defeat them.
One of the most noteworthy aspects of Wheel of Time is that it takes place in a world that has been devastated by a magical war in which men who could wield magic lost control and blinded humanity.
Though See is more in the vein of science fiction--focusing as it does on a world in which people no longer have the ability to see and in which much of human civilization has been wiped out--it still hits some of the same notes as its fantasy counterpart, as people try to survive in a world that is on the brink of radical change.
The Witcher has quickly emerged as another of the best fantasy series on Netflix, thanks in part to the powerful screen charisma of Geralt of Rivia, played by Henry Cavill (in one of his best roles).
Though it’s a bit more cynical than Wheel of Time, it still has many of the essential ingredients for a powerful epic fantasy, particularly in its story surrounding the young girl Ciri, who is bound to Geralt by destiny and has a grand future in store for her.
Like Amazon, Netflix has given the green light to several fantasy shows, including Shadow and Bone, which focuses primarily on a young woman named Alina Starkov who has been born with a formidable magical ability that could change the very face of her world.
Like Wheel of Time, it’s very much a chosen one sort of story, and it also features an elite group of magical wielders who carry significant political influence, even if they are at times distrusted (and persecuted) by others.
In the world of The Wheel of Time, only the Aes Sedai are able to wield and control the One Power, and this gives them a tremendous amount of influence over the affairs of various kingdoms. Unfortunately, this also means that they have to bear the burden of being distrusted by people who doubt their true motives.
A similar dynamic is at work in the ongoing series The Nevers, which also features a group of people blessed with formidable abilities who are as distrusted as they are respected.
When Moiraine arrives in the Two Rivers, she announces that one of four people--Egwene, Rand, Perrin, or Mat--will be the foretold Dragon Reborn, someone fated to save the world and possibly destroy it in the process.
The Wheel of Time is very much about the burdens of authority, which is what makes Jupiter’s Legacy a series that many of its fans will enjoy. This show also engages with the question of leadership, as the second generation of superheroes (some of whom are very intelligent) has to deal with the legacies of the past.
There are few MCU characters as popular as Loki, who continues to cast a spell even after his death in Infinity War. In the series named after him, he has been taken by the group known as the Time Variance Authority, where he has to confront deep philosophical issues, including questions about his own identity, the nature of time, and the question of predestination.
This aligns very nicely with Wheel of Time which, as its title suggests, is a series all about temporality and the ways that humans engage with its limitations.
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