Amazon Prime Video has reportedly scrapped its costly fantasy drama The Wheel of Time after three seasons.
The decision comes just over a month after the season three finale was released on 17 April.
The show, starring Rosamund Pike, started off in 2021 as one of Prime Video’s most watched series premieres of the year and one of its biggest series launches of all time.
It was later joined by Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, based on JRR Tolkien’s history of Middle-earth sourcing material from the appendices (including timelines, genealogies, language samples and other background details) of his novel, The Lord of the Rings.
However, Deadline reports that Prime Video’s decision to end The Wheel of Time was a financial one, with its viewership slipping by the third season.
Devastated fans have been reacting to the news on social media, with one complaining that the decision had come after “the best season they ever had”.
Other fans claimed that the series had gone downhill after it diverged “drastically” from the source material.
“Gee, who could have imagined that diverging drastically from the source material and telling the Wheel of Time books fans to piss off would result [in] this?” one person wrote on X/Twitter.
“And to the Twits of Time TV show fans who said the show was fine. This is what happens when you call actual fans toxic and tell them to leave. They take your advice. Maybe next time listen to people’s [complaints] about what’s wrong.”
“This is absolutely absurd!!” another fan said. “Season three was one of the BEST seasons of television ever.
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“Devastated doesn’t even begin to encapsulate this.”
One fan wrote: “This is so incredibly disappointing. The Wheel of Time is not only a show is so loved by many but is also an amazing example of a piece or media that was consistently getting better. That’s a massive shame!”
The Wheel of Time is based on the internationally bestselling Robert Jordan novels – some of which were co-written by Mistborn author Brandon Sanderson – that chronicle an epic saga beginning in the fictional kingdom of Andor.
It is said to have been commissioned after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos requested a rival to HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones, based on the books by George RR Martin.
Other castmembers included Daniel Henney, Josha Stradowski, Madeleine Madden, Marcus Rutherford and Sophie Okonedo.
