Amazon Prime Video has announced that after lengthy deliberations, they will not be renewing their fantasy series “The Wheel of Time” for a fourth season.
Though liked creatively by the streamer’s executives, the reasons for the cancellation come down to financial ones in the current economic environment.
Whereas the lavishly expensive “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” has been met with a mixed reception throughout its two seasons so far, the cheaper but still costly ‘Wheel’ has seen its review scores improving considerably with each season – from 81% on RT and 55/100 on MC for the first season, to 97% on RT and 77/100 on MC with the recent third season.
The Rosamund Pike-led series has remained a solid performer viewership wise. After launching as the most watched series premiere of 2021 and one of the platform’s Top 5 series launches of all time, it did slip during its third season this year – failing to make Nielsen’s Top 10 Originals streaming chart for the first three weeks of its third season.
The first two seasons were on that list for their entire runs. Nielsen is only U.S. viewership though and streaming renewals depend on global performance. Despite the third season rankiing as #1 on Prime Video in multiple countries, the overall performance was not strong enough for its price for Amazon to commit.
Discussions with lead studio Sony Television took place to try and make a model work but agreement couldn’t be reached. The third season was designed with some closure in mind, but is still a long way from the six seasons planned that would’ve had to severely compress Robert Jordan’s massive novel saga to complete.
Source: Deadline
