Curren High Fantasy Series - The Witcher, Wheel of Time, House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, Willow

[JD]

In the last few years, mainly since Game of Thrones, we've gotten a whole bunch of new high fantasy series, including The Witcher on Netflix starting in 2019, then last year we got Wheel of Time, and in the last few months we've gotten House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, and now today we got the first two episodes of the Willow sequel series today. So I was just curious how people would compare them.
For me The Witcher is my favorite, with great characters, a fascinating world, and a good story. The Rings of Power and, even after just two episodes, Willow both tie as my second favorite, with each of them giving us a fascinating expansion of their franchises. I still enjoyed it, but my least favorite is Wheel of Time, there wasn't any one thing that stands out as bad, I just didn't enjoy it as much as the other three. I haven't watched House of The Dragon yet, but I plan to eventually.

 

[FPAlpha]

I like Witcher though the first season was marred by the decision to have a non-linear storytelling that got really confusing and the showrunner even sort of apologized or openly realized it didn't work out as intended. Second season was much better but i fear the show will tank once Cavill leaves after the third season.

Rings of Power was really good and due to the immense budget looked awesome, which is important to sell a fantasy world. I understand that purists have a host of problems with the show stemming from the fact that it can't use the entire Tolkien catalogue due to rights issues and thus has to be "creative" at certain parts. However i liked what they did and how they built up the mysteries and am eagerly awaiting the second season.

Wheel of Time was a big disappointment for me - i understand that the book series is hugely popular ( never read them) but the show just didn't click for me, mainly because i believe the actors to be all really mediocre in this show with no one i could even remotely call a favorite. I quit halfway through.

House of Dragon was a major disappointment for me - i knew the general gist of the story and even if not it would have been hard for a prequel series to get me excited when i know what the ultimate end would turn out to be ( Kenobi had the same problem for me). What i especially liked in GoT was the political intrigue and all the characters wheeling and dealing around each other but the same fell flat in House and got annoying, maybe because apart from young Rhaenerys there was not a single interesting character in the entire show, none that i liked. From the start in GoT i loved Tyrion, Eddard, Jon and Arya but i also loved to "hate" Cersei and Jaime. All that was completely absent in House of Dragon and i'm content to watch highlight reels on Youtube for now.

Willow i have yet to see but reviews are good so far and i'm open minded and won't hold the movie too high on a pedestal ( i love the movie) and give the show a fair chance.

Other than that i am not too excited about the genre, too many shows were too mediocre for me even if they had a decent budget and some take just too long to come back with a new season so the initial enjoyment has dulled even if the next season is announced, for example Shadow and Bone, which i liked in the first season but will only continue in 2023.