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While Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a massive fantasy series, HBO has recently found a perfect rival that can go toe to toe with the show. From AMC’sInterview with the Vampire and the Immortal Universe it spawned to Netflix’s video game adaptations The Witcher and Castlevania, there is no shortage of great fantasy TV on the airwaves and streaming services. However, the gargantuan popularity of HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire saga, Game of Thrones, casts a long shadow over the genre.
From Prime Video’s Critical Role shows The Legend of Vox Machinaand The Mighty Nein to every one of the titles listed above, most modern fantasy shows are aimed at mature audiences only. In a post-Game of Thrones world, everything from Starz’ Outlander to the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons show Baldur’s Gate 3 defaulted to an adult audience, allowing the creators to include as much gore, swearing, and other adult content as they could want.
This holds true even for lighter, more playful fantasy shows, like the second Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. While this series is more lighthearted and optimistic than Game of Thrones or its first spinoff, House of the Dragon, it still features moments of brutal gore as well as plenty of adult language. Prime Video’s Lord of the Ringsprequel The Rings of Power is a rare show that breaks with this trend, and now HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter series can offer viewers another family-friendly small-screen fantasy franchise.
HBO’s Harry Potter Reboot Series Can Be Their Rings of Power
Like The Rings of Power, HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter show is an adaptation of a bestselling book series in the genre. Like The Rings of Power, it is also a reboot of one of the biggest blockbuster movie franchises of the 2000s, and the first small-screen installment of its series. Although the Harry Potter movies were historically massive upon their initial release, it has been over 15 years since the original adaptations wrapped up their box office run.
Although 2016’s prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them brought the Harry Potter franchise back to cinema screens, the financial underperformance and critical failure of its second sequel, 2022’s Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, led to the rest of this franchise's plans being scrapped. Now, HBO’s Harry Potter show will give the network its own Rings of Power, in that the series is an incredibly expensive show based on a major fantasy IP that isn't rated TV-MA like Game of Thrones and its many, many competitors.
HBO’s Harry Potter Show Has One Huge Problem The Rings of Power Avoided
This sounds like great news for fantasy fans, and the HBO show is in line to be one of the biggest of all time, judging by its budgeting and marketing materials. However, Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings prequel has one massive advantage over its HBO competitor. The Rings of Power adapts new, previously unseen parts of Lord of the Rings author J.R.R Tolkien’s franchise mythos, providing viewers with original characters and storylines within a familiar setting.
In contrast, HBO’s Harry Potter show is a straightforward remake of the original movies, adapting the same books in the same order as the earlier franchise. Since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a fairly conventional children’s book with few major twists, it could well be tough to get viewers invested in this story when a classic, well-loved movie version of the book already exists.
The HBO show would be more similar, then, to a Prime Video remake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, rather than the prequel show, and herein lies the issue. For a lot of Lord of the Rings fans, Prime Video’s The Rings of Power is a fun new addition to the franchise, whereas HBO’s Harry Potter has already faced criticism for simply retreading familiar territory a second time.
