Game of Thrones became a TV phenomenon in a way that’s hard shows to replicate nowadays. There’s no one reason for its success. Its set pieces blurred the lines between movies and TV. It was wonderfully cast and lushly filmed. But its biggest ace in the hole was its source material: the Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin, an as-yet-unfinished fantasy epic full of the sort of granular detail that turns ordinary readers into obsessive superfans.
A lot of that detail made the jump to the small screen. On Game of Thrones, every character had a backstory, every location had a history, and every event had a context. The world-building was so deep it seemed bottomless, and fans eagerly dove in. Game of Thrones ended in 2019, and fans have been searching ever since for a show that scratched that same itch.
House of the Dragon
Duh
House of the Dragon is a Game of Thrones prequel show set over one hundred years before the original series, so it’s an obvious place to start. House of the Dragon gives us more information on a lot of elements introduced in Game of Thrones. The main characters are blonde-haired, dragon-riding Targaryens, the ancestors of Daenerys Targaryen from Thrones. You’ll visit familiar locales like King’s Landing, Dragonstone, and the Wall, but see them as they were long before Jon Snow or Tyrion Lannister were around.
The show has an original story that you can enjoy without ever having seen Game of Thrones, but one of the big draws for longtime fans is the chance to deepen their understanding of Westeros and its people. And another Game of Thrones prequel show coming out in January of 2026, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, will tell yet more of this story.
Release Date
August 21, 2022
Network
HBO
Showrunner
George R.R. Martin
Directors
Clare Kilner, Geeta Patel
Writers
Gabe Fonseca
The Wheel of Time
The wheel weaves as the wheel wills
The Wheel of Time is based on a massive, 14-book series of epic fantasy books by Robert Jordan (and finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan passed). At first, The Wheel of Time seems like a simple story about a farm boy who finds out he’s a messianic hero known as the Dragon Reborn. But there are a lot of “chosen one” narratives out there; The Wheel of Time stands out because of its rich, detailed fantasy world.
The Wheel of Time takes place thousands of years after a great calamity broke the world, and it’s still recovering. We get to know the Aes Sedai, a cabal of sorceresses who influence the powerful from the shadows. We meet the Aiel, a desert-dwelling people with close ties to the Dragon Reborn. We encounter the Seanchan, a strange people from across the sea. And that’s just to start.
Amazon adapted around four of the 14 Wheel of Time books to TV, but stupidly canceled The Wheel of Time TV show just as it was really finding its sea legs. And yet the show is still worth watching even in abbreviated form; that’s how badly Amazon screwed up.
Release Date
2021 – 2025-00-00
Network
Prime Video
Showrunner
Rafe Judkins
Directors
Sanaa Hamri, Ciaran Donnelly, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Thomas Napper, Maja Vrvilo, Wayne Che Yip
Writers
Amanda Kate Shuman, Dave Hill, Rohit Kumar, Justine Juel Gillmer, Celine Song, Rammy Park, The Clarksons Twins, Katherine B. McKenna
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Everything changed when you started to watch this show
Avatar: The Last Airbender is an animated series that ran on Nickelodeon from 2005-2008. Like The Wheel of Time, it’s a Chosen One story: the Chosen One du jour is Aang, a young Airbender who is also the Avatar, the one person in the world who can control all four of the elements: earth, air, fire, and water. That means he has a lot of responsibility he isn’t immediately happy about having to shoulder, and a lot of the show is about how grows into it with the help of his friends.
Also like The Wheel of Time, The Last Airbender rises above the rest in part thanks to its engrossing world, which is inspired mainly by East Asian and indigenous cultures; that makes for a great change of pace if you’re used to the general medieval trappings of Lord of the Rings-esque fantasy. And although The Last Airbender is geared more towards younger viewers than Game of Thrones is, the world is crafted with care and holds together very well, with lots of hidden depths to delve.
At the moment, Netflix is in the middle of airing a live-action Last Airbender remake series, which should tell you something about the show’s enduring popularity. The original is still the best.
Release Date
2005 – 2008
Network
Nickelodeon
Showrunner
Michael Dante DiMartino
Directors
Giancarlo Volpe, Ethan Spaulding, Lauren MacMullan, Dave Filoni, Joaquim Dos Santos, Anthony Lioi
Writers
Tim Hedrick, Elizabeth Welch Ehasz, Joshua Hamilton, James Eagan, Joann Estoesta, Nick Malis, May Chan, Katie Mattila
One Piece
Over 1,000 episodes of big beautiful blue ocean
The One Piece anime, based on the manga by Eiichiro Oda, has been running since 1999 and produced around 1,150 episodes as of this writing. Clearly, people really, REALLY love spending time in this world, which has had a long time to fill itself out.
Like The Last Airbender, One Piece breaks with the traditional fantasy milieu; this time we’re on the open seas with the plucky Monkey D. Luffy, who sets out to fulfill his dream of becoming King of the Pirates. Along the way, he’ll meet hundreds of colorful characters, sail all over the map, combat a tyrannical one-world government, and provide enough world-building detail to keep fans busy for decades.
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Also like The Last Airbender, Netflix is in the middle of airing a live-action One Piece remake series, so there are multiple ways to explore this world.
Release Date
October 20, 1999
Network
Fuji TV
Directors
Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
Writers
Jin Tanaka, Akiko Inoue, Junki Takegami, Shinzo Fujita, Shouji Yonemura, Yoshiyuki Suga, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hirohiko Uesaka, Michiru Shimada, Isao Murayama, Takuya Masumoto, Yoichi Takahashi, Momoka Toyoda
Franchise(s)
One Piece
The Expanse
Aka Game of Thrones in space
Okay, technically The Expanse is science fiction, not fantasy, but it has a Game of Thrones connection that makes it perfect for anyone wanting to fill the Westeros-shaped hole in their heart: the book series on which the show is based is co-authored by Ty Franck, who served as a personal assistant to George R.R. Martin for years. You can tell that when you watch the show, because the world of The Expanse is built with the same attention to detail that Martin is known for.
The Expanse is set in a future where humanity has traveled beyond the Earth to also settle on Mars and in the asteroid belt, and there’s a lot of tension between the three camps. The conflicts are teased out over the course of six excellent seasons, and the science is grounded enough for everything to feel believable. All in all, The Expanse is one of the few shows that can stand up to sci-fi titans like Star Wars: Andor, which is a huge compliment.
Release Date
2015 – 2022-00-00
Network
SyFy
Showrunner
Naren Shankar, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
Writers
Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
Franchise(s)
The Expanse
And the rest
If you’re looking for fantasy shows with dense world-building, there are a couple more obvious contenders, like The Witcher and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. But I’m trying to point you towards shows that will actually be rewarding to watch. If you want great world-building in The Witcher universe, I recommend The Witcher video games; and if you want to explore every nook and cranny of Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings books are right there.
But I’m probably being too picky. Both of those shows have their fans, and they do take place in dense fantasy worlds. The truth is that if you have a wanderlust that no actual vacation can satiate, there’s no shortage of fictional worlds for you to get lost in.
