It's official: the Fourth Wing TV show has found its leads. Esther McGregor will play the story's heroine, Violet Sorrengail, and Emilio Sakraya will play Xaden Riorson.
If you are on BookTok, then you're surely aware of Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series. The saga, which started in 2023 with the first book, Fourth Wing, has continued with sequels Iron Flame and Onyx Storm, bringing the total to three of five planned books.
The romantasy books, which focus on the story of dragon rider Violet Sorrengail, have been capturing the attention of audiences from all around the world, and they will continue to do so with a TV show adaptation from Amazon MGM Studios, which has now officially been ordered to series at Prime Video. Michael B. Jordan, who is executive producing, announced the exciting news on Monday, May 11, at Amazon's UpFronts presentation to advertisers.
The adaptation has been in the works for a while, and anticipation has reached an all-time high as cast speculation begins and we get more updates on when production could start. So, below, we've collected everything we know so far about the Fourth Wing TV show adaptation.
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What is Fourth Wing about?
Fourth Wing is the first installment of the Empyrean series. The book introduces audiences to Violet Sorrengail, a 20-year-old who's suddenly tasked with becoming a dragon rider by her mother, the commanding general of Basgiath War College, where hundreds of candidates are trained to ride the dragons.
Violet lives with a chronic illness inspired by Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which author Yarros has in real life, and always intended to live “a quiet life among books and history" when she's thrown into the fire—quite literally. The first book follows Violet as she tries to find her footing among fellow prospective riders in the cutthroat school, where her classmates are as much of a threat.
However, not everything is bleak. Violet also meets her love interest, Xaden Riorson, a third-year star student at Basgiath War College, during her training. But, of course, it's not as simple — Xaden has an entangled relationship with Violet's family, seeing as her mom had his dad killed after he, in turn, killed her son.
The Empyrean series currently features three books: Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm. The last book in the series came out in January 2025, and Yarros is already working on the still-unnamed fifth book.
Rebecca Yarros
Fourth Wing
Rebecca Yarros
Iron Flame
Rebecca Yarros
Onyx Storm
Yarros notably took a break from the series to write a contemporary novel. She updated fans in January 2026, saying that she was ready to jump back into Empyrean. “Once this angsty little treat is done in the next few (hopefully couple) weeks, I’ll be back in the Empyrean world for the foreseeable future! Book 4’s playlist is simmering, and I’m almost ready for the index cards and plot board,” she wrote on Instagram. “Feels like a great day to start a stack of index cards,” she added on February 8 alongside a picture of the books in the series.
When was the Fourth Wing TV show announced?
Earl Gibson III/Getty Images
The Fourth Wing TV series adaptation was first unveiled in October 2023, with Amazon MGM Studios and Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society set to produce. Per Variety, Amazon and Outlier Society acquired the rights to all the books. Yarros was attached to the project as an executive producer.
Though the announcement was made in October, the production companies had an interest in Yarros's show before the first book had even come out.
“It was wild to think this book wasn’t even out yet and it had already been optioned and then you have to sit on that and not tell anybody. And I figured, well, maybe the book will do OK, because it has this option deal — but a lot of things get options and never made,” she said in an interview. “And the funniest thing is that, in the meeting with Amazon, they said, we had questions about this part of the ending. And I was like, that doesn’t happen. And they said, no, here, when this happens. And I just looked at my editor and go, you gave them my first draft?! They have the first draft?! And you can’t say that in the middle of the meeting. But I could just feel the blood running from my face, and I’m like, there have been some changes!”
To avoid that, Yarros has now given Amazon and Outlier Society an overview of the overall arc. “They have the five-book arc and the general big points of what happens in between each book,” she told Variety in January 2025, “but they don’t have the specifics between Book 4 and Book 5, because I’m getting ready to go to my crazy plotting board and plot out every single event that happens in each book, so that I make sure that I’m within my two books there. But they have general ideas.”
Does the Fourth Wing TV show have a release date?
The Fourth Wing TV show is still in preproduction, so it does not have a tentative release date yet. However, it is coming along. Speaking to Deadline in January 2026, Michael B. Jordan confirmed that the show was “coming,” but it was still in its “early stages.”
“We are making sure that this is going to be [an] exciting show that delivers on all of the things the fans want and some of the things that they won’t be expecting either. But trust me, I know how beloved this franchise IP is and we’re diligently… We’re in the lab, we’re cooking up," Jordan said, before adding, "I feel how much people care about this one. It’s not lost on us.”
In January 2025, Yarros had previously revealed that she had read two versions of the Fourth Wing script. "I was super scared to read it because when you hand somebody your baby and you say, 'Tell me what you think is important in here,' you're kind of like, 'It's all important,'" she said, adding that she “loved” them and “kicked my feet the entire time.”
Who else is involved in the Fourth Wing TV show?
Jemal Countess
The Fourth Wing TV show is being produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society as part of an overall deal. Yarros is credited as a non-writing executive producer with Liz Pelletier, the CEO and publisher for Entangled Publishing, home to the book series.
In July 2024, it was previously announced that Emmy-winner Moira Walley-Beckett, who served as a writer and co-executive producer on Breaking Bad, had been tapped as showrunner. However, on September 24, 2025, Variety reported that Meredith Averill had been brought on to officially replace Walley-Beckett, who exited the project in July 2025. You might recognize Averill's name from Netflix's Locke & Key, where she served as co-creator and showrunner. She's also served as executive producer for Wednesday, The Haunting of Hill House, Jane the Virgin, and more.
Speaking of Walley-Beckett's script, Yarros said: “Moira has done such an amazing job capturing everyone's voice and the dialogue that you guys love and just the energy and spirit of the book that I just — I could not be any happier.”
Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy is also an executive producer; Joy will direct the first episode of the Fourth Wing TV show.
Who is in the cast of the Fourth Wing TV show?
On Oct. 15, Deadline reported the exciting news: the stars of the Fourth Wing TV show will be Esther McGregor as Violet and Emilion Sakraya as Xaden. The news comes after months of fan casts looking at young actors all over the world.
You'll recognize McGregor from the Prime Video drama We Were Liars (and she'll soon take on the role of Rachel Amber in the Life Is Strange TV adaptation). Sakraya, meanwhile, is known for Netflix's Warrior Nun, Sixty Minutes, and Peacock's Those About to Die, among other projects—he was a frequent fan cast for Xaden in the run-up to the announcement. Read more about the two leads below:
After many a TikTok dream cast...the results are in.
Speaking to the BBC in February 2026, Michael B. Jordan admitted that getting the casting right was of the utmost importance for the project. He also reportedly said the project was looking to cast a mixture of known actors and new faces.
"When it's done the right way, I think you can have a nice balance where casting won't be distracting," Jordan said. “It allows people to, like, fall in love with the characters that they have imagined in their head without any baggage, with projecting their own feelings on certain casts.”
He added that casting wouldn't be “cheesy” and that he was not looking to go for “obvious choices.” "I think it's going to be something that feels honest," he continued.
Jordan was also asked if he'd play a role in the series himself, and he simply replied: "I don't know." (The star has received major accolades for his starring role as Smoke in Sinners, including an Oscar nomination.)
JC Olivera/Getty Images
More cast is still to be announced. Some of the actors who have publicly said they are fans of Fourth Wing include Cynthia Erivo and Dylan Efron, which is also leading to fan casts, albeit not for the lead roles.
Is there a trailer for the Fourth Wing TV show?
The Fourth Wing series has yet to begin production, so we don't have a trailer or photos, but watch this space for first-look updates as the production advances.
This post will be updated as news about the Fourth Wing series adaptation breaks.