Prime Video’s Fourth Wing adaptation might be one of the most anticipated upcoming series to date. An adaptation of Rebecca Yarros’ wildly popular The Empyrean Saga series, fans have been clamoring for information since the live action take on the romantasy series was first announced and while any bit of news has been welcome, there were two big announcements everyone’s been waiting on: who would be playing the story’s main characters. Now, the wait for that news is over. Fourth Wing has found its Violet and its Xaden.
According to Deadline, Esther McGregor (We Were Liars, Babygirl) will star as Violet Sorrengail while Emilio Sakraya (Those About to Die, Warrior Nun) will star as Xaden Riorson. These are the first casting announcements for the series, which is being showrun by Meredith Averill and is being produced by Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Kilter Films and Premeditated Productions. The series is anticipated for 2027, but no official date has been given for the series.
In case you aren’t familiar with Fourth Wing, the story follows Violet Sorrengail, a young woman who is forced against her will by her mother into a military academy to be trained as a dragon rider. The training is brutal and quite literally kills people. It’s violent, difficult, and not for the weak. During this brutal training, Violet meets Xaden Riorson, a mysterious cadet with shadow-wielding powers who also happens to be a descendent of a rebellious group. Given that Fourth Wing is a romantasy, a romance develops between the two. The Fourth Wing novel and it’s subsequent sequels Iron Flame and Onyx Storm (two more books are set to arrive later on) have been hugely popular in no small part thanks to the rise of BookTok. Given the significance of the two characters, fans have had a lot of ideas as to who should bring them to life — and have had a lot to say since casting news broke.
Thus far, there has been quite a bit of mixed reaction to McGregor and Sakraya’s castings. While some fans have been positive about things and some even feel like Sakraya could be a good fit for Xaden if not their first choice, there has been a lot of commentary about McGregor as Violet. Many fans have suggested that this could be a miscast situation, but not in the way you might think. A lot of Fourth Wing fans think she would be a perfect Imogen. However, others are willing to go with the casting choice based on her work in We Were Liars where fans of that series felt she did a great job and could very well pull of Violet as well.
Ultimately, while the reaction is mixed, that was going to be the case no matter who was cast as the stars. Fourth Wing has a passionate fandom that has quite literally been coming up with fan casting and art associated with that fan casting for years. Even if the actors chosen aren’t some fans’ first choice, if Prime Video’s series gets the series right, fans will likely come to accept them in the key roles. It’s something that we see happen over and over again when popular books make their way to the screen. The trick at this point is for audiences just to sit tight and stay tuned to see how the rest of the cast fills out — and ultimately what each actor bring to the screen when Fourth Wing finally takes flight.
What do you think about the Fourth Wing casting news? Let us know in the comments.
