The real successor to LotR is a love-it-or-hate-it two-season fantasy adaptation

Finding something to fill the Lord of the Rings-shaped hole in your life is, frankly, a bit of a mug's game. Let's be honest – those films (and even some of the franchise’s offshoots) are absolute benchmarks in fantasy, and nothing quite hits the same. Still, even if nothing matches the LOTR magic, that doesn’t mean there aren’t decent options worth your time. Case in point: The Shannara Chronicles.

The Shannara Chronicles: Not a Masterpiece, But Worth Your Time

Right off the bat, I’m not going to pretend The Shannara Chronicles is the gold standard of book adaptations. Some folks still call it cringey or mediocre, and, to be fair, I had that impression myself the first time round. But going back to it a decade later, it actually holds up better than I remembered. A bit underrated, if you ask me, even with its flaws.

In my case, I stumbled across the show as a teenager, after falling into another Lord of the Rings bender. If you’re after something with less intimidating lore and slightly lighter world-building than Tolkien, this one’s not a bad shout – especially as an on-ramp into the broader fantasy genre.

What Does Shannara Get Right (and Wrong)?

Of course, comparing it to Lord of the Rings is inevitable – Terry Brooks, who wrote the original Shannara books, has said Tolkien influenced his work. But that’s hardly a reason to skip the TV show. If anything, The Shannara Chronicles occasionally feels unsure about its target audience, and it takes more than a few liberties with its source material. That’s probably what stops it being an outright Lord of the Rings copy, for better or worse.

For all its wobbles, the show did manage to deliver a series of familiar beats fantasy fans expect: plucky heroes, good versus evil, weird creatures, quests to stop ancient demons from wrecking the place. Yes, the story is a bit standard and it slides into cliché territory, but let's be real – a lot of the time, that's exactly what you want with this sort of thing.

The real saving grace was the cast. On top of up-and-comers like Austin Butler, there were loads of fantasy staples involved:

• Manu Bennett (yes, Azog from The Hobbit)
• Ivana Baquero (Pan's Labyrinth)
• John Rhys-Davies (hardly a stranger to Tolkien land)

Admittedly, with only two seasons to its name, the series didn’t really get to spread its wings. It definitely had the potential to go further, but it ended up getting overshadowed by the big hitters of its era – think Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Lucifer, The Magicians, and a handful of others. Not exactly a level playing field.

Some fans refer to it as 'so bad it's good' TV. Personally, I reckon that's a bit of a stretch. If anything, watching it now just underlines how much promise was left untapped. It isn’t going to topple the fantasy greats, but it serves as a solid, enjoyable time-filler if you’re after heroic journeys and a healthy dose of nostalgia for early 2010s genre telly.

'It's a shame there isn’t more of the show out there, but for what it is, The Shannara Chronicles is still a solid bit of escapism for Lord of the Rings fans in search of their next adventure.'

I’ll keep crossing my fingers for another crack at adapting these books. In the meantime, the old MTV/Spike TV series will have to do.