The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin is heading to Amazon Prime Video in the United States on September 1, ending an eight-month wait for American fantasy fans who’ve watched the show succeed everywhere except the one country where its distributor, Daily Wire+, actually operates. Author Stephen R. Lawhead, whose novels the series is based on, confirmed the move himself: “This just in - and confirmed by the producer and one of the actors (see below). For those waiting on Amazon Prime USA, it looks like the wait is soon over.”
Rise of the Merlin premiered on DailyWire+ in January, a seven-episode adaptation of Lawhead’s Arthurian novels set in post-Roman Britain, following Merlin’s origin decades before Arthur’s birth. Executive producer Jeremy Boreing has said the show ran roughly seven figures per episode, eight figures overall for the season, by some reporting closer to $10 million minimum, making it the most expensive production Daily Wire has ever attempted. Boreing wrote and directed much of it personally, taking a leave from his role atop the company to do it. He has since stepped back from Daily Wire’s CEO chair entirely, exiting the company he co-founded in March 2025 to focus on creative projects, though Pendragon remains the signature work of that chapter.
The pitch behind the show was to prove that big-budget fantasy television doesn’t require the profanity, sexualized content, and grimdark tone that’s defined the genre since Game of Thrones redefined what prestige fantasy was supposed to look like. Critics who actually watched it, even ones skeptical of Daily Wire as a studio, noted the show pulled it off. The Hollywood Reporter, covering the split reaction to the show’s debut, quoted one viewer calling it a series with “a Christian vibe... but it does not hit you on your head with the Good Book,” while praising its production quality outright. The show holds an 88% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the value-focused review site Worth It or Woke called it “an ambitious and surprisingly solid fantasy series elevated by strong visuals, earnest storytelling, and an excellent Merlin,” pointing to Tom Sharp’s lead performance as a standout.
The show’s problem was never quality. It was reach. Daily Wire+ is a subscription service built primarily around political commentary and podcasts, not scripted drama, and most fantasy audiences simply never had a reason to sign up. Giant Freakin Robot’s coverage of the show’s international expansion put it directly: much of the entertainment press ignored Pendragon entirely because of who made it, and as of that writing the show still carried no critic score on Rotten Tomatoes at all, only an audience score, because critics simply didn’t review it.
That changed once Amazon Prime Video picked the show up internationally earlier this year. Once it reached UK, Irish, Spanish, and Portuguese Prime subscribers outside Daily Wire’s paywall, the show did what word of mouth does when a real audience finally gets access: it climbed. Data shared from the show’s own performance tracking shows Rise of the Merlin hitting No. 3 on Prime Video’s overall TV chart in both the UK and Ireland, sitting in the top five overall in both countries for eight straight days. In Spain it reached No. 4 among TV shows, charting for 18 days. In Portugal it hit No. 6 and was, as of the latest tracking, still climbing after 26 days on the chart. Actor Steve Varnom, part of the cast, posted in July that the show was “SMASHING IT in the UK and Europe.” Colin Cunningham, who plays King Vortigern, won a British Columbia Leo Award, the region’s equivalent of a Golden Globe, for his performance in the show’s third episode.
None of that international success solved the core financial problem: Daily Wire spent eight figures on a season of television and, for eight months, the only way to watch it in America was through a subscription service most fantasy fans had never considered. An American Prime Video release changes that math directly. It puts the show in front of the single largest English-speaking streaming audience in the world, on a platform people already pay for, with zero political friction required to hit play.
The timing lines up with a promotional rollout on Daily Wire’s side too. A new poster for a spinoff titled The Pendragon Cycle, featuring Myles Clohessy as Uther Pendragon, confirms a September 1 Amazon premiere date directly, meaning this isn’t just the original season migrating over. Daily Wire appears to be using the US Prime debut to launch expanded content in the same universe simultaneously, betting that a wider platform means a wider audience willing to follow the story past its first season.
Whether that’s enough to fully recoup an eight-figure investment remains to be seen. But a show that spent eight months proving its numbers only in Europe, while its own creator was locked out of the platform where most of his target audience actually watches TV, finally gets its shot at the audience it was built for.
Six books. One unforgettable world. The Adventures of Baron Von Monocle is steampunk adventure with the kind of worldbuilding and heart that made you fall in love with fantasy in the first place. Start the series on Amazon.
The series is fantastic.
The series was extremely poor. Its a dud.