Pendragon Cycle Hits Prime Video After the Paywall Dropped

The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin sat at No. 4 among all Prime Video titles in the United States by September 9, 2026. It was also No. 3 among TV shows and No. 1 in fantasy, per Amazon’s own badges. The seven-part series had been on DailyWire+ since January 22. The U.S. chart moved after Amazon opened the pipe.

Jeremy Boreing created the show, directed its first two episodes, and spent years trying to get Stephen R. Lawhead’s Arthurian books on screen. He left The Daily Wire in March 2025. The hit now lives on a platform that did not make it, while a second season sits in draft without a greenlight he can give.

Amazon Ranked a Show Daily Wire Already Made

The episodes streaming on Prime Video in the United States from September 1, 2026, are the same seven that DailyWire+ released in January. Prime Video also carries them in Canada from that date. DailyWire+ still lists the series. The rank is Amazon’s, because that is the catalog a general audience already pays for.

Boreing posted the U.S. snapshot on September 9: No. 4 overall and No. 3 among TV shows. Ben Shapiro, a Daily Wire co-founder and an executive producer on the series, wrote the same day that it was “the #3 TV series in the country.” Boreing Media’s press notes, checked on September 10, list those U.S. peaks plus peak ranks across six countries.

PRIME VIDEO PEAKS BY TERRITORY

Those U.S. figures are Amazon’s title-page badges and Top 10 rows. The other territories come from Prime Video daily charts via FlixPatrol between June 21 and September 9. Spain spent 44 days on the fantasy chart, longer than the U.S. sample had even existed.

Europe Had the Hit All Summer

Prime Video put the series in front of UK, Irish, Spanish, and Portuguese subscribers weeks before the American switch. It reached No. 1 among fantasy series in each of those markets. The UK peak among all titles was No. 3, with 38 days on the chart. That is the clean test. Viewers who had never heard of DailyWire+ still started the first episode.

Colin Cunningham, who plays King Vortigern, won Best Lead Performance in a Dramatic Series at the 2026 Leo Awards, British Columbia’s film and TV honors, for which his Canadian credits made him eligible. Boreing called the work a gravity that anchors the series. Cunningham said he was “more happy for the show” than for the statue, calling the Leo “legitimate industry recognition.”

Rotten Tomatoes still has no Tomatometer score. The audience meter sits at 84 percent. Mainstream critics mostly skipped it in January, when watching required a DailyWire+ login. The European Prime window, then the U.S. one, is what let people press play without buying a politics app.

FROM RIGHTS DEAL TO THE U.S. CHART

1. November 2022: The Daily Wire announces it will adapt Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle, calling the project its most ambitious to date.
2. July 2023: Boreing takes leave from co-CEO duties to write and direct; filming is set for Italy and Hungary.
3. September to December 2023: Production shoots on location, with Tom Sharp cast as Merlin from a self-submitted tape.
4. December 25, 2025: Episodes 1 and 2 go up early for DailyWire+ All Access members.
5. January 22, 2026: All seven episodes premiere on DailyWire+.
6. June 21 to August 2026: The series charts on Prime Video in the UK, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal.
7. September 1, 2026: Prime Video opens the U.S. and Canada window; by September 9 it is No. 4 among all U.S. titles.

January asked subscribers to add a whole platform for one fantasy show. September put the same show next to Reacher. The badge followed the second choice.

Jeremy Boreing Left Before the Hit Arrived

Boreing has said he first tried to adapt The Pendragon Cycle at 21, before he knew what an option was. Dallas Sonnier, who executive produces through Bonfire Legend, later described him as the showrunner, writer, and creative lead, the person who gave up the CEO chair to finish the shoot. The finished series is the swing that outlasted his job.

He stepped away from The Daily Wire in March 2025. In 2026 the company sold Jeremy’s Razors to Boreing Media, the independent shop he now runs with former Daily Wire president Jon Lewis. The press kit for Rise of the Merlin goes out under that new letterhead, even though Daily Wire still hosts the episodes and still owns the continuation question.

The audience for conservative filmmaking was never in doubt. People have always wanted stories about great ideas. Inheritance, memory, fidelity. Those are among the oldest subjects in drama, and they happen to be among the deepest conservative concerns. What Pendragon proved is how badly that hunger was being ignored.

Jeremy Boreing, creator and director, on the Prime Video run

The ignored hunger includes his former company’s own window. A DailyWire+ exclusive hid a genre show behind a pundit brand. Prime Video filed it as historical fantasy, 56 to 69 minutes an episode, 7 hours 27 minutes in all, and let it compete with everything else on the home screen.

Stephen Lawhead Built This Merlin in 1987

The series adapts the first two novels in Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle, Taliesin (1987) and Lawhead’s novel Merlin, published by Baen (1988). Arthur followed in 1989. Lawhead is credited as a producer. Baen reissued the books as the TV version approached, and he added a prequel, Aurelia.

His Britain is not Camelot plate armor. It is the island after the legions left, with Saxon war bands on the coasts and Christianity taking root among older gods. Merlin is the son of the bard Taliesin and Charis, a princess out of a sinking Atlantic kingdom. The press-kit logline is blunt: generations before Arthur, a boy born of two worlds becomes the man who will put a sword in a stone.

Tom Sharp, a British actor who sent in a tape without an agent, plays that Merlin across warrior, exile, husband, and prophet. Rose Reid is Charis. James Arden is Taliesin. Finney Cassidy and Myles Clohessy play Aurelius and Uther. Brett Cooper, the one Daily Wire face most subscribers would know, plays Ganieda, Merlin’s wife. Sharp has said shooting in Hungary and Italy “beats CGI and green screen every day of the week,” because the actors are “reacting off real things.”

That book-faithful, location-shot package is what Prime Video is selling. The Christian through-line is in the text Lawhead wrote in the 1980s, not a 2026 culture memo bolted onto a generic wizard show.

Seven Episodes, One Sword in a Stone

Boreing wrote and directed the first two hours. Jesse V. Johnson and Ryan Whitaker take later chapters. Kyle McCuiston wrote the score. The season is built as a closed seven-part series, not an open weekly drip, and it still stops before Arthur’s reign. The last image is the one every Arthur story leans toward.

THE SEVEN CHAPTERS ON PRIME VIDEO

• Island of the Mighty: Boreing writes and directs the opener, as Britain’s tribes slide into chaos and a found child is named Taliesin.
• The Vision of Taliesin: Boreing and Reid write the union of Taliesin and Charis, the match that will produce Merlin.
• A Fatherless Child: Johnson directs adult Merlin’s return from the wild, and Cunningham’s Vortigern, the hour that won the Leo.
• The King of Maridunum: Whitaker picks up after Vortigern’s fall, with Pascent and Hengist cutting a pact against Aurelius and Uther.
• The Price of Failure: Josiah Nelson’s script sends Merlin north for allies while Aurelius tries to hold a doubting war camp.
• Ganieda: Reid writes the backstory of Merlin’s marriage, kingship, and the break that unleashes his power.
• The Last True Bard: The finale, from Nelson, Whitaker, and Boreing, throws the British kings against a larger Saxon host and lands on the sword in the stone.

Lawhead’s later volumes, Arthur, Pendragon, and Grail, are still sitting on the shelf. The Prime Video season cannot use them without someone paying for another shoot.

Who Greenlights a Second Season Now?

Boreing said in March that a first draft of season 2 was already written, that the cast was ready, and that “there’s an enormous amount of story still to tell.” He repeated the draft-and-cast point as the U.S. Prime window opened. He has also said that two years earlier he could have greenlit the work himself, and that he cannot now. Daily Wire has not announced a renewal.

My beautiful friends (and my beautiful detractors!),

The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin is now #4 Overall and the #3 TV Show on Prime US.

I am filled with gratitude.

The cast and crew thank you all. So do I. pic.twitter.com/lrWU6idfGH

— Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing) September 9, 2026

WHAT WE KNOW

• The draft: Boreing says a first draft of a second season is written and the principal cast is willing to return.
• The books: The televised story has used Taliesin and Merlin; Arthur has not yet been crowned on screen.
• The window: The seven episodes remain on DailyWire+ and on Prime Video in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The buyer: No public deal names Daily Wire, Boreing Media, or Amazon as the financier of more episodes.
• The rights path: It is not public whether Daily Wire would produce in-house, license the continuation, or transfer the series to Boreing.
• The budget: Boreing put the first season at at least $1 million per episode and at least $10 million overall; no figure has been attached to a follow-up.

When Shapiro publicly congratulated Boreing and “the entire Daily Wire team,” the split was the subtext. One co-founder was applauding a chart for a series the other co-founder can no longer order. A second season is not waiting on proof of audience. It is waiting on whoever still holds the rights to spend again, after the first season’s audience finally showed up on someone else’s home screen.