Fourth Wing TV Series Cast: Violet, Xaden and What's Missing

The Fourth Wing TV series cast has two names so far: Esther McGregor as Violet Sorrengail and Emilio Sakraya as Xaden Riorson. Deadline, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter all reported it on October 15, 2026, and all three say Amazon or Prime Video declined to comment.

The headlines run ahead of that. Teen Vogue's share headline reads "We Officially Have a Violet and Xaden", while its own article says McGregor "has reportedly been cast". Deadline credits "sources close to production"; Variety says it "has learned". Two days later, the newest releases on Amazon MGM Studios' press site still had nothing on Fourth Wing casting. Three trades on the same afternoon is about as solid as an unofficial casting gets, so we'd plan around these two. We just wouldn't call it official yet.

Our Fourth Wing on-screen page now carries the casting reports next to the May series order, with every source dated.

Fourth Wing TV series cast: confirmed, reported, not announced

We sorted every fact by who says it. "Confirmed" means Amazon put it in a press release. "Reported" means trade press sources, with Amazon declining to comment.

Reactor's subhead for the casting story was "Important dragon casting yet to be announced," which is fair, since none of the reports attaches a voice or a name to a dragon.

Image: FaeShelf chart, from the linked trade reports and the Amazon MGM Studios release, checked October 17, 2026

The road here was long. Amazon MGM Studios "snapped up rights" to the Empyrean in October 2023, around the time Fourth Wing came out. The first showrunner, Moira Walley-Beckett, left in June 2025, and Meredith Averill took over that September. Prime Video ordered the series in May 2026, when Michael B. Jordan, whose Outlier Society is producing, announced it on stage at the Amazon upfront. Casting the leads took five more months.

Who Esther McGregor and Emilio Sakraya are

Esther McGregor, the reported Violet, starred in Prime Video's We Were Liars, and her film credits include Babygirl and Pedro Almodóvar's The Room Next Door. She's currently shooting Life Is Strange, also for Prime Video. So Amazon is casting from inside its own house.

Emilio Sakraya, the reported Xaden, has credits that include Peacock's Those About to Die plus Warrior Nun and Tribes of Europa, and he recently finished work on season 3 of Netflix's One Piece. Among fans, he "was a top choice for the role of Xaden Riorson." Teen Vogue quotes Yarros from 2025: "My biggest thing has always been, Xaden isn't white, and I need him to not be white on television." It also notes Sakraya is of Moroccan and Serbian descent, so that line from the author holds.

Neither is a household name, which looks deliberate. Jordan told the BBC in February that casting had to be "done the right way" so it "won't be distracting". Picking two actors who aren't megastars fits that standard.

How fans took the Fourth Wing casting

Badly, if you only read the loudest line. The top comment in r/Fantasyromance's casting thread, from u/JumpOk5721 (523 points, October 15), was a forecast: "Oh god the fouth wing fandom are going to hate this".

The dedicated sub came out much calmer. In r/fourthwing's casting megathread, the highest-voted reply, from u/faeontherun (187 points), asked people to remember "they are not in costume (hair, makeup, outfits) so don't be too quick to judge based off how they look off-screen !!!"

We counted the ten highest-voted top-level replies with text in that megathread on October 17: seven patient or happy, two disappointed, one joke. The doubt clusters on Violet. u/Vivid-Blackberry-321 (46 points) wrote "I actually really liked Esther McGregor in We Were Liars but…not seeing her as Violet." On the other side, u/Select_Piano3973 (69 points) went with "Emilio was who everyone wanted anyway, right?" and bet that with hair and makeup "Esther is going to kill it".

Image: FaeShelf chart, from the r/fourthwing casting megathread via the Arctic Shift archive, October 17, 2026

We side with the seven because nobody has seen a frame yet. There's no trailer, no costume photo and no reported filming date, so every verdict so far is about two headshots. The one complaint in the top ten that names a character is about Violet, and so is the next one down; nobody in those replies knocked Sakraya.

What to read before the Fourth Wing series

Read Fourth Wing, the first book. Back in October 2023, Amazon was developing "its first title, Fourth Wing" for TV, and the plan for later seasons is to adapt the rest of the novels if the show works. Nobody has said how much of book 1 season 1 covers, though.

You have time. With no filming start reported and no premiere date, there's no countdown to beat, so the Empyrean series page is the place to track the next book rather than the show. Titles and dates for books 4 and 5 still aren't announced; Threshing Day, the companion book of 13 short stories, came out in September. Whether the show uses any of those stories is still unknown.

On our scale, Fourth Wing sits at 4, from Common Sense Media's note of "a few fairly explicit sex scenes". What a Prime Video version keeps of that is anyone's guess; the producers haven't talked about it in any of the reports cited here.

GODEEPER: Threshing Day landed in September: does it go before Onyx Storm or after? Empyrean Series Reading Order →

Our take: what we'd do with the Fourth Wing TV series cast news

We'd plan around McGregor and Sakraya. Three trades with the same two names on the same afternoon, and no denial from Amazon, is enough for us. But we won't call it confirmed until Amazon, Prime Video or Yarros says so, and the on-screen page will flip the row from Reported to Confirmed the day one of them does. The list of what's missing is longer than the list of names: no supporting cast, no filming date, no premiere window. If you haven't read the series, that's your head start. If you've already finished Onyx Storm, the wait for book 4 is just as open-ended: no title, no date.

Related Reading

• Books like Fourth Wing: dragon riders and war colleges to read while the show films, split by what you loved.
• Onyx Storm spice level: how the heat changes by book 3, chapter by chapter.
• Romantasy series reading order guide: order, status and next dates for the big series.

References

• Deadline: 'Fourth Wing' Finds Its Violet & Xaden (October 15, 2026)
• Variety: 'Fourth Wing' TV Series Casts Esther McGregor and Emilio Sakraya (October 15, 2026)
• The Hollywood Reporter: Esther McGregor and Emilio Sakraya Cast as Violet and Xaden (October 15, 2026)
• Amazon MGM Studios: Prime Video orders Fourth Wing to series (May 11, 2026)
• Deadline: 'Fourth Wing' gets Amazon series order (May 11, 2026)
• Deadline: Meredith Averill set as new showrunner (September 24, 2025)
• Deadline: 'Fourth Wing' series from Amazon in development (October 30, 2023)
• Reactor: The Fourth Wing Series Has Found Its Violet and Xaden (October 16, 2026)
• Teen Vogue: Meet Fourth Wing Stars Esther McGregor and Emilio Sakraya (October 16, 2026)
• Common Sense Media: Fourth Wing
• Entangled Publishing: Fourth Wing
• r/Fantasyromance: Fourth Wing casting announcement thread (October 15, 2026)
• r/fourthwing: Violet and Xaden Casting Megathread (October 15, 2026)