Before ‘Wednesday,' Its Co-Creators Made This Austin Butler Fantasy Series That Was Ahead of Its Time

Before Wednesday turned Jenna Ortega into a goth icon for the TikTok era, creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millarwere busy unleashing something far stranger onto TV screens: The Shannara Chronicles. Based on a series of novels by Terry Brooks, the show was a dystopian fever dream that took Lord of the Rings fanfiction and gave it a CW-sized production budget. Set in a post-apocalyptic Earth where elves wear thigh-hugging leather, demons roam free, and magic is both extremely real and an extremely melodramatic plot point, The Shannara Chronicles was MTV’s bold, sometimes baffling, and deeply earnest attempt at prestige fantasy in 2016. It had Tolkien-coded characters styled like Hot Topic models. It was Game of Thrones, but everyone has a Korean skincare routine and a teenage love triangle to navigate. It was, as one keen-eyed Reddit user observed, “Middle-earth, 90210.”