Jeremy Renner reprises his role as the Avengers’ resident archer and family man Clint Barton, who finds himself training a protégée, Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), in hopes that he can take care of his latest crisis and get home in time for Christmas. But the six-part mini-series “Hawkeye” promises to be more of a grounded action-adventure, in the vein of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” (and with some of the same characters). The recent run of Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series have featured some real departures, with shows like “WandaVision,” “Loki” and “What If…?” sporting unusual narrative structures and stories that ventured into the more mystical areas of Marvel Comics. As with the books, the TV series is as much character-driven as it is lore-driven. “The Wheel of Time” starts as simply as the novels do: with the tale of the mystic Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) who helps a group of young people escape the shadow forces pursuing them, while knowing that someone in her charge may be their land’s long-prophesied champion in an ancient, eternally recurring battle against civilization-destroying chaos agents.

So if Amazon’s TV version of catches on, there’ll be enough story to tell to keep the show running longer than the “Game of Thrones” series and “The Lord of the Rings” movies combined. Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time” saga spans 14 fantasy novels plus various supplemental works, with the last of the books having been completed posthumously by the author’s colleague Brandon Sanderson.

Civilization game of thrones