The new Warhammer 40K television series is a balancing act. The universe is dense, the fans are demanding, and the tone is like nothing else on television. If Amazon gets it right, they’ll have something remarkable — a franchise that doesn’t just draw in viewers but dominates the cultural conversation. If they get it wrong, it’ll be just another bland sci-fi catastrophe, rejected by the fans before the end of the first season.
There is no space here for half-measures or fence-sitting desire to ‘enhance accessibility.’ The show must commit fully — to its tone, to its universe, and to the fanbase that has cultivated this universe for decades. This is not Marvel. It is not Star Trek. It is darker, weirder, and far more difficult to replicate.
These are the five things that they absolutely need to get right.
Respect the Source Material — Don’t Explain It
The Warhammer 40K universe needs no introduction. It’s not supposed to be easy or comfortable. It drops you into a galaxy of religious tyranny, endless war, and thousand-year grudges with no hand-holding. That’s not a negative. That’s the idea. The fans don’t need to have it explained to them. They need to be dropped in and have to fight and learn — the same way that every single individual who’s ever picked up a codex or novel has done.
Television shows tend to treat dense lore as something that needs to be explained to the casual viewer. But here, that would dilute exactly what it is that makes 40K work. You don’t need a voiceover to describe the Imperium. Just show it to us. A city where skulls are stuck in walls, civilians chant litanies as they scrub tank tracks, and a soldier is executed for praying incorrectly — that’s 40K. Don’t describe it. Depict it, and leave it alone.
New fans will catch up or they won’t, and that’s fine. This isn’t for tourists; this is for the people who already know and those who will listen and learn. Nothing will work against this series more quickly than patronising the audience like they’re ignorant. The 40K world is rich and complicated, so let it tell its own story. The lore doesn’t need to be dumbed down — it just needs respect.
Nail the Tone — No Quips, No Hope
Tone is where most adaptations fail. Warhammer 40K is not dark simply because it wants to be cool; it is a deep darkness from the understanding that everything has fallen into chaos and will never stop. It combines religious fascism, ancient alien terrors, techno-superstition, and militarised paranoia, all crashing into one disturbing tableau. If the show tries to assuage this burden with modern humour or emotional softness, it will necessarily fail to capture its full potential.
This is not a hero and villain world. There are no heroes. Even the alleged heroes — the Imperium of Man — are horrific. The everyday man exists in filth, dies in obscurity, and spends his short life praying to the corpse on the throne. You are not meant to sympathise with this. You are meant to be horrified by it. The writing, the direction, the pacing must all accommodate that level of brutality.
Most of all, it must avoid irony. The second a character delivers a self-aware gag or hurls a barbed remark at their surroundings, the illusion is shattered. It must be presented with utter seriousness. Look to Threads, not The Boys. Black humour in the world of 40K comes from the absurd rather than dissipating tension. If the series lacks the confidence to embrace its own insanity, then it’s not fit for this universe.
New fans will catch up, or perhaps they won’t; that’s alright too. This is not for tourists; it’s being written for people who already understand and for people who are prepared to listen and learn. Nothing will put this series into a tailspin quicker than insulting the intelligence of its readers. The 40K universe is complicated and rich, so allow it to tell its own story. The background does not require dumbing down; it simply needs respecting.
Start Small — One Warzone, One Story
The background of 40K is intentionally mind-crushing. There are thousands of factions, sub-factions, planets, wars, and timelines to work with, and attempting to pack too much into season one would be a certain recipe for disaster. Instead, the series should focus on one story, in one location, and tell it absolutely perfectly. Begin with a ruined planet, perhaps a siege of a hive city, or an Inquisitor launching an investigation. Something that, while contained, has profound significance.
There are numerous possibilities. A story set within the Astra Militarum, following the career of a regiment from recruitment to inevitable massacre, would be gritty and realistic. A political thriller set within the Adeptus Mechanicus would show the insanity of technological worship and cyber-religion. Or go the Eisenhorn way: a noir investigation from the point of view of an Inquisitor peeling away layers of corruption. All these would have the setting naturally revealed through the course of the story without exposition dumps.
By keeping the focus tight, the show can develop a consistent tone and appearance. The process also allows for the characters to breathe — something that’s generally not found within sprawling ensemble genre shows. Don’t bounce from planet to planet and plotline; don’t feel like you need to include every faction. Tell one story from beginning to end. If it succeeds, all the rest will be okay. The universe is large enough for that. But the initial season must remain intimate.
Use People Who Understand 40K
This is not a universe where you can simply fake it till you make it. It’s not sufficient to bring in a few consultants and peruse some wiki pages. To properly write and shoot this, you require individuals who already get the spirit of the setting — not merely its surface aesthetics but its underlying logic and contradictions as well. You require individuals who’ve spent years living in this universe, not days.
That doesn’t mean the show should be controlled by amateur enthusiasts with no background in screenwriting. But the creative team must also consist of both seasoned professionals and passionate fans. In adapting something as weird as Warhammer for television, you need to have individuals familiar with that weirdness — the ones who understand why a Guardsman would march into sure death without hesitation, or why a Tech-Priest mutters binaric prayers as he painstakingly welds a servo-skull.
Games Workshop needs to stay involved, but not as an overbearing presence — more like a quality guardian. They need to keep the lore consistent and the visual language true to the intellectual property, but the story must be in the showrunners’ hands. What we need is a team that has the freedom to innovate and the skill to do it properly. Make the balance incorrect, and you have fan service without substance or a good show that can’t contain the essence of 40K.
Make It Look Like 40K
Nothing else is important if the show doesn’t look right. 40K is one of the most visually distinctive sci-fi universes ever conceived. It’s not clean. It’s not sleek. It’s rotten, bloated, and visually cluttered. Everything is meant to intimidate, dehumanise, or horrify. A good adaptation must capture that in every frame. That requires serious investment in set design, costuming, and effects.
You cannot do this with generic props and green screens. You need hulking gothic architecture, enormous weapons, hulking armour that seems to weigh 50 kilos. You need environments that have a sense of age, as if they’ve been lived in for ten thousand years. If you cut back on this, the fans will notice immediately. Worse — the setting will no longer be distinct.
Forget minimalism altogether; 40K is anything but minimalist. A Bolter should be no larger than a toaster. A throne needs to be made out of a pile of skulls. A spaceship needs to look like a flying cathedral. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but that’s the point. Go all in on it. Exaggerate it to the extreme. Make it both grotesque and beautiful in equal amounts. That’s what is going to make this stand out from all the other sci-fi shows out there. If they don’t have that right, the rest of it doesn’t matter.
Victory Demands Fanaticism
Warhammer 40K cannot succeed by playing it safe. It can’t be emotionally warm, mainstream-friendly, or tonally ‘balanced’. It has to go all-in on why the setting is so great: the sadism, the perversity, the scale, and the utter commitment to its own craziness. Anything less, and it’ll fail.
There’s no compromise here. You do Warhammer 40K — or you don’t. Fans will feel the difference. Viewers will pick up the doubt. And once the faith is shattered, there’s no repairing it. Amazon and Games Workshop have only one chance to get it right.
So go all in. Make it unflinching. Make it merciless. And most importantly — make it 40K.
