Sophie Turner is officially strapping on the twin holsters and red shades as Lara Croft, fronting Prime Video’s new Tomb Raider series from Phoebe Waller-Bridge—and it already feels like one of those casting moves that’s going to dominate the discourse for months. The show is now in production, Prime Video has dropped a first-look image, and Turner is talking about Lara not just as an action icon but as the kind of “fierce female role model” she grew up with.​

Turner’s version of Lara Croft is being framed as bold, battle-tested, and very much aware of the franchise she’s inheriting. In the first-look image, she’s kitted out in a modern riff on the classic Croft uniform: shorts, tank top, thigh holster, backpack, and those unmistakable red sunglasses, all shot in a way that leans more into grit than glossy cosplay. Turner has called herself a longtime Tomb Raider fan and says Lara always felt like a powerful woman carving out space in a “male-dominated world,” which hints that this series is aiming for more than just puzzle-filled tombs and shootouts. Expect the character to be written less as a pin-up adventurer and more as a flawed, resilient professional who happens to also be able to sprint across collapsing ruins.​

Behind the camera, this is very much a Phoebe Waller-Bridge joint, which is where things get really interesting. Waller-Bridge is the creator, writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner, teaming with Chad Hodge, with Jonathan Van Tulleken directing and executive producing, so this isn’t a loose licensing deal—it’s a full-on author-driven reinterpretation of a gaming legend. Waller-Bridge has talked about Tomb Raider being packed with “iconic characters” and said she’s pulling in both personal favorites and fan favorites while also creating “new rascals” for the universe, which sounds like a promise of sharp dialogue, messy relationships, and morally grey rival treasure hunters rather than stock NPCs.​

Amazon MGM Studios clearly wants this to be a tentpole for Prime Video, not just a side project slotted between bigger franchises. The studio is calling out Lara Croft as one of the most “distinguished and legendary” video game characters and framing Turner’s take as defined by bravery, resilience, and determination. The series is also part of a broader Lara Croft strategy at Amazon that includes new games like Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst, with Crystal Dynamics and Amazon Game Studios pushing Lara into a new era both on consoles and in streaming. For fans, that means this show isn’t operating in a vacuum—it’s likely one pillar in a coordinated push to make Tomb Raider feel current again for a generation that might know Lara more from memes than memory cards.​

The cast around Turner reads like Amazon went shopping for “people who can class up your adventure series” and said yes to all of them. Sigourney Weaver is on board as Evelyn Wallis, a mysterious high-flyer who wants to exploit Lara’s talents, immediately signaling that the show is ready to play in that space where corporate power, old money, and ancient artifacts collide. Jason Isaacs joins as Atlas DeMornay, Lara’s uncle, which practically guarantees family secrets, old betrayals, and tense manor-house conversations between expeditions. Add in Martin Bobb-Semple as longtime tech ally Zip, Bill Paterson as Croft family butler Winston, and a string of new characters—from rival raider Lukas to competitive adversary Sasha and British Museum operatives who are more into champagne and preservation than climbing down into cursed catacombs—and you start to see how wide this world is meant to feel.​

Tonally, this Tomb Raider looks like it wants to sit in a sweet spot between pulpy Saturday-afternoon adventure and prestige streaming drama. Peter Friedlander, who oversees Amazon MGM Studios, is already talking about “bold storytelling” and “unforgettable characters,” which is studio code for: this won’t just be a level-to-level adaptation of the games. If Waller-Bridge brings even a fraction of the emotional whiplash and dark humor of Fleabag—minus the fourth-wall breaks—Lara’s missions could have as much tension in a cramped London boardroom or a family dining room as in a booby-trapped temple. The supporting characters’ descriptions alone—burnt-out officials, ruthless museum power players, illegal raiders with history—suggest a show obsessed with who profits from history and who gets buried by it.​

What makes this series particularly intriguing for long-time fans is where it lands in the broader evolution of Lara Croft as a character. The early Core Design and Crystal Dynamics games leaned into Lara as an impossibly composed icon; the more recent reboots reimagined her as a younger, rougher survivor thrown into trauma and tested to the limit. With Amazon’s show arriving alongside new games that promise a “charismatic, self-assured, formidable” Lara in the largest Tomb Raider world yet, the series has the freedom to cherry-pick from across the character’s history: some of the swagger, some of the vulnerability, and a lot of the archaeological obsession. That also means room to tackle questions that games only brush past—like the ethics of raiding tombs, the colonial baggage of digging up “lost” worlds, and what happens when one woman becomes the unofficial gatekeeper of so much buried power.​

For Sophie Turner, this is a decisive pivot into full-on action-hero territory at exactly the right moment in her career. After growing up on Game of Thrones and more recently headlining Prime Video’s thriller Steal, she’s already familiar to audiences as someone who can do ruthless, emotionally complicated leads. Taking on Lara Croft not only plugs her into a multidecade global brand, but it also gives her a role that can stretch across seasons, tie into games, and become a defining part of her post-Westeros identity. If the scripts land and the action looks as good as the early imagery suggests, Turner’s Lara could end up being the version that sits in people’s heads the way the original polygonal model and the early-2000s films did for earlier generations.​

Production is underway, and while Prime Video is still holding back specific plot details and release timing, the signaling is loud and clear: this is a big swing designed to reintroduce Lara Croft to the mainstream. Between Waller-Bridge’s creative control, a cast stacked with heavy-hitters, and Amazon’s parallel investment in new games with Crystal Dynamics, the franchise is being set up less as a nostalgia play and more as a full reboot of the Lara Croft mythology for the streaming age. For anyone who ever locked a training-level butler in the Croft Manor freezer or watched those early DVD adaptations on repeat, Sophie Turner’s Lara is shaping up to be the next definitive way into Tomb Raider’s world—only this time, the puzzles might be as emotional and political as they are physical.