The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power arrived on Prime Video on September 1, 2022, with the weight of a billion dollars and the whole of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Second Age on its back. Amazon acquired the television rights from the Tolkien Estate in November 2017 and committed to five seasons for at least US$1 billion, which would make it the most expensive television series ever made.
The show is developed by J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay, produced by Amazon MGM Studios with New Line Cinema, and set thousands of years before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is not a continuation of Peter Jackson’s trilogies. It is an attempt to bridge the appendices with original material.
Trailer, via Prime Video.
Galadriel and the Second Age
The premise is the selling point and the problem. Tolkien’s Second Age spans thousands of years. The series condenses it. Morgoth has fallen; his lieutenant Sauron rises as a new Dark Lord; the Rings of Power are forged; Númenor, the island kingdom of Men, falls; and Elves and Men form a last alliance to defeat Sauron.
That is a lot of history, and the show has twenty-four episodes across three seasons to hold it. The first season runs eight episodes, filmed in New Zealand with a large international cast.
Morfydd Clark plays Galadriel, and Robert Aramayo plays Elrond. Both are younger versions of characters who appear in Jackson’s films, and that is deliberate. The producers meant to evoke the films through similar production design, younger versions of film characters, and a main theme by Howard Shore, who scored both trilogies. Bear McCreary wrote the original score. Per Amazon’s deal with the estate, the series is not a continuation of those films. The intent to echo them anyway is the tell.
A Cast Built for a Map
The ensemble is enormous by design. Owain Arthur plays Durin IV, Sophia Nomvete plays Disa, Markella Kavenagh plays Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot, and Ismael Cruz Córdova plays Arondir. The characters include Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Harfoots, the last being precursors to the Hobbits. The synopsis promises the Misty Mountains, the forests of Lindon, the island kingdom of Númenor, and the furthest reaches of the map.
That sprawl is the show’s method. Amazon announced its main cast in January 2020, including Nazanin Boniadi, Tom Budge, Ema Horvath, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, and Daniel Weyman. In December, twenty more names followed: Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Maxim Baldry, Lenny Henry, Peter Mullan, Lloyd Owen, Benjamin Walker, and others. Baldry, Owen, and Walker play Isildur, Elendil, and Gil-galad.
The production kept recasting. Budge revealed in March 2021 that Amazon decided to recast his character after filming several episodes; Charles Edwards replaced him that July. Boniadi chose not to return for season two, and Bronwyn was not recast. Sam Hazeldine replaced Mawle as Adar in early December 2022.
What the First Season Gets Right
The Rings of Power looks like the most expensive television series ever made, because it is. The production design echoes Jackson’s Middle-earth by design, and the Shore theme is part of that intended echo. Clark’s Galadriel is the spine of the thing: a warrior before she is a wise woman. That is a reading of the character at this point in the timeline, and it is the paper’s. Aramayo’s Elrond is softer and more political.
The Harfoot storyline is the season’s biggest gamble, in this paper’s view. The Harfoots are precursors to the Hobbits, which means they ask the audience to invest in a race that does not exist yet. It works more often than it should. Kavenagh plays her with a stubborn curiosity that earns the screen time. The Dwarves, led by Durin IV and Disa, give the show its best domestic register.
Where the Billion Dollars Show
The money is visible in the wrong places, as this paper sees it. The series condenses thousands of years of Tolkien’s history into a short period, and the seams show. Kingdoms that Tolkien spread across ages arrive on the series’ shortened clock. When a show spends this much, every cut is a decision, and some of these decisions flatten the Second Age into a season of television rather than letting it breathe.
The cast churn does not help. Recasting a character after several episodes have been filmed is a production reality, not a creative one, but it leaves a mark on the screen. The second season features a different Adar and no Bronwyn, plus new cast members including Gabriel Akuwudike, Yasen “Zates” Atour, Ben Daniels, Amelia Kenworthy, and Nia Towle. A show this expensive should not feel like it is still assembling itself in public.
Beginning in a time of relative peace, we follow an ensemble cast of characters as they confront the re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.
That is the official synopsis, and it is accurate. It is also the problem. “The re-emergence of evil” is a premise, not a story. The Rings of Power has the premise and the budget and the cast. What it needs, in this paper’s view, is the patience to let Sauron be a person before he is a symbol.
Sauron, Númenor, and the Long Game
The Second Age material is genuinely great, and the show knows it. Sauron’s rise, the forging of the rings, the fall of Númenor, the last alliance — these are events Tolkien sketched and never dramatized at length. That is the opportunity. A series that treats the appendices as an outline rather than a constraint could be extraordinary. A series that treats them as a checklist will not be.
Three seasons and twenty-four episodes in, this paper’s verdict is that the show is still closer to the checklist than the outline. It hits the beats. It stages the kingdoms. It introduces the players. What it has not yet done, in our reading, is make any of it feel inevitable. The fall of Númenor should land as a tragedy the audience feels coming. On the evidence of what has aired, it reads as a plot point on a map.
The Comparison Jackson Invites
The comparison to Jackson is unavoidable and the show invites it. Younger versions of film characters, the same production design language, Shore’s theme. But Jackson directed The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) trilogies, and Payne and McKay have a five-season commitment and an entire age. The scale that makes The Rings of Power possible is also what makes it hard to hold.
The Verdict on Middle-earth’s Second Age
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a serious, expensive, often beautiful attempt at something no one had tried before. This paper’s verdict: it is not a failure. Clark and Aramayo are good. The Harfoots are good. The Dwarves are good. The production is frequently stunning. But the show is not yet great, and the gap between what it costs and what it achieves is the whole story.
The strongest argument for the series, as we see it, is that it exists at all. Tolkien’s Second Age was, in this paper’s reading, a timeline rather than a narrative, and someone had to build the bridge. Payne and McKay developed it. Whether they can walk across it is the open question. Three seasons in, they are still on the bridge.
The weakest argument is the one the show keeps making for itself, in our view: that scale is the point. It is not. The most expensive television series ever made is still a television series, and television lives on character, not on budget. The Rings of Power has the characters. It has the cast. It has the source material. What it has not yet proven, to this paper, is that it knows which of those matters most.
This is the part worth watching, as far as this paper is concerned. Not the money, not the map, not the rings. Whether the show can slow down long enough to let Sauron be a person, Númenor be a place, and the Second Age be a story rather than a schedule. If it can, the at-least US$1 billion commitment will look like a bargain. If it cannot, it will look like what it is: a very expensive outline.
Metacritic score: 71/100 (7.1/10)
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