Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power arrived with a ridiculous amount of hype, promising a return to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth with a billion-dollar budget and no expense spared. The result, sadly, was somewhat anticlimactic.
It’s not that The Rings of Power was outright bad, but its characters and storylines failed to hold audiences’ attention and The Hollywood Reporter recently revealed that by the time of the finale, 63 percent of those that’d tuned in for the premiere had abandoned the show.
All of this means that season 2 could be make or break, so hopefully it’ll have learned the lessons of the past. For example, Galadriel star Morfydd Clark teased that The Rings of Power is finally going to debut… the Rings of Power. as she revealed at the series’ FYC event, via Deadline.
“She’s about to have a life-changing thing happen to her. She’s about to become acquainted with Nenya, her ring. It’s really exciting to see how the magic creeps in.”
And as for her overall arc?
“She’s trying to see the light through the darkness.”
Cryptic! Let’s hope that season 2 starts with a bang, and is a substantial improvement on what came before.
The eight-episode season has been filming in the United Kingdom since October 2022, though recently hit a speedbump as the writer’s strike means showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have had to step aside and let the executive producers call the shots. Fortunately, there are just 19 days of filming remaining, but even so, this isn’t ideal.
Once the shoot is over the show will enter post-production, with a substantial amount of VFX work to be completed. The Rings of Power season two will premiere on Prime Video in 2024, likely around the same September release slot the first season debuted in.