Spoiler Warning: Spoilers are present for The Rings of Power Season 1 and the trailer for Season 2.
I was one of the folks back in 2022 who generally enjoyed The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I think I even named it my favourite series of the year – despite there being plenty of competition for that award! But I also noted some weaknesses, both narratively and on the production side of things, and at the end of the day, I felt there was still work to do for the series to justify its frankly insane billion-dollar price tag.
That’s where I start as I look ahead to The Rings of Power’s upcoming second season. But there are a few other considerations before we dive head-first into the meat of the recent teaser trailer and begin to wonder about storylines and set-piece battles! In this piece today, I want to consider The Rings of Power Season 2 not only as a standalone work, but also as one piece of an expanding “Tolkien-verse,” which will soon include an animated film, a new film based around Gollum, and another currently-untitled film.
The Rings of Power was not well-received in its first season, and Season 2 has the difficult tasks of winning back viewers who were left disappointed, convincing those who drifted away to give it a second chance, and also bringing on board new viewers who either missed out last time or weren’t even convinced to press play. None of that will be easy, and while behind-the-scenes changes could’ve provided The Rings of Power with a soft reboot of sorts… none of that was readily apparent to me in the recent teaser trailer. If viewers want simply “more of The Rings of Power,” then that’s good news. But if the show, as has been reported, lost two-thirds of its audience over the course of a truncated first season… I don’t see how “more of the same” will be of any help.
I’ve discussed this before – thanks to another Amazon Prime Video series, by coincidence – but the huge gap of two years in between such short seasons of television is something that The Rings of Power could’ve done without. I was a fan of Season 1, as previously stated, but even I’m having a hard time recalling the details of what happened last time, as well as the names of characters, where everyone ended up, and just the overall state of Middle-earth as the credits rolled. This isn’t a problem unique to Amazon by any means, as it’s something many streaming productions have struggled with. But it simply must be a priority to ensure that Season 3 is produced much more quickly. Were there problems beyond Amazon’s control this time? Sure: pandemic restrictions in New Zealand and a strike by writers and actors surely had parts to play. But waiting two full years for eight episodes of television is unacceptable – and it will cause actual harm to The Rings of Power as it tries to pick up where it left off.
Let’s talk briefly about where The Rings of Power might fit in an expanding streaming television marketplace. When the series was commissioned, Game of Thrones was approaching the end of its run, and Amazon may have expected – wrongly – that its series would have the high-budget high fantasy space all to itself, at least on the small screen. That hasn’t happened, with Netflix’s The Witcher, HBO’s spin-off House of the Dragon, and several others offering something similar. And now, following the passing of Christopher Tolkien – who had guarded his father’s estate quite vociferously – there are even other competing works being produced out of JRR Tolkien’s stories.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an animated film that’s currently set to premiere later this year, and just last week we got the announcement from Warner Bros. of two new live-action films: one focusing on Gollum, to be directed by Andy Serkis, and another untitled film. Both will be produced by Peter Jackson, who directed The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
Not only does The Rings of Power not have the high fantasy space to itself, but it’s also in direct competition with other works set in Middle-earth thanks to these new films. If Season 3 is slow to enter production and targets a 2026 release date, it could come up against Serkis and Jackson’s Gollum film. While I’m somewhat sceptical of a film focusing so heavily on Gollum – particularly in light of the disappointment of the Gollum video game last year – bringing back Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis is sure to pique the curiosity of fans of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s certainly got me interested!
None of this is to say that The Rings of Power can’t peacefully co-exist with all of these productions – in Middle-earth and beyond. There’s a market for fantasy on television, and most of the projects we’ve been talking about have their own weaknesses, too. But what it does do is muddy the waters, meaning it’s going to be tough for The Rings of Power to truly stand out.
When Amazon was negotiating with the Tolkien estate prior to The Rings of Power being commissioned, I can’t help but feel that the wrong decisions were taken. Although this may be controversial, in my view it would’ve been better to re-tell the story of The Lord of the Rings instead of trying to create a prequel from the book’s appendices. Re-making such a popular story less than twenty years after the films had been produced would have drawn a lot of criticism – but The Rings of Power caught that anyway, and at least if the series had been re-telling The Lord of the Rings, the story itself would’ve been built on firmer foundations.
That’s all for the birds now, of course, but as new Middle-earth films are being created, set in and around the time of The Lord of the Rings, I don’t think that the comparison they present is a favourable one for The Rings of Power. Ask 100 Lord of the Rings fans whether they’re more excited for the next season of this series or War of the Rohirrim and the Gollum film… and I think you and I both have a good idea about which way that survey would go!
I’ve had a little time to sit with the trailer for The Rings of Power Season 2, and I’ve given it a couple of re-watches to see if I missed anything interesting. We’ll set aside concerns about the long wait, other fantasy shows, and Amazon’s management of the project and take a look at the trailer now. As always, I encourage you to watch the trailer for yourself if you can – it’s available on YouTube at time of writing, and I assume it’ll be somewhere on Amazon Prime Video, too. I’ll drop a link to the trailer at the bottom of this article.
My two biggest takeaways from the trailer are as follows: first, “more of the same.” In terms of costumes, characters, and visual effects, The Rings of Power Season 2 looks remarkably similar to Season 1 – or at least to my two-year-old recollections of Season 1! As discussed above, I think that in itself could be a serious hurdle for a series whose first season was not especially well-received. This trailer is going to be most folks’ first look at The Rings of Power in close to two years, and if that’s the main impression most people get… I’m not sure that bodes well for bringing back wayward viewers.
Secondly, I was struck by the absence of several key characters from Season 1 – characters that we know to be returning in some capacity this time around. Their absences could be hiding spoilers, they could be held in reserve for a future trailer, or the post-production work on those scenes and sequences could be unfinished. But I also wonder whether the proto-Hobbit Harfoots and the humans of the Southlands may be taking on less of a prominent role this time around.
We did get a very brief glimpse of the Stranger – the wizard character whom many are assuming to be Gandalf – seemingly performing some kind of magical spell. I’ve had a theory for a while that the Stranger may, in fact, turn out to be another wizard like Saruman; this would be a different outcome to what many viewers seem to be expecting! But the Stranger was barely glimpsed in this trailer, which could also suggest that his role is going to be less significant this time around. I’m not always in favour of writers and artists making big changes to their work based on complaints, but the Harfoot-Stranger storyline was probably not the most well-received in Season 1, so scaling it back could make sense… if indeed that’s what’s happened.
The Dwarves and Elves both seem to be aware of Sauron’s rise, and we saw several clips that could all be from the same battle – or that could be from different fights spread across multiple episodes. One clip appeared to show siege weapons being deployed against a city. Battles in Middle-earth have usually been fun to see on screen – though the titular Battle of the Five Armies in the final part of The Hobbit trilogy was, I would argue, over-stretched and a bit of a mess in terms of some of its CGI. But after Season 1 had ended without a full “battle episode,” it could be fun to have something like that this time around.
We saw most of the main characters, but one character pairing that was missing from the trailer was that of Elrond and the Dwarf prince Durin. These two characters were great together in Season 1, and their dynamic did a lot to bring some of the otherwise heavy stories down to earth. While it’ll be great to see different character groupings in Season 2, and to give the likes of Elrond and Galadriel more screen time together, I hope that doesn’t come at the expense of the wonderful “bromance” between Elrond and Durin that was built up in Season 1.
Season 1 hinted at the fate of Numenor and its people – destruction by a massive tidal wave/flood. Whether that will actually happen in Season 2 wasn’t clear, but with the action potentially returning to the island after Numenor’s excursion to the mainland, I think it has to be a possibility! I didn’t see a lot of Numenor in the trailer, but there did seem to be one interesting clip involving a character I didn’t recognise disembarking from a large Eagle. Does that mean that Tolkien’s somewhat notorious Eagles will be in play in Season 2? That could certainly shake things up!
I can’t help but wonder whether the scene showing what we assume to be Sauron meeting the ring-maker Celebrimbor is actually a flashback. In Tolkien’s original works – which The Rings of Power has diverged from already, I should note – it was Sauron who taught the Elves how to make magical rings, so showing this as a flashback could work. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% convinced of that, but it’s certainly an interesting possibility, and a way to bring the series more in line with The Silmarillion and Tolkien’s own stories.
There were two creatures/monsters that I didn’t recognise: one that seemed to be comprised of wriggling worms or tentacles and another that resides under the sea. Both of these could be great fun as threats/antagonists, and I look forward to seeing what the series will do with them. In terms of visuals, both looked great – and while they’re CGI creations, they were well-integrated with the sets and characters around them. When looking at video that has been compressed for YouTube, it isn’t always easy to tell how good or bad a CGI moment might look – but these seem to be on the right track, at least.
Although we couldn’t see what caused it, some disaster appears to befall the Dwarves at their underground home, with damage raining down on a Dwarven bridge. The theme of this season could be the tearing down of the existing power structures in Middle-earth, with our main characters needing to leap into action to save what they can and prepare to rebuild what’s going to be lost.
The soundtrack to the trailer seemed to be solid. Music in Season 1 was generally pretty good – and the song This Wandering Day in particular was exceptional. With composer Bear McCreary returning to compose the soundtrack this time, I think we can expect more decent music. Visually, as noted I didn’t really feel that any of the CGI/VFX were sub-par. Nothing really leapt out at me as being visually stunning or groundbreaking – but again, a short trailer made for YouTube won’t necessarily give you that!
So that’s my look ahead to The Rings of Power Season 2, which will be on our screens at the end of August. Although it feels like spring has only just sprung, August and September will be upon us before we know it – so there really isn’t that long to wait! I’m debating whether or not to re-watch Season 1 before Season 2 gets here just so I’m caught up and ready to go. When the season arrives, I’ll do my best to share my thoughts and opinions here on the website, so I hope you’ll join me for that.
Despite some issues, I’ll end by saying that I’m generally looking forward to the return of The Rings of Power, and I’m crossing my fingers that the series can build upon the genuine successes of its first season. There should be opportunities to learn from what worked and what didn’t last time around, and perhaps to hone and refine things a little. That’s not really the impression I got from the way the trailer was cut… but here’s hoping!
You can watch The Rings of Power Season 2 trailer on YouTube by clicking or tapping here.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 will premiere on the 29th of August 2024 on Amazon Prime Video. Season 1 is available to stream now and is also available on DVD. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is the copyright of Amazon Prime Video/Amazon Studios and New Line Cinema. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 