The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power | Image: Prime Video
Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings series finally has a name, and it’s a damned good one.
Set during Second Age, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will tell the story of how the titular rings of power were first forged and divvied up amongst Middle-earth’s races. The new series’ title — along with a forging-focused teaser video — allude to how the rings’ creation were both tied to the reemergence of a long-dormant evil in the world and to the subsequent hardships that the world’s men, elves, and dwarves would end up facing in the future.
In a press statement about the series and its title, co-showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay said that their desire was to come up with a title that “could live on in the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics.”
“The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliances of Elves and Men,” the pair explained. “Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring — but before there was one, there were many… and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.”
While The Rings of Power certainly has all the makings of being the sort of big-budget prestige fantasy that fans of the genre might want to tune into weekly, this series in particular is likely going to live and die by its ability to actually expand upon The Lord of the Rings lore in ways that feel essential and complementary to the canon.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season one hits Prime Video on September 2nd, with new episodes dropping every Friday.