Tolkien purists, sheathe your swords. Or at least lower them long enough to admit what two seasons of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have quietly accomplished. Amazon’s Second Age epic set out to tell the story of the forging of the rings, the rise of Sauron and the slow corruption of Middle-earth’s greatest kingdoms. That is a story about seduction, and the series is at its best when it understands that evil rarely arrives with a sword. It arrives with a smile, a gift and a very good argument.
The ambition was never in question. Amazon reportedly paid about $250 million for the television rights and spent a reported $465 million on the first season alone, making it one of the most expensive shows ever made. Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay put that money on the screen. Season 1, which premiered in September 2022, gave us the gleaming island kingdom of Númenor, the Elven forges of Eregion and the cavernous Dwarf city of Khazad-dûm, a place so lived-in you can almost smell the stone dust. Prime Video says it was the biggest premiere in the service’s history.
A Villain Hiding in Plain Sight
The first season’s slow burn paid off in spades in its finale. For eight episodes, viewers were asked to guess which stranger was secretly the Dark Lord. The answer was Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), the rough-hewn, wounded charmer who had spent the season rescuing Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and flirting with redemption. The reveal reframed everything that came before. The man she trusted, the man she was drawn to, was the enemy she had hunted for centuries.
Season 2, which arrived in August 2024, sharpened the knife. Vickers returned as Annatar, the golden-haired “Lord of Gifts,” and wormed his way into the confidence of the elf-smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards). Their scenes together are the heart of the season, a two-hander about flattery, vanity and the terrible pleasure of being seen as a genius. Edwards plays Celebrimbor’s unraveling as a tragedy of pride. Vickers plays Sauron as a con man who half believes his own pitch. It is the best acting on the show, and it is the reason the season’s devastating siege of Eregion lands with such force.
Critics noticed. Both seasons are Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and Season 2 drew a stronger critics score than Season 1. Salon’s Melanie McFarland called it “the rarest of affairs: one we can give ourselves over to entirely.”
Dwarves, Wizards and a Little Bit of Whimsy
The show’s emotional anchor has always been under the mountain. Owain Arthur’s Prince Durin IV and Sophia Nomvete’s Princess Disa make up the warmest marriage in the franchise, a pair of bickering, devoted partners who feel like real people trapped in a legend. Disa’s “resonating,” a sung form of Dwarf magic used to coax secrets from the stone, is the kind of strange, lovely invention that justifies the whole enterprise. Nomvete, the first Black woman to play a Dwarf in a Lord of the Rings production, endured a wave of online abuse from fans who believed Middle-earth had a dress code. She answered it with the most charismatic performance in the ensemble.
Season 2 also had the good sense to go a little weird. Rory Kinnear’s Tom Bombadil, the singing, riddling forest spirit that Peter Jackson famously cut from his films, finally made it to the screen, and Kinnear plays him with a twinkling, slightly unhinged grace. The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), the mysterious man who fell from the sky in Season 1, finally named himself in the Season 2 finale. Gandalf. Fans had guessed, but hearing it still landed like a thunderclap.
A Slow Burn, by Design
Some viewers have complained about the pacing, and the Harfoot storylines in particular took their time. But the slow burn is the point. Like the early seasons of Game of Thrones, The Rings of Power spends its first chapters building character and laying foundation, introducing kingdoms, alliances and grudges that will matter when the war comes. No scene, word or action is wasted. The patience the show asks of its audience is the same patience Sauron uses on his victims, and by the time Eregion falls, every quiet conversation that came before it has become a fuse. It is unfortunate that some viewers did not stick around to see Annatar’s full corruption of Celebrimbor. It was a masterful study of hubris and its consequences.
There is also the score. Bear McCreary’s music, built around a main title theme by Howard Shore, the composer of Jackson’s films, gives the series a sweep that even its weaker episodes cannot spoil.
Season 3: Five Years Later
Which brings us to the anticipation. Season 3 premieres November 11, 2026, with four episodes, followed by two more on November 18 and the final two on November 25, according to Amazon. The story jumps five years past the fall of Eregion. Sauron’s armies have conquered nearly all of Middle-earth. The Dwarves are sealed inside Khazad-dûm. The Elven realms of Lindon and Rivendell survive under the protection of their Three Rings. And Sauron, holed up in his newly completed tower of Barad-dûr, is obsessed with the one ring that will bring his last enemies to their knees.
The new faces are juicy. Jamie Campbell Bower joins as Celeborn, Galadriel’s long-lost husband, a casting that promises to complicate her strange bond with Sauron. Eddie Marsan plays Thrain, Durin’s older brother. Zubin Varla is Khamûl, an Easterling of Rhûn, a name Tolkien readers will recognize as one of the Nine. Andrew Richardson plays Anarion, Isildur’s younger brother. And in the strangest true detail of the lot, Simon Pegg, of Shaun of the Dead fame, voices the Balrog, which will speak for the first time. The comedian as the demon of Moria. Only in Hollywood.
The latest trailer shows Sauron’s Ring-servants roaming the land, Gandalf working his persuasion in Rhûn and civil-war tension brewing in Númenor, where Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) sits on a throne he took from Queen Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). The stakes have never been higher, and the series has never seemed more sure of what it is.
Will Galadriel’s husband be a comfort or a complication? Can Durin and Disa hold the mountain? And how much of her heart did Galadriel leave with the Dark Lord she once called friend? Season 3 is where this show finally gets to answer the questions it spent two seasons setting up. The rings are forged. The villain has stopped hiding. Now the war begins.
Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres November 11, 2026, exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories, with new episodes on November 18 and November 25. All 16 episodes of Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming now. Learn more at primevideo.com.