Did The Rings of Power Fumble Its Release, or Just Set Itself Up for Success in Season 2? An Investigation

Of all the possible outcomes facing Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” the one I didn’t see coming is that I’d end up feeling a need to defend it. Basically, everything about the show’s production (i.e. a behemoth corporation spending unfathomable amounts of money on a blatant IP grab for a streaming service on the edge of relevance) represents everything I’ve come to loathe about the entertainment industry. The age of TV reboots seems almost quaint now, in this era of endless prequels and sequels to spinoffs of franchises. As the most expensive television series of all time (all! time!), “The Rings of Power” should by all rights be Enemy No. 1.  

And yet, on the eve of its first season coming to a close, all I can muster is a petty sort of confusion that the series isn’t half the pop culture monster it once promised to be. “The show’s good!” I keep yelling at no one in particular. “Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel rules!” I insist at the vocal Tolkien fans saying otherwise, reasoning that even elves are allowed to change over thousands of years when just weeks ago, I was rolling my eyes at the idea of caring about any more elves. “Did no one see the creation of MORDOR?” I lamented after the (literally) explosive sixth episode dropped, as unending “House of the Dragon” memes slam my timelines like the searing comets flinging out of Mount Doom (MOUNT DOOM!). This isn’t the first time I’ve been wrong about the level of enthusiasm that would greet a show (I was sure “The Queen’s Gambit” would be nothing more than a tricky “Jeopardy” question someday), but the degree to which “Rings of Power” has failed to permeate the public consciousness has nonetheless thrown me for a more serious loop than I’d ever expected. So what to make of “The Rings of Power” now that the first season of a planned five is out in the world, to the restrained tune of polite applause?  

Looking back, there are a few factors to point to for the muted reception. For one, the first two episodes making up the premiere were, unavoidably but unfortunately, heavier on exposition than action. For another, that pattern held up until the aforementioned sixth episode, by which point the show might’ve already lost enough of its intended audience to make a real difference. Week to week, “The Rings of Power” was serving up enough Tolkien tidbits and gold-spun lore to keep diehards interested, but perhaps was moving slowly enough that anyone else grew impatient with the story, let alone Amazon Prime’s (improved, but still) finnicky interface. (Episodes dropping on Fridays at midnight ET also might have contributed to the relative lack of social media discourse that “House of the Dragon” enjoys every Sunday night on HBO, though Amazon admittedly has a harder nut to crack on that front with its far more global rollout strategy.)  

Typically, I’m not one to advocate for this sort of “the first season is basically the pilot episode” approach, which many streaming services have used and abused with flaccid debut seasons for years now. As developed by showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, though, the show seems to be assembling itself piece by piece, slow but steady, in a bid to become the kind of sweeping epic people will someday watch in breathless marathon gulps. I’m sure Amazon would love it if their hundreds of millions of dollars had resulted in the kind of inescapable social media chatter or deep Reddit dives that “House of the Dragon” has been generating, however: there’s a decent chance that — at least narratively — “The Rings of Power” could win the long game, anyway. Having had to pitch five seasons at once, Payne and McKay have to rise to the challenge of building the kind of epic story Tolkien fans won’t just recognize, but will respect. Given how many characters, timelines, and corners of the world “The Rings of Power” is currently juggling, it’s inevitable that its initial outings would be heavy on the exposition as they set the stage for the immense battles to come.  

There is, of course, every chance that the show will not live up to its ambitions going forward and will instead collapse under the weight of them. The season finale can, and should, include some real answers to the show’s most burning questions (where is Sauron? What’s up with “The Stranger?” Do these mysteries have the same answer?) rather than tease them out much longer.  The second season, which is already written and has begun shooting, could render every word of this column moot if it doesn’t prioritize episodic urgency in a way the first didn’t. But in surveying the evidence of how Season 1 unfolded, I nonetheless will hold out hope that its better instincts will win out. Leaning into its existing strengths — clever dialogue, gorgeously filmed vistas and caves alike, Clark’s nuanced performance, and the tender bonds between unlikely pairs like elf Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and dwarf Durin (Owain Arthur) or Harfoot Nori ( Markella Kavenagh) and her magic stranger (Daniel Weyman) — should yield a winning, compelling story. The question is, just how many people does “The Rings of Power” have to compel in order for Amazon, “Lord of the Rings” fans, and the wary industry at large to consider it an actual win?  

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