Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ On Prime Video, A Prequel That’s As Ambitious And Expansive As The Original

If it feels like it was a few eras ago that Amazon announced that it had bought the rights to Lord Of The Rings in order to create a new series. Since the 2017 announcement, there has been a lot of shows that have come and gone on all streaming services, new services introduced, and others either shrank or vanished altogether (RIP Quibi). Oh, and there’s that whole thing about a global pandemic changing our viewing habits. But Amazon’s new LOTR prequel is finally ready to debut, with a five-season commitment.

THE LORD OF RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Nothing is evil in the beginning,” says a voice as we see white-clad children playing. “When the world was so young there had not even yet been a sunrise. But even, then, there was light.”

The Gist: Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) is shown as a girl with her brother, then describes how Morgoth literally obliterated the light in their home of Valinor. An Elven army left Valinor for Middle-earth, detailing a centuries-long war that took thousands of Elven lives, including her brother. Her brother had the mark of Sauron on him, and despite the fact that it seems that the immediate threat to the Elven population is over, Galadriel is determined to go to extremes to find Sauron. After a pitched battle in a frozen cavern, most of her army abandons her.

When she finally returns to Lindon, she’s informed by her friend Elrond (Robert Aramayo) that she’ll be honored by High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), despite her defiance of his orders. At the ceremony, she learns that she’ll be sent to the undying lands of Valinor to live out an eternal life of peace. But she feels that she has unfinished business; Sauron is still out there.

Meanwhile, Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) an Elven soldier who is part of the contingent guarding the human settlement in the Southlands, is secretly in love with a human healer named Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi). With the war officially over, he’s supposed to return to Lindon after almost eight decades, but he defies orders and stays to be with Bronwyn, whose son Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) is hiding something that has the potential to turn the current peace upside-down.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Obviously, The Rings Of Power is comparable to the Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit movie trilogies; J.R.R. Tolkien’s LOTR appendices are the source for this prequel, which takes place thousands of years before the events of LOTR and The Hobbit, in the Second Age of Middle-earth.

Our Take: J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay are the showrunners of Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, the long-germinating series that was supposed to be Prime Video’s huge entry into the big-tent fantasy genre. Of course, a lot of shows have come and gone since then, but this was always going to be a highly-anticipated tentpole for Amazon, and it shows. The Rings Of Power has the scope and expansiveness of the other two trilogies, aided by Amazon-funded CGI and location shooting.

Whether this all really matters for non-genre fans out there is another matter. This series, which will play out over at least five seasons, takes place over thousands of years. There’s at least a dozen primary characters, and the first episode only introduces us to a handful of them and their stories. The stories themselves are relatively accessible; one involves an Elven warrior out for revenge and the defeat of the ultimate evil, and the other is about a forbidden love. There are other storylines that were touched in in the first episode, and those didn’t really develop beyond a scene or two.

In a lot of ways, The Rings Of Power is critic-proof: LOTR fans are going to watch it and either praise it or pick it apart, general fans of the fantasy genre will also tune in if the show is at all competent. And it seems that Payne and McKay have done a fine job of setting up a few compelling characters — especially Galadriel — without trying to lay out the entire story all at once. They know they have the time to do that and an audience that will go with them in whatever direction they want to take Tolkien’s characters and story.

But they also know that they have a binge-watching audience in front of them, so the first episode moves at a pace that’s somewhere in line with other recent hit fantasy series, from The Witcher to House of the Dragon to The Sandman. With the first episode, Payne and McKay do enough to rope in the non-genre fans who may not be overly familiar with some of the older versions of these characters, but it’s still to be determined if they’ve done enough to get them to keep watching.

Sex and Skin: Not in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After a meteor hits the Southlands, a Harfoot boy goes to the crater and sees there’s a naked body in the middle of it.

Sleeper Star: Markella Kavenagh plays a Harfoot named Nori Brandyfoot, who leads a group of kids out on a berry-gathering adventure, when she sees a wolf. We hope to see more of her and the Harfoot tribe, which is going serve as this series’ equivalent to the Hobbits.

Most Pilot-y Line: Arondir tells one of his buttinsky colleagues, “I think you talk too much, and you smell like rotten leaves.” We never thought rotten leaves were that bad of a smell.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power should satisfy LOTR fans and bring in non-fans with a relatively accessible story and some compelling characters to follow. In other words, it’s off to a good start, but there is plenty of time for it to either cement itself as one of the best fantasy shows ever or go completely haywire.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.e