Is The Rings of Power Finale Runtime Actually Two Hours?
And are we sure it's not a movie?
If you thought that Stranger Things went for a crazy runtime in season 4, then wait until you know that the rumored length of The Rings of Power finale is around 2 hours — which is just as long as an average feature film would take.
The impressive runtime has not been officially confirmed, but speculations emerged that the final episode will indeed be twice as long as an average episode. Usually, The Rings of Power episode would last around an hour, which, to be fair, is already long enough for a TV show.
"Some people have tried to reverse engineer the idea of this being a 50 hour story total and came up with the idea that this next episode would have to be something like 140 minutes. However, this is far from definitive. That's the only thing I've seen regarding runtime speculation," Reddit user CambrianExplosives noted.
No matter how long The Rings of Power finale will be, the eighth episode surely does have a lot of things to cover. Naturally, fans expect the season's biggest mystery — Sauron's identity — to finally be revealed, even if it happens in the very last moments of the episode. Among other things the show is yet to shed light on is the fate of Halbrand; the Southlanders whose homeland is basically gone; the Harfoots who have to deal with the aftermath of the massive fire inflicted by the weird creepy cultists... oh, and speaking about those — who even are they?
There is also a big possibility of the Balrog — who has been disturbed in episode 7 — to cause troubles for the Dwarves now that Durin and Disa seem to be aiming to covertly dig for mithril.
The number of things yet unknown is so big that even if the rumors about the two-hour long runtime of the finale are true, it might be just right for The Rings of Power to properly address all the storylines and establish a path for season 2.
The finale will arrive on Prime Video on Friday, October 14, premiering at approximately midnight, 12 a.m. (ET). The premiere date for the second season is yet to be scheduled, but the shooting process was reported to have already been started.