Tolkien's Estate Let Amazon Create Rings of Power On 1 Strict Condition
Season 2 of Rings of Power is set for production after the first season which fielded mixed audience reviews.
Many fans accused the prequel of high jacking the Lord of the Rings franchise, saying the Amazon Prime Video series was essentially a mega-budget fan fiction. Because of the stipulations placed on the series by author J.R.R. Tolkien's estate, that's not far from the truth.
Prime Video announced the series a few years ago and when they were approved for production by Tolkien's estate, it came on one condition. It was not allowed to infringe on anything laid out in Peter Jackson's 2000s Lord of the Rings cinematic trilogy or the Hobbit franchise of the 2010s.
Still wanting to benefit from and add to the massively popular franchise, the streaming service set the series in Middle-earth's Second Age, almost two millennia before the Third Age popularized by the original LotR books and the Jackson films.
Tolkien wrote little of the Second Age, limiting our knowledge to small mentions in appendices and his Unfinished Tales. What we do know is that the Second Age lasted 3,441 years and was the period in which Sauron held power before being defeated. By the Third Age, the villain lived in spirit as a mysterious force of evil.
The creators of the series are J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who were excited to have such a wide net of stories to tell in an established world. They were not bound by particulars, as little of the Second Age has been touched on by Tolkien.
Tom Shippey, a scholar of Tolkien's works, said that the show has a lot of freedom because of the change in scenery, but it must not affect the established canon. Nothing can contradict Tolkien.
The series took a bit longer than expected to get off the ground after being green-lit by Tolkien's estate due to the COVID pandemic. It was expected for 2020, then again in 2021, before finally being released on Amazon's streaming platform on September 1, 2022. Due to the stipulations, few characters in the series are established from the original trilogy. However, fans would recognize Galadriel, Elrond, and Sauron, among others, whose races live far longer lives than those of Man.
Some fans were upset at the use of Tolkien's world to tell a new story in Rings of Power, but many others were excited to see what new tales can be told in the next season. Season 2 has been confirmed, expected for a 2024 release with speculation that it may be fast-tracked for 2023.