The Rings of Power review: an intoxicating return to Middle-earth

NOTE: This review contains spoilers for The Rings of Power episode 1.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was one of the most successful film franchises of all time, earning billions at the box office, winning 17 Oscars and very briefly making it cool to be a nerd.

Yet those movies barely scraped the surface of the vast world created by JRR Tolkien and over the next few weeks, we’ll be heading deeper into the fabled history of Middle-earth than ever before. The Rings of Power is one of the most eagerly-anticipated TV events of the year. 

Set 3,000 years before Frodo and his pals went searching for Mount Doom, this is a tale that charts the rise and fall of the ancient kingdom of Númenor and the forging of the rings of power. It's an epic origins story which lays the foundations for Tolkien’s most famous works. Essentially, Amazon has pulled all those meandering songs and footnotes most of us skipped through when reading the Lord of the Rings and splashed them across on a $500m canvas.

The result probably won’t appeal to anyone who isn’t already partial to this world, yet it should prove an intoxicating ride for anyone who is, as the series opens rich seams of previously untapped lore while addressing questions you never knew you wanted answering. Anyone who was disappointed to find The Silmarillion wasn’t quite The Lord of the Rings prequel they had been expecting, might find something closer to what they were looking for here…

The Second Age was an era of uneasy peace, yet memories of the last great war with Morgoth — and his servant Sauron — are never far away, meaning distrust and suspicion are still rife. Flying around the map of Middle-earth, as if by drone, is a great geographical reminder, but it also hints at some new politics to get used to.

We get our first glimpse of the sliding spectrum that exists between good and evil when we hear of regions where people were more sympathetic to the dark lord than elsewhere. It turns out that the hearts of men are easily corrupted...

Thankfully there are some familiar faces to guide us through these early exchanges, not least Lady Galadriel — a character played with elan by Cate Blanchett in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Rather than the stateswoman-like presence we saw in the films, this is a young and rebellious Galadriel who rails against the advice of her elders, like a college student home for Christmas.

Her hunt for Sauron in the icy Northern wastes is one of episode one’s highlights. It advertises the majesty and cinematic scope of Tolkien’s world, not to mention the previously uncharted kingdoms yet to be mined. (Dwarf-related pun very much intended.)

One untapped resource from Tolkien’s writings is undoubtedly Sauron himself who, other than a brief cameo in The Fellowship of the Ring, has never really appeared on screen before. “Nothing is evil in the beginning,” says Galadriel, but will we get to find out what he was? Let’s hope so.

Morfydd Clark is a great piece of casting as the young(er) Galadriel and she shows real chemistry with Robert Aramayo, who plays Lord Elrond. Like a pair of cousins who’ve shared centuries of history together, they form an early cornerstone of the series. The Harfoots provide another.

While the affairs of the world’s big people are fascinating, it’s these bucolic nomads who provide the show’s heart, sit at the center of the story and prove they're an essential ingredient in any Tolkien saga. We can’t help but feel that like their hobbit descendants, the time will soon come when they shape the fortunes of all.

With a budget that would dent the pocket of Smaug himself, The Rings of Power also has the honor of being the most expensive TV series of all time (for context, Game of Thrones cost a modest $15m per episode by its final series). Expectations were always going to be high for the season premiere and Amazon’s ambition for the project is clearly even higher.

Peter Jackson’s film trilogies began small before slowly encompassing the whole of Middle-earth, yet with a cast list as long as Gandalf’s beard, this series has a lot of people to meet in its early chapters. The opening episode wisely concentrates on a select few characters, yet the story-telling burden could grow increasingly stretched and diluted as more and more story arcs are thrown into the mix. The trouble with a new world is that it must be built before the audience explores it.

With so much plot to unload and so many communities to introduce, the pilot is essentially a spectacular piece of exposition. We don’t even meet The Stranger, one of the most mysterious and discussed characters of the series, until the second episode. With The House of Dragon striking a ferocious first blow in this month’s fantasy face-off, beginning with a double-bill certainly feels like the right call. 

New episodes of The Rings of Power air every Friday on Prime Video.

More LOTR: The Rings of Power

• How to watch The Rings of Power
• The Rings of Power premiere: eight burning questions we need answered
• Meet The Rings of Power cast: who are the major players in the LOTR prequel?
• Morfydd Clark — things you didn’t know about the actress playing Galadriel in The Rings of Power
• Sophia Nomvete hails the first female dwarf as a 'magical moment' for Tolkien fans