Season 2 of Amazon Prime Video's 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' makes the cardinal mistake of assuming we care without doing any of the legwork to achieve that. Just as ‘House of the Dragon’ returned to our screens after its first season two years ago this June, the other major 2022 fantasy show ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ is now back for its second offering. While the wait for the second ‘House of the Dragon’ season was an agonising for fans, the watching experience itself of the first ‘Rings of Power’ season that was unfortunately equally painful.
Over eight episodes, the show lumbered through the history of Middle Earth in the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of the beloved original J.R.R.
Tolkien trilogy. For all the billions that Jeff Bezos was willing to throw at the project to bring the ‘Lord of the Rings’ intellectual property within Amazon’s coffers, little effort was made to craft an engaging dramatic story for viewers to care about. From a first glance at the opening episode of season 2, the same issue with the first prevails.
Once again, clear dramatic arcs, empathetic characters, and sharp dialogue have been placed second to glitzy visuals and deep lore dives. Right from the off, we have a flashback on how Sauron ended up on that raft in the ocean at the beginning of the first season. It’s the sort of deep-dive question that only a fan would care to know about.
The first season’s obsession wit.
