Rings of Power: season three promises a ‘fresh start’ but there’s no such thing in Tolkien’s Middle-earth

Detailed summary

Prime Video’s high-budget series is turning a page, but it can’t escape Middle-earth’s ever-heavier load of canonical baggage

Rings of Power co-creator and showrunner Patrick McKay describes the third season, premiering this month, as a “turning [of] the page” for Prime Video’s high-budget Tolkien adaptation.

Season two ended with the Elven realm of Eregion in ruins and Sauron in possession of the Nine Rings intended for Men.

The new season picks up five years later, throwing viewers into a Middle-earth already at war, with Sauron working to forge the One Ring.

It was 1937 when J.R.R. Tolkien first published a story set in the fictional world of Middle-earth: The Hobbit. In the 90 years since, sequels, prequels, spin-offs and adaptations have proliferated.

Every new Middle-earth arrives on top of earlier books, films, performances, memories and fandom experiences.

As someone who researches online fandom, what interests me most about Tolkien adaptations is understanding how fans decide if they feel right.

Fans might compare characters with earlier versions, remember a passage from the books, notice that a place looks different, debate chronology, or decide something does or doesn’t “feel” like Tolkien.

A study of 1,000 prospective viewers of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) identified two major reference points for evaluation: Tolkien’s writings and Jackson’s previous films.

That doesn’t mean viewers are neatly divided into “book fans” or “movie fans”. It’s more about the weight viewers give these reference points when forming expectations.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Conversation AU. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.