The Rings Of Power Season 2 Will Address Fan Complaints?

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power executives listened to fans and will make changes to the series based on responses.

By Phillip Moyer | Updated

Rings of Power was a record-breaking series for Amazon Studios in more ways than one. It was the most expensive television series ever made, was viewed by more than 100 million people around the world, and helped Prime Video dethrone Netflix as the most-subscribed-to streaming service on the planet. However, that doesn’t mean that the series has no room for improvement — and according to ComicBook, Amazon Studios has looked to fans to find ways to improve the series. 

While certain types of fan feedback were… less than welcome, the studio’s head of global television reports that the creators of Rings of Power paid close attention to which elements of the show fans disliked. There were a lot of things that fans enjoyed, including the mystery surrounding the stranger and the nuanced portrayal of the Orcs. However, not everything was well-received.

According to Vernon Sanders, Amazon Studios’ head of television, they paid close attention to fan feedback after every Season 1 episode of Rings of Power. When looking at the reaction from thousands of Lord of the Rings fans, they found that some fans disliked the series’ divergences from the source material or its abbreviated timeline. 

Amazon Studios worked directly with the Tolkien Estate to make the adaptation faithful to the original works that it was based on. While the show takes place thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, the series’ appendices served as a major source for Rings of Power. Other works from J.R.R. Tolkein, such as The Silmarillion and the posthumously-published Unfinished Tales, also served as source material for the popular series.

However, despite the Tolkien Estate’s involvement, story events from across the thousands of years of Middle Earth’s history ended up getting placed closely together to help the story be told more smoothly. In spite of these adjustments made for simplicity’s sake, many fans felt that the story moved along at a slow pace, making Rings of Power more difficult to watch than its film counterparts.

With the production of Rings of Power Season 2 already underway, it’s not clear what changes the showrunners will be making with regard to fan feedback. However, it’s unlikely that a show would put that much energy into measuring the opinions of its fans without taking some of their criticisms under consideration. While remaining more faithful to the source material might be a difficult task, it would not be surprising to see an increased emphasis on pacing when the next season is released.

Of course, Rings of Power isn’t the only beloved fantasy series that Amazon Studios is working on. The studio has already completed one season of Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic The Wheel of Time, which was decently well-received, though nowhere near as popular as Rings of Power.

Filming for the second season of The Wheel of Time already wrapped, and the series has already been renewed for a third season despite the fact that season 2 has not yet been released on Prime Video.