Amazon’s The Rings of Power arrived under intense scrutiny. It bore the burden of following Peter Jackson’s acclaimed films while also introducing audiences to a lesser-known period of Middle-earth history. What emerged was a series that walks a strange line. It feels both like a prequel to Jackson’s trilogies and like a full-scale reboot, reshaping familiar characters and lore into something different. This article unpacks why that is.
A Story Set Millennia Before, Told With Familiar Echoes
Although The Rings of Power is set in the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, its presentation often feels as though it is gearing audiences up for those stories. This is partly due to deliberate creative choices:
- Galadriel, Elrond, Sauron, and Isildur are all characters who appear in Jackson’s adaptations, providing a sense of continuity.
- The show’s opening voiceover, sweeping New Zealand landscapes, and Howard Shore’s musical contributions directly invoke the cinematic language of the earlier films.
- Visual design choices—such as the architecture of Númenor or the costuming of the Elves—borrow heavily from Weta Workshop’s designs, reinforcing visual continuity.
All of this gives the impression that we are being shown the origin story of what we already know, even though the source material and timeline demand a broader canvas.
Canonical Compression and Reimagining
The series compresses thousands of years of history into a single narrative timeline. While necessary for television storytelling, this decision places disparate events and characters into direct contact that they never had in Tolkien’s writings. The result is a kind of narrative shorthand, borrowing the structural feel of a prequel but also reinventing key elements:
- Elrond and Durin’s friendship becomes a major arc, though it was not described in the source texts.
- The forging of the rings is brought forward, overlapping with characters and conflicts that in Tolkien’s lore occurred centuries apart.
- The Harfoots, an invented proto-Hobbit culture, are introduced to maintain a link to the light-hearted spirit of the Shire, even though Hobbits are not central to the Second Age.
These choices reframe the Second Age in a way that feels more digestible for viewers familiar only with the films, but they also reshape the mythos significantly.
A New Tone, A New Cast
The casting and characterisation choices also contribute to the feeling of a reboot. Galadriel, for instance, is reimagined as a warrior, vastly more active and confrontational than the ethereal ruler seen in Jackson’s films. The portrayal of Sauron as a charming and conflicted figure departs from the more impersonal, looming evil seen previously. There is a clear effort to reintroduce the world through modern storytelling lenses, where character arcs are more emotionally driven and moral ambiguity more pronounced.
This retooling of tone makes the series more accessible to new viewers but can jar those deeply familiar with Tolkien’s more mythic, detached style of narration.
Rights, Restrictions, and Creative Gaps
One practical reason for this dual identity is the show’s rights limitations. Amazon holds the rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but not to The Silmarillion or other posthumous works by Tolkien. This has forced the writers to create storylines based on appendices and vague references, requiring original invention within Tolkien’s framework.
This gap has contributed to the feeling of a reboot. The writers are effectively reconstructing a version of Middle-earth that is inspired by, but not strictly bound to, Tolkien’s vision. The result is something that visually and thematically nods to what came before, while narratively building something new.
The Seven Swords takeaway
The Rings of Power feels like a prequel because of its visual continuity, character overlap, and musical echoes with the Jackson films. Yet it also functions as a reboot, reframing the tone, timeline, and even fundamental themes of Middle-earth to fit contemporary expectations and the confines of available rights.
Whether one sees this as a betrayal of the source or a necessary evolution depends largely on perspective. For some, it’s a chance to see new corners of Tolkien’s world brought to life. For others, it’s an uneasy hybrid that doesn’t quite fit into either camp. What’s clear is that The Rings of Power is not merely filling in the blanks. It is rewriting the shape of the legendarium for a new audience.
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