‘Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power’: showrunners respond to criticism and anticipate season 2

“Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” still has two chapters to finish its first season. In recent weeks, we’ve seen how Amazon Prime Video has laid the groundwork for a grand five-season plan that will chronicle the major events of the Second Age of Middle-earth. The critics applauded the series by Patrick McKay and JD Payne, the audience was a little more heterogeneous in opinions, with praise, constructive criticism and, sadly, also a lot of hatred. The showrunners look back and conclude in a chat with the Hollywood Reporter that they miss a growing season: “Some people had nice things to say about the pilot and the second episode, or they didn’t have nice things to say, but I hope they stay for more episodes. The level has been raised.”. They say they have learned their lesson and will find a way to make even the smallest scene “is linked to greater challenges”. Let everything be very epic, let’s go. But without losing sight of those most intimate moments.

They are aware of the criticisms, especially those who say that the series took a long time to start, ask for patience and believe that the season will be remembered much better when we have seen it in its entirety. Regarding hatred towards a certain sector of the public, Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, assures it “they saw him coming, there were no surprises” because they had studied the potential market for the series, and also “the dark side of how people can manipulate criticism and have other points of view that we cannot support”, referring to the racist comments. JD Payne adds: “Tolkien’s spirit is about disparate people who don’t trust each other and who have different points of view who find a common goal in friendship and achieving great things. This is the spirit we have tried to instill in every comma and period of this series. ” That this aspiration can be offensive to people and anger people … is very difficult for us to understand. What are they protecting? I don’t know how people who say these things can think they are fighting for good. Galadriel has a line in the seventh episode that every war is fought from within and without. Even if you think you are fighting for something you think is good, if you do something worse in that fight you become evil. I don’t know how people who say these things think they are fighting for good. It is obviously evil. As we have seen, the series is a success with the public and Salke claims, obviously without data, that it is working “incredibly well internationally”.

The “Rings of Power” team has already started filming the second season of the series, this time in the UK instead of New Zealand, and they promise it will be “bigger and better at all levels … for reasons of size” as for the former. We will also see more of Sauron, who was saved on purpose: “It would have been very tempting to do the first season as the Sauron Show, very much about the villains. But we wanted that level of evil and complexity to emerge from a world that you are already involved in, not only is evil a threat. We wanted you to fall in love with it. new to Middle-earth. To understand and connect with each character’s conflicts before testing them in a way that has never been tested before. “ McKay explains.

We’ll also see how evil will eventually affect characters in a more intimate way, as JD Payne comments: “It’s a very Tolkien thing that when a shadow spreads, which is happening in our series, it affects everyone’s relationships. Even Frodo and Sam. They are the best friends in all of Middle-earth, yet they started falling in love. one of the other, distrust the other because it is a manifestation of that shadow. That viewers are wary of whether one character or another could be Sauron comes from that shadow that covers us all and makes us mistrust others”.

When will the second season premiere?

The new season of the series will be quicker to make because much of the preparation and construction of sets, costumes and more has already been done for the premiere. but Patrick McKay anticipates that the new chapters will take some time to arrive because they will be thrown away “another couple of years” working on them. This would take us to the end of 2024 or as early as 2025. For now, on Friday 7 October, the penultimate episode of the first season will premiere on Amazon Prime Video and the last one will be released on Friday 14th.