The Rings of Powerleft audiences stunned with its season finale. The show was filled to the brim with mysteries, and while there was plenty of Second Age material to draw from, viewers were in for some new storylines as showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne opted to create their own story to fill the bridges left in canon. However, the showrunners revealed that season 2 would be drawing much more heavily from canonical sources.
J.R.R. Tolkien spent his life working on the histories, languages, and peoples of Middle-earth thatThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Poweris based on. As his magnum opus, he fleshed out an entire world that he named Arda, the histories of which he split into different “Ages.” Any informationbeyond these Middle-earth agesare mysterious and hard to come by, but Tolkien’s conceit when writing the series was that this was the true history of Earth, which was now in a Sixth or Seventh Age.
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As reported bySlash Film, both showrunners were brought on to The Official Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Podcast, where host Felicia Day asked the two about the sophomore season of the series (which is currently filming). McKay responded, “There’s a lot of canon here, and season 1 is a place where there’s an enormous amount of invention happening between tent poles and the canon.” He continued, “Season 2 is a lot more canon that we’re interested in adapting and bringing to life.”
“Season 2 has a canonical story,” McKay noted a separate interview withThe Hollywood Reporter. “There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season 1!’ In season 2, we’re giving it to them.” The fact that theRings of Powerco-showrunners felt the need to emphasize this fact in two separate interviews indicates that fans have a lot more canonical stories and characters to look forward to when the show returns for its second season.
The seeds for this have already been planted: in the season finale, it was revealed that Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) was, in fact, the Dark Lord Sauron. And it was revealed that theidentity ofRings of Power’s mysterious Stranger(Daniel Weyman) who fell from the sky is a member of the Istari, a group of five wizards sent to guide Middle Earth and protect them from Sauron’s machinations (of this group, Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast are members).
Maybe audiences can expect to see one of the defining moments of the Second Age inRings of Powerseason 2: the forging of the One Ring, one of themost important moments in Middle-earth’s history. In the season finale, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) forged the three rings Narya, Nenya, and Vilya in order to combat Sauron. The forging of the One Ring in Mount Doom happens shortly after this in Tolkien’s canon, so it’ll likely show up at some point or another.
