Rings of Power

Middle Earth is returning with the latest adaptation of JRR Tolkien's fantasy drama, featuring elves and hobbits and everything in between, with The Rings ...

[Sir Lenny Henry addresses racism in fantasy genre ahead of The Rings of Power launch](https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/01/the-rings-of-power-sir-lenny-henry-addresses-racism-in-fantasy-genre-17280905/?ico=more_text_links) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is available to stream on Amazon Prime The Rings of Power will cover the entire Second Age, covering the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. However, The Rings of Power is not set in the Third Age, and instead follows events in the Second Age. But while we know The Rings of Power is a prequel to both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, when exactly does it take place? [The Rings of Power](https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/31/the-rings-of-power-review-a-billion-dollars-well-spent-just-about-17273324/).

The Dark Lord of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the chief danger in Amazon Studios' The Rings of Power, but who will portray him in the series?

The Rings of Power Hobbits and history explained](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/rings-of-power-harfoots-hobbits-explained/) [Who is Morgoth in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/morgoth-rings-of-power/) [Who is Galadriel’s brother? Rings of Power timeline explained](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/rings-of-power-timeline-second-age-middle-earth/) For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the [Radio Times podcast](https://www.radiotimes.com/podcasts/) with Jane Garvey. Meet Finrod actor Will Fletcher](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/galadriel-brother-will-fletcher-finrod-explained/) [Who is Elrond actor Robert Aramayo in The Rings of Power?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/elrond-robert-aramayo-rings-of-power/) [What is the Second Age of Middle-earth? Many had speculated that Mawle was portraying an antagonist in the series. However, some reports have called his character Oren, as was originally reported by [Rings of Power release schedule: When are Lord of the Rings episodes out?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/lord-rings-power-release-schedule-amazon-prime-video/) [How to watch The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies in order](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/how-to-watch-lord-of-the-rings-movies-order-timeline/) [Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power review – Dazzling prequel doesn't let Tolkien fans down](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/lord-of-the-rings-of-power-review/) [Meet the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/lord-rings-power-cast-amazon-prime-video/) [What is Valinor in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power?](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/valinor-rings-of-power/) [What are Harfoots? So, who exactly could be playing Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power? Who could play Sauron in The Rings of Power? [Amazon Prime Video](https://www.radiotimes.com/streaming/amazon-prime-video/) series [The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/fantasy/lord-of-the-rings-tv-series-release-date-amazon/) has finally arrived and tells the story of the Second Age of Middle-earth. So, as Sauron is the chief antagonist of the series, just who exactly is playing him in The Rings of Power? Who plays Sauron in The Rings of Power?

The show is available on Amazon Prime Video only, so you'll require a Prime Membership to watch. Amazon will be displaying in up to 4K resolution with HDR (high ...

So much scope, indeed, that it's widely expected that Amazon will quickly commission The Rings of Power for season 2, which is expected to start photography in the very near future, although there's no known release date at this stage, or word on whether there will be more episodes or additional seasons. The show is based around 20 rings of power (hence the name) handed to various characters throughout Middle Earth. Here's how The Rings of Power release date calendar looks for the eight episodes of season one:

The proto-hobbits or harfoots in the new Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power, have Irish accents. Something's not quite right in Middle Earth…

The harfoots, according to Tolkien lore, were allies of the dwarves, who in the original trilogy and this series have Scottish accents, so perhaps that celtic link informed the decision. As an Irish person living in Britain who is used to “potato” jokes being bandied around pretty freely (please, Jeff Bezos, use your money to shoot “Keith Lemon” into the sun), and also as someone who finds the state of “being offended” inherently embarrassing, I initially thought the harfoots' accents were quite funny. The Irish accent is a completely new addition to the franchise, introduced by the show’s creators specifically for this group of underdeveloped hobbits. [Amazon](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/gallery/best-amazon-prime-series-movies)’s exorbitant but pretty Lord of the Rings prequel series [The Rings of Power](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-reviews), there’s a community of short, nomadic, pre-civilisation people called harfoots. They also happen to have Irish accents, distinguishing them from the old-timey BBC accents of the high-status elves, as well as the OG hobbits, who spoke in a Gloucestershire brogue. There is no mention of accents anywhere in Tolkien’s literature, nor were there any Irish accents in Peter Jackson’s take on

Amazon bet on its Lord of the Rings prequel, the most expensive TV show ever made. It paid off.

The show has its flaws – episode one has so much world to set up that it ends up dragging its feet, and there’s a smattering of what the late, great Terry Pratchett called “as you know, your father, the king” dialogue – but by and large, at least in the two episodes we have seen, it’s an extraordinary achievement. It’s Clark’s Galadriel that keeps us anchored; the show begins, as the movies do, with her character recapping a few millennia of history, starting with her own childhood in Elvenhome and taking in the elves’ war against the first dark lord, Morgoth, and the disappearance of his most trusted servant, Sauron. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is one of the most ambitious and finely realised storytelling achievements in television: genuinely cinematic, by turns both propulsive and elegiac, and – best of all – fun. – colour-blind casting (to some Tolkien fans, dragons, walking trees and giant talking eagles are all fine, but black people are bafflingly a bridge too far), the more tedious end of the Rings fandom began to cry foul. The Rings of Power showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay are both – remarkably – helming a major project for the first time and have had to start from scratch with just a list of battles, dates and themes to go on. Not only is Amazon’s big bet reportedly the most expensive show ever made (the budget apparently hovers somewhere close to the $700m mark for the first season alone) – its creators are playing in the sandbox of one of the most complex world-builders in literature in

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power debuted its first two sprawling episodes this Thursday, introducing viewers to a massive cast of characters—some ...

. . Payne and Patrick McKay can make up all sorts of things—so long as they don’t tread to close to material they don’t have the rights to use. Could The Stranger be a totally new character, perhaps even a new Istari or some other immortal being? Yes, it’s too early for Gandalf by a few thousand years, but given how much the timeline is being compressed here, and how far afield we’ve already gotten, why not? The evil sorcerer has been in hiding for thousands of years with only Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) still trying to track him down (in the revised fiction of the show, that is). There’s so little payoff if it’s just Baldar The Black, a Wizard made up whole cloth for the show. The second option here is that The Stranger is a different Wizard than the ones we’re familiar with in The Lord Of The Rings. "When we meet him, it’s pretty clear he’s got a deep sense of his purpose and what he wants to achieve." Admittedly, this was my first instinct—though when he spoke with the fireflies I thought he could also be Radagast the Brown. The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) is just one of several mysteries introduced in the two-part premiere. She decides to help the strange, bearded man—who turns out to be incapable of speaking and apparently suffering amnesia, though he’s able to talk to fireflies and give them instructions. When her friend Poppy (Megan Richards) startles her and she slips and falls into the crater, Nori realizes that the fire doesn’t burn.