Is Amazon extremely expensive? The Lord of the Rings is the gamble starting to pay off?
Critics' and audiences' reviews of the much-debated fantasy drama's second season The Rings of Power show initial improvement over the show's debut season in 2022.
The company released the first three episodes of the new season on Prime Video on Thursday, giving fans a chance to sample a significant portion of the eight-episode season. The initial Rotten Tomatoes critic score is 92 percent “Fresh,” and the audience score is 69 percent positive.
It's easy to forget that the first season received pretty good reviews from critics and an average of 83 percent, but this season has taken a leap forward. The 69 percent audience rating may seem like the least impressive number, but the first season's audience rating was a disastrous 38 percent, so that rating has nearly doubled.
Of course, it’s still very early days and the ratings can and will change as more episodes are released, but the consensus among critics who’ve seen episodes beyond the first three seems to be that the remaining hours are at least as good as the first. (The series’ IMDB ratings show a very steady response from season one to season two, averaging 7.3 percent for both seasons, but the Amazon-owned service has also been accused of deleting negative reviews the latter time around.)
That said, on the bright side Rings Reviews still tend to be mixed rather than glowing. The Hollywood Reporter's review was negative, and The Washington PostThe title of the review summed it up “The Rings of Power improves in his second season but not enough.”
Many are comparing Ringsonce again, at HBO House of the DragonDuring the shows' debut seasons, which aired partially head-to-head in 2022, the overwhelming consensus was that Dragon it was the best show. But the second season of Dragon It was considered a disappointment by some, and RingsThe showrunners seem to have made good on their promise to take note of what worked and what didn't from their first go-round. They've improved several aspects with a season that has accelerated momentum and delivered clearer dramatic installments to complement its consistently gorgeous visuals (and an excellent Bear McCreary score). (The Dragon Season 2's RT scores (based on the entire season, not just three episodes) were 83% (critics' score) and 74% (audience score).
THE Rings The viewership score is also interesting in the context of the cultural debate over the show’s first season. Its low scores have been attributed at least in part to review bombing inspired by the show’s so-called “woke” elements (and, indeed, there was a real percentage of the show’s negative reactions that had language to support this claim, and some of the actors were targeted with hateful insults). So what are we to make, then, of the show’s largely embrace of the show’s second season? Has the show become less woke? Have its viewers become more tolerant of the creators’ more modern take on JRR Tolkien’s world? Did the first season’s haters simply not watch this time around? Or were the show’s defenders wrong to lay so much blame for the scores at the feet of trolls? A mix of the two, perhaps?
Another question: ratings. The Rings of Power is the most expensive TV show of all time, costing Amazon an estimated $715 million. Amazon says the first season was watched by over 100 million people worldwide, with over 32 billion minutes streamed (and would surely dismiss this story’s question about whether the show is paying off now, insisting that “it already has!”).
Still The Hollywood Reporter reported that the first season had a completion rate of just 37 percent (50 percent would be considered “solid”), reflecting a significant decline. So it will be interesting to see going forward whether the more positive reaction translates into higher ratings, or whether these audience scores are basically a reflection of fewer fans who enjoyed the first season and then stuck around. Either way, in terms of the immediate reaction to a series that many were skeptical about, The Rings of Power It's a late summer surprise that apparently seems to have started off on the right foot compared to last time.