You know how it goes: a new show starts, you get seriously invested in the characters and stories, and then the threat of cancellation looms. Or, worse, it becomes clear that there wasn’t a full plan in the first place and there’s no clear end-point in sight. Fear not, though, fantasy fans – The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power won’t be one of those shows.
Telling a whole new story in the Second Age of Middle-earth, Prime Video’s streaming series began with its storytellers – including showrunner JD Payne and Patrick McKay, along with executive producer and director JA Bayona – cooking up a full beginning-to-end story. It’s about the destination as well as the journey, and The Rings Of Power is ready to take us there and back again. “We even know what our final shot of the last episode is going to be,” Payne teases to Empire in our world-exclusive cover story. “The rights that Amazon bought were for a 50-hour show. They knew from the beginning that was the size of the canvas – this was a big story with a clear beginning, middle and end. There are things in the first season that don’t pay off until Season 5.”
Across those five seasons, The Rings Of Power will weave a story of Elves, Dwarves, Harfoots and more set against an epic backdrop of major events from the history of Middle-earth – from the forging of the rings, to the rise of Sauron. If the individual plot threads are new, the outline is straight from the source. “It was like Tolkien put some stars in the sky and let us make out the constellations,” Payne explains. “In his letters [particularly in one to his publisher], Tolkien talked about wanting to leave behind a mythology that ‘left scope for other minds and hands, wielding the tools of paint, music and drama.’ We’re doing what Tolkien wanted. As long as we felt like every invention of ours was true to his essence, we knew we were on the right track.”
Get ready for a show, then, that brings fresh ideas, perspectives, characters and more to our screens in a world we’ve long loved – but all in keeping with what its original creator set out. “The pressure would drive us insane if we didn’t feel like there was a story here that didn’t come from us. It comes from a bigger place,” says McKay. “It came from Tolkien and we’re just the stewards of it. We trust those ideas so deeply, because they’re not ours. We’re custodians, at best.” It’s always been clear in the world of The Lord Of The Rings – if you’re going to climb up a mountain that steep with a burden that heavy, you can still make it with the right Fellowship.
Empire’s world-exclusive The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power issue takes a deep-dive into Prime Video’s epic fantasy series, with three covers to collect. Inside, we explore its epic scale, its many inhabitants, and its multi-year plan to tell a whole new tale in a beloved world, speaking to showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, director and executive producer J.A. Bayona, producer Ron Ames, and stars including Morfydd Clark, Lenny Henry, Robert Aramayo, Markella Kavenagh, and Benjamin Walker. All that, plus tons of never-before-seen images. Find a copy on newsstands from Thursday 9 June, and pre-order a copy with your choice of covers here. The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power starts streaming from 2 September.