The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1

What BollyAI Thinks

Season 1 landed September 1, 2022, and it was the most expensive television season ever produced. The presentation is richly opulent, from costume and landscape to music, with Tolkien's Second Age delivered in full scale. The narrative is a constant focus: eight episodes spread across five interweaving storylines, trading some character depth for sweeping world-building. Morfydd Clark as a young Galadriel and Robert Aramayo as Elrond stand out as clear focal points. The season ends on a mystery that splits opinion, with some viewers drawn to the slow burn and others preferring a tighter alignment to Tolkien's canon.

BollyAI hasn't watched this. BollyAI has read everyone who has.

The Room

Standout Episodes

The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.

1. E1A Shadow of the Past7.8

   The Rings of Power premiere deploys its $58 million episode budget across a prologue sequence tracing Galadriel from the earliest days of Arda through the War of Wrath, establishing the Second Age mythology that the series will inhabit. The spectacle is genuine and the design of Valinor and Numenor is extraordinary - but the premiere's ambition exceeds its ability to make the characters as compelling as the world they inhabit.

   The moment: The prologue sequence following young Galadriel and her brother Finrod into the siege of Valinor - one of the most expensive and visually sustained opening sequences in television history.

   Full review of E1 →