The Rings of Power Season 1 premieres on Prime Video

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiered on Amazon's Prime Video streaming service on 1 September 2022. The first two episodes were released together, with the rest of the eight-episode first season following weekly.

The series was set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It followed characters such as the elf Galadriel, the Dwarf prince Durin IV, and the elf Elrond, as the forging of the Rings of Power and the rise of the dark lord Sauron began to take shape. Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay led the production.

The launch mattered because Amazon had paid a reported $250 million for the television rights and invested heavily in the show, widely reported as among the most expensive series ever made. It drew record viewing figures for Prime Video, but also divided audiences and critics, with debate over how closely it followed Tolkien's source material. That mixed reception shaped the choices made in later seasons.