Beautiful landscapes and fantastical creatures are major praise points for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and those good aspects continue into The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a prequel series to the films. The show is watchable exclusively on Amazon Prime Video and sets up the foundation for the Lord of the Rings films, meticulously covering its plot hole tracks while also getting a larger idea across.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set a few thousand years before the time of Frodo Baggins and follows 2 journeys: that of Galadriel the Elf and Nori the Harfoot. After Morgoth, a creature set on conquering the world is defeated, Galadriel is in pursuit of Sauron, the servant of Morgoth. This pursuit is cut short by a mutiny of her subordinates and she is forced to return home. After Galadriel jumps from a ship bound for paradise, she is entangled in a series of events that constitute the show and the films themselves. Nori encounters a giant that fell from the sky, and her part of the show focuses on her dealing with this giant while also being a Harfoot, a traveling community that is hostile to outsiders.

Scene setup is one of the most important parts of any show. Without a convincing backdrop, it does not matter how good a script is or how neat a plot is. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power recognizes this crucial artery of filmmaking and does not leave it to die. While some scenes were iffy in the design, the series managed to capture the same feeling of a large open world as the film trilogy.

Keeping with the standards of the films, the plot pacing in this show was executed well, with the climax arriving in the last half of the show. The exposition did not eat up multiple episodes and the story was allowed to move forward. However, oftentimes a central goal was absent from the series, and the theme was blurry until close to the climax.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power attempts to juggle an absurd amount of names, personalities, and relationships all in 8 episodes, compounding on the memory challenge that is present with names like Galadriel and Isildur.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power consumes more than an hour of a viewer’s time per episode, totaling around 8.5 hours of watch time. This makes it difficult to binge-watch and for people with short attention spans, renders the show uninteresting and crawling through the story.

In conclusion, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power captures some of the spirits of The Lord of the Rings films with wonderful scenery and fantasy creatures but fails to be as engrossing as its sequels, by overdoing characters and expanding less story over more time.