Spoilers for season 1 ahead.
With the first rings forged and the true identity of Galadriel’s boyfriend—er, sorry, mortal enemy—revealed, the Rings of Power is ramping up to its highly anticipated second season. But the fires of Mount Doom will wait for no man (or elf), and you’d better believe Amazon Prime Video plans to milk its Lord of the Rings IP for as long as possible. (There are still more J.R.R. Tolkien footnotes to explore!) Thus, another four seasons of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are already queued up, as Rings co-showrunner J.D. Payne revealed before the first season had even premiered.
“There are things in the first season that don’t pay off until season 5,” Payne told Empire in June 2022. “We even know what our final shot of the last episode is going to be.”
With that in mind, here’s what we know about what’s (currently) next for Middle-earth.
Will Rings of Power have a season 2?
Yes, and three more after. Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, revealed during an interview with Variety, “We’re building infrastructure for five seasons. We’re building a small city. We were always going to spend what we needed to spend to get it right.”
When will season 2 of Rings of Power come out?
Five seasons are planned in total, with season 2 expected to roll out its episodes on Prime Video beginning August 29, 2024.
Who will be in the cast?
Most of the main cast is expected to return, including Morfydd Clark, Charlie Vickers, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Markella Kavenagh, Daniel Weyman, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Sophia Nomvete, and more.
But Prime Video has also announced multiple additions to the already sprawling cast. These include: Ciarán Hinds (Game of Thrones); Rory Kinnear (Skyfall, Spectre); Tanya Moodie (Motherland); Gabriel Akuwudike (Hanna); Yasen ‘Zates’ Atour (The Witcher); Ben Daniels (The Crown); Amelia Kenworthy; Nia Towle (Persuasion); Nicholas Woodeson (Silent Witness, Skyfall); Sam Hazeldine (Peaky Blinders); Oliver Alvin-Wilson (Wonder Woman 1984); Stuart Bowman (Alex Rider); Calam Lynch (Bridgerton); William Chubb (The Sandman); Kevin Eldon (Shadow and Bone); Will Keen (My Lady Jane); Selina Lo (Hellraiser); and Gavi Singh Chera (The Lazarus Project).
What will season 2 be about?
Galadriel will still be reeling from her crush-gone-wrong, bless her. As Payne told Esquire in an October 2022 interview, “Even knowing that Sauron was partially involved in the science behind the making of the rings, we see [Galadriel] give the go-ahead to make the rings anyway. She also has to bear some responsibility: ‘I empowered the Dark Lord. I saved his life on a raft. I was party to him coming from obscurity to head an army.’ That’s a lot she has to wrestle with and be accountable for. I think we can expect to see her having to pick up those threads and see how those decisions impact her various relationships.”
And as Charlie Vickers’s Halbrand/Sauron steps toward the lava-spewing mouth of Mount Doom in the final frames of season 1, we can expect much higher stakes moving forward. As Prime Video’s official synopsis for season 2 reads: “Sauron has returned. Cast out by Galadriel, without army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of the Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will. Building on Season 1’s epic scope and ambition, Season 2 of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power plunges even its most beloved and vulnerable characters into a rising tide of darkness, challenging each to find their place in a world that is increasingly on the brink of calamity. Elves and dwarves, orcs and men, wizards and Harfoots… as friendships are strained and kingdoms begin to fracture, the forces of good will struggle ever more valiantly to hold on to what matters to them most of all… each other.”
Get a sneak peek of what’s to come in the season 2 trailer below, released on July 26 during San Diego Comic-Con.
