‘The Rings of Power’ Season 3 Review: Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series Is Just Going Through the Motions

Shrouded by a marked loss of enthusiasm, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay's "Lord of the Rings" prequel series succumbs to its worst tendencies in a new season that's too content to witness the inevitable.

The charges against Amazon’s epic (and epically priced) “Lord of the Rings” series, “The Rings of Power,” stacked up quickly. The first two seasons were pretty good by blockbuster standards — and I wasn’t alone in saying so — but the record-breaking costs, as well as the franchise’s lofty pedigree, set expectations higher than Great Eagles can soar. When the most expensive TV series ever made struggled to yield the requisite viewership spikes and comparable cultural impact, the claws came out.

Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay’s series was, among other prominent complaints, a lackluster imitation of Peter Jackson’s films and an all-too-obvious ploy to become TV’s next “Game of Thrones.” Even when the visuals wowed, the characters weren’t memorable enough (save for the dwarves), the stories weren’t fun enough (again, except for the dwarves), and the twists weren’t smart enough. (The dwarves, in their infinite wisdom, did not partake.) Perhaps most damning for a show paid and made for an audience of one, Jeff Bezos’ pet project didn’t get J.R.R. Tolkien’s text — at least, not on at any depth.

On the whole, these criticisms weren’t enough to spoil a flawed but ambitious saga. Sure, “The Rings of Power” was made with too much deference to the past and too little innovation for the present — repeating itself (and other “Lord of the Rings” adaptations) while lacking the deft touch and sweeping imagination viewers crave from their greatest fantasy series. But it was still thrilling in its spectacle, from sets to sound design, costumes to vivid colors. (“House of the Dragon” it was not.) Episodes easily conveyed the filmmakers’ giddy excitement for the next big battle scene, the next big twist, and the next big moment in their Tolkien translation. All that money was on the screen, where it belonged, and dreams of spending it elsewhere — like, say, on many shows instead of just one — were set aside when Mount Doom erupted and the Siege of Eregion was underway.

I say all this, dear reader, not just as a handy recap of where things stand for yet another series with lengthy breaks between seasons, but to establish my position on a franchise that’s reached its sudden, somewhat unexpected nadir (for now, at least). While flaws were evident before, “The Rings of Power” Season 3 is undone by them. The listless episodes aren’t just hamstrung by additional exposition and a dearth of deadly combat; there’s a lingering wariness to it all, as if the filmmakers have run out of surprises and settled for treating their adaptation like the supplementary material it’s based on.

The third season begins with a recap of its own: Five years have passed since the Elven city of Eregion fell, and Sauron (Charlie Vickers) controls more of Middle Earth than ever. His army of orcs are tracking down the rest of the titular rings, which are safe(ish) with the elves in the luxe strongholds of Lindon and Rivendell, as well as my beloved dwarves in the sonorous mines of Khazad-dûm. But the Dark Lord himself is right where we left him, trying to forge the one ring to rule them all. Celembrimbor (Charles Edwards) was the only Elf who knew how to forge it, and now that he’s dead, Sauron grows more desperate by the day.

Not that you could tell from Vickers’ affectless portrayal. In “The Rings of Power,” the Australian actor is saddled with an arguably impossible task: Take the very presence of evil — which Tolkien so profoundly established in readers’ limitless imaginations as “an image of malice and hatred,” before Jackson sagely (and cinematically) channeled that energy into a giant, all-seeing eye — and embody that transcendent menace within a guy who looks like the guitarist next door. Vickers was able to hide his Sauron in plain sight during Season 1, when no one knew who Halbrand really was, but the big reveal didn’t lead to a bigger (or more sinister) performance, and attempts to lend human dimensions to evil incarnate similarly suffered.

What Sauron means to the series is more powerful than what he does on a scene-by-scene basis, and Season 3 throws that balance way out of whack. Absent significant conflict elsewhere, the story keeps returning to Sauron and his schemes, but none of his scenes have enough juice to elevate him to adequate levels of intimidation. A lengthy climactic sequence near the end of the season deploys shifting aspect ratios, operatic music cues, and dead-eyes stares aplenty, but they don’t add up to the riveting spectacle its creators intended. Instead, they only remind audiences how little Season 3 has to show off, not to mention how misguided some of those showcases can get.

Númenor, with its warring cousins Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), remains a bland, human-centered snooze-fest. (My god, these people are boring.) The desert empire of Rhûn fares slightly better with Ciarán Hinds’ Dark Wizard (those eyebrows!), but the man long known and now confirmed as Gandalf (Daniel Weyman) is still little more than a mysterious symbol. (Just wait ’til you see him… put on his hat?)

And what’s become of Prince Durin (Owain Arthur), Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete), and my rambunctious, sunless dwarves? You’d think lifelong cave dwellers would thrive in a season that’s lost a considerable amount of its light (times are tough in Middle Earth, and “The Rings of Power” has never been subtle), but my feisty friends are stuck in a plot so predictable it’s all but spelled out in the very first episode by accident! (When the wisest dwarf speaks, we all know to listen.)

New additions feel slotted in, as if emotional attachments are expected to emerge from name recognition alone (sorry to Celeborn, Galadriel’s long-lost hubby), while old favorites are nowhere to be found. (Nori and Poppy are entirely absent through seven episodes.) Others that do show up aren’t developed thoroughly enough to support their dramatic turns, like the Southlands boy turned tree-chopping, Mordor-enslaved man Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), or get wasted in order to prop up other, less compelling characters, like Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova).

Perhaps “The Rings of Power” Season 3 is just a temporary dip — the midway point of a five-season plan that needs to set the table so we can feast for the two final seasons. Even if that’s the case, it’s no excuse. “The Lord of the Rings” may engender enough goodwill to give “The Rings of Power” a little leeway, but a full season lacking in evident ingenuity and attentive investment is enough to strip away the nostalgic sheen.

The biggest slight against the series has always been its status as a prequel: Based on appendices to “The Lord of the Rings,” this is the story the movies ran through as an epilogue, so it’s going to take a little extra sumthin’ sumthin’ to prove expanding into a five-season series is warranted. Instead, we’re given the same ol’, same ol’. Not everything needs to be realized onscreen just for the sake of seeing it happen, step by step, beat by beat, ring by ring. Yet bearing witness to the inevitable is Season 3’s greatest ambition.

Grade: C

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” premieres Wednesday, November 11 on Amazon Prime Video with four episodes. Two episodes will be released November 18 and 25 to complete the season.