Amazon’s stab at an epic Lord of the Rings story, The Rings of Power, is one of the most expensive shows ever made. It’s supposed to run for five seasons, but it took a while to confirm that season 3 was even coming. Now, there’s some news on when we’ll actually see that, and it’s not great.
It’s just been announced that The Rings of Power season 3 has wrapped filming. That’s great, but the actual timeline of this is less good once you do the math for the potential season 3 release date.
- The Rings of Power season 2 wrapped production in June 2023. It then premiered in August 2024. So that’s a full 14 months of post-production, certainly on the long side given how enormously VFX-heavy a series like this is.
- So, if The Rings of Power season 3 just wrapped production now, another 14 months of post production would produce a release date in February 2027. That’s a full two and a half years between seasons. That’s a decent bit longer than the 23 month-gap between seasons 1 and 2.
Part of this is due to the weirdly late renewal of Rings of Power season 3. Even though season 2 ended in October 2024, it wasn’t greenlit until February 2025, four months later. Pretty unusual for a series that was already supposed to be five seasons long at baseline.
But if you know what’s going on here, you may understand. Reportedly, viewership for The Rings of Power season 2 was half that of season 1, the first season arriving with a somewhat tepid reception when Amazon imagined it could be its own Game of Thrones. Season 2 was actually quite a bit better, but you only get one chance to make a first impression. This is a huge commitment of resources for Amazon, given the movie-like production value of the show (I’m not sure any series on TV is more elaborately rendered), so if viewership keeps going down while costs remain the same, that five-season idea could be out of reach.
It certainly won’t help if it’s a full two and a half years between seasons, as it’s difficult to imagine that viewership goes up after forcing fans to wait that long. Even for some of the most popular shows on TV, those lengthy gaps lead to less retention (see Wednesday season 2 underperforming the first).
I don’t know what the future holds for Rings of Power, but we won’t find out until 2027 at the earliest, most likely.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
