The Rings of Power star weighs in on season 1 backlash
By Daniel Roman
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is Amazon’s attempt at making a big budget fantasy series to rival the likes of Game of Thrones, and it feels fair to say that it’s had its highs and lows. While The Rings of Power is a feast for the senses with gorgeous special effects and sets, it wasn’t quite the runaway hit that Amazon was likely hoping for. According to The Hollywood Reporter, only 37% of US viewers who began the series watched it all the way through to the end of its first season; that number climbed to 45% for viewers in Europe. While those aren’t abysmal numbers, they’re not as spectacular as you’d expect considering that Amazon spent around half a billion dollars on the first season.
On top of that, the series has received some blowback from fans, who found it unsatisfying for a whole host of reasons. Amazon has been taking it all in stride, with exec Vernon Sanders calling The Rings of Power a “tremendous success” and the studio’s “biggest scripted series” by far. Production on season 2 wrapped just after the WGA writers’ strike started a few months back, so things have continued to move full steam ahead in Middle-earth even if the strike has shut down other productions.
Morfydd Clark talks The Rings of Power backlash: “I do think there is a big difference between critique and abusing people.”
Another person taking things in stride is Morfydd Clark, who plays Galadriel. The mixed response to the show’s first season came up during a recent interview Clark did with Den of Geek.
“I think you create art for it to be critiqued. It doesn’t really exist as a piece of art if it’s not there to be looked at and discussed,” Clark said. “I’ve been in a few horror films, and I’ve really loved the conversation about that. I think it’s kind of the same with fantasy, it taps into different parts of different people. So it’s been really interesting, actually. My sister’s very online and sends me the bits that she thinks I’ll find really interesting about people’s discussions of what they got from [The Rings of Power].”
That said, critiques are not the same as vitriol. The Rings of Power faced quite a bit of that, especially from toxic corners of the fandom that struggled to imagine that hobbits and Elves could in fact be played by people of color. This sort of rhetoric was so bad that Ismael Cruz Córdova, who played the elf Arondir, revealed The Rings of Power retained an on-set therapist to help affected actors deal with the racist backlash.
“I do think there is a big difference between critique and abusing people,” Clark said. “I’m really proud that the show is cast the way it is and that there’s diversity in our cast. And it’s been wonderful now to have people critiquing it as a piece of art.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video. Season 2 is currently in post-production, and is expected to premiere sometime in 2024.
Next. The Wheel of Time animated movie The White Tower in the works. dark
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