The Rings of Power season 2 finished filming before the actors strike

That was a close one; Variety reports that the second season of The Rings of Power, Amazon’s tremendously expensive Lord of the Rings prequel series, has wrapped filming.

Why is that important? Because this week, Hollywood actors belonging to the SAG-AFTRA union decided to go on strike. And this comes two months after Hollywood writers went on strike. Without actors or writers, there isn’t much of anything getting done, so The Rings of Power came in just under the wire.

This means that Amazon Studios can keep the second season of The Rings of Power on track to release sometime in 2024. And they need to; according to Collider, the studio spent some $462 million on the first season alone. To recoup this investment, they need to keep The Rings of Power top of mind, so any delay could be deadly.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power won’t be delayed by actors strike

Of course, delay or not, the show could still fail. The first season gained a following, but was also subject to its fair share of blowback from Lord of the Rings fans who didn’t think the series much honored the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. We’ll see if the response is any better the second time around.

The Rings of Power is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before people like Frodo and Aragorn were born. That said, there are still familiar characters like Galadriel, Elrond and (probably) Gandalf running around; a couple thousand years is nothing when you’re immortal.

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