Amazon sounds bullish on The Rings of Power season 3 (but there's still no announcement)

What's a fan gotta do to get some clarity? The second season of Amazon Prime Video's fabulously expensive Lord of the Rings prequel show The Rings of Power ended last week, and there's still been no announcement of a third season renewal, despite cast and crew members advising us to expect "good news" soon.

True, not a ton of time has passed since the end of season 2, but considering how long shows like The Rings of Power take to put together, the sooner a third season is officially greenlit, the better it will be for fans; no one wants to endure eternal waits between seasons. Speaking to Variety, Amazon executive Jennifer Salke sounded optimistic about the show's prospects, and yet the words "The Rings of Power is renewed for season 3" never crossed her lips.

"[O]ver 55 million people at this point have engaged since Season 2 launched," Salke said. "And if you look at the long-term trajectory, which is how this company looks at an asset like that, this is a long-term investment in that franchise. […] There’s well over 150 million viewers watching and engaging with the show. So I feel really good. I think we all do."

"We’ll continue to make the show as long as we see global customers loving it and watching it...it is a business. Obviously, we need a large amount of people showing up. And there are a large amount of people, so there’s no debate about whether or not the show will continue."

Okay, good, there's no debate about whether the show will continue! So it's definitely going to continue into season 3, right?

Salke seems to be hedging, probably because the producers behind The Rings of Power are getting their ducks in a row and the executives don't want to talk openly about season 3 until everyone is ready. But still, I have to think that if The Rings of Power had been an absolute smash hit of a show rather than merely a decent-sized success, we would have a season 3 announcement by now.

Salke made a couple other half-hearted expressions of commitment. For instance, she said there are "no plans" to move production on The Rings of Power out of the U.K., which could be taken as an indication that season 3 will be filmed in the U.K., which is as good as an admission that season 3 will happen. That's something, right? She also hints that there have been discussions about Amazon buying Embracer Group, a holding company that happens to own the intellectual property rights to a lot of the work of The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, but she didn't give any firm commitments there, either.

And so we wait. The first two seasons of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are now streaming on Prime Video. In the meanwhile, please enjoy this video of the final scene of The Rings of Power season 2 with the music removed:

Elven cries of solidarity sound a little less epic when it's just the lot of them screaming into the air. Hopefully we'll have solid news soon.

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