The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power casts Círdan the shipwright for season 2

The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is fast approaching, and showrunner J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay are promising that they've heard all the criticism of the first season and are adjusting accordingly. "Part of the learning process for us on this is really seeing what people seem to respond to in the show," Payne told Collider. "We also take in everything. We read everything. We read the reviews, we read what you all have written, we read what your colleagues have written, and we read what the fans are saying."

Set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Aragorn or Bilbo or any of those Lord of the Rings characters were born, The Rings of Power distinguished itself by its commitment to bigness: it's an epic tale told in an epic way, with Amazon's deep war chest funding it. "If we've really done our jobs, it'll even seem bigger," McKay said.

At the same time, as huge and beautiful as the show was, it did come under a lot of criticism; some people thought it went too far afield of J.R.R. Tolkien's original vision, some indulged in a racist backlash, and some just found it dull. I'm curious to see the reactions to a revamped second season. Online, at least, people seem like they're shrugging off the show right now.

Ben Daniels is Círdan the shipwright in The Rings of Power season 2

Something that may please the Tolkien fans is the introduction of Círdan, a famous elf from Tolkien's mythology. Círdan is best known as the shipwright who builds the ships that take elves to Valinor, the mythic land far beyond the sea to the west. On the show, he'll be played by Ben Daniels, a veteran stage actor best known to a wide audience as Antony Armstrong-Jones, the former husband of Princess Margaret, on The Crown.

Even for immortal beings like the elves, Círdan is ancient. He's among the first elves to ever walk Middle-earth, and made his way to the western shores of the continent with many of his fellows when the world was young. He stayed behind in Middle-earth and dedicated himself to building ships. He was around for the First Age and is still there in the Third Age when Frodo sails away at the end of The Lord of the Rings.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Círdan will be a mentor to Elrond (Robert Aramayo). In the mythology, he's the recipient of Narya, one of the three elven rings of power created by Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards). He eventually gives that ring to Gandalf, who may or may not already be in the show. Perhaps we'll learn the truth when The Rings of Power returns to our screens on August 29.

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