Prime Video Releases Two New Images For The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power As Show Continues To Be Mired In Controversy

John F. Trent |

Apr 21, 2022

Prime Video recently released two brand new images for their upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series.

The first image showcases a character named Theo played by Tyroe Muhafidin. Take a look.

Prime Video did not provide any details about Muhafidin’s character, but as you can see in the image above he’s holding what appears to be the hilt of a broken sword.

The second image shows off Nazanin Boniadi’s Bronywn. As revealed by Vanity Fair back in February, Bronwyn is a village healer and is involved in a forbidden relationship with a silvan elf named Arondir.

These two new images come as Prime Video continues to find itself mired in controversy surrounding their initial The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power trailer, where Prime Video has been mass deleting comments disparaging the trailer and the show.

According to YouTuber Disparu, Prime Video has “been deleting people over and over again and they’re still going. At least at first when it was at 85,000 and went down to 63,000 and we first noticed they didn’t carry on deleting them. They waited a few works for people to actually shut up about it and then they tried to do it in secret again just like they did originally.”

He added, “Now, even when people make videos about it they still just carry on deleting them the next day. That’s why the last time I made a video about this there was about 56,000 comments and we’re now down to 44,000.”

The show has been heavily criticized for a number of reasons including its casting, the announcement that it was made to reflect what the world actually looks like, the announced “heartwarming and life-affirming and optimistic” tone, character descriptions, story compression, plot points, and the outright insulting and attack on fans of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Comic book writer Chuck Dixon, who adapted Tolkien’s The Hobbit into a graphic novel, shared his thoughts in a recent appearance on the European Lore YouTube channel.

Dixon noted, “What Amazon is doing to Tolkien is an abomination. The people doing the work obviously don’t understand the original work. They are adding elements that are very 2022 to it that five years from now are going to appear laughable.”

“They’re taking a timeless tale and setting it basically in our contemporary zeitgeist. And it’s just wrong,” he explained.

YouTuber Just Some Guy heavily criticized the show’s casting saying, “The point of Tolkien’s stories is to be English in design and effect. And Middle-earth reflects that in its cultures, languages, and the appearance of its races. To change this, to remove the Englishness, or really the whiteness from Tolkien’s stories is to undermine the very purpose of his works.”

It should be obvious that this will result in the backlash, but for some reason after watching fans reject every attempt at playing politics with major franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and the MCU, Amazon decided to inject progressive politics into their show along with playing loose and fast with the lore. And we’re shocked when fans gave them the one finger salute,” he added.

The Lord of the Rings fan site TheOneRing.com, not to be confused with TheOneRing.net, lampooned the show for its depiction of Galadriel.

On Twitter, the website would compare how Amazon was treating the character to how Tolkien described the character. They wrote, “Amazon — ‘Galadriel is a commander of the Northern Armies… Galadriel is hunting down the last remnants of their collaborators, who claimed the life of her brother.”

In the next tweet they added, “Tolkien — … … … [Looking… looking… tell me when you find that part where Galadriel leads her armies into battle, mmkay?]

In another tweet, the website noted, “I wasn’t a huge fan of Nuclear Galadriel, but Jackson had the good sense to only put her in armor when she’s overcoming the lure of the ring. In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power we get warrior princess Galadriel, & architect politician Eldron.”

“I bet my axe a female dwarf will make Durin look a fool,” the site noted.

The official synopsis for the series states, “Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.”

“Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone,” it concludes.