A new rumor claims that Prime Video will be completely rebooting The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power following the creatively bankrupt first season, which chose to throw out Tolkien and replace it with intersectional feminism.
This new rumor comes from YouTuber Gary Buechler of Nerdrotic who says, “We have heard the rumors from my man, Chris Gore, that the showrunners might end up being fall guys and we might have to wait ’til after award season to see if that actually happens.”
He then adds, “I also heard that they’re going to go for a full on reboot with this series and try to pretend that the last two months didn’t happen. Roll out the publicity, maybe roll out some more influencers and try to get people to binge The Rings of Power. Good luck.”
Buechler went on to state, “And to add to that, what if I told you that The Rings of Power did not start this way. It was never meant to be a woke intersectional disaster. It didn’t have not-Gandalf. It didn’t have repurposed Hobbits. It didn’t have Halbrand as Sauron, and it didn’t have warrior Galadriel.”
“What if I told this show was usurped by people like Lindsey Weber and Jennifer Salke. And what if I told you that the fan attacks came from the top. More on that in my next Rings of Power video,” he teased.
Bolstering the rumor he heard that Prime Video will reboot the series moving forward, he speculated the show will see massive viewer fall off in the second season.
Buechler theorized, “It didn’t need to be this way. I think we’d all love to be rooting for a good Lord of the Rings show, but that is not what this is. This is an Amazon product and it has very little chance of succeeding with the same people after two years.”
“I’m guessing you’re going to lose half of your audience in the first episode of season two and it’s just going to go down from there,” he speculated. “I’m guessing you’re gonna end up a lot like Westworld which just so happens to be another Bad Reboot product that just got cancelled except the big difference is Westworld had a good first season.”
“You might have had a chance if you just had a normal bad show and didn’t attack the fans, but you did and now you’re going to suffer the consequences of the perfect failure because that’s what this is. The one thing Amazon did right was everything wrong,” he concluded.
Buechler’s claim of rebooting the series moving forward echoes what Film Threat founder and industry insider Chris Gore said during an appearance on Midnight’s Edge in the Morning.
Gore stated, “I heard from someone who has a connect at Amazon that – if you want to know – that effectively, they’re going to be retooling. And that [J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay] are more than likely…they’re not gonna be publicly fired, but their role will be reduced.”
“Potentially just remaining in the writers room,” he added, “but my understanding is they’re looking for more experienced showrunners.”
He then claimed, “They’re well aware of the problems — there’s sort of like publicly what they say and what they’re actually doing behind the scenes. And what they’re doing behind the scenes is they’re freaking out that this was more of a failure than could have been anticipated.”
“I think, one, the quality of the show that is the number one thing,” he opined. “The fact that it’s like ‘Why am I still watching this? This is sleep inducing.’ The second thing is the total rejection from fans. I can’t believe that there — there has to be very few people that remain that still like it.”
“And thirdly, the direct competition from House of the Dragon,” he concluded. “The strategically them announcing that they would have it come out at the same time and even like pre-seed and post-seed so to speak. So House of the Dragon started earlier and House of the Dragon is ending later.”
Following Gore’s claims a source contacted Bounding Into Comics and informed us that Prime Video plans on keeping Payne and McKay “this season because they want Emmy awards.”
The source added, “Sidelining them would spike any consideration in all categories.”
Payne and McKay have made no sign that they are getting sidelined. Just ahead of the release of the season finale, Payne revealed they plan to focus on Sauron for Season 2.
He told The Hollywood Reporter, “Season one opens with: Who is Galadriel? Where did she come from? What did she suffer? Why is she driven? We’re doing the same thing with Sauron in season two. We’ll fill in all the missing pieces.”
McKay added, “Sauron can now just be Sauron. Like Tony Soprano or Walter White. He’s evil, but complexly evil. We felt like if we did that in season one, he’d overshadow everything else. So the first season is like Batman Begins, and the The Dark Knight is the next movie, with Sauron maneuvering out in the open. We’re really excited. Season two has a canonical story. There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!’ In season two, we’re giving it to them.”
Speaking to Vulture following the season finale, the two showrunners also indicated they learned significant lessons from season one that they will apply to the second season.
Payne revealed, “On a show, we have a lot of time to get to know the characters, to go deeper into mythology and lore. Some scenes we shot didn’t even make it into the final edit. When you put them up against the larger stakes of the world, they didn’t quite punch their weight. Even with small character scenes, you need to have a sense of how it connects to the stakes and will contribute to the whole.”
McKay also detailed, “In Middle-earth, everything at the end of the day is about the fate of Middle-earth. It wants to tie back to the battle of good and evil and the temptation of power. It’s a high bar for anything to clear to deserve a spot in the story. Starting this journey five years ago, J.D. and I had an idea of what that bar was. Having gone through the process, we have more specificity of what really feels like Middle-earth and what doesn’t. Hopefully we have raised the bar for the show going into season two.”
What do you make of this latest rumor? What do you think Prime Video will do in reaction to the poor ratings of The Rings of Power and intense fan backlash to the show?