Sauron finally forges the One Ring. That is the promise of the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which landed on Prime Video on November 11 with four episodes at once, and its whole eight-episode run will be finished before US Thanksgiving.
The season had its world premiere at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on November 10. Episodes drop worldwide at the same moment as the US release, across more than 240 countries and territories.
The release calendar
The show has abandoned its old weekly rhythm for three blocks:
- November 11: episodes 1 to 4, “Marnûkh,” “The Gift of Men,” “The Secret Fire” and “Gundabad.”
- November 18: episodes 5 and 6.
- November 25: episodes 7 and 8, the finale.
That works out to roughly eight hours of Middle-earth in 15 days. Showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay have said they pushed for bigger drops because the serialized story suits bingeing, and that they want families to be able to watch the entire season over the holiday break.
Where the story picks up
The new season jumps five years past the end of season 2. Sauron’s armies now hold much of western Middle-earth after the fall of Eregion. Only a few pockets resist: the Elven realms of Lindon and Rivendell, shielded by the uncorrupted Elven rings, and the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm. Sauron is handing out the Nine rings to mortal men, who the writers call the Nazgnagôl, or “Ring-servants,” before they become the Ringwraiths fans know.
The showrunners built the season around the War of the Elves and Sauron from Tolkien’s appendices, folding two separate chunks of that history into one tighter timeline. They have described Sauron this time as a “full-on villain.” The ring-forging sequence alone took two weeks to film, and the pair called it the most technically demanding thing the series has attempted.
Who is in it
Most of the cast is back, led by Morfydd Clark as Galadriel, Charlie Vickers as Sauron, Robert Aramayo as Elrond, Daniel Weyman as Gandalf and Owain Arthur as Durin IV. The headline newcomer is Jamie Campbell Bower as Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband, who in this version has been missing since the First Age. The writers have called their reunion the first true love story the series has told.
Other additions include Eddie Marsan as Durin’s brother Thrain, Andrew Richardson as Isildur’s brother Anárion, Zubin Varla as Khamûl, the one Ringwraith Tolkien named, and Adam Young as a mysterious Orc called Marnûkh. Simon Pegg voices the Balrog, which speaks on screen for the first time.
How it was made
Production moved to Shepperton Studios in Surrey, with filming running from May to October 2025 across 14 locations, including Windsor Great Park, the ruins of Neath Abbey in South Wales and Portland Bill on the Dorset coast. The visual effects team also scanned Switzerland’s Lauterbrunnen valley, the landscape that inspired Tolkien’s Rivendell, to build the Elven refuge on screen.
Early reaction is warmer than for earlier runs: on one major review aggregator, 79% of 33 critics gave the season a positive score.
The franchise is busy on the big screen too. Jamie Dornan has said he finished filming The Hunt for Gollum as Strider, and collectors keep chasing Tolkien’s earliest books, like the 1937 Hobbit first edition found in a Bristol house clearance.
Bear McCreary’s season 3 soundtrack album, opening with the Aurora duet “Morning Shall Come,” arrives digitally on November 13, five days before episodes 5 and 6.
Further reading
Image: Danny William Wilson, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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