It is too soon to tell if Amazon’s
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
will be a satisfying season of television. From the two episodes that have aired so far, it is clear the showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay are taking some liberties with the timeline as they adapt scanty notes from the appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings
into a fantasy epic set in Middle-earth’s Second Age. What I care most about, however, along with many other fans, is whether the series fits with the spirit of Tolkien’s legendarium. My answer, so far, is a tentative yes.