Future Spoilers: The Rings of Power's Last Scene Already Decided

Summary

• The Rings of Power showrunners said they know what the finale will be.
• Most likely, the events will end with the War of the Last Alliance.
• But before that, we can expect a lot of original storylines.

We're just over a month away from the premiere of the second season of Amazon Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and that means it's time to stock up on crusty lembas bread. After all, even more harrowing events from the Second Age of Middle-earth are yet to come.

Though heavily panned by die-hard fans, The Rings of Power Season 1 proved to be a huge critical and commercial success, becoming the most popular show on Prime Video. While we have yet to see Season 2, and a third season has not yet been ordered by Amazon, showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay already have ideas about it. According to them, they have outlined what will happen in not only the third, but also the fourth and fifth seasons, and even how the series will end.

The Showrunners Already Know How The Rings of Power Is Going to End

A few months before the first season of The Rings of Power premiered on Prime Video, showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay and executive producer J. A. Bayona spoke with Empire about the show and its future. According to Payne, The Rings of Power was conceived as a five-season project from the very beginning, so many of the ideas are set well in advance:

'We even know what our final shot of the last episode is going to be. The rights that Amazon bought were for a 50-hour show. They knew from the beginning that was the size of the canvas – this was a big story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There are things in the first season that don't pay off until Season 5.'

Only time will tell if The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings prequel will last the full five seasons, but the writers clearly intend to be faithful to the major events outlined by J. R. R. Tolkien himself.

What Can We Expect from the Upcoming Events?

Of course, it remains unknown where the events of The Rings of Power will end. However, in another interview, Payne and McKay hinted that the climax of the story will be the greatest battle in the history of Middle-earth:

'This time, Sauron's agenda sets everything in motion: Adar [Sam Hazeldine, taking over the role from Joseph Mawle] and his army of orcs; Galadriel [Morfydd Clark], Elrond [Robert Aramayo] and Gil-galad [Benjamin Walker] and their armies of elves — all of which will come crashing together in the most ambitious battle our show has seen yet, a battle from which many big players may not make it out alive.'

The 'most ambitious battle' most likely refers to the Siege of Barad-dûr, a key event in the War of the Last Alliance. This is the battle in which Elves and Men confronted Sauron's forces and destroyed his physical shell, and Isildur, having acquired the One Ring, refused to throw it into the volcano, thus beginning the dark events of the Third Age, the last years of which we know from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

But it should be remembered that Amazon only owns the rights to The Lord of the Rings, and therefore the upcoming events, most detailed in The Silmarillion, will either be significantly changed or touched upon as delicately as possible. In other words, if The War of the Last Alliance is indeed going to be the final arc, we should expect a lot of plot twists before then.

The first three episodes of The Rings of Power Season 2 will premiere on Prime Video on August 29, 2024.

Source: Empire, GamesRadar+.