The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power hit Amazon Prime Video in 2022 and with it came a new look into Middle Earth and the world that J.R.R. Tolkien built. With new characters meeting different imaginings of ones we know and love, like Morfydd Clark's take on Galadriel, the series was a pretty good entry point into The Lord of the Rings as a whole and was met with fans loving the story it was telling.
Now, as the show is preparing for Season 2, we're getting a bit of a casting shake up in the form of the Orc leader Adar. It was announced that Adar will be played by Sam Hazeldine in the second season, after being played by Joseph Mawle in Season 1. The announcement came along with the news that six new faces will be joining the series.
The new cast includes Gabriel Akuwudike, Yasen ‘Zates’ Atour, Ben Daniels, Amelia Kenworthy, Nia Towle, and Nicholas Woodeson, but we're still not clear on what roles they'll be playing in the upcoming season. But given where things left off in the finale, the world of possibilities is wide open.
Vernon Sanders, Head of Global Television, Amazon Studios, said in a statement:
“Since its premiere, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been bringing audiences together to experience the magic and wonder of J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnificent Middle-earth. To date, season one is the top Original series for Prime Video in every region and has been viewed by over 100 million people worldwide, a truly global hit that speaks to the universal nature of powerful storytelling. We welcome these wonderful actors to our ‘fellowship’ and look forward to telling more incredible Second Age stories in season two.”
At the end of Season 1, we were left with Galadriel discovering the truth about Sauron (Charlie Vickers) and the knowledge of what is to come in the future of this franchise. And one of the exciting things about The Rings of Power is that despite knowing where the series ends up, we're so far in the past from when Frodo Baggins makes his journey to Mordor that we have no idea how we get to that point (or even to Bilbo's journey in The Hobbit) yet. And with this new cast, it's going to be fascinating to see how they play into the world set forth in Season 1.