First Look: The Rings of Power unveils Ciarán Hinds’s new character in blockbuster Lord of the Rings series

The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was a huge hit for Prime Video, with more than 100 million people – including at least 25 million on the first day of its release, in 2022 – streaming a good 32 billion minutes of the $1 billion series.
So the arrival of the second season, on Thursday, August 29th, is a big deal for fans. As part of the build-up, the makers of the blockbuster drama have revealed a first look at the new character being played by Ciarán Hinds, the veteran Irish star of, among many others, The Dry, Kin and, on the big screen, Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s 2022 film, for which the actor earned an Oscar nomination.
The Rings of Power’s first season took some Irish viewers aback with what our television critic Ed Power called “its race of simpleton proto-hobbits, rosy of cheek, slathered in muck, wearing twigs in their hair and speaking in stage-Irish accents that make the cast of Wild Mountain Thyme sound like Daniel Day-Lewis”.
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Alarmed by the perception that they had indulged in caricature, The Rings of Power’s showrunners, JD Payne and Patrick McKay, told The Irish Times that they were “inspired by Tolkien’s imagination” and “not in any way attempting to capture the Irish people”.
The first season, which takes place centuries before the JRR Tolkien’s original story, ended with two images that set the stage for the series’ return next week: a trio of elves stood triumphant over the creation of three glittering rings that promised them new levels of power; while Sauron, Tolkien’s most famous villain, descended into the newly formed hellscape known as Mordor.
In season two, Sauron has returned. “Cast out by Galadriel, without an army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of The Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will,” the programme makers say.
“Building on season one’s epic scopy and ambition, the new season plunges even its most beloved and vulnerable characters into a rising tide of darkness, challenging each to find their place in a world that is increasingly on the brink of calamity. Elves and dwarves, orcs and men, wizards and Harfoots… as friendships are strained and kingdoms begin to fracture, the forces of good will struggle ever more valiantly to hold on to what matters to them most of all… each other.”
As for Hinds’s character, the programme’s makers say: “The mysterious being known as the Stranger is not the only wizard who has come to Middle-earth. For in the mysterious lands of Rhûn, another wizard awaits him. A dark and powerful wizard, whose origins and intentions are shrouded in secrecy, and who has a legion of magic-wielding acolytes who obey his every command, among them the three travellers who sought out the Stranger at the end of season one – on the Dark Wizard’s orders.”
The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power streams on Prime Video from Thursday, August 29th