It’s been eight long years since the epic The Hobbit trilogy concluded with The Battle of the Five Armies, but now the wait is finally over for Tolkien fans: it’s time to go back to Middle-earth. This new saga from showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay, based on JRR Tolkien’s lengthy appendices to The Lord of the Rings, gets off to a spectacular, cinematic start despite being designed for home streaming rather than theatres. Here’s a breakdown of what happened and who we met in the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Beware, here be spoilers:
“Nothing is evil in the beginning”
