Rings of Power finally looks like the show fans wanted. Will Amazon let it reach Númenor?
The season 3 trailer shows Sauron reaching for the One Ring, and the comments under it are already plotting seasons 4 and 5. Only one of those seasons has a greenlight.
Season 3 of The Rings of Power premieres November 11 with an unusual rollout: four episodes at once, two more on November 18, and the final two on November 25. The trailer, released October 21, picks up five years after the fall of Eregion, with Sauron's armies holding most of Middle-earth, Barad-dûr finished, and the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm and the Elves of Lindon and Rivendell as the last holdouts.
Charlie Vickers' Sauron spends the trailer promising to be a conqueror, sorcerer, and king — "I see the path to victory is so certain" — while the forging of the One Ring draws closer. The reception under the trailer is noticeably warmer than this show is used to, down to the production values:
"Finally, they made armies and places appear large, or at least made an effort."
— a commenter under Prime Video's trailer (903 upvotes)
The most-upvoted comment, though, isn't about season 3 at all. It's a road map:
"I'm calling it. This season ends with Sauron captured, and taken to Numenor. Season 4: The Fall of Numenor. Season 5: The war of the Last Alliance."
— the top comment under Prime Video's trailer (1.1K upvotes)
The theory has 1,100 upvotes because it isn't really a theory. In Tolkien's own chronology, Sauron's story after his moment of total victory runs exactly that way: he's taken to Númenor as a prisoner, corrupts the island from within until the sea swallows it, and the survivors form the Last Alliance that takes the Ring off his hand. The commenters are reading ahead in a book the show has publicly committed to adapting.
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The part Amazon hasn't signed yet
Which brings up the inconvenient production reality. The five-season, 50-episode plan has been baked into Amazon's deal with the Tolkien estate since 2017, and per Dark Horizons, Amazon MGM TV head Peter Friedlander assured the creative team on set that they'll finish the story they planned. A formal season 4 order is a different document, and it doesn't exist:
- Greenlight: as of The Hollywood Reporter's last update, season 4 is "not officially greenlit yet" — the studio is "considering" it.
- If ordered: pre-production was targeted for fall 2026, filming for early 2027, and a release around 2028.
- The audience math Amazon is weighing: season 2's premiere lost about half of season 1's US debut audience — but by February 2025 it had become Prime Video's most-watched returning season by hours, with better completion rates than season 1.
Amazon committed to five seasons and 50 episodes back in 2017. Nine years later, season 4 is still waiting for a formal greenlight.
My position: the trailer suggests the show is finally arriving at the story it was built for, because the Fall of Númenor is the strongest material the Second Age has — a kingdom talked into destroying itself by its own prisoner. Whether the show gets to film it now depends on November: three weeks, eight episodes, and viewing numbers that have to convince Amazon the contract it signed in 2017 is still a promise worth keeping.
Previously we wrote: The Dexter: Resurrection ending puts Dexter on the wrong side of the kill room