Sauron’s influence reaches beyond those who knowingly serve him in Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season three. Nerdist’s review of episodes 1–7 finds that spreading darkness central to the show’s strongest season yet, combining the earnestness of its first two seasons with greater suspense, deeper darkness, and a more nuanced, psychological approach to its characters.
That verdict comes after a substantial rewatch test: the reviewer estimates watching the seven episodes about four or five times in total, including the initial viewing, set-visit write-ups, breakout considerations, and the review. They enjoyed every viewing and rank the season among the best television seasons released that year. Despite some flaws, its narrative confidence and mature storytelling had the critic watching with the intensity of a football game, glued to the screen during suspenseful moments and eager to start the next episode.
The praise extends across the season’s craft. Nerdist credits the writing, cinematography, acting, and the skills of numerous artisans with transforming its raw materials into what the critic calls “true perfection.” Its season-three set-visit report takes a closer look at that work.
The Rings of Power season-three review rating graphic. Credit: Prime Video.
Table of Contents
The Rings of Power Season 3 Overall Review
Evil is no longer hiding. Sauron’s forces have flooded Middle-earth, and more of its inhabitants are falling under his control. Even characters who don’t consider themselves his followers feel his influence: mistrust, treachery, deceit, misunderstandings, and resentment spread between friends. The reviewer praises how that palpable darkness moves the season’s many character arcs forward rather than remaining confined to the battlefield.
For Nerdist’s critic, that makes the fantasy resonate with life outside Middle-earth. How do people keep going when everyone around them seems to be embracing darkness, or when there seems little left to believe in? Who can they rely on when everything falls apart? And why invest in love or community when an enemy can turn those attachments into weapons? The reviewer argues that the season engages with those questions to great effect.
Watch the video accompanying the review’s discussion of season three.
Hope remains central, but the review praises the show for treating it as neither childish nor an instant cure. It has to be earned through difficult steps, painful decisions, and sacrifice. The critic’s favorite theme is that building a better future can require choices that sting, or are themselves steeped in darkness. In this reading, true creation demands sacrifice, and finding the light can mean first touching darkness. The reviewer finds that these ideas ring true both in Middle-earth and in our world.
Watch the second video included in Nerdist’s season-three review.
Even as the days grow grimmer, humor, heart, and love remain. The reviewer praises the carefully drawn characters and their charming relationships, especially when they reunite with the people they love.
The examples are specific: Elrond and Durin sitting together and gently teasing each other; the chaos of Durin and Disa’s family; Isildur and Elendil’s happiness at being reunited; and Galadriel and Celeborn’s dreamy, flirtatious first meeting. Arondir and Marnûkh’s reluctant elf-orc friendship adds another dynamic, particularly when Galadriel encourages Marnûkh to share his poetry, a detail discussed further in Nerdist’s feature on the orc’s character arc.
Arondir, Galadriel, and Marnûkh in The Rings of Power season three. Credit: Prime Video.
These moments make evil feel briefly absent. The critic wants to linger in that happiness but admits permanent comfort wouldn’t leave much story to tell. The larger argument is that fellowship will defeat the darkness, and the season threads that idea through its story.
The structure earns praise, too. Rather than keeping a sprawling cast in separate adventures, season three brings its storylines together, which the reviewer finds compelling and good for the whole ensemble. The critic also teases an unidentified inclusion that felt particularly tailored to their interests, deliberately leaving the surprise unexplained.
Númenor
Númenor provides one of the review’s clearest turnarounds. Previously not the critic’s favorite storyline, it becomes a tightly constructed, dynamic, and fascinating high-fantasy political drama, with both the heart of the nation and Middle-earth’s fate at stake. Beauty and tragedy sit alongside a varied cast, while newly introduced characters let a story familiar from the lore unfold in fresh ways.
Eärien in the season-three Númenor storyline. Credit: Prime Video.
At its emotional center are Elendil and Míriel, whose yearning the critic calls “exquisite.” Their feelings draw them toward one another, but their love of country and sense of duty pull them apart, weighing as urgently on their hearts as their personal desires. Cynthia Addai-Robinson and Lloyd Owen receive emphatic praise for their performances; Nerdist’s accompanying report on their evolving relationship examines the pairing further.
Trystan Gravelle earns similarly strong praise as Pharazôn. The review finds him more sinister and detestable than ever, delivering on the character’s explosive potential as he switches from personable to vicious in an instant. Ema Horvath, meanwhile, delivers what the critic considers her most compelling performance as Eärien yet.
A behind-the-scenes image featuring Isildur and Míriel in Númenor. Credit: Prime Video.
Elrond
Robert Aramayo remains a pitch-perfect Elrond in the reviewer’s assessment. This season gives the half-elven character questions about his identity, his brother Elros’s legacy, and whether the Kingdom of Man can be trusted to help Middle-earth.
That uncertainty is personal. Men are his kin and connect him to the brother he loved, yet he doesn’t understand them. The critic argues that season three carefully plants the roots of a question that Tolkien’s lore makes increasingly important as the series continues, one that will remain with Elrond long after the Second Age ends. The review stops short of explaining more to avoid spoilers.
Elrond in an image accompanying the season-three review. Credit: Prime Video.
Durin, Disa, and Khazad-dûm in The Rings of Power Season 3
Sauron is on everyone’s mind, but the dwarves of Khazad-dûm have chosen neutrality, at least for now, in his war with the elves. The Dwarven rings have already been forged, leaving a looming question about what to do with them. Durin and Disa’s story connects those larger concerns from the lore with an intimate examination of trust and devotion.
As in Númenor, devotion takes the form of both love for another person and love for a kingdom, and both have consequences. The review praises the way the storyline moves between those scales, although it acknowledges that the Dwarven plot is uneven at times. For the critic, it ultimately works.
Sophia Nomvete’s Stone Singing remains a particular highlight, reaching fiercer, more intense places than ever before. Disa also remains an implacable voice of reason. Opposite her, the reviewer calls Owain Arthur’s Durin tender and charming.
Durin and Disa in The Rings of Power. Credit: Prime Video.
Gandalf
Farther east, the critic considers Daniel Weyman an exceptional choice for a younger Gandalf. This formative version is wise and cheerful, but less patient than the wizard he will become. The foundations of a future Gandalf who can only occasionally be ruffled are recognizable, though he hasn’t learned all his important lessons yet.
His impatience matters because he still wants to act in ways better suited to the enemy. Yet he’s learning, trying, and looking for goodness in everyone around him. The review credits Weyman with making Gandalf feel trustworthy and compassionate, someone who could offer comfort while still standing his ground.
Daniel Weyman as Gandalf in season three. Credit: Prime Video.
This Gandalf isn’t fearless or all-powerful. His defining quality, in the critic’s reading, is goodness, making his story a much-needed counterpoint to a world rapidly descending into evil. The review also leaves a question hanging over his travels: who might he encounter along the way?
Elsewhere, Galadriel, Arondir, and the orc Marnûkh make an unlikely traveling party. Marnûkh has information that might stop Sauron in his tracks, but he needs help using it. Whether anyone should trust him is another question. The reviewer’s affection for him outweighs that uncertainty: his sharp writing and humor make him a highlight, with Adam Young’s acting choices and comic timing earning particular praise. A joke about orcs eating babies gets singled out as especially funny, though the review leaves the punchline for viewers to discover.
The journey also gives Galadriel’s earlier experiences lasting consequences. The reviewer welcomes how her encounters with Adar have genuinely changed her. This is an elf who once threatened to kill every orc in Middle-earth; now she has learned to say “Uruk,” at least most of the time.
Her friendship with Arondir provides another welcome development. The review describes them as two of Middle-earth’s loneliest souls and finds warmth and affection in their connection. Ismael Cruz Córdova calls Galadriel “The Beyoncé of Middle-earth.” Alongside that friendship, the reviewer praises Arondir’s growing power and confidence as he asserts himself among the high-elves, a group he previously didn’t feel part of.
Celeborn, Galadriel, and Sauron
Waiting somewhere down the road is Jamie Campbell Bower’s Celeborn, whom the reviewer considers a strong addition to the elven cast. He’s appealingly nerdy, with an ethereal, poetic, dreamy quality. Despite his long captivity at the enemy’s hands, he still yearns for light, nature, and love. His enthusiasm for discussing different kinds of plants gives that softness a concrete expression.
His reunion with Galadriel is central to both characters’ arcs, but the review praises the season for taking no shortcuts. Husband and wife have spent a long time apart. Their circumstances have changed, and so have they; the way their relationship unfolds reflects that distance. Despite the emotional weight, the reviewer finds beauty in Galadriel allowing someone else to help carry her burdens, even briefly.
The desire to stop Sauron remains the other major part of her arc. The review describes that drive as something some might call an obsession: Galadriel knows him and believes he won’t stop unless someone stops him. It also sees her preoccupation as more than a practical concern with defeating him. Sauron himself, not just the threat he poses, continues to occupy her thoughts.
Sauron in The Rings of Power Season 3
In the reviewer’s reading, Sauron’s growing power doesn’t make him any less isolated. Charlie Vickers’ performance earns emphatic praise for making him evil, pathetic, fabulous, and needy all at once. In his great tower, he has only orcs for company and whoever he can draw to his side through their greed or fear. None of those companions, the critic observes, likes him much.
His own mind offers no refuge. Charles Edwards returns as Celebrimbor, whose biting voice embodies Sauron’s insecurities. Even in Sauron’s mind, Celebrimbor won’t allow him to call him “partner.” The reviewer reads this loneliness as a longing to belong to something Sauron cannot understand and therefore rejects. There’s sadness in that interpretation, even as the critic relishes his villainy.
Sauron sees no point in pretense this season. He’s ready to do the worst to get what he wants, maiming, torturing, and killing without remorse or much of a blink. Yet he doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself, a contradiction the reviewer sees more clearly than Sauron does. He’s obsessed with forging the One Ring, but the critic asks: to what end? Simon Pegg’s Balrog earns particular praise for their scene together, verbally tearing into Sauron and confronting his failings.
The forging itself draws some of the review’s strongest praise. Vickers performs opposite only the fires of Mount Doom, and the reviewer finds his work and the sequence extraordinary. The critic attributes the following passage to J. R. R. Tolkien: “In the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged in secret, a master ring, to control all others. And into this ring he poured all his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life.”
For the reviewer, those words come viscerally to life, capturing the lore and giving the Ring’s creation an immediate, intense impact on every being, including Sauron himself.
Concluding Thoughts on The Rings of Power Season 3
The verdict comes with a clear qualification: no series is perfect, parts of this season fall short, and some of those weaknesses aren’t minor. The reviewer nevertheless finds the season exceptionally well-written, gorgeously executed, brilliantly acted, and beautiful to watch. Across seven episodes, it exceeds even their very high expectations.
That enthusiasm comes down to the season’s sense of purpose. The reviewer describes well-formed, nuanced, complicated characters who are tragic, hopeful, heartfelt, intriguing, and connected to one another. Rather than wandering without direction, the story knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and hits every intended note. It leaves the critic delighted and captivated, with a clear verdict that the season deserves viewers’ time despite the many other options available.
The Rings of Power season three releases on Prime Video on November 11.
