Prime Video has announced its San Diego Comic-Con 2026 lineup, and The Rings of Power Season 3 has a Hall H slo (the big hall meant for big properties)t. The panel is set for Friday, July 24 from 10:00AM to 11:30AM, shared with Blade Runner 2099. Cast and executive producers will be on stage, with Prime Video promising “behind-the-scenes insights and thrilling surprises.”
Hall H is SDCC’s largest auditorium, seating around 6,500 people.
The Second Age in Tolkien’s mythology covers the forging of the Rings of Power and the fall of Numenor, documented primarily in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. The deception of the Elven-smiths of Eregion by Annatar, a disguised Sauron, is spelled out in specific detail in Unfinished Tales. The Akallabeth in The Silmarillion gives the drowning of Numenor the weight of myth. Tolkien left source material for nearly all of it.
Two seasons in, the creative team built the show’s drama around invented characters who appear nowhere in Tolkien’s writing. The Second Age timeline, spanning thousands of years in Tolkien’s own accounting, was collapsed into a compact TV arc. Numenor’s fall and the deception of Celebrimbor have so far both been substantially reworked from Tolkien’s accounts in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
My guess? This panel at Comic-Con just doubles down on celebrating a story that barely resembles what Tolkien wrote, and trumpets these changes as if it’s what fans actually want.
Our Exploring Tolkien podcast has followed the show’s handling of its source material throughout both seasons–much to our chagrin.
