Image credit: Prime Video

Before the Lord of the Rings prequel premiered on Amazon, fans feared that it will be Prime Video’s “own Game of Thrones”, with sex and violence.

With the finale being less than a week away, The Rings of Power is heading into its second season — all despite massive criticism and even fears that the show would resort to nude scenes and gore in order to compete with HBO’s Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.

However, it turns out that Amazon did not intend to go down this path, according to Amazon Studios head, Jennifer Salke.

“So many people have grown up with this literature, and we wanted this series to pay it forward for new generations of Tolkien lovers. The line we’ve been using is “If you’re old enough to read the books, you’re old enough to watch the show.” We knew from the beginning that this was not our Game of Thrones,” she told Variety.

She mentioned how fans begged the showrunners not to “insert sex and a level of provocative violence”, adding that the fandom felt such things “don’t feel true to the stories that Tolkien wanted to tell.”

However, despite Amazon staying true to its pledge not to make The Rings of Power overly sexual and keep it family-appropriate, many fans seem to be disappointed — mainly because a lot of other things they deem important for Tolkien were ditched in the show.

“I’m not an expert on what Tolkien would have wanted. Galadriel running around in armour that weights the same as a double decker bus. While wanting to kill Sauron was definitely not what he wanted. So much so that he actually wrote the story completely differently, but stay true.” – @ryan_rudman

Others, however, appreciate the Lord of the Rings prequel staying within the PG-13 rating.

“Yes the story does not follow Tolkien’s narrative. But it does have a magical and ethereal fantasy feel to it, which is great. Every fantasy does not need to be about murder and sex. Sometimes you just want a tale of elves and dwarves.” – @lordakoroth

It turns out that for many people, Amazon’s decision to step away from how Game of Thrones does its fantasy was just right.

“[T]he extreme sex and gore in Thrones is something I hate. Rings has a TON of issues but I’ve liked it on it sticking to a misty “PG 13″ level. Doubt this is a popular sentiment tho,” Twitter user Atari_Akazawa argued.

The fear that The Rings of Power will include nudity and violence was first voiced long before the show’s premiere, in 2020, when some reports suggested that sex will be a part of the show. At the time, it caused massive backlash, with people arguing that the world of Middle-earth is simply not about that, and the Tolkien stories do not need sex and violence to attract viewers.