It’s been nearly a year since The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power wrapped up its second season on Prime Video, and fans who’ve been holding out hope for a quicker turnaround on Season 3 just got a bit of bad news. Robert Aramayo, who plays Elrond in the fantasy epic, revealed in a new interview with Deadline that filming on the third season is still ongoing and will keep him tied up until the end of this year — which means Middle-earth won’t be returning to screens anytime soon.
Aramayo, while promoting his new film I Swear (in which he plays a man with Tourette’s Syndrome), explained that Rings of Power Season 3 has him fully booked for the rest of 2025. “And then I’ll try and get a job fast,” he joked, but the bigger takeaway for fans is that even if cameras wrap late this year, post-production on a show of this scale could easily stretch well into 2026. Based on how long the first two seasons took to complete, it’s looking less and less likely that we’ll see the next chapter of the Second Age before then.
The road to Rings of Power Season 3 has already been a winding one. Season 1 started filming back in February 2020 in New Zealand — the same place Peter Jackson shot his films — only to be shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic. Production picked back up later that year, finally wrapping in 2021. By the time it premiered in 2022, Amazon had already shifted production to the UK for Season 2, which filmed from late 2022 to mid-2023. That season debuted in August 2024 and wrapped its finale in October, but the move to London has carried into Season 3, with Aramayo and the rest of the cast now shooting there.
What We Know About Season 3
The most recent official update before Aramayo’s comments came back in June 2025, when three new cast members were announced: Andrew Richardson (Extrapolations), Zubin Varla (Andor), and Adam Young (The Witcher: Blood Origins). Richardson will be a series regular, while Varla and Young are set for recurring roles.
Amazon has confirmed at least one major detail: Season 3 will include a significant time jump, pushing the story forward several years from the events of Season 2. The official logline teases that the new season will take place at the height of the War of the Elves and Sauron, as the Dark Lord finally begins crafting the One Ring in his bid to dominate Middle-earth.
The first two seasons are streaming on Prime Video.
r
