SEATTLE–In the wake of the release of The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime executives caused a stir this week when they officially declared the works of the Middle-Earth Expanded Universe (MEEU) to be non-canonical.
“We’re keeping Rings of Power in line with the continuity of the film trilogies–the originals and the prequels,” Jeff Bezos explained in a press conference. “We realize that the world of the novels has continued the Middle-Earth saga from the movies, and they’ve had a small following of fans for some time. But, to make the story most accessible to the largest possible audience, we decided not to draw from those sources at this time.”
“For example, I’m pretty sure one of the novels has Treebeard dying by being crushed by a falling moon, while Sam and Rosie’s son just watches in horror. But nobody knows about that unless they happened to read that novel! So we’re just doing our own thing for the show and not acknowledging those events.”
Bezos revealed that books from the Middle-Earth Expanded Universe, including The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales, would be published under the “Legends” banner going forward, indicating their non-canonical status as opposed to the films and The Rings of Power.
“But we’ll probably take some of the most popular Legends characters, like Grand Admiral Thorondir, and adapt them into the new canon,” Bezos continued. “Maybe in an animated show called Lord of the Rings: Rebels, with Dave Filoni as showrunner.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres every Friday on Amazon Prime.
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