Amazon combats The Rings of Power review bombing on Prime video with quick fix

Amazon have delayed reviews on Prime Video for Rings of Power as a way to combat any potential review bombing the show might face early on during its release. However it hasn’t stopped viewers from expressing themselves elsewhere.

Review bombing — the act of tanking a show’s early impressions publicly with one-star reviews — is an issue that continues to grow as new shows release. Many recent Marvel products such as Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk have faced major review bombing from viewers.

In an effort to avoid a similar fate though, Amazon has put in place a 72-hour delay for reviews on Rings of Power, its new Lord of The Rings show, as a way to combat people interfering with the show’s rating.

The reach of Amazon’s anti-review bombing mechanisms is short though. It only applies to viewers on Prime Video. Elsewhere, Rings of Power has been received negatively by viewers. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show currently has a 39% audience rating while the critic and industry meter has it sitting at 84%.

According to Variety, this is a strategy that Amazon are trialling as a way to ensure that show’s are reviewed appropriately and in good faith. 

This system was first used for another recent release on the platform, with the TV adaptation of A League of Their Own — the platform delaying its review window in a similar fashion. Given that the show currently has a 4.3/5 rating on Prime Video, it appears this move from Amazon has paid off.

The Lord of The Rings: Rings of Power is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. The series is being led by showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay and takes place during Middle-earth’s Second Age. Given the Lord of The Rings trilogy takes place during the Third Age, Rings of Power is set in a world thousands of years earlier.

The first two episodes have already dropped. In Dexerto’s review of the first episode, we wrote that Rings of Power is “looking to be more akin to Peter Jackson’s work than anything else.”

From now on, a new episode will be released weekly until the eight-episode run comes to an end on October 14. And while so far the show has stayed in the clear, time will tell if Rings of Power will be the next big project to suffer from extended review bombing.