The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit: in what order to watch the movies and series in the saga?

Amazon Studios has just finished up the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a prequel to the novels and movies in the franchise that takes place during the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy world. With plenty of mysteries and secrets unveiled during the series, the streaming platform is already working on a second season for the coming years to continue the story.

Now is as good a time as ever to catch up on all the movies that have been released up till now. So how do you watch them if you never have before? We propose two options:

How to watch The Lord of the Rings in chronological order

If what you want is to see all of the plot in the same order they happen in-universe, as established by Tolkien in his writings, then you need to start by watching the Rings of Power series, followed by the prequel trilogy, where you see The One Ring arrive to the Shire, and change Bilbo’s life forever. We also meet Gollum for the first time, and get introduced to the terrifying dragon Smaug.

Afterwards, you continue with the original trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

The chronological order (including the newest Amazon Prime Video series) is:

How to watch the Lord of the Rings saga by release date

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If you instead prefer to watch everything in the order they were released, then it’s a little bit simpler:

Middle Earth in the movies, the same as in Amazon?

Something very important to keep in mind is that the cinematic universe envisioned and directed by Peter Jackson is not the same as the one created by Amazon for the new streaming series, even when some of the original creatives are back. In fact, John Howe is once again in charge of concept art and Howard Shore, composer for the six films, gave life to some of the music we can enjoy in the series.

Asides from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth is coming back to the big screen through the animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, art of which has already been revealed. The animated production is not expected to release until april 12, 2024, but it will tell a story before both movie trilogies involving the old king of Rohan.

If after all of this you’re still craving more experiences linked to The Lord of the Rings, we also recommend you take a look at Tolkien, a 2019 movie that tells the life story of the author, played by Nicholas Hoult.