It's been years in the making and is believed to be the most expensive show ever to grace the small screen, and according to the critics, The Rings of Power has been worth the wait.
But the new series, based on the writing of JRR Tolkien, has been dealt an old problem, as racist reaction to the cast's diversity drags down the show's online ratings.
The practice, known as 'review bombing', can materially affect the economic prospects of a release, as thousands reviewers leave one-star reviews.
It comes as one of the show's actors, Ismael Cruz Córdova, revealed to Esquire that a small but motivated fanbase has been clogging his inbox with “pure and vicious hate speech” for two years.
Córdova plays an elf in the show, the first time in the 'Rings' franchise that a person of colour has scored a role as one of Tolkien's immortal beings.
The 35-year-old Puerto Rican actor said the racist criticism was unfounded.
“You can never use it as an excuse: ‘But elves don’t look like that,’” he told the publication.
“They didn’t, but now they do.”
Amazon delays ratings
In response to the practice review bombing, the show's streaming host Amazon has delayed the posting of some reviews.
As reported by Variety, which first noticed the new practice, the three-day gap is designed to test whether some reviews are genuine or maliciously motivated.
Amazon has also implemented a new practice of requiring reviewers to have actually watched the program before being able to leave a rating.
However, on public internet rating sites the impact can already be seen: Rotten Tomatoes records a 38 per cent audience approval score, in stark contrast to its 84 per cent critical approval. IMDb, which is owned by Amazon, had a similar disparity, with almost 20 thousand one-star ratings.
It reflects a similar racist response to the new Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon. Just last month, actor Steve Toussaint slammed viewers who were "happy with a dragon flying... but [not] a rich Black guy."
