Amazon’s new massively-budgeted, much buzzed about Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power, gave the streaming/shopping service a big win this past weekend as its first two premiere episodes – “A Shadow of the Past” and “Adrift,” directed by The Orphanage and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s J. A. Bayona – drew 25 million global viewers in 24 hours, officially becoming the biggest premiere in the history of the company.
So it’s no surprise at all that Fandom’s Lord of the Rings Wiki — The One Wiki to Rule Them All — was the belle of the ball following The Rings of Power’s debut, with 2.4 million pageviews. Leading the One Ring pack, number one with a bullet (er, or a broadsword), was the crusading, Sauron-hunting Galadriel.
Galadriel Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
As traffic to the The One Wiki to Rule Them All shot way up, the number one page people landed on was that of Galadriel, played in the series by Saint Maud’s Morfydd Clark. Fans wanted to learn all they could about this revenge-seeking warrior elf, who turned her back on paradise in order to continue hunting her “white whale” (to avenge the death of her brother, Finrod).
In Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, Galadriel was played by Cate Blanchett as part of a saga that takes place thousands of years after the events of Middle Earth’s Second Age, which The Rings of Power is set in. In those films, Galadriel is already known to all as a legendary elven ruler, both respected and feared. In The Rings of Power though, she’s just starting to make a name for herself and it will be her refusal of The Undying Lands to the West, and King Gil-galad’s order that she retire with esteem and honor, that helps forge her destiny.
Galadriel tops the pageviews chart, and for good reason, but let’s see how the rest of the One Ring Wiki Top 10 shakes out…
- 1. Galadriel
- 2. Harfoots
- 3. Sauron
- 4. Melkor
- 5. Celebrimbor
- 6. Rings of Power
- 7. Elrond
- 8. Arondir
- 9. Gil-galad
- 10. Maiar
Hardy Harfoots
As you can see, coming in right after Galadriel on the One Ring Wiki chart is the page for the Harfoots, the nomadic, Shire-less breed of Hobbit who wander, season to season, across Middle Earth, traveling in packs so that there’s safety in numbers.
The Rings of Power will eventually be about Sauron forging the titular rings (as Galadriel has already come across what seemed to be a failed attempt to do so in one particular hideout) but to get there we’re going to follow many stories, which tackle the main arc from different angles. The Harfoot storyline – featuring Nori Brandyfoot, her friend Poppy, and Nori’s parents – features many curious goings-on, the least of which is the fall from the heavens by The Stranger (who many fans feel light be a Maia, as indicated by the tenth entry on the Wiki listing).
The Harfoots are taking up the “Hobbit” role in The Rings of Power, for sure, as the small, less-powerful players in the realm who get caught up in circumstances they’re ill-equipped to handle. But rest assured, Nori and the rest of these little folks will find a way to persevere and help the other heroes crack the case.
Breaking down the rest of the Top 10, rabid Rings fans wanted to know more about not-seen-on-the-show-yet Sauron (who doesn’t?), Melkor (aka Sauron’s defeated boss, Morgoth), the ridiculously-named Elven smith Celebrimbor, and Ismael Cruz Córdova’s Elf soldier, Arondir.
Orcs vs. Dragons
Fantasy TV is having a big moment right now, as it was only a few weeks ago that HBO’s House of the Dragon premiered and the Game of Thrones Wiki was on fire (metaphorically). The Rings of Power caused the One Ring Wiki to spike 132% on Sept 1, when the first two episodes dropped at midnight.
On September 2, the Wiki jumped up even higher, to the aforementioned 2.4 million pageviews, and right now, comparing the first five days of traffic between the two shows, One Ring is just barely beating out the Thrones Wiki with about 14% more traffic. Spike-wise, though, at the time of their respective premieres, House of the Dragon caused the Thrones Wiki to shoot up 278%, compared to that previously mentioned 132% for One Ring.
The two Wikis are mostly running neck-and-neck in terms of scale and spikes, with the average Lord of the Rings fan consuming 4 pages a day and the Game of Thrones equivalent absorbing 3.75 pages. It’s likely, with new episodes of both shows now being released weekly for the next few months, that the Wikis will switch off, back and forth, between the top two spots. Even this past weekend, One Ring was number one on Saturday while Thrones took the top spot back on Sunday.
And while it’s easy to see the two shows as competition, it’s also understandable that there’s a lot of fantasy consumer crossover here between viewers happy to have all of this new content, as Game of Thrones fans are 75% more likely to visit the One Ring Wiki than other users on Fandom.
