This is not a Tolkien show. This is a show by Amazon wearing Tolkien's world as a skinsuit. The same thing happened to Star Wars. The viewership of this show is still riding on the name recognition, but as soon as it flops, people will stop watching more. Give it 5 years, and the original Peter Jackson trilogy videos will no longer be culturally relevant because nobody wants LoTR content any more, while record amounts of it continue to get produced.