Amazon's Prime Video made a major investment in The Rings of Power when it acquired the rights to the source material from the Tolkien estate, even committing to multiple seasons upfront. The casting was strong and the visuals were quite spectacular (including the opening credits). But while the first season had its moments, personally I found it a bit plodding, often more concerned with establishing this rich fictional world and the characters within it than moving the story forward.

Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have said that this was deliberate. They wanted to avoid a "villain-centric" story in S1 but promised they would be delving more deeply into "the lore and the stories people have been waiting to hear." That would be the rise of Sauron (Charlie Vickers), the forging of the titular rings of power, and the last alliance between elves and men to defeat Sauron's evil machinations. Judging by the teaser that dropped today, we'll be getting lots more action in S2, with the shape-shifting Sauron now handily disguised as an elf. Bonus: There's an accompanying behind-the-scenes preview of the second season.

(Spoilers for the S1 finale below.)

Enlarge / A scene from the Prime Video original series Fallout. (credit: Prime Video/YouTube)

Amazon Prime Video subscribers will see new types of advertisements this broadcast year. Amazon announced today that it's adding new ad formats to its video streaming service, hoping to encourage people to interact with the ads and shop on Amazon.

In January, Prime Video streams included commercials unless subscribers paid $3 extra per month. That has meant that watching stuff on Prime Video ad-free costs $12 per month or, if you're also a Prime subscriber, $18 per month.

New types of Prime Video ads

Amazon has heightened focus on streaming ads this year. Those who opted for Prime Video with commercials will soon see shoppable carousel ads, interactive pause ads, and interactive brand trivia ads, as Amazon calls them. Amazon said that advertisers could buy these new displays to be shown "across the vast majority of content on Prime Video, wherever it’s streamed." All the new ad formats allow a viewer to place advertised products in their Amazon cart.

Last summer's Hollywood strikes delayed a number of releases, among them the fourth season of Prime Video's The Boys. We're longtime fans of this incredibly violent, darkly funny anti-homage to superheroes and, thus, are thrilled to see there's finally an official trailer for S4. It's filled with the bloody mayhem we've come to expect from the show, as well as a tantalizing glimpse of the chief villain, Homelander (Antony Starr), performing in what appears to be an ice skating extravaganza.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below, especially S3.)

As I've written previously, the show is based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The Boys is set in a fictional universe where superheroes are real but are corrupted by corporate interests and a toxic celebrity-obsessed culture. The most elite superhero group is called the Seven, operated by the Vought Corporation, which created the supes with a substance called Compound V. The Seven is headed up by Homelander, a violent and unstable psychopath disguised as the All-American hero. Homelander's counterpart as the head of the titular "Boys" is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a self-appointed vigilante intent on checking the bad behavior of the Seven—especially Homelander, who brutally raped Butcher's wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), unknowingly fathering a son, Ryan, in the process.