The return of dragons on the small screen has been a huge hit. Now it’s time for the return of the elves and dwarves.

Amazon Studios is launching “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” an ambitious, years-in-the-making and very expensive salvo that will go head-to-head with another costly streaming fantasy epic: HBO’s “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House of the Dragon,” which recently became the most-watched series premiere in HBO history.

The series is based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings and asides about Middle-earth’s Second Age, which preceded the Third Age’s “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films and books. Tolkien’s grandson, Simon Tolkien, was a creative consultant.

Amazon Prime Video will debut both the first two “The Rings of Power” episodes on Friday. After that, the remaining six episodes arrive weekly on Friday.

The hour-long episodes are stuffed with action and humor but buckle up: Payne and his co-showrunner Patrick McKay plan to use a 50-hour canvas to explore their nuanced characters and complex histories. These first eight episodes are like an appetizer.

Early ones shift across the various regions of Middle-earth, our planet’s imagined mythological past. Here, some 4,000 years before “The Hobbit,” are elves involved with royal intrigue, dwarves who mine inside mountains, hobbitlike harfoots who are pastoral, humans who seem unusually prone to violence, and evil orcs.

Despite being set centuries before the books and films that make up the Tolkien’s canon, fans of “The Lord of the Rings” will notice some familiar characters, based on the long lifespan of some of the creatures, including Galadriel, Elrond and Isildur. Sauron, the evil force, is unseen in the first two episodes but a malevolent presence throughout.