The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been under fire from audiences for breaking the canon previously outlined by author J.R.R. Tolkien, but this is a hard-to-avoid faux pas with Tolkien's work. Tolkien wrote several books and essays diving into the lore of the fantasy world he created in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, the most significant of which is The Silmarillion. This title has often been regarded as a history book, full of the doings of characters like Galadriel, Elrond, and their Elven families. However, much of this history is told differently in Tolkien's other works.
J.R.R. Tolkien was never against making changes to his work. In fact, when he started writing The Lord of the Rings, he went back and changed how Bilbo Baggins became the Ring-bearer in The Hobbit. The novel's first edition tells of a Gollum who willingly handed his ring over to help Bilbo escape the mountain. In the revised version, Gollum cursed the hobbit and lamented the ring. At the start of the newly changed book, Tolkien explains that this version of the tale was the truth and that Bilbo had been reluctant to divulge it before, as it made him seem like a thief.
J.R.R. Tolkien Wrote Several Versions Of Various Middle-Earth Stories
Much of what J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about the Second Age, aside from The Silmarillion, was never published during his lifetime. His notes and essays were gathered by his son and compiled into books, such as Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, and released to the public posthumously. The problem is that many of these stories contradicted what Tolkien had written in The Silmarillion, with some stories being entirely new. This left the question of a single canon in the air since it is challenging to choose which versions of these stories the author intended to accept as truth.
Tolkien didn't create different versions of the same stories because he was inconsistent but because he was a historian. Each of his written works is meant to be read as if they were being recorded in Middle-earth by people who had either witnessed the events or had received word of them after centuries of verbal storytelling. Just like the real world contains variations of Norse and Greek mythology, so are there variations in the history of Middle-earth.
Does A Flexible Canon Mean Rings Of Power Can Do No Wrong?
While J.R.R. Tolkien didn't explore his stories with the concept of "canon" in mind, it doesn't mean that his legacy should be thrown out the window. The author had been consistent with many events that seemed important to him— which is why he took the effort to change his already published version of The Hobbit to better fit with the plot of The Lord of the Rings. It's important to that he made this change in a way that made sense. It was entirely within Bilbo's character to lie when he first wrote about his interaction with Gollum, only to go back and change it later.
While Tolkien himself might have written about a version of his story where Gandalf arrived in Middle-earth during the Second Age, before Lord of the Rings, he wouldn't have done so in a way that changed the fundamental aspects of the character. So far, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 1 is within the boundaries of believable change, but it teeters on the edge of altering characters like Galadriel and Elrond. Prime Video will simply have to proceed with caution.