Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit: The Best Watch Order
Six films, one world, and a genuine dilemma: The Hobbit trilogy is set sixty years before The Lord of the Rings but was made a decade later. Both orders are defensible. Here's how to choose.
Release order
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) — Eleven Oscars, including Best Picture.
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
Release order puts the strongest films first and treats The Hobbit as a prequel epilogue. This is the order for a first viewing: The Fellowship of the Ring is one of cinema's great openings, and starting there means starting at the peak.
Chronological order
Watching the Hobbit trilogy first, then The Lord of the Rings, follows Middle-earth's own timeline — Bilbo's adventure, then Frodo's. It flows surprisingly well on a rewatch, and small connections (the finding of the Ring, Gandalf's investigations) land differently when you meet them in story order.
Theatrical or Extended editions?
For The Lord of the Rings, the Extended Editions add roughly two hours of material across the trilogy and are widely considered the definitive versions — if you have the time, choose them. For The Hobbit, the theatrical cuts are tighter and generally the better first experience. Rights to the two trilogies are sometimes held by different services in the same country, so it's worth searching each trilogy separately on this site to see where both currently stream for you.