Journey back to Middle-earth with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power teaser trailer
The world is changed. You can feel it in the water. You can feel it in the earth. You can smell it in the air: The first teaser for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has finally arrived.
Amazon Prime Video dropped the first footage of its much-anticipated fantasy TV series Sunday during the Super Bowl, revealing the long-awaited return to J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. The show is set during Tolkien's Second Age, a time period thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, a time that saw Sauron's original rise to power and the forging of the One Ring.
Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have described The Rings of Power as "the novel Tolkien never wrote," and the show will follow the major events the author outlined in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, while also filling in the gaps with new characters and story lines. The teaser gives fans their best glimpse yet of some of the show's major players — some taken straight from Tolkien's original text and others invented for the series. There's ancient elf Galadriel, of course, played by Cate Blanchett in Peter Jackson's trilogy and here by Morfydd Clark. We also see young elven lord Elrond, with Robert Aramayo taking over the role from Hugo Weaving. (You may recognize Aramayo from his role as young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones.) But there are new characters, too: Ismael Cruz Córdova plays bow-wielding silvan elf Arondir, who's in a forbidden love affair with human healer Bronwyn (played by Nazanin Boniadi).
By the time of The Lord of the Rings, many of the ancient elvish, dwarven, and human civilizations have fallen into ruin; here, we see glimpses of them in their full glory. The teaser opens on a gorgeous harbor, with a regal mountain looming in the background — a harbor that looks a lot like Númenor, the vast and beautiful island populated by seafaring humans in the Second Age. (In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is of Númenorean descent.) We see dwarves, too, played by Owain Arthur and Sophia Nomvete, and here, they're living in splendor in the ancient mining city of Khazad-dûm — better known as Moria.
prime video 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power'
As for hobbits? The Rings of Power is set long before everyone's favorite hairy-toed halflings even existed, so don't expect to see the Shire any time soon. But the show will feature harfoots, small, pastoral beings who preceded hobbits, and some of the series' harfoot cast members include Sir Lenny Henry, Markella Kavanagh, and Megan Richards.
That's a lot to unpack in a single teaser! But the footage also introduces a few tantalizing questions: We see cast member Benjamin Walker as an unidentified, regal-looking elf — who might he be playing? And what's up with that mysterious figure wreathed in flame — or that meteor seen streaking across the sky? We'll have to wait and see when The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres Sept. 2.
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