One week from today, September 2, Amazon Prime will premiere their new show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.
Amazon Studios
We know from the trailers that the basic premise is that this show takes place during the Second Age, around the time that Sauron created the Great Rings, of which the One Ring ruled all, and gifted them to powerful people around Middle-earth. Literally, the introduction to The Fellowship of the Ring.
I love the Peter Jackson movies, and while I’ve attempted to read the original books, I’ve only finished The Hobbit because they are dense reads. As a fan, I was thinking of what I was hoping to see from the upcoming show, without getting too specific and falling into the trap that MCU fans often do.
Fellowship Opening
I want to see the forging of the Great Rings, by Celebrimbor, who we learn more about in the Shadow of Mordor video game. I want to see how Sauron chose the Three Elves, Seven Dwarf-Lords, and Nine Men. I think that if the show is done right, that when you go back to watch Fellowship and Galadriel, who seems to be the protagonist of the show, has her expositional speech, that every line will remind you of a moment in the show. It’s clear when it’s done right, because we already have a moment like that. In the Peter Jackson movies, Aragorn and the four Hobbits are travelling to Rivendell, and they pass three large statues of trolls. Then, in The Hobbit, we see Bilbo and the dwarves fight said trolls, and how they turn to stone in the end. So now, when you go back to the original films, and see those trolls, you are instantly thrown back to that scene in The Hobbit. If we could do that, but with Galadriel’s entire five minute monologue, it would be incredibly satisfying.
The Height of the Dwarves
In both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, we visit what used to be a Dwarven stronghold, Moria and the Lonely Mountain respectively. Both of these were spoken of with high admiration, but all we saw were ruins and monster lairs.
We know that Durin IV was a Dwarvish king of Khazad-dum (Moria), so I hope that means that we’ll see Moria the way that Gimli talks about it, which would then make the reveal of the destruction hurt so much more.
Valinor
Lastly, I would like a little more information on the Undying Lands. We know that is where the Elves go, where they cannot die. In The Lord of the Rings that is where all of the Elves are leaving for, which worries Men, because Elves have always been their biggest allies in the fights against Sauron/Melkor. We know that Frodo and Bilbo are granted passage on the ship due to their Ring-bearer status, but that no one else is able to go there, due to the curvature of the earth, somehow.
It gets really complicated, something about how the Valar, essentially Angels, created it or lived there after fighting with Melkor, who Sauron served. I kind of know that the two trees from the poster are famously in Valinor, so I assume we are going to at least visit, but I really need some explanation as to how all that works. Luckily, the main characters are all Elves, so it should be natural to give some good explanations as to what is going on there.
The Nerdd 