The buildup to Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings TV series has, for fans, felt comparable in length to the millennia-spanning quasi-historical chronicles of author J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary lore. Indeed, over four years after the project’s initial November 2017 announcement—also two-and-a-half years since casting commenced and nearly two years since the pandemic halted production—Amazon has finally unveiled the mystery project’s rather revelatory title: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Amazon’s long-awaited unveiling of The Rings of Power arrived with a teaser trailer of sorts. Check it out just below.
While its failure to include actual footage from The Rings of Power is disappointing, the clip does manage to tease a unique interpretation of its small screen manifestation of Middle-earth—set during an era dubbed the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—with an artful presentation of that evokes The Fellowship of the Ring’s legendary prologue, in which we saw the Rings of Power being forged. However, while this concept-driven clip is similarly narrated with mystical reverence by a female voice—reciting similar exposition about the Rings—the path of molten metal is closely followed in the wooden mold, ultimately revealing a shape resembling the One Ring itself, which, appropriately, turns out to be the “o” in power for the show’s title. Yet, the biggest twist of the clip has nothing to do with its connection to the show’s content. Rather, it has to do with the execution of the visuals, which were achieved not with CGI, but through a practical process captured by a Phantom Flex 4K camera, as documented in the behind-the-scenes clip below.
Of course, the One Ring is the ultimate MacGuffin of the mythos; an initially unassuming plain gold artifact that, as Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel explained concisely in The Fellowship of the Rings prologue, was surreptitiously created with malevolent intentions by the insidious Sauron as a master ring to control the well-intended Rings of Power distributed to the leaders of the Elves, Dwarves and Men, in which “the strength and will to govern each race” was bound. Additionally, the television teaser features a more embellished twist on the traditional interpretation of the Rings monologue, describing the One Ring itself, “One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne in the land of Mordor… where the shadows lie.” This seems to further solidify the long-held belief that the show’s Second Age setting will showcase a story centered on the formation of the Rings, and, likewise, will feature Sauron himself as an actual character, rather than, as we saw in the films, a flaming eye atop a tower or even a mace-swinging armored giant.
“This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics,” explains showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay of the title. “The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring — but before there was one, there were many… and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.”
Interestingly enough, the teaser’s depicted mold-set molten path also seems to strategically coincide with the substance of the voiceover, especially when it comes to the line, “Nine for mortal men… doomed to die.” At that point, the clip unsubtly shows water rushing down onto the steaming shape as it cools. This seems to imply that the series will also prominently focus on the story of Númenor, a great kingdom located on a five-pointed-star-shaped island that once dwelt at the center of Middle-earth itself. The Númenoreans themselves were a race of Men—from which Aragorn was a descendant—who enjoyed significantly longer lifespans than Middle-earth’s contiguous human residents but were nevertheless mortal. Consequently, a combination of resentment and unbridled hubris would ultimately lead to the kingdom’s undoing when the suggestible King Ar-Pharazôn allowed himself to become influenced by Sauron. This led to an invasion of Valinor, the Undying Lands, for an ill-advised quest to claim immortality from its resident divine deities. The invasion would yield a catastrophic reprisal that resulted in the fleet’s destruction and Númenor itself sinking to the bottom of the sea, drowning its populace. This fate provides a prescient quality to the teaser clip’s suddenly saturated climax.
However, despite the still-mysterious focus of the series, The Rings of Power’s title-revealing teaser was also complemented by a new, adventure-evoking official tagline that now graces its Twitter account: “A grand journey is defined by its travelers.” Thus, while Sauron and Númenor will likely provide prominent elements, the series still seems destined to follow a traditional set of characters, conventionally on a quest of some kind.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, as we can now conveniently call it, is currently scheduled to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, September 2.
