Are you ready to go there, and back again? Amazon certainly hopes so.
During the Super Bowl tonight, Amazon Studios lifted the lid on its long-awaited Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Rings of Power. We’ve had glimpses of magical trees, mysterious hands, and glimpses of faces old and new, but now, for the first time, we get to see Amazon’s long-secret vision for Arda and Middle-Earth in action, and it’s really all rather stunning.
Set during the Second Age of Middle-Earth — thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which take place at the climax of the Third Age — The Rings of Power introduces us to a world on the precipice of returned evils, as the Dark Lord Sauron plots to deceive the Elves into helping him forge the titular Rings of Power, the magical trinkets he plans to spread across the rulers of the races of Middle-Earth, and through them dominate their will with a secret ring, binding them all together.
The trailer gives a few glimpses at characters we know from the books and films — most notably Morfydd Clark and Robert Aramayo, who are playing younger versions of the long-lived elves Galadriel and Elrond — as well as some of the new characters created for the show, including Ismael Cruz Cruz Córdova and Nazanin Boniadi, as the Silvan Arondir, and Bronwyn, a human healer who finds herself drawn to the Wood-Elf, as well as a look at the underground Dwarven realms of Khazad-dûm, and their princess Disa, played by Sophia Nomvete.
Also starring is an expansive cast that includes — deep breath — Charles Edwards, Maxim Baldry, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Ian Blackburn, Kip Chapman, Anthony Crum, Maxine Cunliffe, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Thusitha Jayasundera, Fabian McCallum, Simon Merrells, Geoff Morrell, Peter Mullan, Lloyd Owen, Augustus Prew, Peter Tait, Alex Tarrant, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, and Sara Zwangobani. Some of which we get to briefly see above, but otherwise, so far beyond offering a sumptuous look at what to expect from the show, there’s still plenty of questions left to answer even after this first fleeting tease.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will stream on Prime Video from September 2.
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