“Rings Of Power” Episode 1 Sets The Stage For An Epic Tale

MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER EPISODE ONE!

“Among those of [Morgoth’s] servants that have names the greatest was that spirit whom the Eldar called Sauron..,.in all the deeds of Melkor the Morgoth upon Arda, in his vast works and in the deceits of his cunning, Sauron had a part, and was only less evil than his master in that for long he served another and not himself. But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the Void.”

– The Silmarillion: Valaquenta, p. 23

Although Amazon was denied access to the contents of The Silmarillion (and it’s evident from the opening scene just to what extent this has hindered their ability to tell a coherent story), The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power is best described as a Silmarillion sequel of similarly gargantuan proportions, and not as a prequel to The Lord Of The Rings, despite how Amazon and the mainstream media have jointly marketed the series, and what its long and unwieldy full title would perhaps lead you to believe…and I mean that not merely in the sense that The Rings Of Power picks up right where The Silmarillion left off, with the great enemy Morgoth defeated and his lieutenant Sauron still evading capture in Middle-earth, but in that the writers have constructed an original story around these events that feels almost too large for even this largest and most expensive of television series’ – a grand and somber narrative spanning centuries, with a massive ensemble cast given precious few moments to leave a lasting impression in these first two episodes.

Rings Of Power
Elrond and Galadriel | newsrebeat.com

Yet on that note, there are hundreds upon hundreds of named characters in The Silmarillion, many of whom only stick around for a couple of pages and some of whom are mentioned just once or twice in a single paragraph, and these characters have nonetheless made an impression on people – so I firmly believe that the protagonists of Amazon’s epic series will do the same, especially seeing as the main cast already have more screentime in just two episodes than most of The Silmarillion‘s main characters had in a whole book. Still not as much as they deserve, mind you, but just enough that you’ll know going into episode three which of these characters you’ll want to spend more time with – and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that, for me, those characters are Elanor Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), and Disa (Sophia Nomvete), the latter of whom I’ll speak about in my review of episode two.

Collectively, these three characters represent almost all the Free Peoples of Middle-earth – Harfoots, Elves, and Dwarves, respectively – and at this point I’m just waiting for a charismatic human character to come along and give me a reason to get invested in the dealings of Men. Nazanin Boniadi does her level best with the character of Bronwyn, a shy and unassuming single mother from the Southlands who falls in love with a Silvan Elf, but humans in The Rings Of Power are the most underwritten of all the races that make up Middle-earth’s diverse population. To some extent, that could be interpreted as a reflection of their current social status in Middle-earth and an unconscious bias on the part of our Elven protagonists and narrator, but I have a feeling it’s probably not intentional.

Nonetheless, with so many different peoples represented in just the first two episodes, even if only briefly, the scope of this series is quite large – as I said, almost too large. In episode one, following a necessarily vague and therefore somewhat unhelpful prologue that is memorable mostly for the fact that it’s the first time we’ve seen events from The Silmarillion adapted for the screen, we flash-forward to find our main characters scattered far and wide across Middle-earth, each isolated to their own little corner of the map where they can pursue their own agendas untroubled. And while I’m hardly the first person to say this, it bears repeating that each location we visit is distinct and extraordinarily beautiful, from the rolling hills of Valinor bathed in unearthly light to the cliffs of Lindon overlooking the young sea, and the tumbling ladders of crystalline ice suspended from mountaintops in the Forodwaith.

In fact, not to get side-tracked or anything, but I can’t overstate it enough that The Rings Of Power is beautiful; genuinely some of the most beautiful television ever produced. Director J.A. Bayona definitely got the memo that Middle-earth is as much a character in Tolkien’s stories as any Elf or Hobbit, and just as deserving of flattering close-ups every now and again. If there’s one fault with Bayona’s direction, it’s that whenever his camera comes to rest just over a character’s shoulder during a reverse-angle dialogue sequence, he has a tendency to leave it there for the duration of the scene, which grows especially frustrating when the environments in which these characters are placed are clearly practical sets demanding – nay, pleading – to be interacted with and walked upon! I’m not feeling the energy that these sets inspired in the actors, and which they could have used to their advantage if they were allowed to ever move about.

Anyway, forgive me my occasional tangents. We’re first introduced to the Elves – an immortal race of beings from beyond the Sundering Seas who reside in Middle-earth partly out of genuine love for the land, and partly because the land was bought with their own blood. Characters like Elrond, who are relatively young in Elven years, have a vision of what Middle-earth could be if the Elves finally laid down their weapons and allowed themselves to be at peace for once in their lives, while Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) is still poking around in dark corners, searching for any sign of Sauron, the undefeated enemy responsible for so much of her sorrow.

Conceptually, Galadriel’s arc is quite the compelling one – and the idea that there are Elves who wish for her to stop, and would even conspire with each other to send her packing and put an end to the war she insists on prolonging for her own purposes, is all rather fascinating. In execution, it only works half the time. Legally, The Rings Of Power can’t plumb the depths of Galadriel’s trauma without encroaching upon territory covered exclusively in The Silmarillion, including the gruesome details of her elder brother Finrod (Will Fletcher)’s death at the hands of Sauron. We only spend a few moments with Finrod in waking life before he’s dead, suddenly, at which point Galadriel embarks on her quest for vengeance.

Rings Of Power
Gil-galad | nerdist.com

Galadriel has been hunting Sauron for centuries by the time we catch up with her in the Northern Wastes, and is still hot on his heels, but we as the audience are only allowed one quick glimpse of the Dark Lord (conveniently wearing a familiar suit of full-body armor) – and while we can all agree that he looks absolutely fantastic, I can’t help but wonder if one shot is enough to convince fans, particularly casual fans who aren’t aware of the atrocities Sauron committed while serving under Morgoth, just what a threat he poses to Middle-earth. Sure, poisoned cow’s milk in Tirharad and decayed mallorn leaves in Lindon are an indication that he’s probably up to no good, but until orcs start popping up in the Southlands in episode two, the only tangible antagonist is a single hungry snow-troll that stupidly attempts to ambush Galadriel in a cave.

Still, one could argue that the Elves are the antagonists of their own story – for indeed, it’s their pride, their stubbornness, and their misplaced confidence in their own might that leads the High King of the Noldor, Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), to dismiss all of the evidence piling up as just a string of coincidences out of which Galadriel has constructed a false narrative that Sauron has returned. In that sense, too, The Rings Of Power is much like The Silmarillion: for at their core they are both stories of Elven failings. Where the stories may differ slightly, and where The Rings Of Power certainly differs from previous adaptations of Tolkien’s work, is that The Rings Of Power doesn’t depict the Elves as ethereal or untouchable to the point where their aloof attitude is ever justified.

Nor are they capable of the same gravity-defying feats that Peter Jackson’s Elves effortlessly pulled off in The Hobbit trilogy. In fact, physically, they’re almost indistinguishable from humans. Some might consider this a downgrade – personally, I find it to be an intriguing stylistic choice that unexpectedly serves a thematic purpose in the story. For if Elves look just like humans, and they act just like humans, then the only thing differentiating them from humans is their immortality – and for a human, to look at an Elf and see nothing there so vastly different from themselves that it could be said to warrant the gift of immortal life being bestowed to one and not the other, that would be weird and a little conflicting. On top of that, the Elves and humans are still pretty close in the Second Age, so these are people the humans know well, and regard as friends, if not nearly family.

Well, mostly. In Middle-earth’s Southlands, where Elves were assigned to watch over the descendants of humans who followed Morgoth during the First Age, there’s a clear divide between the two peoples that is widening with each passing day – and only Bronwyn and a Silvan Elf named Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) have any interest in bridging that divide. While their relationship is described in romantic terms by supporting characters in-universe (Arondir is harshly reminded by his Elven compatriots that two prior unions between Elves and Men ended tragically), I have not yet discerned this apparently palpable chemistry of which they speak. It’s only when the two characters find themselves suddenly standing on the front lines of the war for Middle-earth that I was even convinced they cared for each other.

Still, while neither Arondir nor Bronwyn is particularly high on my list of characters I cared about deeply after watching the first two episodes, I’m nonetheless curious about life in the Southlands for both the Silvan Elves and the descendants of Morgoth’s worshippers, and I wish The Rings Of Power used its time as wisely as it did its enormous budget; perhaps then we could have explored the conflict between Elves and Men with some proper nuance and avoided awkward moments…like when a kid refers to Arondir by the name “Knife-Ears” (I need writers to stop inventing fantasy slurs, please for the love of Eru, stop), or when Arondir tells Bronwyn that the residents of a nearby village were especially loyal to Morgoth in the old days, as if it hasn’t been over a thousand years since then – you’re telling me that the people of these two neighboring villages didn’t intermingle and intermarry to the point where such labels would be meaningless after a few generations?

I suppose it’s not so bizarre that an Elf would think that way, but that one line – well, that and Bronwyn’s immediate rebuttal that the people in the village are “good people”, close kin of hers – doesn’t make for the most thorough exploration of the subject. And unfortunately, Bronwyn is interrupted before she can say anything more, when she and Arondir find the village in question deserted. That’s the end of that conversation, and as of episode two the writers have not yet picked up this story-thread again.

That sort of thing happens a lot in the first two episodes of The Rings Of Power (not that specific scenario, just scenes being interrupted before they can reach their seemingly natural conclusion), which is why I take issue with complaints that the pacing is slow. I felt as though the first episode raced by! The moments that stand out to me in these episodes, generally, are the still and contemplative moments that have been given space to breathe – when the show isn’t rushing on to the next thing but instead allowing us to live in the present with characters we adore, set amidst beautiful scenery or on any of those magnificent practical sets I mentioned before. I think that’s one reason why both Elrond and Elanor got through to me, because they’re the two characters who benefit most from such moments in the first episode.

Rings Of Power
Elanor Brandyfoot | esquire.com

The time we spend with the Harfoots in episode one, for example, is time well-spent establishing characters and character dynamics that will be easy to remember going forward. Elanor Brandyfoot is an inquisitive young Harfoot who wants to see the great wide world off the beaten path that the Harfoots take each year as they migrate back-and-forth across the same familiar patch of land in Rhovanion (a patch of land that by the time of The Lord Of The Rings had become an “unfriendly waste”, blasted by some “pestilence or war or evil deed of the Enemy” – so make a mental note of that). Her best friend, Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards), is the prehistoric Samwise Gamgee to her prehistoric Frodo Baggins; well, perhaps not quite as fascinated by Elves as Sam would be, but no less willing to help her friend out of a tight situation at a moment’s notice.

Even outside of these two characters, I felt that we really got to know the Harfoots, individually and collectively, who they are and what they stand for, as they spend the entire first episode preparing for a festival to mark the end of summer (who wants to bet it’s held on September 22nd?), while avoiding “Big People” and other dangerous creatures wandering across their lands. There are several character actors with small but memorable roles sprinkled amongst the Harfoots, including legendary British comedian Sir Lenny Henry as an elderly sage named Sadoc Burrows who is in possession of the Harfoots’ only book – and is the only Harfoot capable of reading it. Thusitha Jayasundera is also delightful as Malva, a gossip constantly prophesying doom who hangs around Sadoc in the hopes that he’ll spill some secrets from his dusty old book.

Because it’s not until the very end of episode one that something momentous actually happens to the Harfoots in the form of an old man falling from the sky (more on him in my review of episode two), the Harfoots are, for the time being, relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. As Elanor’s mother Marigold (Sara Zwangobani) tries to explain to her, the Harfoots don’t need to get involved in Big People business because they have each other, they always have and they always will, and that’s always been enough. Therefore, while it comes as no surprise that the Harfoots are easily the most endearing characters in The Rings Of Power, I was personally shocked to discover that their subplot is also one of the most interesting, even before the arrival of the aforementioned Stranger (Daniel Weyman).

Of course, it’s because the Harfoots make the most of their limited screentime that this is the case – and I’m sure I’d feel the same way about Elves or Men if we had spent a little more time getting to know them as actual characters – but I think part of it, at least for me, is that the Harfoots, alone of all the Free Peoples we’ve met (with the possible exception of the Dwarves, but they don’t show up until episode two), are unfamiliar in a way that is particularly immersive, because it underscores how far removed this story is from the events of The Lord Of The Rings.

To put it another way, when we first enter the Elf-kingdom of Lindon in episode one, I felt at-home right away because The Rings Of Power uses all the same design cues for the Elves and their architecture that Peter Jackson did – Lindon is, much like Jackson’s interpretation of Rivendell, a web of open-concept porticos and colonnades draped across cliffs and autumnal woodlands. It’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it does make me feel as though I’m returning to Middle-earth the way that Peter Jackson conceived it, when really I want to see something different, something new (is it any wonder Elanor is my favorite character?). When we meet the Harfoots, living not yet in cozy holes in the ground but in tents and small carts in the middle of the woods, rather like the Nelwyn from 1988’s Willow…that was the moment Rings Of Power first pulled me out of my comfort-zone, and it felt wonderful.

Rings Of Power
Lindon | timeout.com

In that moment, I wasn’t returning to Middle-earth – I was being reintroduced to this world and these characters as I’ve never seen them before onscreen or even in the pages of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. I can predict each step the Harfoots will have to take for them to transform over time into the Hobbits of the Third Age, but I’m enjoying this take on the Harfoots so much that I don’t need to see them evolve any time soon – and in just five seasons, I don’t know that The Rings Of Power could even believably get them to the point where they’d be recognizable from The Lord Of The Rings, decked out with late 19th Century accoutrements like pocket-watches, parasols, and floral-printed waistcoats with brass buttons.

That being said, The Rings Of Power covers over five-hundred years of Middle-earth’s history in a prologue under five minutes long (though there’s enough intentionally vague imagery in there that you’ll still want to check out my recent Silmarillion summary so you can pick up on easily-overlooked details) before jumping forward a few thousand years to an indeterminate point on the timeline somewhere near the end of the Second Age, so it’s clear now that the writers are taking many liberties with the chronology where they feel it suits their story to have, say, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) alive simultaneously to the last Númenóreans.

I can’t honestly say that it bothers me every time the Tale of Years has been slightly altered, but I do find it strange that the character dynamics amongst the Elves don’t at all reflect their canonical age differences – Elrond and Galadriel, for instance, speak to each other as if they’re roughly the same age, when in truth Galadriel is anywhere between 5000 to 24000 years old in The Rings Of The Power, while Elrond, at a mere 1500 years old, is young enough to be her future son-in-law. Gil-galad and Celebrimbor are a generation younger than Galadriel, yet both are played as if they’re much older, and portrayed by middle-aged actors to boot.

I have no desire to dissect every moment in the first episode that I would consider “lore-breaking”, because inevitably that will turn into nit-picking and in fact I’m quite satisfied with how The Rings Of Power has turned out, so if that’s the kind of coverage you’re expecting I urge you to continue your search elsewhere besides my blog. Just to give you a sense of what kind of thing irritated me, and because I think it will irritate me for a long time yet and I need to share this burden with my readers, I was…deeply conflicted when Gil-galad granted Galadriel permission to return across the Sundering Seas to Valinor, as if he possessed the authority to do so. On the one hand, I understand that it would be exceedingly difficult to explain why Galadriel is banned from heading west without mentioning her crimes against the Valar in the First Age that Amazon can’t legally mention, but also…it just felt so wrong.

On a more positive note, while I expected to be extremely critical of the original dialogue written for The Rings Of Power, I can only think of a few instances from the first episode where a line was poorly-written or its delivery fell flat. For the most part, Amazon’s writers did an admirable job of mimicking Tolkien’s signature style without ever reusing or misappropriating lines from The Lord Of The Rings. But given how high the bar is that they’ve set for themselves, every occasion on which they fail to clear that bar – in the first episode, the worst line of dialogue is undoubtedly “Elf-lords only” – will momentarily break the immersion.

Rings Of Power
Into the West | polygon.com

What will draw you back in again, whether you’re a diehard fan or someone just looking for a cool new show to watch over the weekend, are the characters (whom you really can’t help but root for), and the visual splendor on display in every frame of these first two episodes. After finishing these episodes, you may feel – as I do – that the story still needs a little more time to solidify into the firm backbone required of a multi-season series and a potential billion-dollar investment on Amazon’s part, but if Amazon (and audiences) are willing to give The Rings Of Power the time it needs to do just that, it could quickly grow to become what it already aspires to be: a worthy sequel to The Silmarillion.

Episode Rating: 7.5/10

Prepare For “The Rings Of Power” With A Silmarillion Summary

CONTENT WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF RAPE AND INCEST

Middle-earth’s recorded history is divided up into four segments, each universally recognized and referred to as an “Age” of the world. The beginnings and endings of any given Age are determined not by a person or even a group of people, but by all peoples…for every Age has its own antagonist, a manifestation of evil so great it requires a coalition of Middle-earth’s inhabitants to defeat or eradicate forever, and when that happens, the reckoning of years resets to zero and history is allowed to flow inexorably onwards towards the last confrontation of god and devil in which Middle-earth itself will be unmade and a new one, a better one, will take its place.

Rings Of Power
The Years of the Trees | slashfilm.com

The events depicted in Amazon’s upcoming series, The Rings Of Power, took place during the latter half of the Second Age, which ran on for three-thousand, four-hundred and forty-one years before ending abruptly with the defeat of Sauron by the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, at which point the Third Age began. Another three-thousand years after that, the Third Age ended with the downfall of Sauron in the War of the Ring (as told in The Lord Of The Rings), which immediately preceded the beginning of the Fourth Age. Importantly, the Fourth Age did not officially begin until a few years after Sauron’s downfall, when Galadriel, Elrond, and most of the High Elves in Middle-earth finally departed into the west and permitted the human race to take back the lands they had been occupying for centuries.

But today, we look back to a time before the beginnings of the Fourth, Third, or Second Ages, long before the Rings of Power were forged in Eregion and longer still before they were depowered or destroyed, a time known as the First Age…although in truth the First Age did not officially begin until there was a sun and a moon in the sky to make the reckoning of years easier for Men and Elves, and our story begins even further back, before there was a sun or a moon, before they had even been conceived of by their divine creators. Further back, and further back, through the Years of the Trees to the Years of the Lamps and to a time before time was measured.

The story of the First Age and the eons which preceded it is recounted in The Silmarillion – a collection of stories and legends published after J.R.R. Tolkien’s death by his youngest son, Christopher, who made it his life’s mission to track down all of his father’s scattered notes and stitch them together to form a somewhat cohesive narrative. Fair warning, even in its published form, The Silmarillion isn’t the most accessible entry-point into Tolkien’s legendarium. It’s a small book, but dense. It also includes information pertinent to Amazon’s The Rings Of Power, information that I shall do my best to highlight as I undertake today’s arduous task of summarizing The Silmarillion‘s contents for casual fans, or for anyone who doesn’t have the time or inclination to read the book but still wants to get the most out of The Rings Of Power.

(Quick disclaimer for all the hardcore fans out there, I will be referencing the published, “Flat-World” Silmarillion…and not the “Round-World” Silmarillion which J.R.R. Tolkien sketched out towards the end of his life, for two reasons; one being that the “Round-World” Silmarillion is a rough first draft of a story inconsistent with almost everything else in Tolkien’s legendarium, and lacking the polish it needed to withstand scrutiny; and the other being that the “Round-World” Silmarillion hinges on the rape of Arien, charioteer of the sun, and something about that just doesn’t sit right with me).

The First War

Before sun and moon, before the Trees or the Lamps or the kindling of the stars, the inhabitants of Middle-earth had no methods by which to measure the natural passage of time. However, because the sole inhabitants of Middle-earth were ageless immortal gods (divided into two classes; the Valar, or angelic powers, and the Maiar, or lesser spirits), they got along just fine using their own unique and incomprehensible system of Valian Years. In any case, they had bigger things to worry about. Melkor (later known as Morgoth by the Elves), one of the most powerful Valar in existence, sought to destroy the world while it was still fragile, and with an army of corrupted Maiar at his back he posed a formidable threat to the divine plan of the Valar. Although he could only tear down what others had built before him, the First Enemy kept the Valar engaged in an endless cycle of ruin and renewal that left them exhausted.

With the help of a young god named Tulkas, the Valar finally drove Melkor to the shadowy margins of Middle-earth where he could not trouble them for a time. To commemorate their victory, they erected two great towers – one in the far north, the other in the far south – and placed lamps in these towers to banish all shadows from the world. Where the light of the two lamps touched, there was a blessed land named Almaren, and the Valar dwelt here briefly. But the Years of the Lamps ended when Melkor returned out of the darkness, toppled the great towers, and spilled their fire across the verdant surface of Middle-earth until Almaren was utterly destroyed. Accepting their defeat, the Valar then retreated beyond the mountains of the Pelóri to a land separated from Middle-earth by a vast ocean – a land which they named Valinor.

Here, the Valar once again exerted their energy to bring forth two magnificent trees, Laurelin and Telperion, which emanated gold and silver light from their leaves, respectively. This light purified the land and cleansed it of all evil, but it could not escape through the mountains which encircled Valinor. Several of the Valar were not content with hiding behind walls while Melkor wreaked havoc in Middle-earth, and they stole out secretly to combat him or subverted him in other ways. Varda, the queen of the Valar, collected the dew of the Two Trees and scattered it across the sky, creating stars which pierced the dark clouds surrounding Middle-earth. Melkor hated the stars, and he hated Varda most of all the Valar.

The Awakening Of The Elves

Rings Of Power
Elves in Middle-earth | cnn.com

By the shores of Lake Cuiviénen in the far east of Middle-earth, the Elves were born first of all the Free Peoples. Their arrival had long been anticipated by the Valar…and by Melkor, who saw an opportunity to throw the divine plan into chaos if he slaughtered the Elves or ruined them as he ruined all things which he touched. Therefore, he sent his servants out into the wilderness to find the place of their awakening. The Elves had no weapons of their own with which to defend themselves, but they were unknowingly protected by the light of the stars.

Still, when the Valar finally found them, they insisted that the Elves come to Valinor where their safety could be ensured. Many followed the Valar out of fear of Melkor, though nearly as many stayed, or turned back, or were lost along the way for various reasons. One of these was Elu Thingol, a king of the Elves who was leading his people westward from Cuiviénen when he stumbled across Melian, a sorceress of the Maiar, in the woods of Nan Elmoth. They were instantly so enamored by each other that neither was able to move or speak for years, and many of Thingol’s people continued without him. When he and Melian finally emerged out of Nan Elmoth hand-in-hand, they found a few Elves still waiting for them and these became the subjects of Thingol and Melian’s realm in the hidden woods of Doriath, protected by Melian’s magic.

Those who made it to Valinor at long last were allowed to dwell wherever they wished within its confines or along its coasts, and they basked in the blessed light of the Two Trees…for which they were known as the Calaquendi or Light-elves, while those who never made it to Valinor were named the Moriquendi or Dark-elves, because they chose to remain in the darkness of Middle-earth. The rift between the Calaquendi and the Moriquendi was never small, but it only widened throughout the First Age.

The Years Of The Trees

In Valinor, the Calaquendi became further divided into smaller subgroups – the most significant being the Noldor (Deep-elves), who dwelt in the city of Tirion in Valinor’s only mountain pass, the Vanyar (Fair-elves), who settled on the slopes of Valinor’s highest mountain, Taniquetil, and the Falmari (Wave-folk), who lived by the shores of the Sundering Sea and on various islands just off the coast of Valinor. The Noldor were great craftspeople, smiths, jewelers, sculptors, alchemists, architects, and drivers of technological progress – they learned much from Aulë, blacksmith of the Valar. The Vanyar were primarily poets and singers, and they were loyal disciples of Varda and her husband, Manwë, who lived at the summit of Taniquetil. The Falmari revered Ulmo, lord of the seas, and they were shipwrights and mariners with a gift for music.

The greatest of the Noldor was Fëanor, the circumstances of whose birth were…complicated. His father Finwë was High King of the Noldor, and his mother Míriel was a talented embroiderer – but in giving birth to Fëanor, her first and only child, Míriel spent so much of her energy that her spirit fled from her body shortly afterwards and refused to return, though Finwë and the Valar begged her to return. Hers was the first natural death in Valinor, and it caused the Elves great consternation. Finwë eventually remarried to Indis of the Vanyar and had several more children, but Fëanor resented his stepmother and stepsiblings, and wished them harm for their influence on his father.

His was no Cinderella story, however, for Fëanor’s stepsiblings were by all accounts lovely people, and they and their children were among the great heroes of the First Age. Fingolfin, and his sons Fingon and Turgon, were all mighty warriors and statesmen. Finarfin, his son Finrod, and his daughter Galadriel, were both wise and strong. I’m sure that Írimë and Findis, Finwë’s daughters, had their own virtuous traits, but all we know about Írimë is that she later joined the Rebellion of the Noldor, and we’ll probably never find out what happened to her because Tolkien didn’t make a point of recording women’s deeds in Middle-earth.

I’m getting ahead of myself. In Valinor, during the Years of the Trees, family reunions could occasionally get a little tense but Fëanor and his seven sons usually avoided their stepfamily entirely and spent their time working on various projects – including the creation of the Tengwar alphabet, the far-seeing palantíri, and the Silmarils. The Silmarils were Fëanor’s most prized possession, for within these three radiant gemstones he had captured some of the light of the Two Trees and there it remained forever undimmed while the Years of the Trees themselves drew swiftly to a close.

The Theft Of The Silmarils

Rings Of Power
Shelob, spawn of Ungoliant | cjlockett.com

Remember Melkor? The Valar sure did, and while they were busy organizing the evacuation of the Elven population of Middle-earth, they were simultaneously ripping apart the lands vacated or soon-to-be-vacated by the Elves in their search for Melkor. When they found him, cowering in the underground fortress of Utumno, they threw him in chains and dragged him back to Valinor…only for the lord of the Valar, Manwë, to take mercy on him and decree that he should be allowed to roam freely throughout Valinor in the hopes that the light of the Two Trees would cleanse the evil from him. It did not. It only made Melkor angrier and more hateful and envious of the Valar when he saw all that they had created that he could not ruin with his touch, and he detested the Elves because their very presence in Valinor was a testament to his failure.

And yet, Melkor correctly perceived that there were cracks in the cheery façade of Valinor, ones that could grow to become gaping rifts. Going amongst the Elves, he spread scurrilous rumors that the sons of Finwë were plotting against each other, knowing full well how Fëanor and Fingolfin would react when these rumors reached their ears, as they soon did. Fingolfin became protective of his family, and began forging weapons and armor in case the need should ever arise for him to fight, while Fëanor became equally as protective of the Silmarils he had made, and he personally locked them away in the northern stronghold of Formenos. The two quarreled in the streets of Tirion, and at one point even drew blades on each other. Fëanor hated Melkor, but knew not that he played into the dark lord’s hands by acting irrationally out of fear and anger.

The Valar, on the other hand, realized at once that Melkor was behind all of this, and they went to capture him – only to find that he had seemingly fled from Valinor back to Middle-earth by way of a land-bridge in the far north. In truth, he had crept away into the lands south of Valinor, where he sought out the ancient spider goddess Ungoliant, who fed on light itself. They conspired together to obtain the light of the Two Trees, which Melkor hated and Ungoliant hungered for – and as part of their deal, Melkor even promised her the light of the Silmarils.

They waited until the next reunion of Finwë’s sons to make their move, for Melkor knew that Fëanor was still in a fragile state of mind and would lash out in anger once he heard what had been done. Fëanor was actually in an uncharacteristically good mood when the day started, and even shook Fingolfin’s hand. But while they were partying, Melkor and Ungoliant returned to Valinor and approached the Two Trees. Melkor made deep incisions in their trunks, and Ungoliant drank from them until the Trees withered and died, and their light was sucked from the sky. The Elves and the Valar panicked in the sudden darkness, and by the time they had found their way to the green mound where the Trees had grown, Melkor and Ungoliant had already struck their next target – Formenos.

There, Melkor slew Finwë, High King of the Noldor, and he took the Silmarils for himself. He refused to feed them to Ungoliant as he had promised, and in her frustration she stung him and wrapped him in webs, and attempted to devour him alive – luckily for him, he screamed so loudly that a pack of Balrogs heard him and came to his aid. Ungoliant fled into the far south of Middle-earth, stopping just long enough to spawn a couple hundred-thousand equally repulsive offspring – including Shelob, the spider who guarded Mordor in the late Third Age – before eating herself in desperation. Melkor, however, returned to his old fortresses in Middle-earth and hunkered down, waiting for the Elves to carry out the next part of his plan.

The Rebellion Of The Noldor

When Fëanor learned about the theft of the Silmarils and the death of his father, he was filled with rage. He declared himself High King of the Noldor on the spot (although most of the Noldor rejected him, and claimed Fingolfin as their king), and gave Melkor the name Morgoth (“Black Foe”) which was used ever afterwards. The Noldor weren’t overly fond of Fëanor, but they hated Morgoth more in this moment and they all wanted revenge for the senseless killing of the Trees. And Fëanor offered them an opportunity for vengeance that the Valar would have denied them – to leave Valinor and pursue Morgoth into Middle-earth, and take back the Silmarils by force.

The very idea of going to war – against one of the Valar, no less – was unfamiliar to the Elves who had mostly lived sheltered lives in Valinor under the care of the gods, but none could deny that the Valar had failed to protect them this time, and might again. So they followed Fëanor, and left. It was a spontaneous decision, and one that many would come to regret in later years, but at the time it seemed like the only option available to them. Of Finwë’s children, only Finarfin and Findis remained in Valinor…and all of Finarfin’s children went with Fëanor, Galadriel most eagerly. She didn’t even care about the Silmarils necessarily, she just wanted to see Middle-earth.

The Valar were not too happy about any of this, and repeatedly warned the Elves that they would be following Fëanor into exile – and maybe, if they had promised to take action against Morgoth right then and there, while he was still weak from his fight with Ungoliant and his armies were untested, many tragedies could have been avoided and the Elves would have agreed to stay. But they chose to mourn ineffectively over the withered stumps of the Two Trees while Morgoth gathered his strength. So the Elves kept walking.

Eventually, they got tired of walking and Fëanor suggested that they borrow some ships from the Falmari who lived in Alqualondë on the eastern coast of Valinor. The Falmari told him to get lost, but Fëanor was pretty set on the idea by now and he wanted to teach the Falmari a lesson for getting in between him and his precious Silmarils, so he and his sons crept into the havens of Alqualondë and attempted to steal the ships. The Falmari resisted, swords were drawn, and the blood of Elves was spilled by Elves for the first time. This terrible moment was referred to as the Kinslaying.

At last, the Falmari were defeated and Fëanor took their ships – although many of his followers refused to board them, out of shame. Galadriel and Finrod, whose mother was Falmari, even helped defend Alqualondë during the Kinslaying. But they could not turn back and face the judgement of the Valar, so they continued along the shores of Valinor, marching parallel to Fëanor and his sons in their stolen ships. Fëanor had never liked Galadriel, and he was probably wary she would betray him to his doom, so when they reached the cold northern wastelands of the world he took the ships and set out across the ocean with his sons, leaving most of the Noldor stranded on the beaches. They followed, by way of an aforementioned land-bridge. Many perished, but Galadriel and Finrod were as strong-willed as Fëanor and they refused to turn back.

The War Of The Jewels Begins

Rings Of Power
Galadriel and Halbrand in the Sundering Sea | radiotimes.com

Upon reaching Middle-earth, almost the first thing that Fëanor did was rush headfirst into battle and get himself killed by a Balrog. It is quite possibly one of the most anticlimactic deaths in all of fantasy literature, and that is its tragedy. If Fëanor had been content to make weapons and not to wield them, he would probably have devised machines capable of shredding Morgoth’s armies and obliterating his fortifications within a few years. Mind you, whatever temporary peace such weapons brought about would likely have been outweighed by the far more devastating consequences of their creation…but anyway, I’m getting distracted by “what if?” scenarios.

Though Fëanor was dead, hope was not yet lost. For soon thereafter, the Sun and Moon rose out of Valinor into the sky (which until that point was dark and dotted with stars, as you may remember), and Morgoth’s armies fled before the bright lights in the sky. You see, all that time spent weeping over tree-stumps had finally paid off for the Valar as they were able to resurrect a single fruit of Laurelin and a single flower of Telperion that both contained a faint remnant of their light, and these they placed in vessels crafted by Aulë, and these were then given to the Maiar Arien and Tilion to carry across the sky for all eternity.

With the first sunrise, the Elves in Middle-earth began to measure time in days, and the First Age officially began. They never loved the sun as they did the stars and the memory of the True Light, but they were thankful for it – and none more so than Galadriel and Finrod, and all those whom Fëanor had left to die in the far north, for warmed by the sun’s rays they marched on with renewed vigor and determination, and they came at last into Middle-earth and found that Morgoth’s armies were afraid of the sun and fled before them. Fingolfin, now recognized by all as High King of the Noldor, made it all the way to the gates of Morgoth’s fortress city, Angband, before stopping to rest.

A mere sixty years later, with the help of Fëanor’s eldest son Maedhros, Fingolfin defeated Morgoth’s forces in Dagor Aglareb (“The Glorious Battle”). He slaughtered his enemies so thoroughly that Morgoth could not – and would not – attempt open assault against him for hundreds of years afterwards, instead relying on Elves under his bewitchment to break the Long Peace and the Siege of Angband while he cowered underground and worked on new evils.

The Long Peace

Behind the walls and fortresses built by Fingolfin to watch Angband day and night, the Elves under his protection flourished in the lands of Beleriand…and if that name doesn’t sound familiar, it’s probably because it’s not on the map of Middle-earth in The Lord Of The Rings. Well, pieces of it are, but none of the kingdoms established by the Elves during the Long Peace, none of their cities and high towers, none of their villages and farms…nothing but memories of a time when the Elves thought, naively perhaps, that they could build something lasting in Middle-earth.

It’s around this time that most of the major players in The Silmarillion went their separate ways. Fingolfin and his son Fingon settled in the cold gray hills of Hithlum, where they could most easily guard the northern entrances to Beleriand. Fingon’s brother, Turgon, constructed the city of Gondolin in a hidden valley east of Hithlum, walled by mountains. Galadriel went to Doriath, seeking instruction from Melian of the Maiar, and soon became a capable sorceress in her own right. Finrod carved out the city of Nargothrond in the cliffs overlooking the River Narog, with help from the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains.

Finrod had a gift for communicating with the other Free Peoples of Middle-earth. He was not the first Elf to enlist the help of the Dwarves in building and delving (Thingol had already done so), but he was one of the few who remained on good terms with the Dwarves and never cheated or deceived those who worked for him. Indeed, much like his sister Galadriel he appears to have viewed the Dwarves as powerful allies in the fight against Morgoth. He was also the first Noldor Elf and the first of the Calaquendi in general to encounter Men wandering in Beleriand, and he befriended them at once. A human man named Bëor even lived with him in Nargothrond for many years (and history will say they were roommates).

The meeting of Finrod and Bëor is a crucial moment in the histories of Middle-earth, establishing the close relationship between Elves and Men that endured throughout the First Age and well into the Second. Finrod ensured that Bëor’s people were given lands of their own, and they received the protection of the Elves in exchange for their aid in maintaining the Long Peace. These Men became the first Elf-friends.

Dagor Bragollach

Rings Of Power
Finrod at Dagor Bragollach | inverse.com

Almost four-hundred years after the Dagor Aglareb, Morgoth had his vengeance on the Elves for the humiliation they had caused him. A river of molten fire spewed forth from Angband’s open gates, flowing across northern Beleriand until it crashed against the walls and fortifications that Fingolfin had built. Breaking the Siege of Angband, Morgoth’s forces slaughtered the Elven guards that had long stood watch, and the Elven commanders were separated from their troops in the chaos. Finrod would have been killed, had not one of Bëor’s descendants, a man named Barahir, intervened to save his life.

This was the Dagor Bragollach (“Battle of Sudden Flame”), and it marked the end of the Long Peace that Fingolfin had worked so hard to maintain. As the High King of the Noldor looked out from the hills of Hithlum and watched Morgoth’s forces gaining ground in Beleriand, mowing down armies of Men and Elves as they came, he despaired. Waiting for no counsel, he rode to the gates of Angband and challenged Morgoth to a duel that he did not hope to win. Morgoth came, and flailed at him with the Hammer of the Underworld, Grond, but for a while Fingolfin evaded his heavy blows. He stabbed Morgoth repeatedly, until he stumbled in exhaustion, and then Morgoth crushed him underfoot.

Upon Fingolfin’s death, his son Fingon became High King of the Noldor, but the Noldor had been scattered far and wide across lands overrun by orcs and other fell beasts as they fled before the fires of Angband. Men, too, had been forced out of their lands and now sought refuge in the homes of their Elven friends. One of these was Beren.

Beren And Lúthien

Beren, son of Barahir, came to the hidden woods of Doriath a few years after the Dagor Bragollach and somehow passed through the magical barriers which Melian had put in place to safeguard her kingdom. There, he came upon Melian and Thingol’s daughter, Lúthien Tinúviel, dancing in a glade, and fell in love with her at first sight. After spending a few days with him in the forest, Lúthien led him back to the underground city of Menegroth where she and her family dwelt, and there Beren declared that he intended to marry Lúthien if she would have him. No Elf and human had ever wedded before, but Lúthien would have agreed right then and there had not Thingol interrupted.

Thingol informed Beren that if he really wanted Lúthien’s hand in marriage, he would first have to go to Angband and pry one of the three Silmarils from Morgoth’s iron crown. Thingol knew this was impossible, Beren knew it was impossible, everyone knew it was impossible. But for love of Lúthien, Beren set out from Menegroth at once. He sought the aid of Finrod, who was a master of disguises, and together they traveled disguised as orcs across Beleriand until they were accosted near the Isle of Werewolves, where Morgoth’s lieutenant Sauron dwelt. Sauron was a far greater sorcerer than Finrod, and he quickly stripped their disguises away.

But what neither Sauron nor Finrod realized was that another sorcerer approached, and she was greater than any of them. For Lúthien Tinúviel had run away from Menegroth to follow Beren into peril, and she came to Tol Sirion and used her own magic to defeat Sauron and tear down his fortress brick-by-brick. She was too late to save Finrod, who died in Beren’s arms, but together they carried the Elven king’s body out into the sunlight and laid him to rest in a cairn (Galadriel apparently visits this location in The Rings Of Power, although Amazon probably doesn’t have the rights to tell the full story of Finrod’s death).

Using Lúthien’s magic to disguise themselves as a werewolf and a vampire, respectively, Beren and Lúthien together came to Angband and passed through the gates, becoming the first of the Free Peoples to do so of their own volition. Lúthien then sang before the throne of Morgoth, and with her power alone caused the Dark Lord’s head to bow and his eyes to close, sending him toppling to the ground. Beren pried a single Silmaril from his crown (he tried for all three, but his knife broke), and they just barely escaped before Morgoth awoke from his slumber. But the wolf guarding the gates of Angband lunged at Beren and ripped off his hand which carried the Silmaril, swallowing the precious jewel.

Returning to Menegroth, Beren declared that technically he was still holding the Silmaril in his hand – and Thingol had never said his hand needed to be attached to his body. At this point, Thingol realized that nothing he did or said would ever prevent Beren and Lúthien from being together, so he permitted them to be married. And in the end, he got the Silmaril he had originally asked for – because the wolf came back, searching for Beren, and though he was fatally injured in the ensuing fight, he lived long enough to slice open the wolf’s stomach, reach in, and pull out the bloody Silmaril which he placed in Thingol’s hand.

But when Lúthien felt her husband die, she went alone to the underworld and sang another song – this time a song of love unbreakable which moved Mandos, the god of the dead, to tears. He allowed Beren to live again and be with Lúthien, and they remained together for many years until the time of Beren’s death could no longer be postponed, and then Lúthien chose to become a mortal woman and die alongside him, so that they would never be parted. The Silmaril which Beren had brought back from Angband remained in Menegroth, where Thingol hoarded it.

The End Of The War Of The Jewels

Rings Of Power
A Balrog in the Third Age | ranker.com

Fingon died a mere sixteen years after ascending to the throne, in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (Battle of Unnumbered Tears), making his brother Turgon High King of the Noldor – although by this time most of the Noldor in Beleriand had fled to havens and refugee-camps on the shores of the Sundering Sea, far beyond Turgon’s jurisdiction as King of Gondolin. He would not leave the hidden city and risk endangering its peace, so while he avoided capture by Morgoth he did very little to help his people. Círdan the Shipwright, who protected the seaside havens, was no warrior, and Galadriel, who could probably have mustered the Noldor under her banner if she so desired, had already departed Beleriand and ventured further east into Middle-earth.

One by one, the kingdoms of the Elves fell – and not all to Morgoth, although he benefited from each loss they suffered. In Doriath, Thingol was murdered by Dwarves in a dispute over the Silmaril, and its location was betrayed to the sons of Fëanor, who ransacked Menegroth in their hunt for the stone which belonged to them by rights. Grieving her husband’s death, Melian departed Middle-earth, offering no further aid to her people or even her own great-granddaughter Elwing, who took the Silmaril and fled to the shores of the sea.

Around the same time, a wingless telepathic dragon named Glaurung entered Nargothrond and killed or enslaved most of its inhabitants. Glaurung was later slain by a man named Túrin, who shortly thereafter took his own life after learning from Glaurung that he had unintentionally fathered a child with his sister, Nienor, who threw herself off a cliff when she found out what had happened. Lovely story. I wish I had the time to tell it in full.

Before long, Gondolin was the last city left standing in Beleriand – but it outlasted Menegroth by only four years. In that time, Turgon’s nephew was captured by Morgoth and tortured until he divulged the location of the city, and then Gondolin’s fate was sealed. The city fell in a single night, and Turgon was buried underneath the wreckage of his palace. His daughter, Idril, escaped by way of a secret tunnel she and her human husband had built, and together with their young son Eärendil they made their way to the havens by the sea with a few other survivors. Some had escaped through the mountains encircling Gondolin, though not without great loss of life. An elf named Glorfindel died after falling into a ravine with a Balrog, but he was later resurrected (what is it about killing Balrogs that earns you a second chance at life in Middle-earth?).

The Voyage Of Eärendil

Arriving at the havens by the sea, Idril and her husband brought word of Turgon’s death. After a bit of digging through genealogical charts, it was decided that a young elf named Gil-galad, son of Galadriel’s younger brother Orodreth, was now High King of the Noldor because there were no better options and the Noldor stubbornly refused to let women take the title. Gil-galad had lived a fairly sheltered life with his guardian Círdan, and did virtually nothing as High King until the beginning of the Second Age, so you can forget about him for now.

More importantly, it was here that Idril’s son Eärendil met Elwing, the granddaughter of Lúthien Tinúviel, and they fell in love and got married. Elwing had two sons with Eärendil, named Elrond and Elros – and if you don’t already know those names, you should definitely file them away in the back of your head because The Rings Of Power is as much about the two of them as it is about Galadriel. But in all this time, the sons of Fëanor had never stopped searching for the Silmaril that had mysteriously disappeared from Menegroth – and when they learned that Elwing had escaped to the sea and started a family, they pretty quickly determined that she must still have it. So they went there and did what Fëanorians do best, which is slaughter their entire extended family.

Except they still didn’t get the Silmaril, because Elwing threw herself into the sea and was rescued by the god Ulmo, who transformed her into a sea-bird with the Silmaril upon her breast (somehow). Eärendil escaped in a ship, which he steered westward towards Valinor. Their sons, Elrond and Elros, were initially taken hostage but later adopted by Maedhros, one of the two sons of Fëanor who survived this Second Kinslaying. He felt pretty bad about the whole thing, and was getting sick and tired of chasing gemstones for his dead father’s sake, but he had sworn an unbreakable oath so he and his brother Maglor stayed there by the sea waiting for Elwing to get tired and come back to land.

Elwing never returned to Middle-earth, however. She found Eärendil’s ship in the middle of the ocean, transformed back into a woman, and used the Silmaril to light a path across the Sundering Sea to Valinor. They each had a part to play in what happened next, for Eärendil trekked up Taniquetil and demanded an audience with Varda and Manwë, while Elwing went to Alqualondë and convened the leaders of the Calaquendi. By sharing the tales of their hardships and their triumphs, their joys and their sorrows, they convinced the Valar and the Valinorean Elves to return to Middle-earth one last time and help rid the world of darkness.

The War Of Wrath

Rings Of Power
Elrond, son of Eärendil | radiotimes.com

A short time later, Eärendil returned over the Sundering Seas wearing the Silmaril on a circlet, but this time his ship was lifted into the sky by the winds of Manwë, so high that the Elves of Middle-earth saw what they thought was a star rising out of the west. Morgoth cursed at the sight of it, but in his arrogance he had forgotten what it felt like to be truly afraid. His forces were in control of all of Beleriand, Angband was still impenetrable, and the Elves had no capable leaders (sorry, Gil-galad). The Noldor didn’t stand a chance against him.

But the Valar did, and it was their army which rose out of the sea at Eärendil’s back and spilled across Beleriand with the force of a thousand tidal waves. The Elves of Tirion were there, led by Finarfin, and they tore through Morgoth’s forces while the Valar went ahead and threw down the gates and walls of Angband. In a last-ditch effort to save his own skin, Morgoth unleashed a colossal dragon named Ancalagon that he had bred for war, but Eärendil and the Eagles of Manwë killed it, and it broke through Angband’s ceilings when it fell, killing almost everyone and everything inside. Morgoth survived, but when the Valar found him they showed no mercy. According to the published Silmarillion, they cut off his feet, tied him in chains, used his crown as a collar for his neck, and tossed him unceremoniously into the Void. In another version of the story, they beheaded him right then and there.

The Aftermath

With the downfall of Morgoth, the First Age ended and the Second Age began. Beleriand had been destroyed, trampled into the sea by the Valar, and all that remained of it were a handful of islands – the highlands of Dorthonion, the hill of Himring where Maedhros had lived, a few sacred spaces and inviolate tombs. There was nothing left there for the Elves, so they followed Galadriel east into the lands of Middle-earth you may recognize from maps. The Blue Mountains that had formed the eastern boundary of Beleriand now faced westward across open ocean, and about their feet in the land of Lindon lived many refugees in the care of King Gil-galad.

The Valar and their armies returned over the sea to Valinor, but not before offering pardons to the Elves for their actions during the Rebellions and in the Kinslayings which followed. Galadriel, Gil-galad, and many other Elves refused these pardons, desiring more than ever to make Middle-earth beautiful. Half-Elves like Elrond and Elros were offered a different choice, to determine for themselves whether they wished to be counted as Elves or Men. Elrond chose to be immortal like the Elves, while Elros chose the mortality of Men. And still others, like Morgoth’s lieutenant Sauron, were offered the choice to return to Valinor and be judged by Manwë for their crimes. Sauron side-stepped this choice entirely and hid until the Valar left.

As for the Silmarils, one remained with Eärendil in the sky, but the other two were stolen by the sons of Fëanor amidst the chaos, and they paid for this last reckless deed with their lives and their sanity. Maedhros’ hand was scorched by the Silmaril he carried, and eventually he threw himself into a pit of fire to end his suffering, taking the jewel with him to the heart of the earth. Maglor tossed the other Silmaril into the sea and remained by the shore forever, unwilling to die and unable to continue living. In the Second Age, only one Fëanorian still walked the earth – a grandson of Fëanor named Celebrimbor, the craftsman who forged the Rings of Power.

And…that’s it, that’s the First Age in a nutshell. I think you’re all caught up now. Obviously, I’ve left out a few details and glossed over stories that sprawl across entire chapters in The Silmarillion, but I’ve touched on all the most important bits – certainly everything and anything I expect to be referenced in The Rings Of Power. Remember that Amazon apparently doesn’t have the rights to The Silmarillion, so the versions of these stories they’ll tell will probably be even more vague and condensed than how I’ve presented them; I’m just giving you more context so you can pick up on any little clues the writers and production designers might have scattered about for hardcore fans.

Rings Of Power
Galadriel | syfy.com

Anyway, that took a while to write and I’m starting to understand how Míriel felt after giving birth to Fëanor (gods above, it’s been three whole days since I wrote that line), so depending on what else happens between now and September 2nd this might be one of the last few Rings Of Power posts before the premiere of the first two episodes. If there’s anything else you want me to write about before then, leave it in the comments below and don’t forget to share all those thoughts, theories, and opinions I’m always hounding you about.

See you in Middle-earth, folks.

Sauron Looms Large Over New “Rings Of Power” Trailer

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER AHEAD!

We got played, and honestly I can’t even be mad…because of course Sauron wasn’t going to let himself be exposed in a trailer for The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, not without first seizing an opportunity to manipulate all of the fans (myself included) too over-eager and impatient for a glimpse of Sauron to notice for ourselves that the fine-featured fellow in the picture below, with the ice-blue eyes and the bleach-blond buzzcut, initially misidentified as Anson Boon playing Sauron, not only was not Anson Boon or Sauron, but wasn’t even a man…and embarrassingly, all of this went unnoticed by fans and a fair number of professional journalists for hours, until it was much too late to prevent the terms “Sauron” and “Annatar” from trending on Twitter. Oops…

Rings Of Power
Bridie Sisson as…well, I wish I knew | nerdist.com

Here’s what happened. A new full-length trailer for The Rings Of Power debuted at San Diego Comic-Con during a memorable Hall H presentation hosted by Stephen Colbert, and as well as being the best trailer yet, it also gave us our first really good look at the series’ villains – including the aforementioned buzzcut-sporting figure, who first appears onscreen while Tar-Míriel, Queen Regent of Númenor, is talking about how “evil does not sleep, it waits”, and then again near the end of the trailer to breathe fire off the ends of their blackened fingertips while a deep, gravelly voice informs us that “[we] have been told many lies of Middle-earth”, so forgive me if I got the impression that this character was the big bad.

Everyone seems to have independently reached the conclusion that this was Sauron after watching the trailer, and it really shouldn’t be too difficult to see why, but somehow we as a fandom also collectively became convinced that Anson Boon was the actor playing this random character we had already collectively decided was Sauron, and when I say convinced I mean we had heretofore respectable news-outlets quoting us on this and everything. In hindsight, looking at an image of Anson Boon and comparing it to the screenshots of the pale, androgynous figure played by actress Bridie Sisson in the trailer, the two…don’t look very much alike, but you have to understand that this was a moment in Tolkien Twitter. Perhaps not our finest moment, but a moment nonetheless.

Anyway, right as Sauron made it into the top trends on Twitter, a couple of fans who had remained clear-headed throughout all the chaos must have thought to check Bridie Sisson’s socials because somehow it was discovered that the actress had posted about being in the trailer, even helpfully pointing out exactly where she was so that fans wouldn’t miss her cameo…or, you know, accidentally confuse her with Anson Boon or something. A couple of fans misinterpreted this as confirmation that Sauron was being played by Bridie Sisson in The Rings Of Power, and the whole situation has only continued to spiral out of control from there.

The truth of the matter, or at least what I currently understand to be true, is that Sisson’s character is an entirely original character who just so happens to have connections to Sauron. There is no evidence to suggest she is playing Sauron or that Sauron has been “gender-bent” in The Rings Of Power (whatever that means in this context, given that Sauron is canonically a shape-shifter). Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that Anson Boon – who was only ever rumored to have been cast in The Rings Of Power, anyway – is actually playing Sauron. That’s certainly not his voice we hear near the end of the trailer, nor is it Sisson’s. Finally, and most frustratingly, there is no evidence to suggest that we saw Sauron at any point in the new trailer.

So we’re back to square one when it comes to locating and identifying Sauron…but we’re in good company, at least! When The Rings Of Power opens, Galadriel can be found searching for faint traces of the Dark Lord in the far north of Middle-earth where he was last seen during the War of Wrath, while in Númenor Tar-Míriel consults the far-seeing palantír for information and is assaulted with haunting images of the devastation awaiting her and her people, and somewhere in the wilderness Bridie Sisson’s character appears to also be hunting Sauron, though not with the intention of killing or ensnaring him – quite the opposite, in fact.

Rings Of Power
Galadriel | syfy.com

Sisson’s character wields a metal staff topped by the symbol of the Lidless Eye, which is one of several reasons I initially assumed she was Sauron – but looking at it again, I think it’s far more likely that she’s a devotee of Sauron whose vestal garments and close-cropped hair are meant to signal to the audience that she has humbled herself before the Dark Lord in exchange for everlasting life…or rather, the promise of everlasting life, which admittedly doesn’t mean a whole lot coming from the Base Master of Treachery. I assume that’s why Sauron gives his followers nifty little magical abilities, to keep them distracted.

All of this is just an educated guess on my part, but I believe the priestess is trying to find Sauron because she saw the meteor fall from the sky and interpreted it as a sign that her god-king’s triumphant return is nigh. She might be on the right track, for regardless of where Sauron is and what form he’s currently taking, he is back and his presence can be felt throughout this trailer. The darkness, only alluded to until now, is no longer just a vague patch of shadow lingering on the edges of the map, but a growing ink-blot in its very center – a coagulation of many tangible evil creatures and entities emerging simultaneously from the deep woods and waters as if in answer to a summons.

Even the trailer thumbnail depicts a ferocious orc emboldened to attack Arondir after the Silvan Elf seemingly stumbles upon one of their hidey-holes in the Southlands of Middle-earth. Adar, a High Elf captured by Morgoth during the First Age and tortured to the point where he now half-resembles an orc himself, leads them – and while some of the rumors I’ve heard regarding Adar indicate that he genuinely cares for the orcs under his command and is only reluctantly aligned with Sauron, I don’t know if that necessarily means he’s a nice person. Piecing together all the clips of Arondir in this trailer and others, we can see he spends a lot of time in the same sheer-sided pit filled with orcs, werewolves, and other beasts, and I’m inclined to believe this is an arena where Adar throws his prisoners-of-war to fight until they drop dead of exhaustion, if they’re not eviscerated long before then.

Rings Of Power
Galadriel at the tomb of Finrod | buzzfeed.com

I’m not too worried for Arondir, though – at least he’s a Silvan Elf, so he can always defy gravity if it comes down to that. His mortal lover, Bronwyn, on the other hand, is a village apothecary who knows her limits and isn’t ashamed to take refuge in a closet when an orc breaks into her house, looking for the magical ancient sword she literally just gave to her son Theo…or maybe it just wants to know if she sells allergy medications? I’m very excited to watch this sequence in full and judge for myself whether it’s as creepy as the trailer makes it out to be, because I’ve always seen potential for horror in Middle-earth and I want an adaptation of Tolkien’s works to capture that feeling of paralyzing dread that I experienced as a kid reading The Two Towers for the first time and being so terrified by the description of Gollum crawling “down the face of a precipice….like some large prowling thing of insect-kind” that I would stack heavy books on top of The Lord Of The Rings at night to prevent him from escaping.

That also partially explains why I’m disappointed in The Rings Of Power for reusing the design of the Balrog from Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship Of The Ring – not because it’s a poorly-designed monster by any means (on the contrary, it’s arguably one of the most iconic monsters in cinematic history), but because it’s never terrified me the way Tolkien’s vague description of the creature did…and I almost think the reason for that is that Jackson’s Balrog is so monstrous, it starts to feel less like a sapient being capable of feeling malice towards the Fellowship and more like an animal of limited sentience defending its territory. So I’m a little conflicted, seeing it again – on the one hand, it’s a strong visual link to the movies that I think more casual fans will really appreciate, and on the other hand, it’s just never been how I envision the Balrog.

I’m similarly divided over whether to consider the sea-monster that attacks Galadriel’s ship “evil” or merely aggressive – speaking of The Fellowship Of The Ring, this seemingly out-of-place underwater action sequence reminds me of a perplexing moment during the Council of Elrond where Glorfindel suggests tossing the One Ring into the ocean and Gandalf warns him that there are “many things in the deep waters”, as if anyone there knows what the hell he’s talking about. This is never elaborated on in the books, because I’m sure that to Tolkien it was primarily a throwaway excuse for why the Fellowship couldn’t just go down to the beach and dispose of the Ring in the process, but The Rings Of Power might have a chance to expand on this by showing us the extent of Sauron’s influence under the Sundering Seas.

Who wants to bet that some of these sea-monsters will also be involved in the Downfall of Númenor, circling the submerged island like giant vultures and picking off survivors? I’m not sure why this horrible thought just occurred to me, but you’ve got to admit it would make for some truly gruesome television.

Rings Of Power
Galadriel’s ship | polygon.com

Then there are the wildcards – the morally-ambiguous characters like Halbrand, who will make a selfless choice in one dire situation only to selfishly save his own skin in the next, and the morally-confused characters like Meteor Man, who is apparently capable of leveling forests with shock-waves released from his body but for better or worse can’t remember what he’s supposed to be doing with all of that power bottled up inside of him. Bronwyn’s son Theo is an interesting example of a character that seems to have good intentions, but whose path is leading him too close to the shadow for him to escape unharmed, while the Dwarven prince Durin IV, in his effort to unearth the reserves of mithril buried beneath Khazad-dûm, is literally getting too close to the shadow lurking in the mountain kingdom’s core.

So while unmasking Sauron is the top priority for Galadriel and her allies amongst the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, they really ought to consider turning inwards and confronting the darkness that has taken hold of their own hearts…before it’s too late to prevent the corruption from spreading. The trailer places a lot of emphasis on this grand idea that the Free Peoples are somehow going to conquer the enemy in battle, with Galadriel seemingly persuading Tar-Míriel and the Númenórean army to abandon their isolationist policies and join her in fighting back against Adar and/or Sauron – but if Gandalf were there to counsel them, he would say that “victory cannot be achieved by arms”, and he would be right, for military victories can be too quickly undone for their consequences to be meaningful.

To defeat the enemy requires a strength of will, a humility, and a tendency towards selflessness, all of which are qualities that…simply aren’t found in any of the people making important decisions for Middle-earth during the Second Age. The fact that the Hobbits (and presumably their Harfoot ancestors) do embody these virtues is exactly why they shouldn’t play a large role in the events of the Second Age, because they would fundamentally alter the course of the histories. I think of Hobbits as being kind of like Eru Ilúvatar’s answer to the folly of Men and the pride of Elves in the Second Age – that’s why they spring up suddenly in the early Third Age without any warning and why no one knows exactly where they came from, because like wizards they arrived precisely when they were meant to.

And while we’re on the subject of Hobbits and wizards…two days ago when I still thought Bridie Sisson’s character was Sauron, I had planned to end this post by asking who Meteor Man could be if not Sauron, and I was afraid to even speak into existence the thought that was formulating in my head; that he might in fact be Gandalf the Grey, arriving in Middle-earth by unconventional means roughly one-thousand to two-thousand years ahead of his canonical date-of-arrival in the early Third Age. I don’t know what it is about the thought of Gandalf undergoing a series-long arc of realizing the hidden potential of Harfoots in the mid-to-late Second Age that irks me, but something about it just doesn’t sound right!

Thankfully, with the confirmation that Sisson is playing an original character and not Sauron, those of us who don’t want to see Gandalf in The Rings Of Power can rest easy (for the time being). Sauron’s identity is still a mystery, as is the Meteor Man’s, and the two could still be one-and-the-same – something that, while it would undoubtedly present its own set of issues, wouldn’t annoy me nearly as much as Gandalf showing up for the sake of fanservice and being purposefully planted amongst the Harfoots from the very beginning of his stay in Middle-earth as if it isn’t thematically relevant that he canonically came across them by chance during the Long Winter and was so impressed by their “tough uncomplaining courage” that he became invested in ensuring their survival…hmm, I guess I figured out what irks me about the whole idea.

Rings Of Power
Meteor Man | inverse.com

Apologies for the small rant, that’s just where my head is at right now. Leaving all of that aside, however, this trailer genuinely moved me, gave me the shivers at all the right moments, and made me feel like The Rings Of Power is in pretty good hands. Closer to release, we might get a final trailer (I’d say it’s almost a certainty if Amazon decides to play the first two episodes in select theaters, as TheOneRing.net has previously reported; because then they’d have to sell tickets, and the day tickets go on sale is when movie studios like to drop a new trailer as a little incentive), but as of right now I need no further convincing – I’m sold. Are you?

Trailer Rating: 10/10

“The Rings Of Power” 2nd Trailer – It’s A Wandering Day In Middle-earth

“The past is dead. We either move forward, or we die with it.”

So says Elendil in the new full-length trailer for The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, but for Amazon’s sake, they had better hope the past still has a little bit of life left in it, because if this billion-dollar venture of theirs is going to prove commercially successful, it needs to convince casual fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works and people who have never read his writing or watched the film adaptations of his novels that they could care enough about the events of Middle-earth’s ancient history to sit down and watch roughly eight hours of streaming television based on the Appendices to The Lord Of The Rings. I hope this trailer does the trick, because I don’t know if we’re getting another one before the series premieres in early September.

Rings Of Power
Galadriel | slashfilm.com

The strategy at play in this new trailer is very simple. From the opening shot of Númenor’s coastal capital city viewed through a ravine speckled with seabirds and monuments honoring long-dead kings to the final shot of Sadoc Burrows leading a small group of scruffy yet intrepid Harfoots far afield over rolling green hills in search of a new home, the trailer aims to shock-and-awe its potential viewers with the kind of spectacular visuals that streaming services often struggle to deliver consistently…and very rarely in the first season of a new show. It’s what Middle-earth deserves, of course, but it’s also what will get people talking about The Rings Of Power to their friends and family, because you don’t need to have read the books or seen the movies to know that the show looks incredible.

For anyone wondering why these trailers haven’t given away many story details yet, I think you have your answer – it’s because Amazon believes that such details not only wouldn’t be relevant to anyone who hasn’t read The Lord Of The Rings (and more specifically its Appendices, further limiting the amount of people for whom the content of the story itself would convince them to watch), but could potentially give casual viewers the impression that the show is overly convoluted and inaccessible, which is definitely not what Amazon wants. That’s just my amateur analysis, of course, but in my mind it makes sense to assume you’re losing viewers every time you throw decontextualized pieces of information and unfamiliar names at them in a trailer.

If you’ve read the Appendices to The Lord Of The Rings and are reading this post, I’m going to assume you’re already aware that The Rings Of Power is set during the Second Age and depicts Middle-earth in its heyday – the way it would have appeared before countless wars reduced its fair cities and proud towers to rubble; before Sauron and his orcs pillaged Ost-in-Edhil, before a Balrog stalked the hallways of Khazad-dûm, before the seas rose to swallow Númenor whole, before the Elves allowed the forest to reclaim their homes in Lindon. The question now is whether more casual fans will recognize any of these locations as the same ones they saw ruined or abandoned by the time of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, or whether they’ll be sufficiently wowed that it won’t matter if they do or not.

Who, indeed, could be unmoved by the sight of Khazad-dûm in the days before its fall, “not darksome but full of light and splendour” as Gimli so eloquently described it in The Fellowship Of The Ring? To be honest, Tolkien left so much unsaid regarding Khazad-dûm that in this case, even the books won’t adequately prepare you for what The Rings Of Power has in store – in a single screenshot from the trailer, we’re instantly transported back three-thousand years to a time when “the light of sun and star and moon” showered down upon the Dwarven city through many vents and windows in the high ceilings and, by means of mirrors mounted on walls and pillars, zig-zagged away into the mines and cavernous places deep beneath the Misty Mountains – nourishing not only the Dwarves, but an entire underground ecosystem including a forest and a hanging garden.

Rings Of Power
Khazad-dum | Twitter @LesbianBoromir

That’s just one example of a location and an entire archaic culture constructed in reverse by The Rings Of Power‘s Emmy-award worthy team of concept artists (headed up by the legendary John Howe), production designers, prop-makers, weapon-smiths, armorers, costume designers, hair and makeup artists, and God (or possibly Jeff Bezos) only knows how many others who must have been involved in helping restore Middle-earth to its former glory with all the delicacy and dedication of archaeologists on a dig-site. I could go on for hours, quite frankly, but I think you get the gist: The Rings Of Power is visually stunning and aesthetically pleasing, and that’s likely to be the show’s main selling-point until Amazon feels they can afford to push the story and characters equally as hard (the way Netflix eventually did with The Witcher).

And that’s not to say they haven’t been marketing the story and characters at all; just that it hasn’t been their top priority. At least this new trailer features actual dialogue from Galadriel, Marigold Brandyfoot, Elrond, Gil-galad, Arondir, Elendil, and Durin IV (this is the first time we’re hearing most of these characters speak, as a matter of fact, and while we’re on the topic I have to mention that Robert Aramayo’s Elrond in particular sounds just right – I still don’t know how I feel about his short tousled hair, but he’s won me over with his voice, poise, and mannerisms). There’s also a much stronger focus on the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans, as opposed to the Harfoot-centric first teaser narrated by Elanor Brandyfoot.

Regarding the Elves, what stood out to most fans were all the flashbacks to events in the First Age – events recounted only briefly in the Appendices to The Lord Of The Rings. Amazon doesn’t have the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumously-published compendium of First Age myths and legends, The Silmarillion, which would have allowed them to go into greater detail on certain subjects like the Years of the Trees, Fëanor, the Silmarils, and the War of Wrath, so I’m still a little wary of getting my hopes up for things I don’t think The Rings Of Power can actually show us, but I can’t deny that every time the trailers slip in a sneaky reference to something covered extensively in The Silmarillion it makes me wish they had those rights so they could show us what they’re just vaguely referring to.

I suspect the Tolkien Estate is clinging onto those rights because they know better than anyone that fans will always want to see more than Amazon is currently able to show, and that as demand for The Silmarillion grows, they can gradually drive up the price and force Amazon to fork over another $250 million before filming on season two gets underway. And The Silmarillion is only the beginning! Imagine what Amazon would be willing to pay for the rights to Unfinished Tales and its references to the mysterious Blue Wizards…

Rings Of Power
Galadriel | theplaylist.net

Anyway, what Amazon has been able to show us – even without needing to draw on The Silmarillion – is the same vista of Valinor under the light of the Two Trees that was first revealed to us in an image released almost one year ago, just from a slightly different angle. Later, when Elrond starts mansplaining to Galadriel that it’s time for her to “put up [her] sword” and relax because the enemy has been defeated, Galadriel’s simple yet chilling response – “you have not seen what I have seen” – is intercut with crimson-tinted images of Galadriel covered in ash and of bodies floating in deep water, meant to look like Amazon’s interpretation of the Sinking of Beleriand and the War of Wrath (not that Galadriel canonically played any part in that war, but I’ll let it slide because that never made sense to me anyway, sorry Tolkien).

We also catch a few more quick glimpses of what each of our Elven protagonists are up to in season one, from Galadriel fighting an ice-troll in the Forodwaith to a captive Arondir wrestling giant wolves in a pit (not entirely sure what that’s about, but I’m assuming the parallels to Finrod’s last fight are intentional?), as well as more Elven cities – including what looks like Ost-in-Edhil, where the Rings of Power will be forged. As a side-note, I’m not sure whether to be amused or frustrated that there’s been no mention of Rings (of Power, or otherwise) in any of the three teasers released. I guess season one is all one long, slow-burn backstory for why the Rings were made, but to not even foreshadow the Rings seems like a missed opportunity.

Well, there is one moment in the trailer that could be interpreted as backstory for the Rings – but it involves Durin IV, a semi-canonical character whom Tolkien probably only bothered naming because he needed to get the total number of Durins to seven. Durin IV probably lived near the end of the Second Age and never had anything to do with the creation or distribution of the Rings of Power, yet his ancestor Durin III was actually a close friend of the Ring-maker Celebrimbor and the only Dwarf-lord to whom Celebrimbor personally gifted one of the Seven Rings (according to the Dwarves)…so naturally, in the show, their roles have been swapped. Durin III is now a peripheral character (albeit played by Westworld‘s Peter Mullan, so he’s sure to be a scene-stealer), while Durin IV is the friend of Celebrimbor.

And it’s Durin IV whom we see holding aloft a chunk of raw mithril and proudly declaring “the beginning of a new era”, heavily implying that this is the first discovery of mithril in Khazad-dûm…which somehow feels like a more significant act of timeline-compression than I think it is. It doesn’t really affect anything; it just means that Celebrimbor must have had a different reason for settling in Eregion outside the west gates of Khazad-dûm besides wanting dibs on all mithril leaving the Dwarven kingdom. I just wonder what this is setting up for the future, because to my mind there’s only two options – one involves the creation of Galadriel’s Ring of Power, Nenya, and the other would necessitate moving the Fall of Khazad-dûm forward by roughly four-thousand years…and that’s what scares me about this change.

Rings Of Power
Durin III | gossipify.com

Just because the writers are already having to compress thousands of years of history into just five seasons of television doesn’t mean they should actively seek out opportunities to do more of that. Timeline-compression works best when it’s helping the story flow more smoothly to its destination (an example of this being Peter Jackson’s decision to do away with the seventeen-year long gap between Bilbo’s birthday party and Frodo leaving the Shire in The Fellowship Of The Ring), not when it’s forcing an epic story to shrink itself down to a more manageable size (like what’s at risk of happening in the case of Númenor).

I still firmly believe Amazon could have left the timeline just the way it was and gotten away with changing out the entire cast of human characters every season to emphasize the fear of mortality and decay prevalent among humans (and to some extent all the Free Peoples) throughout the Second Age, but I respect that, for whatever reason, they wanted a story where Isildur and Ar-Pharazôn are contemporaries of Celebrimbor, and they made the timeline work for them. We’ll have to wait until September to see if it pays off, but right now the sequences in Númenor certainly look compelling; particularly if you’re a fan of political intrigue tropes, as I am.

We see Ar-Pharazôn (still just Pharazôn at this point) riling up a colorfully-dressed crowd of Númenórean citizens with one of his speeches, presumably railing against the Elves and their leaders. Elendil’s daughter, Eärien, a non-canonical character described as politically-minded and opinionated, watches from the sidelines with an unreadable expression (it’s safe to assume that she’ll become one of Pharazôn’s allies, the “King’s Men”, in future seasons…and suffer the same terrible fate as all who join him in defying the Ban of the Valar). Tar-Míriel, the Queen Regent of Númenor, wanders through the streets of Armenelos with eyes fixed on the sky – from which particles of ash appear to be falling.

Elendil and Isildur, though not yet leaders of the Faithful, also appear – and The Rings Of Power foreshadows their future significance in the War of the Elves and Sauron by having them befriend and assist Galadriel after she washes up on the shores of Númenor with Halbrand, a probably non-canonical human character of indeterminate origins (I say probably because there’s a chance he’s the future Witch-king of Angmar or another of the nine Nazgûl, most of whose identities Tolkien never disclosed). Halbrand appears to part ways with Galadriel in Númenor – at one point in the trailer, he stands in the same large room where Ar-Pharazôn has been spotted in other images, and the two could very well become allies or rivals depending on what goes down between them there.

Rings Of Power
Tar-Miriel | ew.com

In the last ten seconds of the trailer, the focus returns to the Harfoots and their discovery of the mysterious Meteor Man – whose crash-landing we’ve now seen from various different angles, but this time we get the view from directly above…and there’s really no denying that, for a moment, as he’s lying there in a fetal position in the middle of a burning crater, he strongly resembles the Eye of Sauron as described by Tolkien in The Fellowship Of The Ring“a single Eye….rimmed with fire, [that] was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing”. Coincidence? Deception? Or a hint that this conveniently amnesiac stranger is in fact Sauron, coming to interrupt Middle-earth’s long peace after centuries in hiding?

Based on their dialogue, Galadriel and Gil-galad at least seem fairly certain that Sauron was not defeated during the War of Wrath, and they warn of a darkness creeping back into the world from the deep woods and waters where it long lurked, as if answer to a summons. Gil-galad’s monologue on the subject accompanies footage of orcs marching in torchlit procession behind a tall, gaunt commander with long black hair and eyes like dark hollows in a pale face – not Sauron, but an original character supposedly named Adar, played by Game Of Thrones‘ Joseph Mawle and rumored to be a High Elf (possibly even one of Galadriel’s brothers) captured and corrupted by the darkness.

So as you can see, there’s actually a good amount of substance to this trailer, more than I think the majority of people will pick up on given that every story detail is intentionally presented without any context in an effort to avoid confusing people that could all too easily backfire if Amazon doesn’t provide viewers enough reasons to watch The Rings Of Power. The cinematic scope of the series and its top-notch production design will lure in folks who might otherwise scoff at fantasy, while its breathtaking CGI will earn high praise from those disillusioned by the shoddy work that Marvel Studios has been rushing out in the past few months (if I were Marvel, I’d be pushing back the release date of She-Hulk because it’s gonna be a bloodbath on Twitter when people start comparing screenshots from both shows).

Nostalgia for the Peter Jackson movies is also an important factor to take into consideration, although I could see it going both ways – on the one hand, there will be fans of the movies who are just happy to revisit Middle-earth even if it looks, sounds, and feels a little bit different…and on the other hand, you’ll have the violently angry stans spamming Amazon’s comments with hate because they can’t accept that Jackson’s interpretation of Middle-earth is not necessarily the definitive one.

Rings Of Power
Elrond and Gil-galad | cnn.com

There’s obviously a lot of overlap between stans of Jackson’s films and fans of Tolkien’s writings, but at this point I think the latter are on average slightly more likely to tune into The Rings Of Power simply because there are a significant number of “purists” who didn’t like the movies and probably won’t end up enjoying the series either, but will either watch it for the sole purpose of complaining, or just to see what all the fuss is about. The upside to there so being so few new adaptations of Tolkien’s work over the past decade is that fans haven’t experienced anything resembling a “fatigue” yet, so we don’t not watch these things.

Will it be enough? I guess we’ll find out soon enough, but right now I want to know whether Amazon’s marketing strategy has been working for you – if so, I’d be interested to hear why, but if not, I’d be equally interested in hearing from my readers what Amazon could and should be doing to hook the hardcore fans, but even more importantly the casual viewers who only know The Rings Of Power through its trailers and promotional materials. Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

Trailer Rating: 8.5/10