Ever since 2017 when Amazon first announced the massively expensive deal that would send TV audiences back into the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, fans have been eagerly wondering when their journey might begin. The folks behind the as-yet unnamed series have picked a very auspicious date indeed. Break out the Longbottom Leaf and mark your calendars for September 2, 2022 so you can see what Amazon has had cooking over in New Zealand these last few years.
The date announcement comes with a first image of the series to celebrate the wrap of filming in New Zealand, and fans will be sure to eagerly pore over every pixel. We can confirm that the image is from the first episode though sources close to the production are declining to confirm the identity of the figure seen there. This could be an image of a city in Valinor. The trees in the background, at least, are very interesting.
There are a lot of tantalizing prospects at to who might be adventuring in this new series and those with a deep knowledge of Tolkien have been having fun speculating ever since an official synopsis broke on TheOneRing.net earlier this year. The synopsis read:
Let’s take a closer look at that synopsis, with some help from images from the film trilogy, and imagine what September 22nd might bring.
- “Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history.” Nothing tremendously revelatory here. One of the very first things that Amazon released in association with this project was a tweet reading: “Welcome to the Second Age.” That announcement, coupled with a map including the island of Númenor, gave the more intense Tolkien fans a real sense of what story the show would be telling. (Númenor, to keep it brief, is Tolkien’s answer to the lost island of Atlantis.) For the more casual fans, it’s worth mentioning that the Second Age precedes the Third Age which is when first Bilbo and then Frodo went on their big adventures.
- “This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged…” For those more casual fans who didn’t get the Second Age reference, here it’s spelled out more plainly. This is a prequel to the stories you know and love. But the specific use of “forged” here is no accident. There were reports, years ago, that the series would serve as an origin story for Aragorn. But now we know that the real origin story at play here centers on the Rings of Power.
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
If you recall from either the books or the haunting Cate Blanchett-narrated prologue to Jackson’s Fellowship of the Rings, the forging of the 20 Rings of Power involved Sauron (oh we’ll get to him) duping all manner of folks. The least duped were the elves, who landed three rings for themselves.
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
More disastrously, for them, the dwarves snagged themselves seven rings.
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
But most disastrous of all was the seduction of mankind. Sauron turned nine great kings and warriors into his most fearsome foot soldiers. Tolkien wrote: “Nine he gave to Mortal Men, proud and great, and so ensnared them. Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow, his most terrible servants.”
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Not much is known about the men Sauron corrupted into Ringwraiths, so there’s real opportunity for the Amazon series to introduce these characters without viewers knowing which ones will eventually fall under Sauron’s control. Speaking of falling kings…
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
- “…kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin…” This little section of the synopsis is actually doing a lot of work. First of all, it lets Tolkien fans know that the series won’t be centering just on the kingdom of Númenor. The notion of the rise and fall of kingdoms is very Thrones-y as well. But the use of “glory” and “ruin” lets book fans know that the Amazon series is fluent in the kind of language used by Tolkien’s own kings both on the screen…
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
…and on the page. Tolkien wrote of Gandalf: “Of Númenor he spoke, its glory and its fall, and the return of the Kings of Men to Middle-earth out of the deeps of the Sea, borne upon the wings of storm.”
Image from The Lord of the Rings.
- “…unlikely heroes were tested…” Here comes some comfort for those who absolutely do not want Amazon’s Lord of the Rings to become a Game of Thrones knock-off. The two properties are definitely linked through their examinations of powerful kings, brave warriors, and fantastic beasts. But something that set Tolkien’s tales apart from almost every other fantasy narrative is his use of the hobbits. These innocent audience-proxies allowed readers a simple entry point into the story and there have been several fans anxious that this new show will be missing that element because hobbits aren’t a part of the Second Age at all. But then there’s that use of “unlikely.” That word should set off some alarm bells for Tolkien fans and remind them of Gandalf’s line from the book: “So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!” The concept of the “unlikely hero” is hugely important to Tolkien scholarship.
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
- “…hope hung by the finest of threads…” Not sure if the synopsis really meant to quote film Théoden again here. But, hey, maybe they’re just big Théoden fans. I know I am.
Image from The Lord of the Rings.
- “…and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.” There was some early debate as to who might be Tolkien’s “greatest villain.” Some might argue that honor belongs Melkor/Morgoth. But the First Age ended with his destruction so let’s be real. They’re probably talking about Sauron who, during the Second Age, looked very different from the flaming eye or scarily armored figure from Jackson’s films. Let’s look at what Gandalf said about Sauron a.k.a. “The Enemy” in Tolkien’s book: “The Enemy still lacks one thing to give him strength and knowledge to beat down all resistance, break the last defenses, and cover all the lands in a second darkness.”
- “Beginning in a time of relative peace…” This further narrows down when in the Second Age the story will begin. The Second Age spans thousands of years but you can really only call its beginning relatively peaceful.
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
- “…the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new…” Okay first of all, we knew this was going to be an ensemble cast thanks to the ever-expanding list of actors signed on to the project. The casting is exciting for a number of reasons including the number of non-white faces joining the lily-white elves and hobbits we’ve seen thus far. But in order to include “familiar” faces in your prequel story set thousands of years in the past, you’re going to have to rely on some immortal figures. Thankfully, Tolkien has a few of those kicking around the Second Age. First of all, Arwen’s disapproving elven father, Elrond, was around at the time. As we mentioned, Sauron was hanging around in mortal form. The only cast member with a known assigned role is Welsh actress Morfydd Clark who will be playing a younger version of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel.
Image from Saint Maud.
So that’s the elves handled. There are few more, lesser-known elves, who could show up here. There are also a few wizards who pre-date Gandalf. A pair of them, in fact, who wear blue and that is all Tolkien has really said about them except that they like to travel. But if Amazon wanted to play a bit fast and loose with the universe, they could introduce Gandalf who doesn’t technically pop up on Middle Earth until the Third Age but is immortal so…
- “…as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth…” In the First Age Sauron was servant to the big bad that was Melkor/Morgoth. So the re-emergence would him. Sauron.
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
- “From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains…” Here the synopsis calls out three different places and, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to take them one at a time. The first one is easy and seems intentionally chosen to be recognizable even to casual movie watchers. There’s a whole song about it in The Hobbit! The synopsis mentioned the “darkest depths,” though, so you can bet we’re going down into the mines (they call it a mine!) of Moria/Khazad-dûm.
- “…to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon…” If Misty Mountains was for the casual fans, then a mention of Lindon is for the true nerds. Before Eldrond built Rivendell and Galadriel went to live in Lothlórien, there was Lindon. It’s mostly mentioned in Tolkien’s Appendices so, again, this one is a deep cut.
- “…to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor…” Splitting the difference between the Misty Mountains and Lindon we have another mention of Númenor which was home to a race of super-humans known as Númenorians and, later, Dúnedain. Aragorn, you may recall, was a Dúnedain which just means he’s better, smarter, and lives longer than your average Boromir. But while Aragorn is older than he looks when we meet him in Fellowship of the Ring, he’s not that old. So don’t hold your breath.
- “…to the furthest reaches of the map…” Now this, to borrow a phrase from another franchise, promises to boldly go where no Tolkien fans have gone before. Not only that but it adds one more reference point beyond the pages of Tolkien and Jackson’s film. The tagline of the beloved 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings reads: “Come to Middle-earth, a world beyond the furthest reaches of your imagination.”
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