'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' Has Dropped Its Final Trailer Before Debuting Next Week 

Let's call it the year of comebacks. Based on huge pop-culture behemoths hitting streaming queues, 2022 is certainly panning out that way. First, Stranger Things finally dropped its long-awaited fourth season. Next, eagerly anticipated Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon arrived three years after the HBO hit wrapped up. And, come Friday, September 2, The Lord of the Rings is getting the TV treatment — taking the elves, dwarves and harfoots (aka hobbit ancestors) to Prime Video.

Eight years after the last of The Hobbit movie adaptations hit cinemas, and 19 years since the Lord of the Rings film did the same, the fantasy realm conjured by up JRR Tolkien will start unfurling across the small screen in an all-new series set in Middle-earth. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been in the works for five years, but it's finally becoming a reality. And as the array of trailers keep showing — including the initial sneak peek, then not one, not two, but three new trailers in July, and now a just-dropped final glimpse before the series actually arrives — the first season is all looking suitably epic.

Get ready to jump back to Middle-earth's Second Age, with The Rings of Power bringing that era from the LOTR realm to the screen for the first time. A young Galadriel (Morfydd Clark, Saint Maud) has a mission to hunt the enemy, after her brother gave his life doing the same — and she sees fighting for fate and destiny as the work as something greater.

"Each of us, every one, must decide who we shall be," Galadriel declares — with the new trailer focusing on folks choosing to go into battle for what's right. The big bad they're trying to stave off? The rise of Sauron, with the show charting how that gave rise to the rings and the impact across Middle-earth.

Gorgeous settings, elves, dwarves, harfoots (aka hobbit ancestors), stormy seas, strange skies, cave trolls, orcs, raging fires, a balrog — they're all set to show up across The Rings of Power's first season. So will a young Elrond (Robert Aramayo, The King's Man), as well as New Zealand's natural splendours standing in for the Elven realms of Lindon and Eregion, the Dwarven realm Khazad-dûm, the Southlands, the Northernmost Wastes, the Sundering Seas and the island kingdom of Númenór.

Amazon first announced the show back in 2017, gave it the official go-ahead in mid-2018 and set its premiere date back in 2021. In-between, it confirmed that it wouldn't just remake Peter Jackson's movies. Rather, as per the show's official synopsis, it follows "the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history," with the action set thousands of years before the novels and movies we've all read and watched.

If you're a little rusty on your LOTR lore, the Second Age lasted for 3441 years, and saw the initial rise and fall of Sauron, as well as a spate of wars over the coveted rings. Elves feature prominently, and there's plenty to cover, even if Tolkien's works didn't spend that much time on the period — largely outlining the main events in an appendix to the popular trilogy.

The series will "take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien's pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness," the synopsis continues.

"Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone," it also advises.

That's a massive tale to tell and, this latest The Rings of Power trailer stresses, more than a few figures are involved. Among the other actors traversing Middle-earth are Ismael Cruz Córdova (The Undoing) as Arondir, Nazanin Boniadi (Bombshell) as Bronwyn, Owain Arthur (A Confession) as Prince Durin IV, Charlie Vickers (Palm Beach) as Halbrand and Sophia Nomvete (The Tempest) as Princess Disa. There's also Tom Budge (Judy & Punch), Joseph Mawle (Game of Thrones), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (The Accountant), Maxim Baldry (Years and Years), Peter Mullan (Westworld), Benjamin Walker (The Underground Railroad) and comedian Lenny Henry.

And, the series is being overseen by showrunners and executive producers JD Payne and Patrick McKay, while filmmaker JA Bayona (A Monster Calls, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) directs the first two episodes.

Check out the new The Rings of Power trailer below:

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will be available to stream via Prime Video from Friday, September 2, 2022.

Images: Matt Grace / Ben Rothstein.