Overview
Middle-earth is about to sprawl across your TV screen — or whichever other screen you use to access your streaming queue. And, after five years of talking about it, Amazon has finally given Lord of the Rings fans what they've been waiting for: a first look at its new JRR Tolkien-inspired fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Elves, dwarves, epic cities, leafy landscapes — yes, 2022's new Lord of the Rings streaming series ticks all of those expected boxes so far in its just-dropped first teaser trailer. A young Galadriel (Morfydd Clark, Saint Maud) climbs ice, and a young Elrond (Robert Aramayo, The King's Man) features as well. Also packed into the 61-second clip: elves catching arrows, humans stuck on rafts on stormy seas, cave trolls, raging fires and orc battles.
If you're new to The Rings of Power, Amazon first announced the show back in 2017, gave it the official go-ahead in mid-2018 and set a premiere date of Friday, September 2, 2022 back in 2021. In-between, it confirmed that it wouldn't just remake Peter Jackson's movies. Rather, the series will spend time in Middle-earth's Second Age, bringing that era from the LOTR realm to the screen for the very first time.
According to show's official synopsis, it'll follow "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.
The series will also "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."
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.
Naturally, you can expect Sauron to feature in the new show, and to give its main figures some trouble. "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," the official synopsis continues. "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.
In terms of stars, The Rings of Power will feature an unsurprisingly large cast — and some impressive talent behind the scenes. 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 first teaser trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power below:
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will be available to stream via Amazon Prime Video from Friday, September 2, 2022.