“The Rings Of Power” Season 2 Reintroduces Its Villain

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE ONE AHEAD!

Just as the first season of Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power opened with Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel narrating over a montage of scenes that followed her progression from a child of Valinorean peace and tranquility to a woman hardened by the ceaseless wars she and her kind brought to Middle-earth’s shores, season two tries to do the same for the character of Sauron and goes to show that Amazon hasn’t “bought” the Tolkien Estate (as some of the series’ detractors claim), seeing as they were evidently denied access to the descriptions of Sauron’s First Age activities found only in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, resulting in a prologue and premiere episode that knows it would be so much stronger if it were free, either to adapt the source material or, barring that, outright contradict what it can’t adapt.

Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad, standing in the foreground, while Morfydd Clark as Galadriel stands behind him, out-of-focus. Gil-galad has long dark brown hair, and wears a circlet of golden laurel leaves and a golden-brown cape over the left shoulder of his gold robe. Galadriel has long blonde hair, and wears a floor-length blue-green gown.
Gil-galad and Galadriel | youtube.com

Until that time comes, The Rings Of Power will continue to dance on tip-toes – whether with the gracefulness of a fleet-footed Elf or a lumbering cave troll is entirely dependent on the individual writer for each episode – to avoid touching anything it legally cannot, including the most detailed account of Sauron’s origins (The Ainulindalë), his motivations (The Letters Of J.R.R. Tolkien and Morgoth’s Ring), and his deeds (The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales), which significantly restricts The Rings Of Power‘s Sauron-centric prologue: from starting at a point in time even remotely equivalent to when Galadriel’s began; from using any of the names for Sauron that he canonically preferred to the one in common use among his enemies; from explaining that he belonged to a class of angelic beings called Maiar, specifically one tasked with maintaining order and coordination; from laying bare his vision, ultimately unobtainable save through the domination of all living things, of the world under his control; and from referring to how the Valar, the pantheon of godlike beings ranked above the Maiar in power and seniority, offered him a second chance after Morgoth’s defeat, which Sauron considered and rejected, being unwilling to part with the power he had obtained in Middle-earth.

Most of what was omitted can be inferred to exist still, offscreen. Sauron is not not a Maia in The Rings Of Power, the word just isn’t used. There are subtle hints in his dialogue that point to his true ideology and aims, maybe a bit too subtle, but they’re there. And for all we know, he could conceivably have had his moment of repentance shortly prior to when The Rings Of Power picks up his story as he gathers the Orcs at his fortress in cold Forodwaith, intending to be accepted as Morgoth’s successor. Jack Lowden’s Sauron is rather more pitiable than intimidating (and I can’t say that would be an entirely unfounded read of the villain), but his face befits the name Mairon, nowhere used in this sequence but plausibly still the name he wore as a Maia. The very best version of The Rings Of Power often isn’t the one onscreen, but the one hiding between-the-lines.

Jack Lowden as Sauron in The Rings Of Power. He has long blond hair, slicked-back, and wears black armor over a red-and-gold robe.
Sauron | slashfilm.com

With that said, this episode is extremely entertaining in its own right, and again, we need only turn to the prologue – a very effective microcosm of the entire season so far – to understand why. It may be sacrilegious to suggest, but The Rings Of Power feels most at ease when it’s having fun playing in the vast sandbox that is Middle-earth, using the building-blocks at its disposal, but arranging them in ways that J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn’t have, like when it implied that Sauron and Galadriel had romantic feelings for each other, or when it invented an extremely compelling half-Elf, half-Orc character named Adar (Sam Hazeldine), whom Sauron inherited at the end of the First Age along with everything else that once belonged to Morgoth. Perhaps The Rings Of Power‘s single most valuable contribution to the Middle-earth legendarium is Adar, who not only straddles the line separating good and evil, but forces Middle-earth’s heroes and its villains alike to grapple with the disturbing implication that all Orcs straddle that line as much as any people – something that Tolkien himself was coming to acknowledge near the end of his life, but was never able to reconcile with his earlier depictions of the Orcs.

Adar’s decision, solidified in secret while Sauron addresses the Orcs and makes it increasingly clear that he not only doesn’t see them as his people but assumes it is in their nature to serve a Dark Lord (the same prejudice he accuses Elves and Men of holding), to kill Sauron then and there with his own crown, transforms a coronation into an execution, and all the Orcs get in a stab, until the bloodied heap that remains of Sauron erupts, sending shockwaves across Forodwaith. But while Adar and the Orcs depart in search of a new home, the camera tracks Sauron’s pooled blood as it runs in rivulets through cracks in the stone, coagulating deep underground into something utterly repulsive and somehow mesmerizing to watch, a mass of tiny feelers groping back towards the surface, absorbing small animals and insects; a sort of reverse-Gollum that gradually becomes more humanoid as it slithers purposefully out of the mountains, eventually getting stuck to the wheel of a merchant’s cart, consuming her, and thereafter wearing the body of Charlie Vickers’ Halbrand.

Charlie Vickers as Halbrand, standing at the back of a covered wagon, looking around. He has shoulder-length, shaggy brown hair, and wears brown rags.
Halbrand | youtube.com

At this point (and through no fault of a consistently exceptional Vickers, I must add), the prologue gets bogged down contriving a string of unremarkable scenes intended to signal to the audience that Sauron’s pursuit of redemption under a new name throughout season one was not entirely a deception, as well as retroactively justifying how he came across the heraldry that allowed him to pass himself off as a lost king of the Southlands, and why we and Galadriel first encountered him on a raft in the middle of the Great Sea. The answers to these outstanding mysteries are linked, but neither is particularly interesting. It’s when Sauron returns to the Southlands in the body of the episode that Vickers gets to show off his strengths as an actor, an opportunity that season one deprived him of until its final few minutes. In his scenes opposite Adar (now the Lord of Mordor), Sauron, still disguised as Halbrand, manipulates masterfully – exposing the feigned weakness he wants Adar to believe he can wield as leverage over him, his concern for his people, and using that very same weakness on Adar’s part to begin amassing an army. There is such salt-of-the-earth sincerity in Sauron’s ruggedly handsome face and in his folksy accent that the absence of it in the half-smiles which crook the corners of his lips and never quite reach his steely eyes escapes notice initially.

If Vickers’ performance embodies the idea put forward in The Lord Of The Rings that the agents of evil “seem fair, and feel foul”, Hazeldine’s is the inverse: the grim set of his mouth and the slow, seemingly methodical way in which he moves do not betray emotion, but it roils under the surface and shimmers faintly far behind his eyes. Hazeldine is a less lanky man than Joseph Mawle, who played Adar in the first season, and his version of the character is physically imposing where Mawle’s was frail, without a trace of trembling rasp in his voice. But Adar’s love for the Orcs, the enveloping and unconditional love of a parent for their children, is as genuine coming from Hazeldine as it was from Mawle in season one, and both actors deliver the best performances of their respective seasons.

In comparison, the evolution of Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel and Robert Aramayo’s Elrond from one season to the next may not seem significant, but there is a newfound surety in their performances, with which comes the ability to turn over their characters and explore their different facets. Galadriel is still impulse-driven by nature, but she let those impulses drive her straight into a ditch in season one, forcing her to consult other emotions besides her shattered sense of self-righteousness as she tries to back out of her current predicament without accidentally entrenching herself any deeper. Elrond, by contrast, has never been more certain in his definition of “right” and “wrong”, and is aghast when High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) doesn’t see it the same way, putting the idealistic young politician in an uncomfortable and isolating position where people he’s regarded his whole life as fundamentally good appear to be shedding their morals all around him.

A cliffside in Lindon, upon the edge of which grows a tall mallorn tree with golden leaves. Within its shade sits a dais, encircled by a stream falling off the edge of the cliff, and upon that dais stands a basin filled with water. Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad is approaching the basin. He has long dark hair and wears a golden robe. Nearby stands Robert Aramayo as Elrond. He has short brown hair and wears a blue robe. In the background stand two Elven soldiers in gold cloaks, wielding spears, and Morfydd Clark as Galadriel. She has long blond hair and wears a green mantle.
Lindon | youtube.com

Having Elrond grab the Three Rings and leap off a waterfall into the Gulf of Lhûn to prevent the Elves from using the devices of Sauron isn’t exactly subtle storytelling, but I respect The Rings Of Power for unapologetically foregoing subtlety in favor of spectacle every now and then. It’s the rare fantasy show in the post-Game Of Thrones television landscape that gets a kick out of testing its audiences’ suspension of disbelief. If we accept that Elves exist and can walk over snow without sinking and tell a person’s height and hair color from over fifteen miles away, why can’t they also survive a fall of many hundreds of feet into the ocean? What’s important is that Elrond isn’t just jumping off a waterfall for the sake of having something cool happen in an episode light on action, but because The Rings Of Power has exponentially raised the stakes by having Sauron involved in the forging of the Three Rings (a controversial deviation from the canonical account, where the Three are created behind Sauron’s back, after the Seven and the Nine) and deliberately obfuscating the extent of his involvement. It is a choice that the show proudly owns, taking advantage of the opportunity that’s emerged to closely and critically examine the Three Rings and the potential consequences of wearing them.

Enter the character of Círdan (Ben Daniels), the oldest and wisest Elf in all of Middle-earth, who harbors Elrond when he washes up in the Grey Havens and offers to discard the Three by dropping them into a submarine trench…only to have a change of heart and do the exact opposite of what he promised Elrond, putting on one of the Three himself and delivering the other two to Gil-galad and Galadriel. The Elves are able to slow their inevitable fading and continue the fight against Sauron in Middle-earth, but at the cost of becoming bound to the fate of the Three Rings (and therefore also Sauron, which, to be honest, does make a lot more sense if he had a hand in their creation). It may have been their best choice, but was it the right choice? The Rings Of Power leaves the audience with that question. Although, as a fan of Círdan, who has never had a speaking role in an adaptation of Tolkien’s works before, I’m also left wondering why the writers chose to utilize him in this way. Daniels is perfectly cast in the part, make no mistake, but the narrative does him no favors by having Círdan betray Elrond’s trust the way a parent might an errant child and then fall victim to the temptation of the Rings, all before most viewers will even have picked up his name.

Ben Daniels as Cirdan in close-up. He has long gray hair, slightly curly, and a gray beard. He wears a gray robe with golden waves embroidered around the collar.
Círdan | nerdist.com

I have no idea how to elegantly segue into talking about The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), still following the stars eastward into the land of Rhûn, where he believes he will learn, or relearn, his true name and purpose. Unfortunately, he’s no closer to finding any of those things after the first three episodes of season two, and spends almost the entirety of the premiere lost and going in circles, his genuinely charming banter with his stalwart Harfoot companion Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) the only highlight of this subplot. I’m not sure how much longer The Rings Of Power can even keep up the pretense that the Stranger’s identity is a mystery, when the magic staff that he keeps seeing in his dreams is referred to on several occasions not as a staff, or a stave, or even a wand, but a gand, derived from the Old Norse word gandr, one half of the name Gandálfr or, you guessed it, Gandalf (“wand elf”). There is no reason, none whatsoever, to use this particular word if the Stranger is not Gandalf. And if it’s a misdirect, I’ll be furious.

While the Stranger and Nori can certainly keep a conversation going, the return of Nori’s friend Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) is a welcome relief at a particularly slow moment in this storyline, giving them both another person to bounce off. I’m inclined to believe, however, that her inclusion was the result of rewrites, because of how little effort is put into explaining why she decided to follow Nori after turning down the chance to travel with her and the Stranger last season or how she even caught up with them, and once added to the party, she does nothing that Nori could not also have accomplished. But I always wanted the three of them together anyway, so I can’t object to her reappearance, only to the fact that it doesn’t save this subplot, which continues to waste time in a season too short and too crowded already to spare even a second.

Close-up image of a person of indeterminate age and gender, wearing a brown hood over an ornate bronze mask shaped into a leering skull with gaping eyesockets.
Easterling | youtube.com

That’s the other big problem lingering over The Rings Of Power season two: the story it’s telling, spanning seven kingdoms and all the lands between, is simply too large to be condensed into a season of just eight episodes. Of course, it would help if every subplot was equally engaging, but regardless, there’s not enough time for them all to be fully fleshed-out. And the first episode is only juggling three, mind you, divided between Lindon, Mordor, and Rhûn – in the episodes that follow, The Rings Of Power makes its way around Middle-earth, revisiting Eregion, Khazad-dûm, Númenor, and the Southlands. Every location is its own enormous, fully-realized world, but the time we’ve spent in each is just barely enough to get reacquainted with the characters we already met last season. I’m not demanding twenty episodes, each an hour long, per season (though I wouldn’t object), but surely the most expensive show on television can afford ten?

Thankfully, The Rings Of Power is in no other aspect stingy. The first episode of season two boasts CGI more convincing than most blockbuster movies, breathtaking locations ranging from New Zealand to the Canary Islands, extensive practical sets, a panoply of props including the titular Rings, and gorgeous costumes (for more on that subject, see my interview with the series’ costume designer, Luca Mosca), of which my favorite is, perhaps surprisingly given its relative simplicity, the gray robe embroidered with golden waves that Círdan wears in his introductory scene: an unpretentious but beautiful garment well-fitted to its owner’s personality. Through the lens of director Charlotte Brändström (who directed the sixth and seventh episodes of season one) and cinematographer Alex Disenhof, Middle-earth bursts to life.

Wide shot of a round stone dais in the shade of a tall tree with golden leaves. Ben Daniels as Cirdan and Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad stand upon the dais, while Morfydd Clark as Galadriel ascends the dais by a flight of short steps from the left. Cirdan has long gray hair and wears a gray robe. Gil-galad has long dark hair, a crown of golden laurel leaves, and wears a golden robe. Galadriel has long blonde hair and wears a green gown. Veiled attendants and soldiers wearing gold cloaks and winged helmets, wielding spears, stand nearby.
(left to right) Galadriel, Círdan, and Gil-galad | youtube.com

The flaws that have always held The Rings Of Power just a hair’s-breadth back from greatness continue to do so, but the series strains against its bonds and makes a valiant push forward in this episode, a reintroduction to the world and its characters that doesn’t seek anyone’s forgiveness for sizable changes to the source material, whether smart or baffling, but asks only for patience. If not all fans will be inclined to give it even that much, there are many still who will be intrigued by what the series is doing to grapple with the broader themes of Tolkien’s work, and I see enormous potential yet in this unconventional adaptation.

Episode Rating: 8/10

A “Rings Of Power” Travel Guide To Middle-earth In The Second Age

Middle-earth has been described by some literary critics as a living, breathing character in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and in every adaptation of said writings, one as vividly realized and as crucial to the great tales as Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn, or either of the Bagginses; perhaps even more so than any of those characters, as Middle-earth is the sphere in which all of the great tales unfold (well, disc-turned-sphere…long story, we’ll get to that). No character undergoes as much radical development throughout the story as Middle-earth itself, which is altered irrevocably – though sometimes subtly – every time an Age of Middle-earth ends and a new one begins. Tolkien postulated that, sometime long after the events of The Lord Of The Rings, Middle-earth’s history would naturally segue into ancient human history, meaning that Middle-earth is our earth and continues to be a character in our modern-day “great tales”.

Rings Of Power
Romenna | aboutamazon.com

But of course, the version of Middle-earth in which we currently reside hardly resembles the one depicted on most maps of Middle-earth (tucked into most editions of The Lord Of The Rings right between the index and the back cover, which makes it frustratingly inaccessible to readers until after they’ve finished the book), and that version of Middle-earth bears as many distinct differences as it does similarities to the version of Middle-earth described in the written records of the Second Age, which ended roughly three-thousand years before the events of The Lord Of The Rings…the version of Middle-earth that will star in Amazon’s The Rings Of Power, a story of complex human drama immediately preceding the War of the Last Alliance in which the Second Age came to a sudden end.

As the title of today’s post makes clear, this is a travel-guide to Middle-earth of the mid to late Second Age – one which I hope you will bookmark for future reference, so that you never get confused while watching The Rings Of Power. I’ll briefly go over the histories of each new location in season one up to the point where the story opens, and in most cases no further than that, so you won’t get spoiled for events in future seasons if you don’t want to be.

But first, a couple things to keep in mind regarding this version of Middle-earth. When The Rings Of Power opens, Middle-earth is only just starting to heal after centuries of war and its inhabitants are almost single-mindedly focused on rebuilding everything they sacrificed at the end of the First Age to achieve that peace…although a sizable chunk of Middle-earth (encompassing the Elven kingdoms of Gondolin, Nargothrond, and Doriath) is lost forever beneath the seas, having been “rent asunder” by gods and dragons during the War of Wrath. The gods have long ago departed Middle-earth without fixing any of the damage they caused, leaving many Elves, Dwarves, and humans displaced in the wilderness.

Also, the world is canonically flat throughout most of the Second Age. I know, I know, it sounds like such a big deal – but honestly, it’s surprisingly irrelevant. The only instance in which I could see it being brought up in The Rings Of Power is if the characters travel into the furthest eastern, southern, or northern regions of Middle-earth where the sea and land presumably just stops and the void begins (Tolkien was helpfully nonspecific about how any of it worked). Traveling west past the island of Númenor would eventually yield the same result, but is strictly forbidden to all save the Elves; for in that direction lies Valinor, the Undying Lands of the gods. And that is, incidentally, where we start our journey around Middle-earth…

Tirion

Rings Of Power
Tirion | theonering.net

The paradisiacal region of Valinor was once home to the Noldor, High Elves with an innate passion for exerting their mental and bodily capacities to create great works of art. The Rings Of Power looks back to these days of innocence (which some might call ignorance) when the Noldor built a tall and many-towered city named Tirion in the Cleft of Light that cut through the mountains surrounding Valinor, allowing the soft glow of the Two Trees to escape the blessed land and spill out over the ocean. Here, under the leadership of King Finwë, dwelt the three princes of the Noldor, Fëanor, Fingolfin, and Finarfin, and their individual families – including Fëanor’s seven mighty sons, and Finarfin’s daughter, Galadriel.

Sadly, I doubt we’ll spend much time in Tirion outside of a few vague flashbacks establishing Galadriel’s origins and her close relationship with her brother Finrod – Amazon literally can’t go into too much detail regarding any of the characters who make up her extended family without straying into territory covered by The Silmarillion; the rights to which are currently being withheld by the Tolkien Estate. But that’s okay. By the beginning of the Second Age, the only character still living in Tirion worth mentioning by name would be Finarfin, one of a handful of Noldor Elves who didn’t leave Valinor to pursue Morgoth into Middle-earth after the Dark Lord stole the light of the Two Trees.

Forodwaith

Rings Of Power
Galadriel in the Forodwaith | game-news24.com

The vast northern expanses of Middle-earth, between the Grey Mountains and the edge of the world, are a cold and forbidding place unlikely to ever heal from the grievous wounds inflicted upon the land in ages long past by the Dark Lord Morgoth, who built two great underground fortresses, Utumno and Angband, at either end of the Northern Waste and traveled between them frequently until Utumno was destroyed and he was forced to retreat to Angband, where his lieutenant Sauron awaited his arrival. Together, they erected three hollow mountains above the gates of Angband, which issued poisonous gases and foul smoke to burn and degrade the land around Angband for many miles.

During the War of Wrath, dragons falling out of the sky crashed into Angband and destroyed its fortifications, allowing the gods to storm in and capture both Morgoth (whom they promptly tossed into the void, never to be seen or heard from again) and Sauron (whom they offered a pardon, which he refused before fleeing into the east). The remnants of Morgoth’s armies, including orcs, trolls, dragons, and even a couple of Balrogs dispersed across the Northern Waste, and those that did not succumb to the bitter cold and toxicity of the air burrowed into the ground and hid or at last entered Middle-earth and found strange new lands to defile with their presence.

Early in The Rings Of Power season one, Galadriel leads an expedition into the Waste to hunt for traces of Sauron (I’m interested to know whether she’s following a lead or trusting her intuition), and encounters a ferocious ice-troll dwelling in the ruins of a fortress – not Angband, but one of its outposts, I’m sure. She also discovers the mark of the Lidless Eye burned into a room with dead orcs trapped in its walls like flies in amber, implying that Sauron did in fact pass through the fortress on his way out of Angband, although whether he stopped to recruit some orcs in a ritual-gone-terribly-wrong or was ambushed by them is unclear at present.

Lindon

Rings Of Power
Lindon | tomsguide.com

A thin sliver of the old country that had crashed into the sea during the War of Wrath, Lindon in the early Second Age became a haven for displaced Noldor Elves, Silvan Elves, and Dwarves whose cities beneath the Blue Mountains had caved in, all gathered under the guardianship of Gil-galad, a young Elf of Finarfin’s house who unexpectedly became High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth following the deaths of all his close male relatives in rapid succession. Gil-galad had spent most of the First Age on the Isle of Balar, where he and the Elven shipwright Círdan harbored Elves fleeing from the wars with Morgoth, and in Lindon he served much the same function. His realm lay at a pivotal crossroads from which Elves could either return over the seas to Valinor or journey deeper into Middle-earth’s uncharted wilderness.

Many Elves, including Galadriel and Celebrimbor, initially chose the latter option and established kingdoms of their own in Middle-earth after departing Lindon. In The Rings Of Power, however, both characters return to Lindon to join Gil-galad for dinner and to take counsel of him one last time before embarking on adventures of their own…with Galadriel setting sail into the west, and Celebrimbor borrowing Gil-galad’s young herald Elrond to help him broker a treaty with the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm.

Lindon was described in songs as a realm both “fair and free”, and it appears to have never had a capital city in the same way other Elven kingdoms did, nor is Gil-galad ever mentioned as having a throne. Where Galadriel and Celebrimbor actively sought power and dominion over Middle-earth, Gil-galad appears to have sought only to shelter and protect people, regardless of whether they were Noldor or not, and to have never desired the trappings of rulership that were thrust upon him at a young age. I find him a particularly interesting character for that reason.

Eregion

Rings Of Power
Celebrimbor | winteriscoming.net

In the year 750 of the Second Age, Celebrimbor declared himself King of Eregion, a small and at the time sparsely-populated region in the foothills of the Misty Mountains west of Khazad-dûm. It may have seemed a strange decision to Gil-galad, but Celebrimbor had an ulterior motive that he appears not to have disclosed to anyone: like all Noldor Elves (and especially those of Fëanor’s house), he desired to make beautiful things with his hands, and he had heard rumors that the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm were in possession of Middle-earth’s sole vein of mithril, a precious metal that they had used to embellish their deep halls. He therefore befriended the Dwarves, and collaborated with the Dwarven smith Narvi to build a magical gate for Khazad-dûm’s west entrance, inlaid with mithril designs.

The Rings Of Power is probably set a few hundred years after the founding of Eregion, around the year 1600 of the Second Age (although Amazon is compressing the timeline to make it more manageable, so characters born thousands of years later are already alive and characters who ought to be alive are already dead, so don’t read too much into the exact date), at which point Celebrimbor would have built the city of Ost-in-Edhil and established the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, a guild of Elven jewelsmiths who would later go on to forge the Rings of Power with assistance from a stranger named Annatar. We’ve already caught glimpses of Celebrimbor’s study in promotional images; I just hope that before the end of season one, we get to see him and the Gwaith forge something.

Khazad-dûm

Rings Of Power
Khazad-dûm | chicagotoday.news

Roughly four-thousand years before the Fellowship of the Ring entered Khazad-dûm and found themselves hopelessly lost in its dark and unmapped ruins at the end of the Third Age, visitors to the Dwarven kingdom beneath the Misty Mountains would have feared no “holes and pitfalls” after stepping foot through the magical gates; for at the time, darkness had not yet fallen upon Khazad-dûm, nor had it earned the nickname of Moria, meaning “black chasm” in the Sindarin tongue of the Elves (although some may have already been using the moniker in a derogatory context regardless of what truth there was to it).

Khazad-dûm under the reign of King Durin III is a bustling hub of commerce located in the exact middle of Middle-earth with entrances on both sides of the Misty Mountains to allow for easier access to everybody – Noldor Elves from Eregion, Silvan Elves from Greenwood, Dwarves from the Blue Mountains to the Iron Hills, Harfoots from Wilderland, and Men from across the entire southern half of the map as far as the isle of Númenor. Ironically, even after receiving Rings of Power, the Dwarves were never again as powerful as they were in these days. Their reserves of mithril dwindled in the Third Age, prompting the Dwarven miners under the reign of King Durin VI to dig deeper in search of hidden mithril veins that could revitalize Khazad-dûm’s dying economy…but instead they awoke an ancient horror that had long slept coiled around the base of Caradhras, a Balrog of Morgoth known to the Dwarves of later years as “Durin’s Bane”, for it slaughtered the king and most of his people.

Amazon is compressing the timeline to such an extent that these events, which canonically didn’t occur until the year 1981 of the Third Age, might be depicted in a future season of The Rings Of Power, with Prince Durin IV, King Durin III’s son, taking the place of King Durin VI. At any rate, the eventual fall of Khazad-dûm is already being foreshadowed in the show’s trailers, the latest of which included a short sequence of a leaf falling through a series of caves and tunnels lined with mithril-veins before suddenly catching fire and disintegrating…followed almost immediately by a shot of a Balrog, which I guess could be any Balrog but certainly looks a hell of a lot like Durin’s Bane as portrayed in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, with ram horns and a gaping maw emitting heat. All I’m saying is don’t get too attached to the Dwarven characters in The Rings Of Power

Wilderland

Rings Of Power
Wilderland | kpcnews.com

Everything that lies between the eastern foothills of the Misty Mountains and the western eaves of Greenwood (later Mirkwood), including the Anduin river valley, Dimrill Dale, Lórien, and the Gladden Fields, was known to the Hobbits of the late Third Age as “Wilderland” because it was a wild and unkempt corner of Middle-earth, but what they did not know (or no longer remembered) was that in the Second Age their ancestors lived in Wilderland along the west banks of the Anduin at least as far north as Rivendell and probably as far south as Khazad-dûm’s east gate. They were divided into three distinct subgroups, of whom the most numerous were the nimble Harfoots, a southerly subgroup who were friendly with Dwarves in ancient times.

The Rings Of Power follows a tightly-knit nomadic clan of Harfoots as they travel around Wilderland doing their level best to stay out of the affairs of Elves, Dwarves, and Men…which is peculiar for many reasons, one being that the Harfoots were canonically “the most inclined to settle in one place”. Of course, Amazon has been using the term Harfoot rather liberally, as if it applies to any and all prehistoric Hobbits, including the more adventurous Fallohides and the boat-building Stoors, which could be the only explanation we ever get for this apparent discrepancy – although I for one would be slightly disappointed if we never got to meet any true Stoors and Fallohides in future seasons.

I can understand why, in season one, Amazon wouldn’t want to overcomplicate matters by distinguishing between three different groups of Hobbits in a story that’s already straining to include Harfoots in the first place, but if The Rings Of Power follows the Harfoots on their great migration out of Wilderland and over the Misty Mountains (as I strongly suspect will be the case, given that we have to spend five seasons with them and they don’t have any relevance to the War of the Elves and Sauron), then it would make sense for them to run into Fallohides and Stoors at some point on that journey. Heck, throw in a pair of Fallohide brothers named Marcho and Blanco, and you have yourself a whole Shire origin story just waiting to be told…because that’s definitely something people are clamoring to see.

Tirharad

Rings Of Power
Bronwyn and Arondir in Tirharad | syfy.com

The only non-canonical location on this list, Tirharad or “south-watch” in Sindarin, appears to be a small village located somewhere in the Southlands of Middle-earth where humans whose ancestors worshiped Morgoth during the First Age were exiled to live out their days under the surveillance of Silvan Elves. The whole situation is very unusual. For one thing, we don’t know who exiled these people to begin with; I’m assuming they were a Noldor Elf, someone who would bear a grudge against all of Morgoth’s followers, but then who or what gave them the authority to command humans and why would they entrust the responsibility of surveilling these humans to Silvan Elves, those least affected by Morgoth? I’m very confused.

Several-hundred years later, most of the inhabitants of Tirharad have probably forgotten Morgoth’s name entirely, but at least one Silvan Elf, by the name of Arondir, remains in the nearby watch-tower to guard against future threats – although as he falls in love with a human woman named Bronwyn, he begins to realize that the threat to Tirharad is far greater than the threat its people pose to him. Tirharad is the site of several action sequences we’ve seen in the trailer, including a one-on-one fight between Bronwyn and an orc intruder, an epic confrontation between Arondir and a legion of orcs led by the mysterious “Adar”, and what is presumably the climactic battle of season one, in which Galadriel and a Númenórean army led by Tar-Míriel are involved in liberating the village from orcs.

Númenor

Rings Of Power
Númenor | rollingstone.com

Situated in the middle of the Sundering Seas between Valinor and Middle-earth, the star-shaped island of Númenor juts suddenly out of the water, its irregular geography and sheer cliffs a testament to the strange, violent manner of its birth – lifted straight out of the ocean depths by Ulmo, god of the sea, while the earth was still pliable following the War of Wrath, to be a new homeland for humans who had fought alongside the Elves throughout the First Age. Following a star, these “Elf-friends” ventured across the ocean in a fleet of ships to find their island prepared for them, and visitors from Valinor already waiting for their arrival with gifts including plants, flowers, and songbirds.

Over the next thousand years, the Númenóreans enjoyed peace and prosperity under the leadership of wise, long-lived kings and queens who were initially sympathetic to the plight of the Elves in Middle-earth and as resistant to Sauron as their ancestors were to Morgoth. Since they were forbidden to travel west to Valinor and visit their friends, they sailed east and south along the shores of Middle-earth in search of new lands where they could satisfy their thirst for adventure. Along the way, they liberated many humans from the dominion of Sauron and demanded little in return save for wood with which to build larger ships.

But as time went on and the Númenórean mariners found themselves revisiting lands they had already explored, their eyes turned westward once more and they became gradually convinced that something in Valinor was being withheld from them, namely the gift of immortal life that was granted to all Elves. And as their curiosity gave way to wariness and thence to suspicion, they became…less kind. Canonically, it was in the year 1700 of the Second Age, during the reign of Tar-Minastir, that the Númenóreans first sent troops to Middle-earth to aid King Gil-galad in the wars against Sauron and were so impressed by their own military prowess that they began wielding the same violent force on the people under their protection in the hopes it would make them feel powerful.

Amazon is tweaking the timeline so that all of this (and a great deal more) will occur during the lifespan of Tar-Míriel, the last Queen of Númenor, who canonically lived between 3117 and 3319 of the Second Age. Tar-Míriel is still Tar-Míriel, and will still do everything that Tar-Míriel actually did in her lifetime…she just so happens to also fill the role of Tar-Minastir by leading the Númenórean armies to Middle-earth shortly before the forging of the Rings of Power, and I suspect that the characters around her, particularly non-canonical characters, will similarly play a variety of parts that Tolkien assigned to a multitude of thinly sketched-out characters across the sprawling narrative of the Second Age because he was writing a timeline, not a television series.

To cite one example, Isildur is a Númenórean mariner in The Rings Of Power so that we may witness the rapid evolution of the mariners from explorers to colonizers through his eyes, whereas if Amazon had opted to adapt the stories of the Second Age as written, with obligatory time-jumps between seasons to cover the entire three-thousand year period, we’d need to meet several different Númenórean mariner protagonists over the course of five seasons to tell the same story, and I can see where that would get redundant. Personally, I’m still a proponent of the anthology approach and would very much have liked to see that show, but I trust that The Rings Of Power‘s showrunners and writers can convey with a limited number of characters existing simultaneously to each other what Tolkien only managed with multiple characters existing at different points on a timeline of epic proportions.

Armenelos

Rings Of Power
Tar-Míriel | ew.com

I’ve talked about Númenor, but said nothing yet of its capital city – Armenelos, possibly the greatest city in all of Middle-earth at the time, rivaled in size and splendor only by Khazad-dûm. Interestingly, the name Armenelos isn’t written in The Lord Of The Rings or its appendices, so Amazon shouldn’t be able to use it…but they already have, on the official map of Middle-earth they released way back in February of 2019 to promote The Rings Of Power before the series even had a title. It’s not even the only place-name on that map that comes to us from The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales, but it’s a location we know for a fact we’ll visit in season one because we’ve already seen images of the city, so it would be really weird if Amazon just never uses the name in the show.

In fact, they wouldn’t be allowed to refer to any of the places on their own official map of Númenor by name without apparently overstepping their agreement with the Tolkien Estate, unless (as I’ve long suspected) they got more out of the agreement than just The Lord Of The Rings and its appendices (well, we know they also got The Hobbit, but that’s not gonna be much help to them in this case). Even the map of Númenor that John Howe must have been tracing from when he designed Amazon’s map of Middle-earth is only found in Unfinished Tales. And I promise this is relevant, because there are several stories and characters that Amazon could only use if they had the rights to Unfinished Tales – a notable example being Annatar, a familiar name to many Tolkien fans but one which never appeared in The Lord Of The Rings.

Oddly, a couple of place-names didn’t make it onto Amazon’s map and one of those is Andúnië, the city where Elendil and his family lived near the end of the Second Age – which leads me to believe that they’re being relocated to Armenelos for budgetary purposes in season one. Of the two coastal cities that did make the cut, Romenna is the city I believe was depicted in the opening shot of the first teaser trailer and in many subsequent trailers; it is also the seaport from which Tar-Míriel and her navy will likely set sail for Middle-earth, due to the city’s close proximity with Armenelos and eastward-facing harbor.

Honorable Mentions:

Rings Of Power
Lorien | br.pinterest.com

Amon Lanc, another name from Unfinished Tales that appeared on Amazon’s official map, this one referring to the tall bald hill rising out of southern Greenwood where the Silvan Elves under King Oropher (and later Oropher’s son, Thranduil – yes, that Thranduil) dwelt throughout the Second Age, before a shadow fell upon the forest and forced them to relocate northwards. Amon Lanc then became known as Dol Guldur.

Himling, Tol Fuin, and Tol Morwen, a string of islands off the northwestern coast of Middle-earth that remained above sea-level after Beleriand was submerged. I’m not sure if The Rings Of Power intends to take us to any of these islands, but their presence on Amazon’s official map is intriguing seeing as only Himling has ever previously appeared on maps of Middle-earth included in The Lord Of The Rings. Tol Fuin, the remnants of the Dorthonion highlands where Galadriel’s brothers Angrod and Aegnor dwelt throughout the First Age, could be significant if certain leaks are to be trusted…

Lond Daer, a Númenórean seaport and colony in Middle-earth founded by the great mariner Aldarion sometime between 750 and 800. Pelargir and Umbar, two seaports constructed later in the Second Age which gradually supplanted Lond Daer in significance and were absorbed into the empire of Gondor, do not appear on Amazon’s official map.

Lórien, or Lórinand as it was likely still being called in the Second Age, is the forest east of Khazad-dûm that canonically became Galadriel’s domain during the Second Age, although when exactly and how soon after Celebrimbor founded Eregion remained a mystery even to Tolkien. The conspicuous absence of Galadriel’s husband Celeborn in The Rings Of Power promotional materials has led some to theorize that Celeborn is already settled in Lórien waiting around for Galadriel throughout season one.

Which of these locations are you most excited to see onscreen, either for the first time in years or for the first time ever, when The Rings Of Power premieres next month? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

Middle-earth Explained: Lindon And The Elves Of The Second Age

The recent reveal of an official synopsis for Amazon Prime’s The Lord Of The Rings adaptation has left us all excited to jump back into Middle-earth and revel in the many joys it has to offer us. But to get fully prepared for Amazon’s upcoming series requires more than just a movie marathon or even a reread of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings – Amazon is pulling from Tolkien’s extensive deep lore for their series, and diving into regions of Middle-earth previously unexplored by either the films or main books.

Lindon
“The Grey Havens” by The Brothers Hildebrandt | baltimoresun.com

Lindon is by no means a name familiar to most Tolkien fans, so it’s understandable if you need a reminder about where it is in Middle-earth – though, in fact, both The Lord Of The Rings books and films did very briefly enter Lindon in the saga’s emotional climax. Described in Amazon’s synopsis as an “elf-capital” with “majestic forests”, Lindon is more recognizable as the Elven land west of the Shire where the Grey Havens were located…and from which Frodo and Bilbo set sail at the end of the Third Age, seeking out spiritual healing in the Uttermost West. This bit tends to be confusing for many first-time Tolkien fans, particularly movie-goers; the films don’t set it up as well as they should, and it never gets explained, leading to the entire sequence often being mistakenly interpreted as an allegory for Frodo dying.

But if you’ve ever wondered what happens to the Bagginses after they sail into the sunset at the end of The Return Of The King, then this is the post for you – and in the process, you’ll also learn everything you need to know about Lindon and its people before Amazon brings them to life on the small screen.

Amazon’s Middle-earth series, while still titled The Lord Of The Rings, is set thousands of years before the events of the trilogy, in the Second Age of Middle-earth during a time of mighty empires and epic heroes…but our story begins even further back, in the First Age. The world was flat like a tabletop, and still newly formed, and there were really only two continents: the westernmost of the two being Valinor, the land of the gods (or Valar, as they’re called in Tolkien’s myths), and the easternmost being…well, Middle-earth. The race of Elves originated in the uncharted forests of Middle-earth early in the First Age, predating the creation of the sun and moon by at least a millennia or two and explaining their collective fascination with stars, the only real source of light during their formative years as a species. The Valar had foreseen their coming, and what with the Elves being the subject of a whole bunch of prophecies, and a particularly nasty Dark Lord named Morgoth roaming through Middle-earth at the time, it was in everyone’s best interests for the Valar to herd the Elves westward, and over the sea into Valinor. Along the way, some Elves got fed up and went home, or got lost, or found other places to settle down…to keep things simple, I’m referring to those stragglers as Silvan Elves, though the proper blanket term for them is the Nandor. Anyway, remember them: they show up again later.

Of the Elves who made it all the way to Valinor and flourished there under the benevolent influence of the Valar, the most prominent and promising were always the skilled, hotheaded people known as the Noldor. But just three stolen gemstones and two dead trees later, Valinor had been plunged into chaos, and most of the Noldor recklessly took off for Middle-earth, pursuing Morgoth, the culprit, with an unholy vengeance in their hearts – all while openly rebelling against the Valar, who had insisted they stay put in Valinor while the gods dealt with Morgoth themselves. The Noldor established countries and civilizations of their own in Middle-earth, most of which toppled to ruin at the end of the First Age: when the Valar finally defeated Morgoth in battle, trampling mountains into the sea and flooding the entire region known as Beleriand until only a sliver of it remained; that sliver being Lindon, a coastal landmass just barely big enough to contain the entire suddenly displaced population of Beleriand – and not just the Elves, but the Men and Dwarves too.

Lindon
Elves “At Lake Cuivienen” by Ted Nasmith | pinterest.com

The Second Age opens with the Valar offering all of the exiled Noldor a chance to repent for their crimes and return to Valinor. Many Elves agreed to do so, but many more did not – instead choosing to stay in Middle-earth. Nonetheless, the option to sail back to Valinor was still available to all Elves at any time, and only made more accessible when Círdan the Shipwright completed building his Grey Havens in Lindon in the first year of the Second Age. But while Círdan presided over the Havens, he was never called a king – that title belonged to his adopted son, Gil-galad, who had become High King of the Noldor at a young age, and was by this point acknowledged as the highest-ranking Elven King in all of Middle-earth. Gil-galad stayed in Lindon even while many of his people migrated further eastward, settling new lands in Eregion and beyond.

Amazon’s description of Lindon as an “elf-capital” is both misleading (the closest thing to a city was the Grey Havens) and accurate, in a way: Lindon was a rural melting-pot populated by both Noldor and Silvan Elves, the latter of whom had lived there long before Gil-galad’s arrival. Tolkien hinted at the notion of a deep divide between the Elves from Valinor and those of Middle-earth, which I expect to see explored further in Amazon’s series; as the two peoples clash after their long estrangement, in a cultural and societal conflict. Meanwhile, Dwarves lived in the Blue Mountains that encircled Lindon – though their underground mansions of Nogrod and Belegost were both at least partially-destroyed by the turmoil of Morgoth’s fall.

Midway through the Second Age, Gil-galad warded off an attempt by the Dark Lord Sauron to infiltrate Lindon disguised as an emissary of the Valar named Annatar. Though Gil-galad could not guess at Annatar’s true identity, he sent warnings to his Elven kinsfolk across Middle-earth about the mysterious stranger – warnings that were ignored in Eregion, where Annatar was allowed to become a powerful and influential figure, overseeing the construction of all but three of the great Rings of Power. Those remaining three were secretly given to Gil-galad, Círdan, and Galadriel for safekeeping after Annatar betrayed the Elves of Eregion (*pretends to be shocked*), forging the One Ring to control them all.

Sauron’s brutality in Middle-earth drove many Elves back under the protective aegis of Gil-galad, whose power was still too great for Sauron to challenge – but some, out of fear and grief, fled across the sea to Valinor, never to return. Gil-galad brought in aid from Númenor to help conquer Sauron, unintentionally sparking a grudge-match between Sauron and the island kingdom of Men that eventually resulted in Númenor and most of its population being dragged into the ocean abyss; Valinor being removed from the Circles of the World by divine intervention (though still accessible via the “Straight Road” open only to Elven ships); and the earth being made round. Lindon lost many of its beaches, but otherwise scraped by.

In the final years of the Second Age, Lindon’s Elven armies played a pivotal part in bringing about the defeat of Sauron (albeit a temporary defeat). The last Númenórean refugees led by Elendil joined forces with Gil-galad’s Noldor and Silvan Elves in what became known as the Last Alliance, and together they pursued Sauron south across Middle-earth, into the mountains and volcanic wastelands of Mordor. There, on the slopes of Mount Doom, Gil-galad was burned to death by Sauron’s fiery hand: and with him died the kingship of the Noldor. His Ring of Power, Vilya, was saved by his young herald, Elrond, who later used it to heal Middle-earth’s hurts from his dwelling in the refuge of Rivendell. Lindon, meanwhile, faded in significance in the absence of its noble King, becoming little more than a rest stop on the one-way trip to paradise for world-weary Elves and occasional Ringbearers.

Lindon
The Grey Havens | looper.com

So next time you read the books or watch the movies, and get to those heart-wrenching final scenes at the Grey Havens, spare a thought for what was once the greatest realm of the Elves between the Mountains and the Sea in the Second Age – and think ahead to Amazon’s series, which will allow us to finally witness Lindon in all its glory.

Tell me what place in Middle-earth you’re most excited to see, and be sure to share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

1st Synopsis For “The Lord Of The Rings” Revealed!

TheOneRing.net has long served a dual function as the largest online community of J.R.R. Tolkien fans and a base of fandom research into any and every adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings: in the late  1990’s and early 2000’s, a vast network of spies frequently wrote in to the site from the Peter Jackson trilogy’s set with spy reports that gave fans a first taste of what Jackson was concocting down in New Zealand, preparing them for many of the trilogy’s biggest and most controversial moments; both perfect page-to-screen translations and drastic (and often controversial) divergences from the text. TheOneRing.net developed a good reputation for their work, and eventually became a semi-official channel for New Line Cinema, tirelessly relaying new information to the fans while providing necessary feedback to the studio. The Lord Of The Rings trilogy undeniably benefited from that unprecedented level of communication between the filmmakers and their audiences.

The Lord Of The Rings
empireonline.com

These days, TheOneRing.net (or TORN, for short) does not yet enjoy the privilege of being able to officially coordinate with Amazon Prime Studios regarding their upcoming adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work – and thus, I’ve had to take many of their recent reports with a grain of salt. But last night, after a lot of hinting and teasing, TORN proved that they are indeed back in the game, having gotten their hands on the very first official synopsis for Amazon Prime’s The Lord Of The Rings series. IGN was later able to confirm its authenticity with their own sources, and I myself am fairly confident this is the real deal. It doesn’t read like a fake, which would likely have thrown in some hyperbolic details about what to expect, just to cause chaos and commotion in the fandom.

Rather, the synopsis merely goes over much of what we already knew about the series, adding a little bit of context for general audiences and some intriguing sentences that caught my eye. Let’s break it down:

“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. This epic drama is set thousands of years before 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, 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. 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.”

The Lord Of The Rings
denofgeek.com

Confirmation, if you needed it, that the series is in fact set in the Second Age of Middle-earth (which you can learn more about here on my blog), and that the title “The Lord Of The Rings” is still deliberately misleading. This period of time is bound to be darker and more brutal than the era of The Lord Of The Rings proper, though Amazon is setting the stage for a story with similar themes and characters. Some of the very same characters will, in fact, cross over…but more importantly, Amazon is promising us “unlikely heroes”, a character archetype that is pivotal to the enduring success of The Lord Of The Rings and sorely lacking from the myths of Middle-earth’s earlier history.

During TORN’s livestream, guest star Molly Knox Ostertag (the host of last year’s popular Tolkientober fan-art challenge) tackled this subject quite eloquently, explaining that the “little guy” is what makes Tolkien’s work so approachable even after so many decades: because we can all relate to small, ordinary people like Frodo, Bilbo, and Sam, whose small, ordinary acts of kindness end up saving the world. Readers need to have an emotional investment in a character or a relationship in order to keep reading, and hobbits are so down-to-earth, so humble and so unassuming, that it’s hard not to get invested in them and their journeys through Middle-earth. The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s posthumously-published compendium of First Age myths, was initially unpopular with fans because it lacked hobbits or any hobbit analogues that could keep readers grounded amidst all the epic battles, tragic romances, and stories of somber heroes doomed to die gruesomely. The Second Age has that problem too, which is what Molly Ostertag noted: unless we have a “little guy” to get attached to, where’s the emotional investment? That’s why the mention of “unlikely heroes” makes me hopeful this issue will be remedied without having to bring in hobbits, who don’t really exist yet in the Second Age, at least not as we know them.

With the scope of this series sprawling across the entire map of Middle-earth and even beyond it, the presence of small characters and microcosmic stories is that much more essential. But speaking of what lies beyond the map, let’s touch on that for a moment – the synopsis does confirm that we’ll explore regions of Middle-earth that have never been glimpsed in any previous Tolkien adaptation, like Númenor and Lindon. The “furthest reaches of the map”, however, could very well refer to the mysterious lands east and south of Mordor. And who better to explore these lands and their unique cultures than the two Blue Wizards, who (according to Tolkien’s last writings on the subject) arrived in Middle-earth’s uncharted east during the Second Age, and there proved to be pivotal in the war against Sauron? When this topic came up on the livestream, Molly Ostertag suggested that the Blue Wizards should be depicted as a lesbian couple – yes, yes to all of that. I’ve long felt that one or both of the Blue Wizards should be a woman of color, and the thought of two queer women of color using magic in Middle-earth is indescribably empowering.

The synopsis ends by talking about “legacies” that will live on long after our main characters are dead and gone, implying to me that some of the main cast might revolve periodically throughout the course of the series. This wouldn’t surprise me: the Second Age spans over three-thousand years, and even the longest-lived humans of that era couldn’t survive that long if they tried (and trust me, they did). But while it could be an interesting and shocking gimmick for a few seasons, it could also prevent audiences from ever becoming attached to any season’s human cast – as the immortal Elves would likely be the only constants from one season to another in that case. Compressing the timeline into a few hundred years isn’t ideal either, though, so I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what Amazon has in mind.

The Lord Of The Rings
The War Of The Last Alliance | winteriscoming.net

That’s pretty much all there is to say about The Lord Of The Rings‘ synopsis, but there is one last thing I want to add. Near the end of TORN’s livestream last night, host Justin posed a thought-provoking question to each of the guests: what they wanted to see or hear next from the series? There were a lot of good answers, but I knew right away what my answer would have been, if I were asked.

I want TheOneRing.net to be as intimately involved with the Amazon series’ production as they were with Jackson’s trilogy. Although the level of coordination between TORN and New Line Cinema was unprecedented, it was beautiful because of how it allowed our fandom a firsthand experience of the adaptation of our favorite story and the ability to observe the filmmaking process up close, and gave the studio a trusted outlet through which to speak directly to fans. On that fateful night that Return Of The King pulled off a clean sweep in thirteen Oscars categories, Peter Jackson and his crew even opted out of the New Line Oscar Party and attended TORN’s fan-event instead. These days, it’s traditional for studios to give all their biggest scoops and press releases to the major Hollywood trades, allowing news to spread more quickly to a wider audience, but taking a step back from fans in so doing. The creation of a link between Amazon and TORN would go a long way to making all fans feel a lot more welcome…while allowing Amazon a window into the Tolkien community that can help them gage what fans want to see.

So what do you think? Does The Lord Of The Rings‘ synopsis pique your interest, or leave you underwhelmed? Do you want to see Amazon honor those old bonds of fellowship with TORN? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!