Amazon Teases ‘Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power’ Ahead Of Super Bowl Trailer Drop

After almost five years of waiting since Amazon first bought the rights to Lord of The Rings back in 2017, fans are finally getting a look at more images from the new series The Rings of Power. Ahead of its Prime Video premiere on September 2, 2022, Amazon is slowly releasing details on the show that have been under lockdown for ages. Just learning the series’ title last month was a massive reveal, and fans have been dying to learn more.

The Rings of Power will be releasing a full trailer on Super Bowl Sunday and surprised us with more photos and plot reveals in a sprawling Vanity Fair piece published Thursday. In it, we saw exciting photos of the reimagined classic characters that are now younger than their counterparts in the Peter Jackson trilogy, and completely new ones created for The Rings of Power. The characters we’ll recognize are the elves, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), and Elrond (Robert Aramayo), both of whom are figures of legendary renown in the original movies. At the start of the new series, Galadriel seems to be a fierce warrior and Elrond an ambitious young politician who has yet to make a name for himself.

The story also contained a major plot reveal, which is that one storyline will follow the character of Isildur (Maxim Baldry), known from the first films as the human warrior who slew the dark lord Sauron, but fell prey to the temptation of the One Ring and did not destroy it, allowing Sauron to eventually rise again.

While there are some names that Tolkien fans will recognize immediately, a great many of the 22 characters involved in the series are original creations by the show’s writers. These include two ancestors to hobbits played by Megan Richards and Markella Kavenagh. The dwarf city of Khazad-dûm, seen only as a shell of its former self in the movies, will also feature majorly as a thriving capital in The Rings of Power. Owain Arthur and Sophia Nomvete will play Dwarvish royalty in the city, with Nomvete being the first black woman to play a dwarf, and her character of Disa is the first major female dwarf character in a Lord of the Rings story.

Amazon has also enlisted two first-time showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, to helm the series. McKay and Payne are a writing team who have performed uncredited rewrites on some Hollywood studio films. Even if it seemed like a risky move the pair seem more than passionate about the material, but also willing to change and evolve it to make the best story possible. “Look there may be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth,” Payne told Vanity Fair, “But we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things… We think the work will eventually speak for itself.