Lord of the Rings Rings of Power

What did the first Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power trailer reveal about Prime Video's new Tolkien series?

Isildur in this series has been described as “a sailor” – he’s more familiar to Tolkien fans as a King of Gondor, but he was born in Númenor, so a background in sailing does make some sense. We see a flaming arrow, then a shot of a well-dressed Elf man whom we think is Celebrimbor, played by Charles Edwards. Viewers may recognize Edwards from his stint impregnating Lady Edith and then disappearing off to Germany in Downton Abbey, but here he plays the Elf who forged the Three Elven Rings secretly and separately from the others, to keep them out of Sauron’s influence. This must be Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), a human character invented for the show, who is cast away with Galadriel. Though how he and Galadriel end up on that raft, we have no idea. This series might be taking us through a lot of epic landscapes and high drama among the peoples of Middle Earth, but we’ll still have a small, wide-eyed companion to take us there. “Haven’t you ever wondered,” the young woman’s voice asks us, “what else is out there?” This is a neat reminder that the series will expand into areas of Tolkien’s world that haven’t appeared on screen before. We open on a shot of a beautiful, elegant waterside city that is probably on the island kingdom of Númenor. Over that, we hear a young girl’s voice speaking.

Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay dive deeper into the details of the lavish “Lord of the Rings” TV series.

“We were the beneficiaries of their experience of having worked in Middle-earth before. John Howe, a beloved conceptual designer who worked on the films, lent his talents to The Rings of Power. “We were very lucky to have some alums that had experience in Middle-earth come back in,” Payne says. “The universe that this show wants to be in is Tolkien’s—and that’s an umbrella over Peter’s films—and Led Zeppelin, John Howe’s paintings, and The Hobbit cartoon,” McKay says. In The Rings of Power, one of the most identifiable Middle-earth landmarks, the great tower of Barad-dûr, where Sauron’s flaming eyeball sits, hasn’t been built yet. The Amazon show has an advantage in that its prime locations—like Númenor, the Elven cities of Lindon and Eregion, and the intact dwarven city of Khazad-dûm—didn’t play into Jackson’s films. Even Benjamin Walker, who plays Gil-galad, bears a striking resemblance to Mark Ferguson, who appeared as the elven king in a nonspeaking cameo in The Fellowship of the Ring’s prologue.