Amazon Prime revealed that their upcoming Lord of the Rings series will be titled The Rings of Power, which has major ramifications for the focus of the story.
It’s finally 2022, which means Amazon’s long-gestating Lord of the Rings series is finally coming out this fall, September 2 to be exact. Amazon has been understandably sparse with details about the story, though we do know it’s general time setting, the Second Age of Middle-earth. The general implications of the story being set in the Second Age have already been discussed here, what really got my attention today was the reveal that the series has been titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
It seems like a simple enough title, but it actually has major ramifications for what the show’s story will focus on. After it was revealed that the show would be centered in the Second Age of Middle-earth, I speculated then that the story might focus on the rings of power and how they were made. The series being titled The Rings of Power now almost guarantees that this will be the case. And in case there was any doubt, you’ll note that the reveal of the show’s title was done in a manner reminiscent of forging an item out of metal while the verse about the rings of power was recited. It couldn’t be any clearer that The Rings of Power is going to focus on exactly that: the 3 Elven Rings, the 7 Dwarven Rings, the 9 Rings for Men and the One Ring and how they all came to be forged.
If this is indeed the case, and I believe it is, then it also means that another theory is likely correct, that being that Sauron will likely factor as a major character, if not a main character in the story. Don’t forget that aside from forging the One Ring, Sauron had a direct hand in creating the 7 and the 9 with the help of Celebrimbor’s elven smiths. And I can’t emphasize enough that you are in for a surprise whenever we meet Sauron on this show. This is not the giant Eye of Sauron or even the hulking armored figure seen in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings. Before the One Ring was forged, Sauron had the ability to give himself any appearance he liked. He could look like an elf, a man, he could even turn into a giant wolf (and did so frequently during the First Age). But in the Second Age the key thing to remember is that while the Rings were being forged Sauron put on a very fair appearance and made himself friendly with Celebrimbor’s elves.
This is another name you’ll want to remember: Celebrimbor is the elf who created the 3 elven rings seen at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring and if the story of the show is focusing on how those rings were all made, then he is certainly going to be center stage a lot of the time as well. A quick history lesson: Celebrimbor is the grandson of Feanor, the creator of the Silmarils, aka the jewels the Elves fought over for most of the First Age of Middle-earth. In the Second Age, Celebrimbor is the greatest living Elven smith left in Middle-earth, it’s his people who created those beautiful gates that led to Khazad-Dum (Moria) that we saw in Fellowship of the Ring.
It will be super interesting to see if the plot of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power follows the lines I think it will, but I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t.
