Amazon’s ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ Show ‘The Rings Of Power’ Gets A Trailer And Release Date

Amazon released the first trailer for its upcoming Lord of the Rings live-action show this week. It’s not much—just a narrator reciting the Ring Verse over some visuals of rings being forged—but it’s something.

More importantly, we have the show’s official title and release date. Amazon has come up with a bafflingly awkward name for its new show: The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power. That’s a mouthful. I suppose everyone will just call it The Rings Of Power, which is fine.

The show, which takes place thousands of years before the books (and movies) is set to debut on September 2nd, 2022 on Amazon Prime. I suspect that like other Amazon shows, this one will release weekly, though it’s likely several episodes will release at once on the 2nd.

The official plot description has also been released, though it’s vague on details:

“Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power 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 the events of 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.”

I remain somewhat skeptical after the lackluster adaptation of The Wheel Of Time on Amazon Prime Video, but I’m still hopeful that this will be a fun epic fantasy, whether or not it sticks to the themes and values of Tolkien’s work.

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