The first Lord of the Rings show cost $1 billion and that budget gives a sense of its scale and ambition. Peter Jackson’s movies adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books into three movies was an impressive feat, but the show is aiming to top it by covering around 2,000 years of Middle-earth history in five seasons of TV.
Unlike the movies, LOTR: The Rings of Power is set during the Second Age (the movies took place in the Third). It’ll begin thousands of years before the Lord of the Rings movies, showing the forging of the 19 rings of power and the One Ring to rule them all, running through to the War Of The Last Alliance shown in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’s opening flashbacks. With that expansive timeline placing it well in advance of the main trilogy, it does raise the question of where LOTR’s characters are during The Rings of Power, and which ones are even alive at this point.
The LOTR: The Rings of Power teaser trailer, released during Super Bowl LVI, gives a glimpse of some of the show’s returning characters. The footage doesn’t give a huge amount away, with The Rings of Power’s release date still some way off (it’ll debut September 2, 2022). Nonetheless, there are some returning faces glimpsed, and they won’t be the only Lord of the Rings characters in The Rings of Power.
Which LOTR Characters Are In The Rings Of Power Trailer
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power trailer, and the first look images releases prior to that, reveal two major LOTR movie characters: Galadriel and Elrond. Played by Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving, respectively, in Jackson’s movies, the legendary Elves are very different in Amazon’s show. Galadriel appears in The Rings of Power trailer only briefly, played by Morfydd Clark, in a scene set at sea where a new character, Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), inspects her ears. This is part of her confirmed early story, which involves a struggle for survival on the open water; other confirmed details include this Galadriel being Commander of the Northern Armies, who fights with bravery and anger alike on the battlefield, which represent significant departures from the version in the movies and Tolkien’s wider mythology. Likewise, Elrond will also be somewhat different in The Rings of Power; far from Weaving's assured leader who helps assemble the Fellowship, the show's - played by Robert Aramayo - will still be a young (relatively speaking) and ambitious politician, as well as being described as an "architect," (via Vanity Fair) which suggests the building of Rivendell could factor into the series.
Which Other LOTR Characters Are Alive During The Rings Of Power
In of confirmed LOTR characters in The Rings of Power, two others will definitely play some role in the show: Sauron and Isildur (Maxim Baldry). The latter is most noteworthy for appearing in the opening flashbacks, the man responsible for taking the One Ring off the Dark Lord’s hand before succumbing to it himself. In the show, he will be a sailor, long before the events that he is most famous (and infamous) for. Sauron, mainline, will likely factor more heavily as time goes on; with The Rings of Power covering such a broad timeline, then it may well show his role in the forging of the One Ring, as well as his rise to power, which happens during this era.
Other characters alive during The Rings of Power, though not confirmed to appear, include Tom Bombadil (cut from the Lord of the Rings movies, but old enough to potentially appear in what would likely be a moment of fan service, since he has little clear connection to the story), Gandalf (in his truer Maiar form, he has not yet been sent to Middle-earth as a wizard, so again it would depart from known mythology but is possible), and, since Isildur is appearing, so too could another key playing in the war from Fellowship of the Ring's opening: Elendil, who led his men to an alliance with the Elves. How and when any of them appear in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, however, remains to be seen.