Vanity Fair has just released an extensive profile on Amazon’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which gives us our first proper look at the Second Age of Middle-Earth.
As we inch closer to September, Amazon is giving us more sneak peeks into what it has been working on for the past four years. This gigantic undertaking, which has cost the company a pretty penny, will take us back to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, with a brand-new tale set in the Second Age.
The first trailer for The Rings of Power is set to premiere during Sunday’s Super Bowl, but it seems that the show’s marketing machine couldn’t resist teasing us with a first look by sharing several photos that show off characters like Galadriel, Elrond, and highlight several of Middle-earth’s new vistas.
As can be seen below, the staggering $465 million budget for the first season is on show here and has also paid off splendidly, assuring fans that The Rings of Power will be in a league of its own when compared to other fantasy TV shows like The Witcher and Amazon’s own The Wheel of Time.
As said earlier, the story will be set in the Second Age. This is the period where Sauron took advantage of the power vacuum left after the banishment of Morgoth to seize dominion of Arda. He did this by tricking the Elves into creating the Rings of Power, which the story will dive into in earnest.
The narrative will also detail the fall of Númenor, leading to the formation of Gondor and Arnor and the War of the Last Alliance, which Peter Jackson depicted on-screen in the opening sequence of his first The Lord of the Rings film.
The Rings of Power is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Sep. 2.
