With the streaming wars heating up, the major players are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into prestige series designed to keep subscribers hooked. One of the biggest of these (if not the biggest) will be Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings show. But we still don’t have any concrete details as to what it’ll be about other than that it’ll be set primarily during the Second Age (with the events we saw in The Lord of the Rings movies taking place in the Third Age).
In fact, back in September, writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay revealed that the show would be shot in New Zealand, which would capture the “primordial beauty of the Second Age of Middle-earth.” And now, we’re hearing what the basic arc of the show will be.
According to sources close to We Got This Covered – the same ones who told us Ewan McGregor was returning as Obi-Wan and that Bill Murray will be in Ghostbusters 3 – the series will cover Sauron’s slow rise to power over its multi-season run, leading up to (or going beyond) the moment when Isildur battles Sauron, defeating him using his father’s broken sword Narsil and cutting the One Ring from Sauron’s fingers. It’s a moment audiences will be familiar with from the introductory sequence of The Fellowship of the Ring.
One aspect of this that’ll be very interesting to see is how they approach the character of Sauron. In the Third Age, he’s without corporeal form, appearing as a giant flaming eye. However, in this time period, he’ll be an active participant in the affairs, probably taking on a humanoid shape not dissimilar to the elves. I would presume we’ll see him as a charismatic leader and master manipulator, with the show probably featuring the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of Sauron’s army in Mordor, the establishment of Gondor and possibly the sinking of the kingdom of Númenor. Whatever the case, the role of Sauron demands a top-flight actor.
Now, I’m not a Tolkien scholar, so I don’t know the precise order of these events (if I’ve got anything wrong, please let me know), but I have read the Silmarillion and if they can realize some of the more bonkers and apocalyptic stuff in that in this series, then I’ll definitely be glued to the screen. Here’s hoping we get a release date for The Lord of the Rings soon.
