Four, long years after Amazon announced they had begun work on an original Lord of the Rings spinoff series, we now have our first look at it and, naturally, it’s gorgeous. Through perhaps even more impressive than this glimpse at the upcoming show (and just how much a billion dollars can buy) is just how soon we’ll get the chance to start watching it. According to Amazon, the currently untitled Lord of the Rings series is scheduled to hit Amazon Prime Video on September 2, 2022.
While Vanity Fair has confirmed the new still is from the show’s first episode, not much else is known about what this image depicts or what exactly is in store for Middle-earth in the show’s first season. While some speculate it could be showing Gondor’s former capital of capital city of Osgiliath, with a younger version of Galadriel overlooking it, only time will tell what’s really going on. In the meantime, we personally are huge fans of this interpretation:
Lots of secrets and Easter eggs hidden in that first #LordOfTheRings image, so I tried to annotate them all: pic.twitter.com/0DyrSXRKR4
— Alex Zalben (@azalben) August 2, 2021
Okay okay, if you’re someone who was hoping for something a bit more “official,” below is the synopsis that leaked on popular Lord of the Rings fansite TheOneRing.net earlier this year. While it hasn’t been confirmed as true, it does perhaps offer us the best look at what the series could offer:
“Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series 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.”