What should Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel series be about? Here are 13 ideas

The Creation of Arda and the War of the Jewels

Of all the ideas here, this might be the most out there. Before the Third, Second, or even the First Age, Tolkien devised a creation story. Middle Earth, or Arda, was made by the Valar, a race of angelic beings. One of the Valar, Melkor, spread disharmony during the singing of the song of creation, which resulted in of a flawed world. Melkor would eventually become Morgoth, whom Sauron would serve for thousands of years before Morgoth was expelled from Middle Earth.

But first Melkor had to earn the Valar’s wrath. It came naturally to him. He destroyed the first source of light in the world (the Two Lamps), and caused the gods to leave Middle Earth for their own continent, Valinor (lit by the Two Trees). Ruling over a darkened Middle Earth, Melkor would wreak much havoc on its inhabitant: the Elves, the Ents and the Dwarves. When Melkor attempted to corrupt the Elves (some say he succeeded, hence orcs) the gods returned to Middle Earth and defeated Melkor, returning with him to Valinor.

But you can’t keep a good bad guy down, so after feigning repentance for a few hundred years, a trick Sauron would later use more than once, Morgoth poisoned the Two Trees with help from the giant spider Ungoliant (the mother of Shelob from The Lord of the Rings), stole the precious Silmarils and set off a civil war among the elves before fleeing back to Middle Earth. Many elves would follow Morgoth, initiating the War of the Jewels. This storyline might work best as a limited series given some of its wilder concepts, but seeing the origins of the conflict that ultimately ended with Frodo tossing a ring into a volcano would be a treat.