See the first image from Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show

After a long development cycle, Amazon Studios has unveiled the first image of its ambitious, wildly expensive Lord of the Rings show. Behold:

We see a man in a white cloak looking at a glittering white city at dawn. Also note the huge honking tree in the background.

But I’m getting ahead of myself: we also get a premiere date! The Lord of the Rings show will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on September 2, 2022.

Is this Númenor? Is it Valinor?

Okay, let’s get back to the image. It’s from the first episode of the show, which is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings proper. At this time, elves were more commonly seen in Middle-earth, Sauron was still capable of taking beautiful forms, and a group of long-lived human beings — the ancestors of Aragorn — lived on an island called Númenor.

Amazon didn’t confirm what the picture is showing us, but I think it’s Númenor. The huge tree may be Nimloth, brought over as a seedling from Tol Eressëa, an elven island far in the mythic west. The White Tree of Gondor is grown from a seedling from Nimloth.

So who is the person in the image? It might be Isildur, who carries a seedling from Nimloth from Númenor to Middle-earth. It might also be Sauron himself, who pulls some tricks on the Númenoreans during the Second Age.

But that’s just one opinion. What do you think we’re looking at, and are you excited for this show?

UPDATE: Oh, stop the presses. Upon closer inspection, you can that the tree in the background is actually two trees; the one in the back is a little harder to see because it’s white and blends into the sky:

Okay, if we’re looking at two trees, that changes things. The trees are likely Laurelin and Telperion, two ancient sources of life that grew on Valinor, the land of the Valar who shaped Middle-earth.

Valinor is where the gods of Middle-earth live alongside the elves; when the elves leave Middle-earth in their boats, Valinor is where they’re going. Sauron is from Valinor, as are Gandalf and Saruman. It’s a hugely important place in J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology but doesn’t factor into The Lord of the Rings story, at least not directly.

That we’re seeing two trees is interesting, because the trees were both destroyed by Melkor, Sauron’s boss, in the First Age, long before when the new show is supposedly set. Perhaps we’re looking at a prologue or something?

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