After years of speculation, Amazon finally dropped a teaser trailer for its Lord of the Rings prequel show The Rings of Power over the weekend. This series is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, long before the Fellowship of the Ring was even a glimmer in Gandalf’s eye. That means we’re getting a very different story than the one we know, although younger versions of immortal characters like Galadriel and Elrond will still be around.
But of course, one does not simply watch a trailer…one breaks it down! We’re going to go through this puppy shot by shot and parse out every bit of information we can. In case you need the refresher (or heck, just want to watch it again), here it is below:
Breaking down The Rings of Power teaser
We start with a sweeping shot of a ship sailing beneath a bridge and into a great port city. The camera trails up, giving us a quick glimpse of a bridge with a huge sunburst pattern on it before we get a shot of the city proper. There’s a huge statue of a guy with a sword standing among its white buildings.
Most likely this is a port on Númenor, an island country ruled by a long-lived raced of humans from whom Aragorn is descended. The starburst pattern of the bridge matches that on the weapons and armor we’ve seen on Númenorean characters in posters for the show. The mountain in the background may well be Meneltarma, the Holy Mountain in the center of the island. Finally, the statue resembles the Argonath, those huge statues that mark the border of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings. The Argonath statutes were built by descendants of the Númenoreans, so think of the statue above as a dry run.
That said, it’s possible that this is a port in Lindon, a region of Middle-earth populated by elves and known for its ports. The general opulence makes us think of Númenor, though.
Next: another sweeping shot, this one of a mountain range that opens up to give us a view of two druid-y looking guys. All we really have for these guys comes from the Vanity Fair first-look article that was released last week, which labels them as “nomadic hunters wandering the fields of Middle-earth.” They appear to have horns from some giant elk or moose on their backs.