Amazon is betting big on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a new series based on the work of beloved fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. This new show will be set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Frodo, Bilbo or Aragorn were born. Amazon is spending a whole lotta money on it, so Jeff is surely hoping for the best.
But as big a swing as Amazon is taking, we still don’t know a ton about the series. We know it will feature some immortal elven characters we know from The Lord of the Rings, like Elrond and Galadriel. And knowing what we know about the Second Age, we can deduce that it will explore the island of Númenor, which is ruled by a race of long-lived human beings from whom Aragorn is descended.
But specifics elude us. Will Sauron be in it, for example? He’s the baddie-in-chief of both the Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth, so he would have to be; plus he had a huge hand in creating the “rings of power” from the title. Perhaps this new teaser from Amazon will give us a hint:
Nothing is evil in the beginning... #TheRingsOfPower pic.twitter.com/XffZtqp8Yw
— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) June 27, 2022
“Nothing is evil in the beginning”
This is an interesting tagline for the show, because it evokes the cosmology created by J.R.R. Tolkien. Pretty much every villain in his story started with good intentions, beginning with Melkor, the dark god who terrorized elves and men during the First Age of Middle-earth. He was the most powerful of the god-like Valar, and it was that power that eventually corrupted and twisted him into the original dark lord.
Sauron, Melkor’s servant, also began his existence with good intentions; Sauron was originally a servant of Aulë, the smith of the Valar. But he was drawn to Melkor’s power, believing it to be the best way to achieve the order which he craved. Sauron had a bit of a “perfect is the enemy of the good” problem.
It’s even said that, after Melkor (then known as Morgoth) fell at the end of the First Age, Sauron honestly tried to repent and mend his ways…but it didn’t last. He imitated his master and became the new dark lord of Middle-earth, so I don’t think this tagline refers to him.
It may refer to the Númenoreans, who were splendid and virtuous in the beginning, but are again slowly corrupted to darkness. This theme shows up over and over again in Tolkien’s work — remember that the vicious orcs are also corrupted versions of the beautiful elves — so it’s nice to see it in Amazon’s marketing. It makes me hopeful that the showrunners know what they’re doing.
We’ll see just how faithful The Rings of Power is to Tolkien’s vision when it premieres on Amazon Prime Video on September 2.
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