At long last, watch the trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2

Amazon has released the first teaser trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2. This wildly expensive series is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Frodo and Aragorn and most members of that crew were born; characters like Galadriel, Elrond and Sauron are still around, though, since they're immortal.

It's been over a year since filming wrapped on the second season, and we were starting to wonder whether we'd ever see a new trailer. Well, Amazon shut us up. Watch below:

Everyone knows Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; he's the evil dark lord of Mordor our heroes are trying to defeat. In the Second Age, he's just coming into his own as a budding supervillain. In the first season, he posed as a character named Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), getting close to Galadriel (Morfydd Clark). He helped create the three Elven rings of power and then was found out and was sent packing.

But now he's back, wearing a long blonde Elven wig, still played by Vickers. "I think he's been here among us all along," someone whispers in the trailer. Wasn't he already?

Sauron's new disguise resembles a character from J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium named Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. Annatar comes to the elves and helps them forge rings of power, acting benevolent but actually intending to use the rings to dominate the different races of Middle-earth. The show is throwing a wrench into that, since in the first season Sauron already helped the elves forge their three rings of power, and now they know him, so I'm not sure how he expects a new wig to trick them further.

I'll just let Amazon lay it all out in their official description: In Season Two of The Rings of Power, Sauron has returned. Cast out by Galadriel, without army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of the Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will. Building on Season One’s epic scope and ambition, the new season plunges even its most beloved and vulnerable characters into a rising tide of darkness, challenging each to find their place in a world that is increasingly on the brink of calamity. Elves and dwarves, orcs and men, wizards and Harfoots… as friendships are strained and kingdoms begin to fracture, the forces of good will struggle ever more valiantly to hold on to what matters to them most of all… each other.

Check out images from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2

Amazon also released a bevy of images from the new episodes. Let's start with Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), one of the new elven characters we met in the first season:

We'll also catch up with Durin III (Peter Mullan), the ruler of Khazad-dûm, the Dwarven kingdom that will eventually become known as Moria by the time of The Lord of the Rings proper. In the Second Age, it's a thriving civilization, far from the ruin that Frodo and company will wander through milennia later.

Below, a city is under siege. I'm not sure what city it is. It could be Númenor, an island kingdom of humans off the coast of Middle-earth, or it may be one of the Elven cities on the mainland. We have heard rumblings that a big battle will take place in the Elven region of Eregion in season 2, so that could be what we're looking at here:

What's a Lord of the Rings show without orcs? Nothing, that's what:

And here is a picture of someone communing with a huge sea monster. I don't know the details beyond that. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and company deal with some kind of sea monster outside the gates of Moria. Maybe they're related?

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 release date

The Rings of Power season 2 will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday, August 29. There will be eight episodes in total. Amazon tends to like to drop a few episodes of a new season of TV up front and then release the rest on a per week basis, but we're not sure of their exact plans yet.

I note that The Rings of Power season 2 will start airing after the end of House of the Dragon season 2 over on HBO; that season will wrap up on August 4. When these shows premiered their debut seasons back in 2022, they aired at the same time, leading many people to compare the two series. By and large, fans seemed to prefer House of the Dragon, so maybe Amazon pushed the date back a bit to avoid a rematch.

At the same time, The Rings of Power found its audience in 2022. Amazon says it was "viewed by more than 100 million people worldwide," and that it drove "more Prime sign-ups worldwide during its launch window than any other previous content to date." There's room for everyone.

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