by Thinus Ferreira 

It is the most expensive TV show ever made and when The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power starts on 2 September on Amazon Prime Video with weekly episodes it will usher in the start of the Second Age – not of video streaming services but of a richly-filled fantasy story, costing billions to produce, that simply would not have been possible to tell visually on television before now.

The show will break new ground with a diverse cast including actors like Sophia Nomvete, of South African/Iranian heritage, as a new character – the first black woman to play a dwarf – who will portray a dwarven princess. 

The show will have many more, like Ismael Cruz Cordova as Arondir, a silvan elf, also specially created for the fantasy drama series, who will be the non-white elf portrayed on screen.

With the first season filmed in New Zealand, and with production that moved to the United Kingdom for the second that will start filming soon in Britain, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the TV series can probably be best understood if you understand how George Lucas’ Star Wars film prequels expanded and filled out the “before” story, decades after people saw A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

In this Lord of the Rings, things on the surface level will initially still seem fine and will be relatively peaceful.

The kingdom of man and kingdom of elves are experiencing a great era – but in the same way the Republic and Jedi in Star Wars failed to understand how the connecting dots of smaller crises from Episode I were starting and building to a cataclysm and a great evil despot intent on destroying everything, pitting everyone again each other and planning to rule over the destruction.

Set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books and films, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power that Amazon Studios plan to be a long-running series, will show how “kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin”, how “unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and one of the greatest villains that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness”.

Amazon Studios would like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to run for at least 5 seasons or 50 hours – if not more.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will look at (the initially not evil, or just hiding it, like Palpatine) Sauron’s rise to power, how the various “Rings of Power” were forged and were given by Sauron to humans, elves and dwarves (to corrupt their minds) to then try control them with his One Ring. 

The Lord of the Rings: The Power of the Rings will initially start out with a young Galadriel (now played by Morfydd Clark), elven ruler of Lothlórien and commander of the Northern Armies, looking to find her brother’s murderers.

Since elves live for thousands of years – and other creatures for very long as well – the prequel series will be filled with some younger versions of characters that viewers might know from the films, as well as surprising touchpoints and inter-connected people and relationships linking the prequel show to the Frodo & Company era.

For instance: You won’t hear anyone talk about hobbits or really see hobbits in the series. Hobbit ancestors in this series do feature in the show but they are “still” called “harfoots” and they definitely don’t live in The Shire.

The series is not based on a J. R. R. Tolkien novel, but has been created from the appendices that he wrote to elaborate on his novels.

22 characters, multiple storylines

In the way that HBO’s Game of Thrones (Amazon would love it if their show becomes the global buzzy successor-series to GoT) would move between different kingdoms, political groups and landscapes to tell different, interconnected stories and plotting, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will juggle over 22 characters, each with their own storylines.

Viewers will be in the elven kingdom of Lindon the one moment, only to follow the inside politics of the humans on the powerful island of Númenor next. 

Mix in some Misty Mountains dwarf mines realpolitik, Sauron’s overall scheming, and character’s personal pride, passions and love stories and the series might just be the next biggest binge-watch viewers will have to watch like old-school television: All of us together, weekly.

“Rings for the elves, rings for dwarves, rings for men, and then the one ring Sauron used to deceive them all. It’s the story of the creation of all those powers, where they came from, and what they did to each of those races,” showrunner Patrick McKay told Vanity Fair.

“Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?”

He says: “This is material that is sometimes scary – and sometimes very intense, sometimes quite political, sometimes quite sophisticated – but it’s also heartwarming and life-affirming and optimistic. It’s about friendship and it’s about brotherhood and underdogs overcoming great darkness.”