Amazon’s as-of-yet-untitled Lord of the Rings series has completed production on its first season, and will debut on September 2nd, 2022. The studio announced the release date yesterday, and with the news, provided a first look at the upcoming adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world.
In a statement, Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios said that she “can’t express enough just how excited we all are to take our global audience on a new and epic journey through Middle-earth!” while showrunners J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay said that “Living and breathing Middle-earth these many months has been the adventure of a lifetime. We cannot wait for fans to have the chance to do so as well.”
According to Amazon, the series will be set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, and will follow “an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.” The series is widely expected to be set in Númenor, Tolkien’s Middle-earth equivalent of Atlantis, alongside Sauron’s rise to power amidst the age, the end of which we saw in the opening minutes of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Along the way, it looks as though we’ll see some familiar locations like Rivendell and the Misty Mountains.
The series has already been renewed for a second season (Amazon is apparently planning for at least five seasons), and boasts a massive cast of characters. The 2022 release date means that we have more than a year to go before the project debuts, and might underscore how much work the studio needs to put into its post-production work before it debuts.
That said, there isn’t any shortage of big shows coming from the studio in the meantime: Its big adaptation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series is coming in November, along with a second season of its fantasy drama Carnival Row, season three of superhero drama The Boys, and sixth and final season of The Expanse. There’s also big adaptations of William Gibson’s The Peripheral, Naomi Alderman’s The Power, Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, a sequel season of Good Omens, and Brian K. Vaughn’s Paper Girls on their way over the next couple of years.
Most agree those have got to be the Two Trees of Valinor in the background, and that it’s most likely the city of Tirion depicted here, facing west across the Shadowmere. Galadriel seems like the likely foreground figure, if only out of familiarity to audiences. And that this is probably from some kind of flashback-prologue sequence to set the stage. Very unclear what kind of Silmarillion rights they have to get too detailed about Valinor, though.
It’s certainly exciting to have a bit of optimism injected back in at this glimpse.
It’s could be a lovely Tirion, and in a mountain cleft just as it should be but wouldn’t that be starting rather far back? Maybe it’s Armenelos.
It’s weird being unsure how Tolkien would feel about this.
I’m still a bit skeptical about this series, but this shot does look beautiful.
@3 the estate is happy with the production.
Long hair and braids do not a female make on Arda. I’m betting it’s Olorin or maybe even Sauron/Mairon, pre-corruption. (I know they said they’re not introducing him until the first season finale. “They” say a lot of things.)
@7 Oh, I know it. Plus I see there’ve been rumors about Elves with short hair. Which, uggh, bummer. Let Star Trek have the Vulcan look, and Middle-earth not. That said, it’s not specifically called out about hair length all that much in the books, one way or the other. With some individuals certainly called out, Men and Elves. (Galadriel’s hair gets so much emphasis, it’s implied to be long. Celeborn’s is described as silver and long. And so on.)
Re: Galadriel. It just seems likely to me that Amazon would want to use a familiar character for moviegoers familiar with Jackson’s films to link us to significant past events (we book people don’t really need that kind of set-up, per se), just as Galadriel was used to set up the prologue in the films and speak of times she bore witness to (the Rings of Power).
“They” do.
@7 re: long hair. I cite the Moment of Awesome, when Eowyn revealed herself to the Witch-King by taking off her helmet, demonstrating her long hair, and stating “You look upon a woman.” The unspoken implication is that the long hair was the give-away that she was a woman.
I would also note that Tevildo was an undomesticated short-hair…
Oh, come now. Shouldn’t the release date be September 22??!?
They were soclose…
I tend to agree that this image depicts the Blessed Realm in the days of the Two Trees (zooming in reveals two colossal trees, one of which appears to be formed from sunlight); one wonders if this will be a mere glimpse of vanished glories or if we’ll get a longer look at the state of things pre-Darkening.
I also really, really hope we’ll get at least SOME Evil Cat Prince Sauron in this series – while it has, alas, been made quite explicit that Tevildo, Prince of Cats, and Sauron the Deceiver are not one & the same, a man can still dream eh?
@10, Ed. Yes, I do see the Two Trees, Tirion it is! I guess they’re going to start at the very beginning!
The name of the show should be The Second Age. Normies will assume it’s the story of what happens after LOTR, while the initiated will understand that it takes place before.
I have little hope it will be good though.
1: The current betting is that the $250 million they gave the Tolkien Estate at the outset was the rights for Unfinished Tales and the Akallabeth section of The Silmarillion, and they gained further rights to The Silmarillion through specific, case-by-case negotiations.
3: In the 1960s Tolkien and his agent took the view of “cash or kudos,” that anyone who wanted to make a Middle-earth TV show or movie should show tremendous respect and integrity for the source material or they should give Tolkien and his family a truly obscene slab of cash. Tolkien also had a view that other writers, singers, artists etc should get involved with expanding the sub-creation of Arda and Middle-earth beyond his own capabilities (possibly with Tolkien’s oversight though). Ironically, Christopher Tolkien was far more protective of Tolkien’s work than he himself was. I think on that basis, Tolkien would likely despise Amazon’s mass corporate supercapitalist greed, but on the other hand would appreciate the enormous sums of money set his family’s way and also the expanded profile for his books. The integrity and respect for his work remains to be seen, of course.
10: Current money is that this is from a LotR-style prologue, with a character – almost certainly Galadriel – narrating the story of the First Age and building up to the start of the story proper in the Second Age.
@13 “Tolkien also had a view that other writers, singers, artists etc should get involved with expanding the sub-creation of Arda and Middle-earth beyond his own capabilities (possibly with Tolkien’s oversight though.)”
I can’t recall ever hearing this intriguing claim. Do you recall the source?
@9 Tolkien died on September 2nd, 1973, so it’s still a significant date.
@13: In his biography, and in the expanded introduction to more recent versions of LotR itself (I believe in the introductory section by Wayne Hammond). I think the original quote is also in Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Tolkien went as far as telling one fan “angry” with him for not writing a sequel that he’d be happy to read any sequel she wanted to write (though not, obviously, allow it to be published without his consent).