San Diego Comic-Con has given us one other have a look at Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and it’s… good? While the world of IP-driven properties has to work tougher lately to get any of us purely excited, The Rings of Power’s newest trailer was bursting with glimpses into J.R.R. Tolkien’s world that felt thrilling and tactile, a return to a Middle-earth we might attain out and contact.
The new SDCC trailer exhibits us Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) as she makes an attempt to wake folks as much as the Dark Lord, who she fears will threaten the realm. We additionally see dwarves in Moria earlier than it fell, elves recovering from an extended warfare, people beginning a brand new civilization, and hobbits conserving to themselves. Amid all of it, there’s a person (Anson Boon) sowing seeds of fireplace, lurking in a grey cloak and usually trying like he’s as much as no good. The web rushed to fill in the clean: This was our first glimpse of Sauron, the large unhealthy who’s gathering energy throughout the Second Age. But the reality is… that’s not (but) true.
The trailer is, clearly, organising this Marshall Mathers lookalike to be somebody, although there’s no affirmation but on who precisely Boon is enjoying. Put in a different way: It’s very probably the trailer was attempting to set us as much as assume of Boon’s character as Sauron. But even when he is Sauron, he’s undoubtedly not the flaming eyeball that Lord of the Rings followers are acquainted with from Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy.
The drawback with discovering Sauron in any trailer for The Rings of Power is that again in the Second Age, he glided by the identify Annatar and will shapeshift liberally, an influence he used to cover his evil nature for so long as doable. He’s described in the books because the “Lord of Gifts,” and as having a good (that means pale, but additionally fairly) look, which Boon’s character — whoever it might be — definitely does. And with that honest face, Sauron manipulated the elven smith Celebrimbor into educating him make a hoop that might manipulate the minds of those that held Celebrimbor’s Rings of Power, which, as we all know, led to an entire factor.
The inventive workforce behind The Rings of Power has mentioned that in this collection, we’ll be seeing Sauron in a number of kinds as he tries to imagine complete energy over Middle-earth. So whereas Boon could be Sauron in some sense, he is also an underling, an emissary, and even some minor villain utterly unattached to the Great Evil that Galadriel is attempting to lift the alarm about. Exactly how she succeeds (or doesn’t) stays to be seen — however on condition that the SDCC panel had Stephen “LOTR nerd” Colbert saying that The Rings of Power is a “story the creators are going to tell over the next five seasons,” it appears probably we’ll discover out ultimately.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres Sept. 2 on Amazon Prime Video.
You can discover all of Polygon’s protection of SDCC 2022 information, trailers, and extra right here.
