There are still plenty of unknowns about the new LOTR TV show, but we got a ton of info at Comic-Con this year.
Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power has been a bit of a mystery, to say the least. Despite three different trailers released (with the most recent premiering in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con 2022) and a number of character posters and stills hitting the internet, there’s still plenty of mystery remaining for this new chapter of Middle-earth’s story.
Prior to the Hall H panel at Comic-Con, we had a small handful of details we could be sure of. The show is set in the Second Age, hundreds of years before the birth of the Hobbits–their distant ancestors, the Harfoots, are running around here–and it will deal with the forging of the titular Rings of Power. Even if you’re not a Tolkien scholar, you probably know at least something about the Rings–they’re talked about pretty extensively in the introduction of Fellowship of the Ring, where we see some flashbacks to the Second Age and the subsequent wars the rings spurred on. That said, those flashbacks are pretty much the only content we’ve ever seen from the Second Age–and in fact, even the depths of Tolkien’s work leave a lot of vagaries and secrets to be discovered. There are simply things about this chunk of Middle-earth history that we just don’t know.
That’s where Rings of Power comes in–using those vagaries as a jumping off point, Rings of Power is going to be filling in some of the blanks, telling some of the stories, and extrapolating on some of the unknowns within the lore.
This weekend, at Comic-Con, we got some idea of what that might actually mean. Between various press opportunities, the Hall H panel Q&A, and the exclusive scenes played for convention goers, we’ve pieced together what we can of the story for the show, which will continue to play out across five confirmed seasons.
