Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Trailer Reveals Sauron, See The First Look

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is coming to Amazon Prime Video soon, and Sauron is on his way.

By Nathan Kamal | Published

lord of the rings: the rings of power

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is destined to be one of the biggest gambles in television history. The Amazon Prime Video adaptation of some of author JRR Tolkien’s lesser-known works is the most expensive TV production of all time, which already is a pretty big risk for even a mega-company like Amazon. It also has to deal with the inevitable (and justified) comparisons to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film series, which collectively won 17 Academy Awards (out of 30 nominations) and innumerable other cinematic accolades. Fortunately, the new full Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power trailer just released at the San Diego Comic-Con fills us with hope. Behold the trailer and either love it or despair:

As with the recent teaser trailer for the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it all looks very impressive. The teaser largely served to give glimpses at the new actors playing old roles, like Morfydd Clark replacing Cate Blanchett as Galadriel and Robert Aramayo in place of Hugo Weaving as Elrond, as well as new characters like Charles Edwards as the Elven smith Celebrimbor, Benjamin Walker as the Elf High King Gil-galad, and Owain Arthur as the Dwarven Prince Durin. The full-length trailer for the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power gives us a few more hints at how this particular story of Middle-earth will play out. 

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power takes place during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of Peter Jackson’s series. It opens with an elegiac scene of Galadriel before an enormous pile of empty helmets, indicating the horrible, epic battles that the characters have already been through. According to the cosmology of Middle-earth, the Second Age began after the defeat of Morgoth, the original Dark Lord of the world and the former master of Sauron, and was a period of relative peace. However, the Second Age also saw the rise of Sauron, the forging of the titular Rings of Power, and the destruction of the island Kingdom of Númenor, so things are undoubtedly going to get dark fast. 


Amazon Prime Video has not yet confirmed what actor (or actors) might be portraying Sauron himself, but it looks like the trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has given us a glimpse. Where Sauron only appears in the Middle Age as a burning, disembodied eye atop a Mordor tower (and briefly as an immense, armored giant in a prologue), he had an ability to appear in a more insidious “pleasing” form in the Second Age. The first, pale-eyed figure that pops up throughout the trailer (presumably the “Stranger” played by British actor Daniel Weyman listed in the series credit) is almost certainly Sauron in the form that he uses to deceive the Elves into assisting him. We also get a quick shot of a hideous, burning red eye, which can only foreshadow what is yet to come.