Amazon Studios’ next Lord of the Rings series was largely shrouded in secrecy. We know that it takes place in the Second Age of Middle-earth, but it is still more than three thousand years of fictional history. It doesn’t restrict things too much.
But the show’s official synopsis, obtained by The One Ring.net, seems to indicate that the show will almost inevitably build towards the Fall of Númenor, a cataclysmic scenario of the wrath of the gods that leads to the founding of Gondor and, finally, the viewers of the great prologue to the battle will remember from the first scenes of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Here’s the synopsis:
This epic drama takes place thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, and will take viewers back to an era when great powers were forged, kingdoms reached glory and fell into ruins, unlikely heroes They were tested, hope hanging by the thinnest thread, and the greatest villain ever flowing from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover the whole world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows a cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they face the feared resurgence of evil in Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Dark Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elven capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the ends of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve legacies that will live long after they are gone.
There is only one “greatest villain” in the Second Age. It is Sauron, the same as in Lord of the Rings appropriate, but not as you would recognize it in the movies. In the Second Age, Sauron still had the ability to assume physical form and chose to be, to paraphrase, totally warm and extremely charismatic. Very different from the 3 meter high armor swinging a mace from the first scenes of Peter Jackson The Fellowship of the Ring.
A “feared resurgence of evil in Middle-earth” can also mean really Sauron, but if the creators of the series are following the obvious beats, there are two to choose from. The Dark Lord’s first attempt at power in the Second Age was to impersonate a benevolent emissary of the gods and trick the Elves into teaching him to create rings so that he could forge the Rings of Power. Eventually, they discovered that he was, you know, actually that really powerful servant of the last Dark Lord, and they expelled him – which was when he retired to Mordor, built the Black Gates and started to be Evil in the Main.
The Elves joined the most powerful kingdom of Men, kicked his ass and took him back to Númenor as a prisoner. Which brings us to the second possibility of a feared resurgence of evil.
There are many kingdoms that “rose to glory and fell to ruin” in the Second Age, but there is only one that basically defined the age. It is Númenor, the “breathtaking island kingdom” mentioned later in the synopsis, the land of the very, very, very ancient ancestors of Aragorn. It was a very powerful and brilliant human country that the gods bestowed on the first king of Númenor as thanks for his help in defeating the former chief of Sauron at the end of the First Age.
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Amazon
From his prison cell, Sauron devised a scheme to corrupt the Númenor government inside, in the style of Snake Tongue, and, after many years and generations of kings, had a ridiculous success. In Sauron’s final triumph, the final king of Númenor tried – to paraphrase a little here – to invade the sky. In response, the gods raised a giant wave, crushed their fleet and buried the entire island in the sea. (The wave also drowned out a bit of Lindon, mentioned in the synopsis, but best known for being the location of the Gray Ports.)
The Fall of Númenor is Tolkien’s tribute to Atlantis, a mythological remnant of some interest to him, and his recurring childhood nightmare of his home being drowned by a massive wave. Only nine ships survived the cataclysm, carrying, among others, Isildur – which you must know as that guy from the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring who refuses to destroy the One Ring and then dies like an idiot.
These two scenarios represent the known arches of the Second Age of Middle-earth, as Tolkien described them in the back of Lord of the Rings and posthumously in The Silmarillion. The Amazon series may not have to choose between them.
The show received the green light for a guaranteed season of five seasons, enough time to make a War of Thrones-style multi- (multi-multi-) generational story that eventually goes its way to the destruction of the escape of Númenor and Isildur – or even the founding of Gondor and the final battle against Sauron that marks the end of the Second Age.