The Rings of Power first details have been revealed by Vanity Fair, previewing the upcoming fantasy series. The condensed timeline, cast, and Hobbits all revealed for the first time. The article is huge and has comments from the showrunners and more. If you want to read the entire article the link is there, go check it out along with the exclusive images we cannot post here. However if you just want the quick basic important details revealed, then I got you.
Condensed Timeline
First before we get to the confirmed cast and characters we should discuss the timeline. You see we knew The Rings of Power was playing a little fast and loose with the timeline form the books and whilst there was speculation why, now we have it confirmed. The Rings of Power will condense the biggest stories of Tolkien’s Second Age into one timeline.
In the novels, the aforementioned things take place over thousands of years, but Payne and McKay have compressed events into a single point in time. It is their biggest deviation from the text, and they know it’s a big swing. “We talked with the Tolkien estate,” says Payne. “If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until season four. Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.”
Just to be clear though clearly in this adaptation the First Age hasn’t just ended, we know that by who is in charge of Numenor. However it’s also clear that Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) in this adaptation creates the Rings of Power with the aid of Sauron much later in the Age, to the point where a character like Isildur (Maxim Baldry) is alive. The Second Age in the books last for 3441 years and Isildur was born long after Celebrimbor had lived and died.
I guess we’ll see whether this works, but as a Tolkien fan myself, this does fill me with dread, I won’t lie.
Cast and Characters
I won’t break down who and what each character is here. However here are the conformed cast and characters they play mentioned in the Vanity Fair article. Two of which I mentioned above, but here are the characters you’ll know from the mythology…. If you’re a fan.
Isildur (Maxim Baldry), Celebrimbor, (Charles Edwards), Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo).
There are, as was a certainty, brand new characters never created by Tolkien in The Rings of Power. I say certainty because the little characters that were mentioned by Tolkien are simply not enough to populate this world.
Two lovable, curious harfoots, played by Megan Richards and Markella Kavenagh, encounter a mysterious lost man whose origin promises to be one of the show’s most enticing enigmas.
Additionally we have Arondir, and Elf (Ismael Cruz Córdova), Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), and Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) Bronwyn seems to an Human healer, Arondir her forbidden Elf lover, and Halbrand a mysterious Human who gets caught up with Galadriel.
Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV, Sophia Nomvete as Dwarven Princess Disa are also named and images of both in characters can be seen in the article. But to save you a click, there’s no beard on Disa I can see.
Hobbits in The Rings of Power.
“One of the very specific things the texts say is that hobbits never did anything historic or noteworthy before the Third Age,” says McKay. “But really, does it feel like Middle-earth if you don’t have hobbits or something like hobbits in it?” The hobbit ancestors in this era are called harfoots. They may not live in The Shire, but they are satisfyingly hobbit-adjacent. McKay and Payne have constructed a pastoral harfoot society that thrives on secrecy and evading detection so that they can play out a kind of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead story in the margins of the bigger quests.
Hobbits confirmed then.
Adult Game of Thrones Like Content?
No!
So will there be Westerosi levels of violence and sex in Amazon’s Middle-earth? In short, no. McKay says the goal was “to make a show for everyone, for kids who are 11, 12, and 13, even though sometimes they might have to pull the blanket up over their eyes if it’s a little too scary. We talked about the tone in Tolkien’s books. This is material that is sometimes scary—and sometimes very intense, sometimes quite political, sometimes quite sophisticated—but it’s also heartwarming and life-affirming and optimistic. It’s about friendship and it’s about brotherhood and underdogs overcoming great darkness.”
Show Length?
Whilst we cannot say for certain the showrunners said they pitched 50 hours of television to both Amazon and the Tolkien Estate. That would equate potentially to 5 Seasons of hour long shows or maybe 10-12 episodes if only around 45 minutes per episode? Again, this is not confirmation but it at least gives us a ball park to navigate around.
RELATED: The Rings Of Power Teaser Trailer To Be Shown At Super Bowl
There was certainly a lot more coverage than I can cover here about the show, and potential mysteries and challenges that the production faced. But as said up top, feel free to check out the images and read that source aeticle in full as I did. This was more for those with no time that just want to know the answers to some big questions about the show.
What do you think of The Rings of Power first details? What about the condensed timeline, Hobbits and the cast that have been revealed? Thoughts below as always.
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