In 2017, Amazon announced that its Prime streaming video service would soon be home to a truly
epic project: A TV series based on J.R.R.
Tolkien's massive Lord of the Rings legendarium.
While Lord of the Rings itself has already been adapted for live action, quite successfully
in the form of Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning film trilogy, this series will be set many
years before those events.
We now know that Amazon's Lord of the Rings prequel series will take viewers to the Second
Age, a period of time that ended nearly 3,000 years before Frodo Baggins was born and culminated
in the War of the Last Alliance, which saw Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand
in battle.
The Second Age itself is also vast, covering a little more than 3,400 years of history
that included wars, the rising and falling of kingdoms, and of course the creation of
the Rings of Power, including the One Ring to Rule Them All.
There's a vast canvas for Amazon to work with, and that means a lot of different characters
from Tolkien lore could pop up.
Here are our picks for who we'd most like to see, with a particular emphasis on characters
who haven't already starred in a big-budget movie.
Elendil is a character who appears for only a moment in the prologue to the Lord of the
Rings films, as the High King of Gondor and Arnor who helped forge the Last Alliance that
was able to defeat Sauron at the end of the Second Age.
That's enough to make him a legend, but the story of how Elendil got to that point is
what makes him one of the most compelling characters in the Second Age.
Elendil lived in the legendary kingdom of Numenor at a time when its last king was corrupted
by Sauron.
Even as the king led Numenor and its people astray, Elendil remained faithful, and when
the kingdom fell, his life and those of his sons and followers were saved.
He sailed to Middle-earth, founded the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, and set up a legacy for
men on that continent that carried all the way through to Aragorn at the time of The
Lord of the Rings.
It would be great to see this noble, beloved king at the height of his power, or even resisting
Sauron's initial allure.
Celebrimbor is one of the most important figures in the history of the Rings of Power themselves,
and while he didn't appear in Jackson's films, his spirit is a major part of the Middle Earth:
Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games because of his closeness to the Rings.
An Elven smith in the Second Age, Celebrimbor was a skilled craftsman who was there when
Sauron came upon the Elves in his Annatar guise and began teaching them how to make
rings.
Though he didn't exactly trust Annatar, he did participate in the crafting of rings,
and personally made the three Elven Rings of Power.
"Three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings."
When Sauron revealed his treachery, Celebrimbor worked to hide the Three Rings from the Dark
Lord so he could never wield their power.
He died under torture, after refusing to give up the location of the Three to Sauron.
If you're going to touch on the story of how the Rings of Power came to be, Celebrimbor
has a major role to play there.
If you're a fan of the Lord of the Rings books and films, you're obviously already very familiar
with Sauron.
He's the main antagonist of J.R.R.
Tolkien's novel and Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and proved so vital to the overall mythology
of Middle-earth that he was retroactively inserted into The Hobbit as "The Necromancer"
Gandalf was investigating at the time.
It might seem like overkill to put the Dark Lord in yet another story from this world,
but there's a good reason to bring Sauron back.
Sauron is a character older than the physical realm of Middle-earth itself, an ancient spirit
created as one of the Maiar alongside other vastly powerful beings like Gandalf and Saruman.
That means you can find some version of him in almost any part of the Tolkien timeline,
but in the Second Age he was particularly devious.
To forge the Rings of Power in the first place, Sauron took on a beautiful, more angelic form,
re-named himself Annatar, and called himself the "Lord of Gifts" to trick the Elves into
making rings with him.
Seeing that version of Sauron, beautiful while harboring a darker purpose, could lend a lot
of intrigue to the new series.
Círdan is one of the oldest and most important Elves in all of Middle-earth lore, and that
granted him a brief cameo appearance in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, as a ring-bearer
in the prologue and at the Grey Havens in the end.
That said, there's so much more to his story that a TV series could explore.
Círdan was born before the First Age, and by the time he finally left Middle-earth in
the Fourth Age, he'd been the oldest elf on the continent for millennia.
In the Second Age, he established the Grey Havens in the west of Middle-earth as a master
shipwright who loved to live near the water.
When Sauron attempted to deceive the Elves into crafting the Rings of Power, Círdan
was one of the Elven leaders who resisted the temptation, and when the Three Elven Rings
were hidden from Sauron, he was tasked with bearing one of them.
He fought in the War of the Last Alliance right up until its end, and in the books it
was he, not Elrond, who tried to convince Isildur to destroy the One Ring.
"Cast it into the fire!
Destroy it!"
When we first meet Gandalf in Tolkien's The Hobbit, he is presented as a wizard, but perhaps
a human one.
Over time, though, Tolkien laid out a complex mythology for Gandalf and his wizard brethren,
and revealed them to be Maiar spirits sent by the Valar 1,000 years into the Third Age
to aid against the rise of Sauron.
The Lord of the Rings features Gandalf the Grey and Saruman the White in major roles,
while Radagast the Brown plays a slightly smaller part in The Hobbit.
But there were two other wizards who didn't get roles to play in The Lord of the Rings
or The Hobbit, and whose background and deeds in Middle-earth remain rather vague.
In fact, it's possible that these Blue Wizards - known as Alatar and Pallando - arrived before
the mission was handed down to the others, sometime in the Second Age.
Hoping for their presence in the series might be in vain, but there's so much untapped potential
in the idea of other wizards and what they might have been up to that it seems like an
opportunity that shouldn't be passed up.
As Sauron's second in command during the War of the Ring, the Witch-king of Angmar is a
major presence in the films, particularly in The Return of the King, and we get to see
him riding into battle on behalf of his dark master more than once.
"Do you not know death when you see it, old man?
This is my hour!"
We even see his death scene courtesy of Eowyn.
What we don't ever get to see, apart from a few hints, is exactly how the Witch-king
became the Witch-king.
We know from the poem that opens The Lord of the Rings that Three Rings were given to
Elves, Seven to the Dwarves, and Nine to the Men.
We also know from Tolkien's various writings on the subject that only the leaders of Men
who bore the Nine were fully corrupted by Sauron's influence.
They became the Nazgul, a.k.a. the Ringwraiths, and the Witch-king was their leader.
What we know considerably less about is who the Witch-king was before he was corrupted
by Sauron, and why exactly he was the one among the Nine who rose to that particular
position of honor.
It's a mystery the series could shed some light on in a really interesting way.
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