“This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics. The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men,” said showrunners J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay. “Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring — but before there was one, there were many… and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.”

Thanks to Japanese Amazon:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/...2202762/IMG_7815.png

It would seem that we're undoubtedly getting a start-to-finish telling of the Second Age, yes?

The simplest route, IMO, is to compress Númenor's history while simultaneously using the immortality of the Elves to your advantage as a storyteller - you can have a couple of Númenorean rulers cycle through (before arriving at Elendil and Isildur), if you want, while keeping Gil-galad, Galadriel and Celebrimbor in place without having to worry about characters aging in the normal sense. But I'd imagine these storylines to take place separately for the most part, as they do in the text itself, and being edited together similarly to how the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones juggled several loosely related storylines that took place hundreds of miles away from one another - and gradually came to coalesce as the seasons unfolded. GoT worked just fine on a storytelling level despite Daenerys not meeting most of the other characters until several seasons deep.

But now we've got some indication that they're looking to lay the bricks that lead us to the Last Alliance, ultimately. I wonder if the tension between Elves and Men will be heightened along the way (by increasing the enmity of the Elves, I'd say) after the rise of Númenor to make the Last Alliance feel less like a foregone conclusion.

Thanks for sharing. And thanks to greendragon for her post on the TORn homepage that included info on visual effects legend Douglas Trumbull's work on this teaser.

"The Rings of Power" was my favored title, at least back before the leaks about Isildur, Míriel, etc. being main characters in Season 1, but I think "The Lord of the Rings" added before it makes it a bit clumsy. I don't see why it needs to be in there. It's easy enough to figure what the show is about from "The Rings of Power". For some reason HBO doesn't feel the need to call their prequel show "Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon".

other than that this is a nothing burger.

It doesn't seem particularly likely as the Nazgul were never reported to appear in Numenor, but something might be done with the idea.

The Nazgûl were comprised of men who were originally "kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old". However, Tolkien describes the three Númenóreans who succumbed to Sauron's temptations as "great lords" (The Silmarillion). Even Herumor and Fuinur, two Númenóreans who lived after the Akallabêth, ie. after the death of the last King of Númenor, don't appear to have used kingly titles in exile - they are described as lords who hold sway over the Haradrim.

But I agree with you, it's conceivable that they could have styled themselves as kings in later years. If the Lord of the Nazgûl was one of these Númenóreans, then one of them certainly gets a (Witch-)kingly moniker, in the Third Age if not earlier.

There were evil Númenóreans: Sauronians, but they do not come into this story, except remotely; as the wicked Kings who had become Nazgûl or Ringwraiths.