San Diego Comic-Con gave us another look at Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and is it… good? While the world of IP-based properties has to work harder these days to get any of us excited, the latest trailer for The Rings of Power was full of glimpses into JRR Tolkien’s world that felt exciting and tactile, a return to a Middle Earth. could reach out and touch.
The new SDCC trailer shows Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) as she tries to awaken the people to the Dark Lord, who she fears threatens the realm. We also see dwarves in Moria before it fell, elves recovering from a long war, humans starting a new civilization, and hobbits standing alone. In the middle of it all is a man (Anson Boon) sowing seeds of fire, who hides in a gray cloak and generally seems to be up to no good. The internet rushed to fill the void: this was our first glimpse of Sauron, the big bad who is rising to power during the Second Age. But the truth is that… this is not (yet) true.
The trailer is clearly setting up this Marshall Mathers lookalike to be someone, though there’s no confirmation yet on who exactly Boon is playing. In other words: it’s very likely that the trailer was trying to make us think of Boon’s character as Sauron. But even if he is Sauron, he’s definitely not the flaming eyeball Lord of the Rings fans know from Peter Jackson’s film trilogy.
The problem with finding Sauron in any The Rings of Power trailer is that in the Second Age, he was called Annatar and could shapeshift liberally, a power he used to hide his evil nature for as long as possible. He is described in the books as the “Lord of Gifts” and as fair-looking (meaning pale, but also beautiful), which Boon’s character, whoever he is, certainly does. And with that clear face, Sauron manipulated the elven smith Celebrimbor into teaching him how to make a ring that could manipulate the minds of those who held Celebrimbor’s rings of power, which as we know led to a whole thing.
The creative team for The Rings of Power have said that in this series we will see Sauron in multiple forms as he tries to assume total power over Middle-earth. So while Boon could be Sauron in some ways, he could also be an underling, an emissary, or even a minor villain completely unconnected to the Great Evil that Galadriel is trying to sound the alarm about. Exactly how he pulls it off (or not) remains to be seen, but given that the SDCC panel had Stephen “LOTR nerd” Colbert saying that The Rings of Power is a “story that the creators will tell over the next five seasons, it seems likely that eventually we will know.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres September 2 on Amazon Prime Video.
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