Breaking down the themes, monsters, and rings in The Rings of Power’s season 2 trailer

Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returns this August, and while the new trailer is short on story, it’s long on one undersung aspect of Tolkien’s world: epic fantasy monsters.

There’s plenty to tease out of this teaser, and even a few informed guesses we can make about the scope of the second season of The Rings of Power.

Right out the gate with this sick tentacle monster

Image: Amazon Studios

Can we say what this is? No! Is it nevertheless a great monster design? Absolutely. Can’t wait to see this horrible thing menace someone.

Interesting forest dudes…

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Speaking of menacing, look carefully at this shot of Galadriel, Elrond, and friends preparing for a fight, and you can see exactly who they’re defending against — shrouded figures with glowing blue eyes.

It’s possible they’re orcs, elves, humans, or even ghosts. But by the time of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s Middle-earth is filled with a number of wild-living peoples, so it’s also possible that what we’re seeing here are deeper cuts, like the shape-shifting Beornings. Just about the only thing we can rule out is Ents — these folks just seem too short.

Cool moth… ritual?

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One of the mysteries of this teaser is the identity of this moth-summoning figure with bloody palms. We saw some swarms of moths in season 1, connected with the Stranger, who is very probably Gandalf. But it sure doesn’t look like him in this brief shot. And it’s not exactly clear where these moths are, either — squared-off columns like those seen here generally suggest dwarven architecture, which could indicate that this takes place in Moria.

You can have double the tentacles when tentacles are roots

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Theory: Is the tentacle monster actually made out of roots? Much to ponder.

Celebrimbor in his forge

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Here, we have the closest hint at a clear plot event that the teaser has: Elven ringsmith Celebrimbor alone in his forge, facing a mysterious figure who appears to be walking out of a huge fire. We’ll come back to this.

Big sea monster! Even more tentacles!

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Here, a woman who appears to be dressed the same as the moth-summoning figure floats underwater in apparently chill appreciation of this kraken-like monster.

Now, there are a lot of places on Middle-earth where you could get deep water and stony arches like this — but on the other hand, this monster resembles no classic Tolkien creature so much as the Watcher in the Water, the tentacled monster that attacks the Fellowship outside of Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring. The Watcher took up residence there after the city’s fall, in a lake formed from a stream that flowed out of the ruined dwarven stronghold.

It’s possible we’re seeing a classic sea monster here, but it’s also possible this scene takes place in waters deep, deep underground; deeper than the deepest delvings of dwarves, a place from where the Watcher likely originated. The Lord of the Rings never spent much time there, except in Tolkien’s descriptions of Gandalf’s lone battle with the Balrog, which extended to subterranean places so ancient and deep that they were populated only by gnawing “nameless things” even older than Sauron himself, according to Gandalf in The Two Towers.

Balrog repercussions

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Certainly it looks as if things will not go great for Moria (currently known as Khazad-dûm) this season. Now that Prince Durin’s quest for more mithril mining has set Chekov’s Balrog on the mantelpiece, it’s only a matter of time before it goes off — and season 2 could be that time.

Seven rings for the dwarf-lords in their halls of stone?

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This could just be a regular ring, since we don’t really know what the dwarf rings looked like, but… the show ain’t called The Rings of Power for nothing. After torturing Celebrimbor to obtain the seven dwarven rings, Sauron gave them to seven different dwarven kings. The rings had the power to multiply the dwarves’ hoards of precious materials, but also inflamed the bearers’ greed and anger.

Unlike the nine rings for the lords of men, however, the dwarven rings didn’t turn their wearers into wraiths or anything. And most of the dwarven rings were lost over time because dwarves just proved harder to tempt than men. Four of the rings were eaten by dragons, and though Sauron recouped the other three (the final one from Thorin’s father) he kept them rather than seeking to use them again.

Hell yeah, a giant eagle

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Eagles: They’re back, baby! And hopefully this time we actually get to see them talk, and establish that they’re not just big steeds, but a whole society of creatures like the Ents or dwarves.

The guy stepping down from the bird is the Númenórean Chancellor Pharazôn, and expect to see more of him — if his story follows the one set out in Tolkien’s writing, he’ll be making a bid for kingship, marrying his cousin Queen Míriel against her wishes, and ultimately going to war with the gods. Fun!

The Stranger looks very far away from everything else

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Desert environments are fairly rare in The Lord of the Rings — most of the books are set in forests, plains, mountains, or swamps — so it’s notable that the Stranger appears to be somewhere arid. This is likely the land of Rhûn, which is to say, all the land east of Mordor that Tolkien never bothered adding details about, where the Stranger and Nori were headed at the end of season 1, in search of more clues about his identity.

Celebrimbor captured

Image: Amazon Studios

Image: Amazon Studios

Remember Celebrimbor’s forge and the figure walking out of the fire? In Tolkien’s writing, the story of the elven smith does not end happily, and we start to see some hints of that in this teaser.

As Tolkien put it, even after Sauron had been rejected from the rest of elven society, Celebrimbor and his fellow smiths continued to associate with him, because of his knowledge of the craft and their ambition to create great works. But Sauron’s teachings laced all of Celebrimbor’s great rings — the elven three, the dwarven seven, and the human nine — with controlling magic, in a way that became apparent to the elves the moment that Sauron forged the One Ring in Mordor and put it on.

The elves attempted to keep their rings hidden, but Sauron’s forces eventually razed the elven lands, captured Celebrimbor, tortured him into giving up all but the three elven rings, and executed him. Season 2 of The Rings of Power seems to be playing out this part of the story, with Sauron appearing to Celebrimbor even after his flight at the end of season 1 — and with a bedraggled Celebrimbor dropping a cascade of nine-ish rings, and elven guards attempting to protect him from Sauron.

A new behind-the-scenes video of the season 2 shoot even features a telltale line, with Celebrimbor telling Galadriel, “I’ve had an unexpected visitor.”

What tower is this, then?

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There are a lot of towers in The Lord of the Rings. If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say this one is probably Barad-dûr — that’s the big tower with the Eye of Sauron on it in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. If so, some liberties have been taken in terms of its location.

“But it doesn’t have the characteristic two prongs on top!” you say. That’s fine: In Tolkien’s writing, Barad-dûr is razed to its foundations and rebuilt after its first construction, so it doesn’t necessarily have to look familiar in this prequel series. Sauron began construction on the tower when he chose Mordor as his stronghold, and completed it with the power of the One Ring when it was eventually forged in Mount Doom.

Given that Mordor was created in season 1 of Rings of Power, it seems like Sauron is likely to claim it as free real estate soon — and if this tower really is Barad-dûr, then we can expect to see the forging of the One Ring in season 2 as well.