Prime Video released the full trailer for “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Season 3 on Wednesday, October 21st. It runs about two minutes and sells one idea, that Sauron (Charlie Vickers) is close to finishing the One Ring. The season premieres on November 11th with four episodes. Two more arrive on November 18th and the last two on November 25th, which makes eight in all. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are the showrunners again. Several headlines say Sauron puts the ring on. The footage is not that clear, and the difference matters.
Prime’s own synopsis sets the stage with a war that is mostly won. Five years have passed since the fall of Eregion, and Sauron’s armies hold nearly all of Middle-earth. Only Khazad-dûm and the elven realms of Lindon and Rivendell still stand. Sauron works in his new tower in Mordor on the one thing that can finish the job. The official video description promises “the forging of the One Ring” and says nothing about anyone wearing it. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for Season 2 of “The Rings of Power” and for everything shown in the Season 3 trailer.
The footage is not that clear, and the difference matters.”
The trailer opens on a dark valley with a river of lava cutting through it. Sauron appears in close-up, crowned in spiked black and gold metal and lit by firelight. “I see the path to victory so certain,” he says. The cut then goes to a forest where a rider in black armor with a crown of spikes on his helmet charges through the ferns. Sauron’s voice keeps going over the chase: “I will take my place as a conqueror, a sorcerer, a king.” A white horse crashes in a spray of dirt. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) faces a hooded figure with her sword raised and mud on her face, and a moment later she is flat on the forest floor with that figure standing over her. Deadline reads the attacker as Khamûl the Easterling (Zubin Varla), but the trailer never names him.
Sauron returns without the crown and smiles as he says, “We have work to do.” The next shot shows three black-armored figures in spiked helms in a dark passage, with an orc at the edge of the frame. Prime’s description calls his ring-servants the Nazgnagôl, and Variety’s headline calls them Ringwraiths. A waterfall valley follows, and then a young dark-haired man at a writing desk with a hand over his mouth. That is Elrond (Robert Aramayo). A voice says, “Sauron’s victory is at hand.” A lone figure runs across a lava field. Over a cloaked figure facing a doorway that blazes orange a voice says, “One ring to rule them all.” The trailer then cuts to a green meadow covered in the dead and a long-haired elf in a golden cloak who stands among them with his back to the camera.
The Dwarves get the next stretch. A hand holds a spiked crown, and a woman lifts it toward a red-haired dwarf in a hall lined with flames. Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) follows in a dim close-up and says, “The enemy has twice our number.” A field at night glitters with torches while a hulking creature snarls and an orc in a helm stares out. A colossal statue towers over a city on a cliff. A voice says, “Together I know we can turn the tide.” Gandalf (Daniel Weyman) fills the frame as the line ends. Another voice says, “Kneel to him, Gandalf,” over a long-bearded man in dark robes holding a staff with a ring-shaped head. The trailer does not name the speaker. Deadline and A.V. Club both list a Dark Wizard (Ciarán Hinds) working against Gandalf.
Sauron’s face comes back half hidden by flame. “Let the hunt begin,” he says. A man raises a torch toward a pair of glowing blue eyes in the dark. Then the Balrog arrives as a horned shape wrapped in fire, with one small robed figure standing in front of it before a blast of sparks swallows the frame. ScreenRant’s headline says Sauron duels the Balrog, but the figure is too small and too far away to tell. Variety reports that Simon Pegg voices the Balrog, and Gizmodo notes the trailer gives it no lines.
The middle of the trailer is a run of fast cuts. A hooded figure crosses a lantern-lit causeway in a dark city, and an older dwarf asks, “How are we supposed to defeat the Dark Lord on our own?” The red-haired dwarf answers, “We won’t be on our own.” Deadline names him Durin (Owain Arthur). A bearded rider raises a sword under blue banners and an army fills a field. A harbor full of sailing ships sits under a white city while a voice says, “I came to slay a god.” Celeborn (Jamie Campbell Bower) tells Galadriel, “There is something you fear to tell me.” A blond man lies on a pillow looking up, which A.V. Club reads as Sauron in Galadriel’s bed. Galadriel appears as a voice says, “All of it has come to this.”
Then come the monsters. A winged beast with a torn wing tumbles onto a wall. Variety’s headline calls the winged creatures dragons, although Prime’s July creatures featurette uses a different word, fell-beasts. Galadriel and Celeborn kiss in the forest. Elrond looks back over his shoulder as a voice says, “We have no choice but to act.” An archer sights down an arrow and Galadriel fights in a mob of orcs. A blond man in chain mail stands in shadow with his eyes shut as a voice asks, “Why are you doing all of this?” The answer is Sauron on a dark throne with a helmet on each armrest, smiling. Deadline puts magma around that throne, but the shot is a torchlit hall with no lava in it.
The trailer then spells out its tagline in red letters one word at a time. “RULE” lands first, followed by three silhouettes who look out over Mordor from a balcony with the middle one wearing a spiked crown. “THEM” follows, and the shadow of a winged beast crosses a green hillside. “ALL” closes the card. A speech runs under the next stretch: “This day we march together, to bring order, to this broken world.” Armies gather and a golden chariot waits in a market. A dwarf kneels before a tall cloaked figure, and an enormous winged shape spreads above a pillar of flame. Galadriel looks back as a voice says, “We are, all of us, on the path to ruin now.”
Now the ring. A winged creature circles the Mordor plain, and the trailer cuts to a close-up of a bare hand with soot on the fingers. A band of glowing gold sits on one finger and a blurred face hangs out of focus behind it. Nobody is shown sliding anything on. The next shot is a figure on a rock in an eruption with one arm raised. The Hollywood Reporter’s headline says Sauron finally puts on the One Ring. Empire says he dons it and IGN says he wears it. Reading that hand as Sauron’s is reasonable but it is still a reading. In the teaser Sauron works the forge in a spiked black gauntlet. The hand here is bare.
The title lands over red smoke and the date card follows. That ending is the clearest change from the teaser. Prime showed that teaser at Hall H on July 24th, and the forging was its headline. Molten gold poured from a glowing disc into a ring-shaped mold and script flared on stone. Sauron held the finished ring up in a pair of tongs. That shot is gone from the trailer along with the pour and the hammer. The teaser also carried Sauron’s line, “Now is the mighty hour come.” The trailer drops it for “RULE THEM ALL” and a war.
The Balrog is the other new piece, though not for the first time. The teaser had none, but Prime put out a creatures featurette on July 27th that showed the Balrog, a fell-beast and a Mûmakil. This is the first trailer to include it. Prime dated the season in May and Sauron has been the whole pitch since. That pitch now has armies and a throne and a countdown. It also has a gap, because the trailer shows a war and a ring and leaves the moment fans most want to the headlines.
The people behind it have been blunt about the tone. Payne previously told Empire, “We have a full-on villain this season, in a way that was quite different before,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. McKay added that the season is “darker, more dangerous” and that “No one is safe.” At San Diego Comic-Con he told ComicBook, “I don’t think audiences, even audiences who watched the first two seasons, are really ready for what’s coming this time.” At Comic-Con, Vickers told AFP that Sauron has been locked away in Barad-dur, “trying and failing, trying and failing to forge the One Ring, and he can’t do it.” That is a useful frame. If he is right, Season 3 is about a villain who has failed at the one job he cares about, and the trailer shows a ring without showing the moment it works.
The show has a lot riding on this. TheWrap reports that the series has drawn more than 185 million viewers, that Season 1 is the biggest series premiere in Amazon’s history and that Season 2 ranks among its five most-watched returning seasons. Empire calls Season 3 the midpoint of a planned five-season arc. Bear McCreary scored the teaser, and Variety reports that Charlotte Brändström, Sanaa Hamri and Stefan Schwartz direct the episodes. Newcomers include Eddie Marsan as Thrain, Andrew Richardson as Anarion and Adam Young as the orc Marnûkh. ComicBook calls the batch release a major change.
What Do You Think? Is the hand with the ring Sauron’s, or is the trailer hiding whose it is on purpose? Does a Balrog that talks make the monster better or smaller? And with four episodes landing on November 11th, are you bingeing the first night or pacing the war?
See you on the next binge!
