Amazon’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series has made an art out of playing with the heartstrings of the fanbase. At first, it was reported to be a “young Aragorn” series. Then it was revealed to be a Second Age series, set long before the time of the fellowship. Then, when the first official photo was released from the series, it set fans scrambling again, as the photo depicted the Two Trees of Valinor, which were only ever alive in the First Age. The recent poster reveal has been the icing on the cake. In a move clearly calculated to reveal a great deal and simultaneously nothing at all, Amazon dropped 23 character posters for the upcoming series — featuring a mountain of glamorous shots of hands and exactly zero faces.
The delicate long game that the upcoming TV series is playing does come with some easter eggs for the keen-eyed, as must have been precisely calculated by the evil geniuses behind the marketing campaign. They know we will guess at the characters belonging to those hands. They want us to guess. They are begging us to guess.
Okay, fine, I’ll guess.
There is so much up in the air for this upcoming series that what follows here is merely my best guess based on an ungodly amount of nerd knowledge I have accumulated over years of book-burrowing where my only friends were Frodo and Fingolfin. But, it’s all coming in handy now!
1. The Sunburst Armor
This is difficult, as the poster here is an extremely flamboyant and shiny armored figure. In a number of ways, this figure is reminiscent of other posters: there are Celtic knotwork-esque scrolls and what looks something like a Trinity scroll on the breastplate, for one thing. However, there are still a couple of telling clues that point to a more definitive identity here than the other images.
There is an extremely strong “sunburst” motif, seen on the pommel of the sword and on the breastplate itself. More than anything else, the character that this seems to point to is Ar-Pharazon “the Golden.” The overall shining golden imagery certainly seems to point to this, combined with the golden sunburst motif and the “divine” imagery of the Trinity scroll. It was Ar-Pharazon whose pursuit of immortality was an act of hubris that doomed Numenor, so he is bound to be an important character in this series.
2. The White Flower
This is one of the more curious cases, as the image appears to be depicting a woman with a white flower in her hands. She is clearly a noble of some sort, given the ornate wristbands and armor, but that is not definitive. She could be a character invented for the show, but the apparel she carries in the poster is intriguing and, perhaps, telling.
The scale mail seen above would seem to point to a Numenorean character, but if the Numenorean identification is correct, in all likelihood, the flower is one of the white blossoms of Nimloth, the tree of which the White Tree of Gondor was a descendant. Nimloth flowered in the courts of Numenor, but was eventually cut down by Ar-Pharazon. The identification of this poster, then, points tantalizingly towards Tar-Miriel, the wife of Ar-Pharazon, who was married to him against her will and clearly disagreed with him in many ways. Having this be the tragic queen of Numenor who struggled against her husband’s hubris would be an excellent plotline for the series to explore.
3. The Dagger
This is Galadriel. This is Galadriel. This is Galadriel, almost beyond the shadow of a doubt. Why, you ask me? Well, I am glad you asked.
First, the obvious: the armor is shaped to a feminine form, tapering in the waist and flaring out past it. The real key here, though, is the dagger. Here is where my middle-school friendlessness pays its dividends. The dagger is clearly an image of Telperion and Laurelin, the Trees of Gold and Silver. The dagger is half-silver and half-gold, with a tree root and flower theme progressing from the hilt to the blade.
The reason this means Galadriel is that Telperion and Laurelin were the trees of Valinor, which at one point were the light sources of the world. Each one would produce light and wax and wane each day, while briefly mingling their silver and gold light during the day. Galadriel’s hair was said to be an image of the mingling of these two lights, and the reason that the elf Feanor made the Silmarils in the First Age. Additionally, there seems to be a “pearl” motif on the blade of the dagger, which could be a reference to Galadriel’s mother, Earwen, who was a Sea-elf.
Besides, seeing Galadriel throw down in battle is something we are all waiting to see anyway, isn’t it?
4. The Dwarf
This one has to be a dwarf. From the heavy weapon to the broad hands to the red beard and the gold dust on the hands, this must be one of the dwarves, almost certainly of Khazad-dum. Dwarves as central characters are to be expected, given that the elven kingdom of Eregion and the dwarf kingdom of Khazad-dum were on particularly good terms during much of the Second Age, and it was in Eregion that the rings of power were forged.
However, there is more here than initially would appear. There are runes on the axe held by the dwarf, and according to the linguistic appendices of Tolkien, the inscription reads something like “awake sleeping stone.” In Tolkien’s lore, this could be quite a significant inscription. In Dwarvish legend, the first king of the dwarves was called “Durin the Deathless,” and it was said that he would be reincarnated seven times. Regardless of the status of the legend, Tolkien’s chronologies point to Durin III or IV being significant to the events of the Second Age, and it would be likely that king Durin, whether descended or reincarnated, would be significant to the events of the series. His “waking from sleep” was referenced in the Lord of the Rings books, as was the discovery of his ax as a legendary artifact, which this poster could be depicting.
5. The Retracting Scroll
To hazard a guess, this image looks like it could be Elrond. The elegant posture and flowing robes would seem to indicate an elf, and the little of the scroll that can be seen seems to show a sketch of what looks a great deal like Rivendell from the Peter Jackson movies.
That having been said, there is also a script at the bottom of that scroll, in Tolkien’s “Tengwar” alphabet. While some words are blurry and unclear, it appears to read “king’s scroll - view from south” at the bottom, which throws things into even more confusion. While this could well be Elrond and Rivendell, there is a “king’s scroll” in Tolkien’s legendarium, which is a list of the kings and queens of Numenor, written in the Quenya alphabet. A version of this list was preserved in Gondor after the fall of Numenor, so Elrond could perhaps play a part in its preservation, but the scroll and its bearer are consequently extremely mysterious here.
6. The Golden Tunic
There is only a very narrow field of characters that this poster could depict. Again, it could be an invented character, but the pendant on the clothing would indicate a specific cast of characters. The star pendant is a design seen on at least one other poster, but it has a significant history behind it. It is known as the star of Feanor, and is associated with him, as Gandalf references in the Lord of the Rings book. Consequently, this character is probably an elf, most likely of the kingdom of Eregion, as the Star of Feanor was seen on the western gate of Khazad-dum due to the alliance between the dwarves and the Elves of Eregion.
This could be Gil-galad, the High King of the Elves, or perhaps Elrond, who was at one time Gil-galad’s lieutenant. Another intriguing possibility is that this is actually Celebrimbor, the Ringmaker himself. While the Star of Feanor could mean a number of things, it could possibly be a symbol of the family of Feanor himself. Celebrimbor, as Feanor’s grandson, could be the character depicted in the poster, and the saturation of rings on his hands could be another clue to his identity.
7. The Broken Sword
The broken black sword with a rough and ugly rune on the blade is one of the most tantalizing and confusing posters in the lot. It looks to be an evil weapon crafted by an evil hand, so it would be unsurprising to see it in the hands of Sauron or the Ringwraiths.
However, the man holding it does not appear to be royal or divine like Sauron; he looks more like a hunter or a traveler. Furthermore, Tolkien said almost nothing about the weapons carried by Sauron or the Ringwraiths. As such, this could be a weapon created for the TV series’ storyline, but there is another (admittedly far-fetched) possibility.
There is a famous broken black sword in Tolkien’s legendarium, but it does not belong to the right timeline for a Second Age series. It was the blade named Gurthang, wielded by the tragic Turin Turambar, which broke when he fell upon it in despair, killing himself after realizing that he had doomed himself and impregnated his own sister, who took a flying leap off of a waterfall. There are some messed-up stories in The Silmarillion. The timeline does not work for this character to be Turin, but there is a slight possibility that The Rings of Power could play with a storyline where a character sets out on a quest to find the broken sword of Turin.
8. The Scepter
This looks to be some sort of symbolic rod rather than a weapon, and that itself opens up a few interesting possibilities. Given the Numenorean focus of the series, there are actually two famous rods of authority in Numenor that this could potentially be: the Scepter of Numenor or the Scepter of Annuminas.
The Scepter of Numenor was the symbol of the power of the monarchy itself, as the kings and queens wore no crowns. The scepter was taken by Ar-Pharazon on his disastrous assault on the Blessed Realm and was lost with the king and all of his fleet. The Scepter of Annuminas, however, survived the downfall of Numenor. It was the symbol of office of the Lords of Andunie in Numenor, and became the symbol of authority of the Kingdom of Arnor later on.
Since one of the other posters is likely to be Ar-Pharazon, it is tempting to think that this is the Scepter of Annuminas, which itself might give a clue to the identity of the bearer. The last of the Lords of Andunie was Amandil, who rejected the disastrous plans of Ar-Pharazon and provided an escape for his son Elendil, the father of Isildur and Anarion. If this is the Scepter of Annuminas, it is almost certainly carried by someone of the family of Amandil.
The final possibility is another strange one. The city at the end of the scepter looks strangely like the city of Gondolin in one of the paintings done by the Tolkien illustrator Alan Lee, who was one of the designers on the original Jackson Lord of the Rings movies. This is very unlikely, seeing as Gondolin only ever existed in the First Age, but it is not impossible. If anything is certain with these new posters, it is that they are meant to get the fanbase guessing and hypothesizing about the subject matter and timeline of the series. For now, we will have to wait and see, but the easter eggs have certainly created the sort of stir they were meant to make.