There isn't much of Lenny Henry in the new trailer. He plays a Harfoot – a race of "proto-hobbits" migrating across Middle Earth to their future home of the Shire. We are, however, reintroduced to elf wizard Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), who warns her half-elven comrade Elrond (Robert Aramayo) that evil forces are stirring.
That is a reference to Sauron, who starts out as a henchman to original super-villain Morgoth – a sort of Darth Vader to Morgoth's Emperor Palpatine. He is cast into the abyss with Morgoth at the end of the First Age and believed vanquished for all time. In the Rings of Power he has returned.
"You have fought long enough, Galadriel – put up your sword," says Elrond (the same character is portrayed by Hugo Weaving in the Jackson films).
Galadriel – played later by Cate Blanchett – isn't having it, though. "You have not seen what I have seen." As she says this we cut to a fiery battle lit from below. This, it is believed, is a flashback to "Dagor Bagollach": one of the seismic First Age showdowns between Morgoth and the elves (The Rings of Power is set largely in the Second Age).
Amazon splurged £200 million for the rights to the appendices and their Second Age setting, and put first-time showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay in charge. But it seems there will be lengthy cuts to the period covered in The Silmarillion, Tolkien's posthumously published history of the First Age of Middle Earth (Lord of the Rings itself takes place in the Third Age).
So in addition to Dagor Bagollach, we see the Two Trees in Valinor – an Elvish paradise across the sea from Middle Earth. And there appears to be a sequence in which elf king Fëanor vows to pursues Morgoth after he made off with the sacred gems lighting the trees.
All of which suggests a sprawling saga far larger in scope than anything previously attempted on television. Bigger even than Game of Thrones, with its dragons and elaborate battles (and which is back with its own spin-off, House of the Dragon, in August). There are also glimpses of Sauron and his flaming eye motif, plus we see what could be a werewolf – one of the forms he took pre-Lord of the Rings.
More is revealed, too, of the other storylines that will be tangled up with Galadriel's attempt to prove Sauron is making mischief. The Harfoots are slow-footing it across Middle Earth (their dreadful "Irish" accents harking back to another ancient evil best forgotten – Tom Cruise's rogue brogue from Far and Away). And the camera sweeps over the island kingdom of Númenor, Tolkien's answer to Atlantis and ancestral homeland of Aragorn.
Amazon has visibly poured millions into The Rings of Power and the promo glimmers with the sort of lustre only a limitless budget can buy. And yet the question of whether that can translate into must-watch television must for now remain unanswered.
One cautionary lesson is that Game of Thrones grew less essential as its production values increased and all the back-stabbing and court politics were replaced by bloated action scenes. In the case of Rings of Power, some of that bloat feels present from the outset.
And yet, with the new trailer, one gets the sense for the first time that the series might be something other than a brand extension for Amazon and a way of flogging more Tolkien paperbacks. This return to Middle-Earth really could turn Lord of the Rings diehards into happy hobbits once again.
