The Rings of Power’s Season 2 Trailer Heralds the Rise of a Dark Lord

The debut season of Amazon’s lavish Lord of the Rings prequel, Rings of Power, played a long game to get to whole bunch of questions it left off for season two. Well, now our first look at the sophomore season is here, and at least one of those questions is being pretty resoundingly answered. Where’s Sauron? Here’s Sauron.

Yes, after season one spent so much time trying to convince us, and Morfydd Clark’s Lady Galadriel alike, that there was nothing at all creepy and mysterious and wrong about the strange heir to the Southlands, Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), now with the mask fallen—and the knowledge that he is the Dark Lord Sauron, having taken physical form once more—everything else around him can start falling too.

There’s a lot of suggestions towards the growing darkness that Sauron making himself known really means here—chaos in Númenor and the Elf-lands alike, especially the latter as we see Sauron now (or rather trying to, he still looks like Charlie Vickers, which might be a problem!) disguising himself in a form akin to Annatar, the guise Sauron took to convince Celebrimbor to forge the Rings of Power. And, of course, we get to see a few more of those aforementioned rings, just like the title of the show has promised. But it’s a trailer that really, really focuses on those particular plotlines. We see a few tidbits of similar turmoil in the Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm, and some teases of the mysterious stranger’s journey to Rhun after he discovered he is one of the Istari sent to help save Middle-Earth.

But really, this trailer promises two things: Sauron and rings. And presumably some amount of interaction betwixt both. Hopefully we won’t have to wait all season to see one ring in particular, at least…

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returns to Prime Video on August 29.

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