Amazon Studios is due to launch its Lord of the Rings prequel TV series in September this year. Not much is known about it yet, other than the title – Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power, some first looks, a teaser-trailer, and that it will be set in the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth timeline.
The Second Age will not be all that familiar to audiences of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of Tolkien’s novels, which take place in the Third Age, many thousands of years after the events featured in The Rings Of Power. But the books, including Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and the lore-heavy Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-Earth provide us lots of background to the history of the Second Age.
