Amazon’s ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Takes Place During “The Second Age”

Despite rumors and popular theory, Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings series won’t be about the adventures of a young Aragorn. Well, there go all of the casting calls hoping to find someone who could walk in Viggo Mortensen’s boots.  Over the last few days Amazon has been teasing news on the series, but today with a tweet captioned “Welcome to the Second Age” the biggest question surrounding it has finally been answered.

Now we know when Amazon’s Lord of the Rings will take place, and it’s long before Aragorn was even a twinkle in his mother’s eye…or her mother’s…or her mother’s before that. The Second Age was written about by Tolkien but never fully explored, however it’s known to have been long before any of the familiar adventures seen in the Fellowship or Hobbit trilogies. It’s said to have lasted more than 3400 years and for the most part Tolkien left it unchronicled.

There is one aspect of the Second Age that we might see the series explore. Crucial to it are the Men from the island of Numenor, who were faithful and granted wisdom and life well beyond their years. But they were also jealous and prideful, and became easy targets for the deceptions of Sauron, who had crafted the infamous Rings of Power and the One Ring to rule them all. The Numenorians were deceived into taking on the gods, and Numenor was destroyed utterly, cast into the bottom of the sea. An alliance between elves and faithful Men would later challenge Sauron and defeat him, with the One Ring becoming lost soon after.

The Second Age is vast and has tons of characters from which Amazon could explore for multiple seasons, the better to recoup that $100M+ price tag.