Thread by @TimeOutLondon

Big battles and tasteful nudity will rule Middle-earth’s Second Age 🌎💍

Here's the low-down 👇

timeout.com/news/everythin…

It’s been 18 years since Peter Jackson wrapped his beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Now, after a prolonged period of Hobbitlessness, fans will finally return to Middle-earth courtesy of Amazon

The show remains shrouded in mystery, with media reports generally focused on the Smaug-sized price tag ($250 million for the rights, $465+ million for production).

But with filming wrapped and a release date cresting the horizon of 2022, some details have emerged...

✨ What's it about?

For those who don’t know their Silmarillions from their Sarumans, the series takes place thousands of years prior to Frodo and the Fellowship’s quest to destroy the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings series. The era is known as the Second Age of Middle-earth

The series, which began development in 2017, will reportedly draw heavily from The Silmarillion, Tolkien's posthumously published Middle-earth Bible that spans the entire history of the land he created, as well as Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth

According to Amazon, the series 'will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin.'

It teases an appearance by 'the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen,' plus characters both 'familiar and new'

Amazon recently released a promotional image depicting what appears to be the Two Trees of Valinor.

Given that particular story takes place before the Second Age, fans are salivating at the idea that the LOTR series could be going back even further to the more Biblical First Age

It could also mean the introduction of Melkor — the original Dark Lord who indoctrinated Sauron and cloaked the realms in darkness — as the villain teased in the synopsis

There’s speculation the series will follow Tolkien’s Fall of Númenor narrative, which posits the island kingdom as Middle-earth’s version of Atlantis in a tale that involves war, the Dark Lord Sauron and a series of events that reshapes the world — literally — from flat to round

The series will feature many battles between men, orcs, elves and dwarves. It will likely be more violent in a post-Game of Thrones world. And it will contain tasteful-but-sexless nudity, which somehow prompted fans to create a petition to ‘keep Middle-earth free of nudity’

✨Is the original cast returning?

So far, no. Considering the massive chasm of time between the series' material and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, having Frodo show up in Númenor would be a bit like a historical drama in which Queen Elizabeth hangs out with Genghis Khan

Rumour has it that BAFTA-nominated Welsh actress Morfydd Clark will be playing a younger version of the powerful Elven queen Galadriel.

The character — iconically portrayed by Cate Blanchett in Jackson's films — appears throughout Tolkien's works, including The Silmarillion

Elrond, played in the films by Hugo Weaving, is also said to return. Weaving has dashed all murmurings of a return to the franchise, but the character could be recast.

Once and forever Gandalf Ian McKellen has expressed interest in returning, but it seems unlikely at this point