As the release of season 2 of The Rings of Power approaches this Thursday, the showrunners reveal three new locations that our protagonists will tread in an ever richer Middle-earth.
The Rings of Power Season 2: D-3
Prime Video has not skimped on the means to communicate around its season 2 of The Rings of Power.With a series of plot revelations, new character introductions, and a fiery trailer, the platform hopes to reassure fans who were mostly frustrated by the first season.
This is how we learned about the staging of one of the biggest battles of the entire Second Age, but also — and for the first time on screen—the arrival of Tom Bombadil. What about this magician presented in the guise of Irish actor Ciarán Hinds? Theories abound about the identity of the character. The most serious is that he is one of the two Ithryn Luin, better known as the blue mages, among the five Istari who landed in Middle-earth, as well as Radagast, Gandalf and Saruman. According to some, it is even the latter who will meet the stranger towards the East of Middle-earth, towards the unexplored lands of East Rhein.
three emblematic places from the Lord of the Rings revealed
In this regard, Patrick McKay, one of the two showrunners, and executive producer Lindsey Weber announced that the Rhein region will be one of the new regions to be explored in this season 2. “Of course, they travel to Rhein. My God, where else can we go? We find a community of stewards in the desert that hasn't arrived yet.”This mysterious region, little described by J.R.R. Tolkien, includes all the lands east of Rhovanion and Mordor, little known to the inhabitants of the West of Middle-earth. Gandalf mentions never having been to these “vast unmapped lands, nameless plains and unexplored forests”.
In a note, Tolkien indicates that the Blue Wizards traveled to this great unexplored east and founded “secret cults”as well as “magical traditions”, all the while fighting against the growing influence of Sauron, preventing the Eldar and the Dùnedain from joining him in his enterprise. Everything suggests that this is the mysterious community of stewards mentioned by the producer of the series.
Patrick McKay also mentions Mirkunst Forest as one of the upcoming locations that some characters will be setting foot in. “Where does Shelob live, Mirkwood? Well, Mordor has a lot of scary places, and especially now that the sun has set, evil is going to creep in.”. Formerly called the Great Green Forest or Great Greenwood before evil took hold, this vast expanse of forest is crossed by Bilbo and Thorin's dwarven company before being attacked by the daughters of Arachne, then being captured by the Wood Elves.
Finally, the last location revealed is the Mound Hillsides, a massif of low hills located in the east of the Shire and gradually haunted by evil spirits: the Spirits of the Mounds (or Beings of the Barrows), who will also be there. In Tolkien, Frodo Baggins and his companions are captured by one of them, before an unexpected intervention by Tom Bombadil, who frees the mound from the spirit with the help of one of his songs. We see them in the trailer for the future season 2, in full confrontation with Galadriel and her squad.
The series has also took liberties with the source material, setting the Elves against the Spirits many years before Frodo's passing. After all, why not. The idea of seeing these evil beings on screen for the first time (Peter Jackson omitted this passage in his adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring) is even delightful.