Where’s Gandalf in Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power?

Even though Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power won’t premiere until September, its media blitz already has fans with their ears pricked. This is the first teaser trailer for the new series, set in J.R.R. Tolkien aired during the Super Bowl and had plenty of visuals to look at — but a lot less story.

And it’s got even fewer recognizable characters. It’s easy to wonder if you are wondering…

Are Aragorn or Frodo or any of my other faves in Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show?!?

Image: New Line Cinema/Warner Bros. Pictures

It is short: no The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerIt may occur before the period The Lord of the Rings — which Peter Jackson adapted into a famous trilogy of films — but the show is not a direct prequel to that story. The War of the Ring took place at the end of the “Third Age,” while this story is set during the “Second Age,” and each age covers thousands of years of history.

In fact, we see the final moments of the Second Age in the very first scenes of Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring — the big battle where Isildur cuts the One Ring from Sauron’s hand, just before everything skips forward thousands of years to when Frodo’s story began.

So, we can’t reasonably expect to see Frodo, Bilbo, Aragorn, or even Legolas in the series.

But…

Galadriel and Elrond are both in the show.

Photo: Ben Rothstein/Amazon Studios

Elfen can also be Very old. Dozens of the War of the Ring’s most powerful Elfs appear to play more active roles. The Rings of Power. Robert Aramayo plays Elrond, a young Eddard stark. Game of Thrones. Morfydd, a Welsh actor who plays Galadriel. She’s got armor and a sword now!

Now let’s talk about Gandalf in The Rings of Power

There’s one more possibility for major characters who appeared in Jackson’s The Lord of the RingsTrilogy was also alive at the time The Rings of PowerIt is now. The answer is Gandalf or Saruman.

To condense a longer, wild explanation, Tolkien’s wizards are essentially demigods clothed in the forms of old men, and their purpose on Middle-earth was to observe and combat the rise of Sauron. All the wizards, who were immortal creatures born just after the start of time in the period between the two worlds, were certainly alive at the end of the time period. The Rings of Power. They were, however, on a different continent.

Middle-earth’s gods only began to send wizards to combat Sauron’s return during the Third Age — but that’s according to Tolkien’s canon. If showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne felt tempted to bring a wizard to their Lord of the Rings party, they don’t have to find one who’s alive, they just have to get one to where all the other characters are.

We won’t know much more until The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Sept. 2, but in the meantime, check out our trailer breakdown — there’s a lot of Tolkien lore packed into its brief runtime.