San Diego Comic-Con weekend has come and gone, and we were treated to tons of news about our most anticipated movies and shows. Among the biggest items was the reveal of an awesome new trailer for the second season of Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power.
The series, which follows a younger Galadriel during the Second Age of Middle-Earth, is officially tackling the rise of Sauron in the epic-looking second season. Now that he’s out of the shadows, after hiding in plain sight throughout the first season, it seems like things are going to be picking up quite drastically. This is tremendous news for folks who were bored by the expository first season.
However, there’s something nagging me about this newest trailer. It’s filled with sights and sounds that are sure to be a delight to longtime fans, like a Balrog seemingly laying siege to Moria, The Stranger casting some sick-looking Istari magic, Tom motherfucking Bombadil, and at least one large-scale fight that appears to be in the vein of The Two Towers’ awe-inspiring Battle of Helm’s Deep. There’s also a suspicious lack of The Rings of Power’s minority cast members, and that sucks to see.
If you look closely, the nearly four-minute trailer hardly features the likes of Ismael Cruz Córdova, Sophia Nomvete, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Arondir, Disa, and Tar-Míriel, respectively. Of the three, Disa has the most screen time throughout, but despite leading a whole plotline in the first season, the second season’s trailer has merely glimpses of Arondir wordlessly encountering an Ent in the dark. Míriel is also quietly seen submerging herself into water. Besides these moments, Disa is the only person of color who actually utters a word.
By comparison, Galadriel, Elrond, and even Sauron get to speak far more than any other cast member. Hell, the tree talking to Arondir speaks more in this trailer than Arondir himself. Granted, I understand that most of the aforementioned characters are obviously central to the rest of the series and are names whom most fans love and recognize, but it remains a stark and troubling contrast.
When The Rings of Power’s cast was announced, the show faced tons of sexist and racist backlash over Morfydd Clark’s leading role as Galadriel and the presence of Black and brown folk in the cast. It has now become unfortunately commonplace for any media property diversifying its portfolio to see its minority actors receiving a swell of hate for their involvement in the project. In the case of The Rings of Power, Amazon, as well as some of the actors from the beloved Peter Jackson films—namely Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan and other members of the fellowship—spoke out in defense of the cast.
Read More: Rings of Power’s Epic Comic-Con Trailer Brings War to Middle-earth
I don’t want to jump to conclusions about the aforementioned Rings of Power characters, but this newest trailer doesn’t give a great indication of their roles in things to come. Arondir was a huge part of some great action setpieces in the first season, which makes his absence from those kinds of scenes in this trailer suspect. Disa and her husband Durin are closely tied to Moria, as well as the plotline surrounding the discovery of mythril there, but the emphasis in the trailer seems to be on Durin and his tenuous relationship with his father, who comes into possession of one of the rings Sauron has made for the Dwarven people. Tar-Míriel is literally the queen-regent of Númenor, a central location in the first season, and is a major player in the conflicts that erupt by the finale, and yet she has the tiniest appearance here. This shit reeks.
To make matters even more apparent, Rings of Power has in fact hired a bunch of Black and minority actors for the second season, but you wouldn’t know that from this trailer. Even if they didn’t provide any lines for it, it would’ve been nice to see some of them, but you only get the tiniest glimpse of Selina Lo’s new character. Something feels up about all of this.
I can’t help but feel that, due to the backlash that Rings of Power faced due to its casting, as well as the tepid critical reception of the first season, that these characters might have their roles reduced or obfuscated. At the very least, the promotional materials don’t seem to lean into the full extent of The Rings of Power’s diverse cast and characters as strengths of the show, which feels like a Decision? that someone made to improve the show’s standing with a certain subset of the LOTR fandom. I hope I’m wrong, and that it’s just in my head, but even if I am, Amazon still put out a whitewashed trailer, and it doesn’t feel like much of an accident.
Otherwise, I can’t wait for Rings of Power to return at the end of August. It does appear like things will actually happen rather than the constant talking about things happening that defined much of the first season. Now that the central mystery of Sauron’s identity is also out of the bag, there’s one more compelling player on the board, and I’m looking forward to the greater emphasis on Sauron’s motivations and machinations in the second season. Here’s hoping he becomes a kind of deuteragonist that we follow parallel to Galadriel. But also, this production is looking paler than Frodo after getting stabbed by the Nazg?l. It might be time to pinch it, and get some color back in its cheeks.