“The skies are strange,” a man named Sadoc Burrows says in a brand-new teaser for Prime Video’s upcoming show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. What follows is some kind of object soaring above Middle-earth like a rocket. The elves see it. The dwarves see it. The ents see it. Until finally, it lands, almost like the show itself will on September 2.
The new trailer has been released as a tease for Amazon’s Prime Day, which means you can only watch it (officially) on Amazon’s site. The link is here, though it’s only accessible (officially) if you are a Prime Video member for now; according to an Amazon press release, it will be “available exclusively to Prime members for 48 hours starting July 6 at 3 a.m.” [Update: Which has now passed, here’s the trailer].
The bonus of the teaser—which runs a little less than a minute—being on Amazon is that Amazon’s excellent X-Ray feature is in full effect, so we can tell Sadoc is played by Lenny Henry, the next character that appears is High King Gil-Galed (played by Benjamin Walker), followed by Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova), and Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi). Two more characters appear too, though X-Ray doesn’t name them for some reason.
As you can tell even just by the names, this object, whatever it is, grabs the attention of all walks of life in Middle-earth. From there we can only guess what impact it has on this land, which takes place before the events of the Peter Jackson films—films that this teaser, like the others, share a very similar visual language with.
The other big revelation in this new teaser is another trailer will be released next week, July 14, which is exciting but also a tiny bit odd. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is going to have a big presence at San Diego Comic-Con the following week. So, if a new trailer comes out a week before Comic-Con, what will Comic-Con audiences get to see? The whole first episode perhaps? Keep it locked to io9 to find out.
Update: This article was updated July 8 with the fully online trailer.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.