Saddle up your Fellbeast: we are going back to Middle Earth. If you’re not tagging along with HBO’s return to Westeros, or you just want even more fantasy, Amazon is diving into the world of Lord of the Rings. The Rings of Power, purported to be the most expensive TV show of all time, premieres September 2. Set in the Second Age of JRR Tolkien’s universe, it follows the rise of Sauron (the big baddie from the original series, that giant fiery eye floating atop a tower) and the various goings-on of all the fantasy races (hobbits, dwarves, humans, et cetera). If the first two episodes are anything to go off of, though, it seems like Amazon will be dedicating particular attention to a popular but misunderstood demographic of the Tolkien legendarium: elves. This is great news for fans and viewers alike, because Tolkien’s elves are hot, cool, and tremendously influential. Those elegant and graceful elves you see across fantasy today? You can thank Lord of the Rings for that. I’d go so far as to say that, for all Tolkien’s immense footprint in fantasy literature, his biggest legacy in broader pop culture may be this: he made elves hot.
Zelda, the Witcher, anything from Dungeons and Dragons, that fanfiction you don’t tell anyone you read, certain corners of OnlyFans: all these owe a debt to Lord of the Rings and its elves. Hell, Tolkien’s elves get their own Wikipedia page, entirely separate from the general page for elves. If they’re attractive and have pointy ears, they have Tolkien in their DNA. And now, in the Rings of Power, we’re getting a deeper dive into the world of the elves (or, for the real heads, the Eldar).
To be clear, that elves are attractive is canon, not opinion. “Elves are wondrous fair to look upon,” wrote Tolkien in The Two Towers. That sentiment is consistent throughout his work, from Lord of the Rings to The Silmarillion to his smaller, uncollected tales. The Eldar are tall, beautiful, wise, immortal and pointedly unlike men, who are nasty, brutish, and short[er]. (That’s not to say elves are perfect—Tolkien’s Elves are also notoriously condescending and opaque. “Go not to the Elves for counsel,” says Frodo, “for they will say both no and yes.”)
Let’s back up for a minute—you may be surprised to learn that Elves haven’t always looked like peak Orlando Bloom in our collective imagination. A crash course in elf history, then: elf history starts in medieval literature from Europe and Scandinavia, where they’re largely grouped with dwarves and fairies. They’re small, mysterious, and mischievous. In some European cultures, elves are associated with seduction, but they’re also thought to have caused a wide range of illnesses. It’s not so much that elves were sexy, then, but rather they caused the kinds of things you didn’t want happening under your roof, like syphilis. Think of Puck from *A Midsummer Night’s Dream—*technically a fairy, but functionally an elf for all intents and purposes. Or, for a more modern analogue, think of Dobby from the Harry Potter universe. In the 19th century, Christmas elves start cropping up, which are different in some meaningful ways but still closer to the tiny, impish creatures of old Europe. Rowan Kaiser has done a great job chronicling this evolution over at Inverse.
Tolkien didn’t invent his vision of elves from thin air. In addition to being the father of high fantasy, he was an accomplished academic and translator (there’s a Tolkien edition of Beowulf). His elves are undeniably informed by Norse and Old English folk tales and mythology. Still, it wasn’t until Tolkien that elves took on their more modern, humanoid characteristics in popular imagination.
For most people, or at least people who grew up with Peter Jackson’s original trilogy, the Fellowship’s Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Aragorn’s love interest Arwen (Liv Tyler) are the most memorable elves in pop culture. Legolas in particular was the paradigmatic Tolkien elf—aggressively handsome, nimble, and really good at seeing stuff.
Rings of Power expands our understanding of elf society by focusing on two familiar if less prominent characters: Galadriel and Elrond. A refresher: in Lord of the Rings, Elrond is the lord of Rivendell, the man who calls together the fellowship of the ring and sends Frodo and friends off to Mordor. He was played by Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith). Galadriel, played by Cate Blanchett, is the queen of Lothlorien who gives Frodo a fancy glass of light. Remember, elves are immortal, so this show follows their rise to power and original conflict with Sauron a thousand years or so before the original movies. Their story is drawn from the wider world of Tolkien-lore—specifically the Lord of the Rings appendices and The Silmarillion.
In the series, Elrond, played by Robert Aramayo, is a political upstart, writing speeches for his King and making his way in Elf Court. Galadriel, played by Morfydd Clark, is a soldier—stubborn, lethal, and striking—seeking Sauron, even though his evil is thought to have faded from Middle Earth.
We meet Galadriel as a child in Valinor, otherwise known as the Undying Lands. (Imagine if heaven wasn’t just a place on earth, but a relatively accessible continent you could reach by boat—this is where elves originally came from, and where they go after the events of LOTR.) The elves initially left Valinor to confront Morgoth— Lucifer, basically, in Tolkien’s cosmology. Rings of Power picks up shortly after Sauron, one of Morgoth’s lieutenants, wreaks all kinds of havoc on Middle Earth. Is your head spinning? Don’t sweat it. Rings of Power covers this in a pretty effective montage in its first episode.
Amazon’s elves diverge from the canonical Eldar in a few important and compelling ways. Most strikingly: traditional Tolkien elves are aggressively and uncomfortably Aryan, while Rings of Power has introduced a more inclusive vision of Elvishness. Consider Arrondir, portrayed by Puerto Rican actor Ismael Cruz Córdova, an elf sentinel whose star-crossed relationship with a human herbalist suggests a promising romance to come. Rings of Power will hopefully present a version of elfishness that’s not so unbearably white.
To go further into the nuances and easter eggs of the show risks an entry into spoiler territory. What matters is this: Galadriel and Elrond are lending elves a depth that far exceeds the “sexy archer” archetype embodied by Orlando Bloom’s Legolas. Elrond is ambitious but conflicted; Galadriel is driven but obstinate. Both are as compelling as they are attractive. They’re also deeply flawed. These elves are recognizably human in spite of themselves—which makes them more fun to watch. Rings of Power might not transmit Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to the exact canonical letter, but it has a chance to be straight-up top-notch television.