Amazon's Lord Of The Rings Series To Center On Young Aragorn
Amazon's billion-dollar Lord of the Rings series will reportedly focus its narrative on a very familiar name.
According to Tolkien fansite The One Ring, the lavishly-expensive series based on J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy saga will center on the adventures of a young Aragorn, the once and future king of Gondor.
The One Ring has been a reliable source of Tolkien-related movie news since back in the days of the Peter Jackson trilogy, so while Amazon has yet to officially confirm the series' premise, the claim — reportedly confirmed by multiple sources — is worth quite a bit of consideration.
The site broke down the details of the news in a Twitter thread. Notably, the site says that only the first season will focus specifically on young Aragorn, opening the door for a wider narrative to potentially follow.
In the wider lore of Tolkien, Aragorn had a long and interesting past prior to his arrival in The Lord of the Rings' narrative as a drifter under the name of Strider. For one, thanks to the long lifespans of the Dúnedain, Aragorn was already 87 years old by the time he showed up in the movies, meaning there's a whole lot of adventurin' Middle-Earth's manliest man probably got up to before Sauron got cooking on his plan to rule them all.
While the Amazon series will reportedly never overlap with or retell the stories of the Peter Jackson trilogy, having Aragorn as an anchor means it will take place at least close in time to it.
With that in mind, the door is open for a number of interactions with other long-lived members of the OG LOTR crew — like (slightly) young(er) Gandalf, a lil' bit younger (but still old as all hell) Elrond, a younger Arwen for the classic Romeo and Juliet plot — you see the vaguely familiar places this can go.
Of course, using Aragorn as an entry point also allows for an exploration of Tolkien's world in either direction, to the early days of man, to the forging of the rings, or up closer to the events of the movie trilogy. Provided they just use Aragorn and his storied and heroic lineage as a springboard to explore the world and history of Middle-Earth, this could end up being pretty interesting.
Aragorn is also, as The One Ring points out, a character who has lived many lives, taking on a number of names and identities during his youth.
Growing up with his royal lineage kept secret, he was raised by Elrond with the name Estel. As a young man in the courts of Rohan and Gondor, he was called Thorongil. And of course, when we meet him in The Lord of the Rings, he's a kickass bohemian drifter named Strider, the sexiest man to ever walk the plains of Middle-Earth.
While some members of the beloved movies' cast and creative team have expressed varying degrees of interest in signing on to the Amazon series in some capacity, it feels safe to say that Viggo Mortensen won't be signing on to play a young version of himself. Considering how thoroughly he inhabited the role the first time around, it's going to be interesting to see who gets chosen to try and fill his shoes when production on the Lord of the Rings TV series takes off.