Small Details You Missed In The Rings Of Power Season 3 Trailer

"The Rings of Power" Season 3 is right around the corner now, and to celebrate, Amazon Studios unveiled a new trailer amidst a string of additional Season 3 announcements at a Hall H session at San Diego Comic-Con. The trailer ran for just under 100 seconds and was packed to the brim with hints and teasers for what's to come in a season that showrunner Patrick McKay said (via Empire) will be "darker, more dangerous." He added: "No one is safe."

After two seasons of worldbuilding, Amazon Studios' tent-pole Middle-earth show is about to crank things up to 11, and the trailer is bristling with evidence, from gigantic Mûmakil to the building of Sauron's fortress of Barad-dûr and even a chilling final shot of the One Ring itself. There were lots of other smaller details hidden in the cracks, too. We've had our top Tolkien-trained eyes scour the trailer for these hidden gems.

Celeborn (played by Jamie Campbell Bower) is one of the new characters you can expect to see a lot of this season. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) meets her husband way before this in the source material, so finally getting him into the show was an imperative after two whole seasons of his being MIA. In the trailer, we see the love birds dancing, hugging, talking, and planning. We also see them passionately making out in a reclined position a little over a minute into the clip. They're fully clothed still, but it's a hot and heavy moment, which could be hinting at another long overdue character: their daughter, Celebrían.

Like Celeborn, Celebrían is supposed to be in the story already. She's born early in the Second Age, and eventually she's supposed to become the wife of Elrond (Robert Aramayo). This makes Elrond and Galadriel's kiss in Season 2 extra weird (and one of the biggest book changes in "The Rings of Power" so far). As it is, the show needs to get Celebrían, you know, conceived, born, and grown up real quick if she's going to end up with Elrond before the story wraps up at the end of Season 5. That said, we might have gotten a brief, indirect, G-rated glimpse of Celebrían's introduction in the teaser.

There are a lot of scary creatures in "The Rings of Power." We've seen sea monsters, swamp creatures, and plenty of terrifying land-based beings, including Trolls, Orcs, giant spiders, and even a Balrog. Not much in the way of airborne monsters, though. The only ones so far are visible for a quick second early in Season 1, when Galadriel is narrating how the Elves returned from the Undying Lands to Middle-earth to wage war on Morgoth. We see a quick shot of Eagles fighting something in the sky, and on closer look, they clearly aren't dragons. On the contrary, they look a lot like the fell beasts that the Nazgûl ride in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" movies.

Now, the trailer for Season 3 has brought back these same long-necked, bat-winged horrors, and clearly the experience is going to get up-close and personal this time. Twice in the trailer, we see these creatures for a brief moment. One time, a light-colored one is shown crawling down a building. But right before that, we get a shot of one flying across the night sky, outlined against the moon, with a chilling Nazgûl scream, to boot. That shot, in particular, evokes a scene from the "Fellowship of the Ring" book, where the group by the same name encounters the flying Ringwraiths for the first time. It's fun to see the homage as we gear up for the Nazgûl and their fell beasts to play an important role this season.

In the days leading up to the release of the trailer, Amazon Studios announced that the Ringwraiths (called by the non-canon name Nazgnagôl in the show) would be arriving in Season 3. They specifically called out Khamûl as a wraith who will be played by "Andor" actor Zubin Varla. Khamûl is the only named Nazgûl in Tolkien's canon, but he isn't the most well-known of the Nine. That honor goes to the Witch-king, a nameless individual who operates as one of Sauron's most feared servants in "The Lord of the Rings," and whom Éowyn defeats in battle. As of this writing, the Witch-king remains unidentified in "The Rings of Power" — or does he?

Here's the thing. Just before the one-minute mark in the trailer, we get a shot of one of the Nazgûl pulling out a sword. Then, we see two of them from behind, side by side, facing down Durin with his Dwarven guards. The scene feels an awful lot like the shot of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin facing the five Nazgûl on Weathertop in "The Fellowship of the Ring." Even the way the Black Rider pulls his sword out feels a lot like how the Witch-king draws the evil dagger before stabbing Frodo. If this is a nod to the iconic scene from "The Lord of the Rings," does that mean we've actually seen the Witch-king himself? Either way, the homage is another fun nod to Jackson's trilogy.

Elendil (Lloyd Owen), his son Isildur (Maxim Baldry), and his daughter Eärien (Ema Horvath) are pretty recognizable after two seasons on screen. That said, there are a couple of shots in the trailer where Elendil and Eärien are seen next to someone who doesn't look like he's Isildur. The first is halfway through, where we get an armored individual standing next to Elendil in front of an army. The second time, we get two people riding horses. One appears to be Eärien, but the other is hard to make out. Both shots are quick, but there's a chance that the individual in one (if not both) of these shots is Elendil's other son, Anarion.

What makes this even more likely is the fact that at San Diego Comic-Con, Amazon Studios announced that Andrew Richardson ("Ponies") will be playing Anarion in the coming season. Anarion has a crucial role in the founding of Gondor and all that war business that ends with the death of his father and his brother cutting the One Ring from Sauron's hand. It's good to know that he'll finally be entering the story, and we might have even gotten a sneak peek of the character in the trailer.

When a trailer shows you something once, it can be easy to misread things. When you see it twice? That's a sign, right? The sign we're seeing here is that the Elves of Lindon and the Men of Númenor are about to team up, and it's going to be awesome. What small details are sending this message? Two short scenes shared by the High Elven King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) and the usurping ruler of Númenor, Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle). The first scene shows the pair walking through a resplendent corridor in what looks like a palace or building in Númenor. The second shot shows them from the shoulders up in full armor. While we won't know what's going on here until the show comes out in November, the source material has some context clues.

First, in the book "Unfinished Tales," there is a story where Gil-galad sends a message asking for help from the king of Númenor. This isn't Pharazôn at this point, and Gil-galad doesn't go to Númenor personally, but the interaction does happen. Later in the Second Age, Gil-galad sends to Númenor for help again, and, two separate times (once when summoned and once unsummoned), Númenor sends massive armies to Middle-earth to fight Sauron. "The Rings of Power" has changed the Tolkien timeline in a lot of ways, not the least through time compression. We might be seeing a two-part teaser of how showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne plan on condensing all of this down into a single request and response between the two kingdoms.

Fëanor's hammer has been connected to some major jewel-smith work in the "Rings of Power" story. We say "The Rings of Power" specifically because, while the character Fëanor is important in Tolkien's legendarium, and he doubtless had a hammer, the author doesn't talk about it. Instead, the hammer was called out in the show as an important part of the magical crafting process, and Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and Sauron (Charlie Vickers) put it to work to forge the Rings of Power. If you were watching closely at the end of the trailer, the hammer shows up yet again in Season 3, this time for its biggest job yet: to forge the One Ring to rule them all in the fires of Mount Doom.

We don't get a lot of details from Tolkien about how the One Ring is forged. That leaves some wiggle room for creative liberties in this area of J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay's story, and it appears they're using that to connect the ring-making process to more than Sauron's knowledge and the overbearing heat of an active volcano. Sauron clearly finds the tool of the greatest Elven smith indispensable as he pursues the creation of his biggest achievement — a smooth, unadorned magical ring that he can use to project power and dominate the will of others across Middle-earth.

For more exciting announcements and updates, check out Looper's post from Comic-Con 2026 featuring the "Blade Runner 2099" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" panels.