Breaking down the themes, monsters, and rings in The Rings of Power’s season 2 trailer

polygon.com:

Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returns this August, and while the new trailer is short on story, it’s long on one undersung aspect of Tolkien’s world: epic fantasy monsters.

There’s plenty to tease out of this teaser, and even a few informed guesses we can make about the scope of the second season of The Rings of Power.

Can we say what this is? No! Is it nevertheless a great monster design? Absolutely. Can’t wait to see this horrible thing menace someone.

Speaking of menacing, look carefully at this shot of Galadriel, Elrond, and friends preparing for a fight, and you can see exactly who they’re defending against — shrouded figures with glowing blue eyes.

It’s possible they’re orcs, elves, humans, or even ghosts. But by the time of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s Middle-earth is filled with a number of wild-living peoples, so it’s also possible that what we’re seeing here are deeper cuts, like the shape-shifting Beornings. Just about the only thing we can rule out is Ents — these folks just seem too short.

One of the mysteries of this teaser is the identity of this moth-summoning figure with bloody palms. We saw some swarms of moths in season 1, connected with the Stranger, who is very probably Gandalf. But it sure doesn’t look like him in this brief shot. And it’s not exactly clear where these moths are, either — squared-off columns like those seen here generally suggest dwarven architecture, which could indicate that this takes place in Moria.

Theory: Is the tentacle monster actually made out of roots? Much to ponder.

Here, we have the closest hint at a clear plot event that the teaser has: Elven ringsmith Celebrimbor alone in his forge, facing a mysterious figure who appears to be walking out of a huge fire. We’ll come back to this.

Here, a woman who appears to be dressed the same as the moth-summoning figure floats underwater in apparently chill appreciation of this kraken-like monster.

Now, there are a lot of places on Middle-earth