5 Lord Of The Rings TV Shows They Should Make Instead Of Young Aragorn
Some Middle-Earth stories are way more interesting than what Amazon is doing.
When Amazon bought the rights for The Lord of the Rings TV show, fans of Middle-Earth were rightly wary of what the company would do to the beloved franchise. Would they remake the films? Would they branch off into the other works that Tolkien wrote?
It's now rumoured that, for the first season at least, the TV show will follow a young Aragorn. The subject of one of the main sub-plots of the films, he's definitely a popular character among fans - though a bit of a safe choice.
Aragorn hasn't featured in any of Tolkien's published works other than The Lord of the Rings, and his mysterious backstory is one of the biggest draws to his character. Apparently, Amazon haven't learned from Star Wars' repeated failures to not explore pre-existing characters in their prequels.
However, there are other routes Amazon could go down. Tolkien wrote what he called his 'Legendarium', a huge collection of works in the Lord of the Rings universe that are both poems and stories. These are still being published today, and in these stories, there are topics for a TV show that would be far more interesting than Aragorn's backstory.
5. After The Films
During the Lord of the Rings films, a lot of world-altering events took place. Several evil regimes were overthrown, elves left the world for good, and Merry and Pippin introduced whole new kinds of smokeable herbs to The Shire.
A TV show that explored the pre-existing characters learning to fit in to this new world would be a very interesting way to explore the future of the land, and would give fans a chance to return to several beloved characters. Several actors, like Ian McKellen (Gandalf) and Sean Astin (Sam Gamgee) have already expressed interest in returning, so you know they're up for it. Although the ending of the final film nullifies some of those options...
Even if not all the characters returned, it could be interesting to follow people from the surviving factions and see how they understand the world. What about an expedition into the ruined Mordor, or a Kylo Ren -style imitator trying to emulate an evil overlord, who must be overthrown?
The death of Sauron likely wouldn't remove all evil from the world - in the book it certainly didn't. Any number of lurking evils still exist in the world, and a plot to remove one of these would make for an exciting show. Perhaps we could see a return to the mines of Moria to drive out the goblins, or an adventure to the south of Middle-Earth to recruit the Haradrim to the forces of good.
This would give the showrunner a lot of creative freedom, although if they needed help Tolkien's Silmarillion included snippets of information on the fate of beloved characters.