Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere with two episodes

The new Lord of the Rings series from Amazon Prime will premiere with two episodes on Sept. 1 at 9 p.m. EDT/ 6 p.m. PDT. After that, the episodes will follow a more standard one-a-week schedule, dropping at 12 a.m. EDT on Fridays/9 p.m. PDT on Thursdays. The first season will be eight episodes long, concluding on Oct. 14.

Titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the show takes place in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But that doesn’t mean some familiar characters won’t be popping up — after all, elves live for a really, really, really long time, and wizards are basically demigods. Younger versions of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) are already confirmed to make appearances. The show isn’t based on any particular Tolkien book, but instead his pages and pages of Appendices that explore the history of Middle-earth.