Elendil

There's an interesting article about The Rings of Power in the Hollywood Reporter: ‘The Rings of Power’ Showrunners Break Silence on Backlash, Sauron and Season 2

[...] The call from the lawyers came in to Amazon on a Friday in 2017: The Tolkien estate was going to entertain proposals for a Lord of the Rings show. Prime Video, along with every other entertainment company, was looking for “the next Game of Thrones.” Amazon’s founder and chairman, Jeff Bezos, was a longtime Tolkien fan. Going after The Lord of the Rings was a no-brainer, and an internal “fellowship” was assembled to figure out how to beat other prospective bidders.

Sources say HBO pitched the estate on retelling Middle-earth’s “Third Age” — essentially remaking Peter Jackson’s beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy, which grossed $3 billion and won 17 Oscars. The estate has its gripes with Jackson’s adaptations (the late Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son, said they “eviscerated” the books) but wasn’t interested in treading the same ground. Netflix pitched doing several shows, such as a Gandalf series and an Aragorn drama. “They took the Marvel approach,” said one insider to the talks, “and that completely freaked out the estate.”

Amazon’s negotiating team (led by Sharon Tal Yguado, Roy Price and Dan Scharf) wooed the estate not with a specific pitch, but with a pledge of a close relationship that would give the estate a creative seat at the table so it could protect Tolkien’s legacy ....

I'm still watching the show, and my favorite character so far is Elendil, an ancestor of Aragorn.

Elendil is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium .... In the Last Alliance of Men and Elves, Elendil and Gil-galad [king of the elves] laid siege to the Dark Lord Sauron's fortress of Barad-dûr, and fought him hand-to-hand for the One Ring. Both Elendil and Gil-galad were killed, and Elendil's son Isildur took the Ring for himself .... In the 2022 television series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Elendil is played by the Welsh actor Lloyd Owen. The show introduces Elendil as a Númenórean nobleman, who serves as a sea captain ...