Have You Recognized the "Secret Code" in The Rings of Power Opening Credits?

Created by Katrina Crawford and Mark Bashore of the Seattle-based studio Plains of Yonder, it is a beautiful spectacle of glistening grains of sand and tiny pebbles swirling through a complex pattern of morphing shapes and symbols.

And these shapes and symbols are not merely visual flair. In fact, according to Den of Geek, there's somewhat of a "secret code" present: all of these elements either point out at various parts of the Middle-Earth's history or foreshadow contents of the series.

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The most obvious element here is, of course, the ring shapes, representing the titular rings of power. They appear in groups of nine (representing the rings of men), seven (for the rings of dwarves), and three (for the rings of elves) before being dominated by a single larger, central circle (for the One Ring to rule them all) – anyone who as much as watched the opening sequence of Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring can figure that. Similarly, the meaning behind a serpentine stream of dark sand, accompanied by ominous music is a no-brainer.

The opening's other elements are not as unambiguous and immediately obvious to everyone. For example, the double tree shapes might confuse someone whose only previous exposure to the Middle-Earth were the movies, though he might guess that they might be connected to the White Tree of Gondor. They indeed may represent the White Tree of Numenor, and its descendant, the White Tree of Gondor, but as any reader of Tolkien's legendarium can tell, they also might point at the two Trees of Valinor. After all, there certainly are references to events of the First Age of Middle-Earth in the series.

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And then there are more abstract and symbolic layers of meaning in the ever-shifting shapes. Starting from the very fact that all of them are made of shifting sand, the very image of impermanence. Flow of time that gradually and inevitably washes away everything in our world, like so much loose sand, was an important theme in Tolkien's works. In fact, going back to the rings of power again, their main function and a huge part of their corruptive allure boiled down to defying that inevitability, and commanding the time to stop, starting with making their wearers immortal, if they weren't already, and possibly keeping whole lands untouched by passing of ages.

All in all, the more you look at the opening sequence, the more you realize that its creators put a real effort into it, and did their homework.