I love the fact that alternate universes are just as likely to not exist. This could very well be the only universe. There is literally no way to test the multiverse hypothesis, at least for now and maybe forever, so we can't actually say. Unlike Schrodinger's cat we have have no way to open the box. But I do like a good thought exercise and we've got some really nifty stories out of this one.

I'd guess you'd know.

The best part is they did this whole giant reveal thing at a castle where they had "superfans" watch the trailer. These "superfans" then did a question and answer bit where they couldn't seem to spot the simplest of things and could barely talk about LOTR. They even pulled some of them from Youtube after the backlash but other people put them back up.

They have recreated characters from LOTR arbitrarily to fit their story. The fact that they are completely wrong most of the time is because they want money. "We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit. And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.” So they couldn't really use the real characters back stories or much of anything. So instead they created their own story added some LOTR characters to sell it to LOTR fans. https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/16/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-showrunners-admit-they-dont-have-the-rights-to-the-silmarillion-or-unfinished-tales/