SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME BOOK FOUR: THE SHADOW RISING, AHEAD!
The Wheel Of Time, Amazon Prime’s best epic fantasy series that hardly anyone seems to know about, is returning for its third season sometime soon, by the looks of it. With showrunner Rafe Judkins and stars Josha Stradowski and Madeleine Madden scheduled to take the stage at CCXP in Brazil this Saturday to discuss season three and drop the release date (confirmed by Judkins over on his Instagram), and a new poster dropping this morning, there’s excitement in the air as it feels suddenly plausible that the Dragon Reborn might be back on our screens early in the new year.
The Wheel Of Time | Twitter @TheWheelOfTime
The poster – our first look at season three since the short video celebrating a wrap on filming early this year – is beautiful, which is something I haven’t necessarily been able to say of previous posters for the series…not that they were ever bad, but they were “floating head” posters, and I felt like the show’s marketing team could have cooked up something a little more visually arresting to entice audiences, who made The Wheel Of Time Prime Video’s most watched original series debut of 2021 but didn’t show up as strongly for season two in 2023 despite much better reviews for the season, in large part because the marketing was non-existent. The actors and writers literally couldn’t talk about the show or promote it at the time due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and Amazon did virtually nothing to fill the void. We don’t know how season two performed in the eyes of Amazon executives, but with season four yet to be greenlit, I think it’s safe to assume that they’re waiting for season three to come out first and do well before they commit to continuing the sprawling story; which was planned to run for eight seasons, condensing fourteen books worth of source material.
So the marketing can’t suck this time around – and if this poster is anything to go by, I’m cautiously optimistic that it won’t. So let’s discuss the poster itself.
The image seems obviously designed to eventually double as a book cover for The Shadow Rising, the fourth volume in Robert Jordan’s saga, which The Wheel Of Time season three will be adapting (having consolidated most of the relevant parts of books two and three into its second season). Depicting Stradowski’s character Rand al’Thor walking through a steel forest of standing spears in a desert at dawn, carrying Rosamund Pike’s Moiraine Damodred in his arms, the poster follows through on the promise made in season two to shift focus away from Moiraine, the series’ protagonist throughout its first season, and onto Rand, the books’ protagonist, who has reluctantly accepted that he is the “Dragon Reborn” destined to save the world or destroy it, and must now complete the vague prophecies written about him centuries before his birth if he is to defeat the Dark One at the Last Battle and prevent the very fabric of reality from being torn apart.
The poster transports us to one of the books’ harshest settings, the Waste, home to twelve warring clans who collectively make up the Aiel. Rand is, as the show has already revealed, the son of an Aiel Maiden of the Spear named Shaiel, who died giving birth to him on the field of battle during the Aiel War, in which a coalition of Aiel clans under the command of Chief Janduin of the Taardad invaded the Westlands to exact vengeance for the killing of a sacred tree (long story). Janduin is Rand’s father, making him half-Aiel. Wait, didn’t I say that Rand’s parents are both Aiel? I’ll let the show explain that.
Rand al’Thor | nerdist.com
In The Wheel Of Time season two, we met Aiel Maiden of the Spear Aviendha (played by Ayoola Smart) as she led an expeditionary force back into the Westlands to find the prophesized savior of the Aiel, the Car’a’carn or “Chief of Chiefs”, who turned out to also be Rand al’Thor. In season three, presumably just as in the books, Rand will decide to follow her into the Waste and help his people in their hour of need, against Moiraine’s wishes. His journey will take him to the ruined city of Rhuidean, built in ages past by Aes Sedai to house a treasure trove of powerful tar’angreal (magical objects) and the secret histories of the Aiel. But in the Waste, Rand will encounter opposition not only from the Dark One’s most powerful minions, but from leaders of the Aiel who dispute and challenge his claim to be the Car’a’carn, including a hotheaded clan chief and an ambitious Wise One (the Aiel equivalent to an Aes Sedai) who join forces to take him down.
Eagle-eyed fans will have noticed right away that Rand is sporting some new tattoos on his arms in the season three poster, which have great significance but are kinda a spoiler, so I won’t give away too much. Let’s just say, the process of obtaining those tattoos is an arduous one, and comprises one of the most memorable sequences in the entirety of Jordan’s saga, a sequence I hope The Wheel Of Time can do justice, as I firmly believe that it could single-handedly put the show on the map, so to speak. If not, The Shadow Rising still has plenty of other outstanding moments that could also do the trick (it is regarded by many fans as the best book in the series), some of which I’m looking forward to even more, but that particular sequence has the potential to be uniquely brilliant on every level. I already know Stradowski’s gonna kill it; it’s just a question of whether the show’s writing, direction, cinematography and production design are able to match the energy he’s going to bring.
Bain, Aviendha, and Chiad | lrmonline.com
Oh, and as for why Rand is holding Moiraine in his arms, well, I have my theories. Which I will not be sharing at this time, because again, that would require spoilers and the source material is just obscure enough that I don’t feel comfortable revealing everything that happens even though it’s been over thirty years since The Shadow Rising‘s publication. I envy those of you who will be watching the season with fresh eyes, completely unaware of what’s coming. Because everything I’ve seen thus far – i.e. this poster – tells me it’s gonna be great.
What do you think of the poster, and what are you hoping gets revealed or shown during Saturday’s CCXP panel? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE SIX, AHEAD!
The question posed in the title of The Rings Of Power season two, episode six – “Where Is He?” – is one the show has already answered: in fact, to clear up any confusion on that front, we were given the full rundown on everywhere Sauron (Charlie Vickers) has been in the last millennia of Middle-earth’s history. We’ve followed his movements so closely this season that there can be no doubt as to where he is at any given moment (usually Eregion, but he does make a quick excursion to the Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm in this episode). The suspense comes from waiting for the characters in-universe to figure it out for themselves, with the limited information they have at their disposal.
Sauron and the Balrog | youtube.com
Ironically, the person closest to Sauron physically, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), is the furthest from the truth, his mind beginning to fracture under the pressure of constant emotional abuse and manipulation tactics, even as his soul stubbornly defies corruption. Having waxed poetic about Edwards’ masterful turn as the tortured Elven-smith many times already, I always fear that I will run out of words to express the fullness of my awe and admiration for his talent, or that they will begin to feel hollow, but as his performance evolves subtly from episode to episode, new praises always rise in my throat. Edwards conveys his character’s deeply internal disintegration with discomforting palpability while never resorting to trite affectations – one particularly forceful example of his unconventional, heightened approach to the subject matter his fiery reading of an almost Shakespearean monologue as he labors over the Nine Rings. Something that Edwards ensures we never forget is that Celebrimbor is not a human, and he’s not just any Elf either – he is one of the mightiest of the Noldor, proudest and wisest of all Elves.
Per usual, Vickers matches Edwards beat-for-beat, his “Annatar” morphing into a more overtly devilish figure with each day that passes, trading out his humble white garments for a somewhat unsubtle black robe with gold trim. The seemingly genuine regret with which Sauron tortures Celebrimbor makes him a far more terrifying villain than if he took great pleasure in his atrocities – he has convinced himself that his ultimate goal, building a utopia in Middle-earth, will justify the suffering he must necessarily inflict on its denizens to force them to accept him as their rightful ruler, but he hates that he feels he has to be violent. After all, he was originally an angelic being who delighted in perfection and order, and abhorred chaos. In a sequence near the end of the episode, Sauron ensnares Celebrimbor in a wide-scale simulation of Eregion at peace – while in reality, the city is under siege by Adar (Sam Hazeldine)’s army of Orcs – and although the deception is intended to pacify the Elven-smith and keep him in his forge, Sauron himself is deeply immersed in the illusion.
Sauron and Celebrimbor | msn.com
The elaborate transition back from hazy, gold-hued fantasy to stark reality, a combination of complex camera-work, practical effects, and VFX, has become one of the season’s most talked-about moments: a showcase for director Sanaa Hamri and cinematographer Alex Disenhof. As the camera circles Sauron, the last vestiges of illusion fall apart, day turns into night, and the quiet sounds of idyllic life give way to weeping and wailing. On the other side of the river, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) begs Adar to stop his assault on Eregion, warning him that he’s playing right into Sauron’s hands, but Adar is intent on ridding the world of Sauron once and for all, and he feels that the Elves have failed, now it’s his turn. His motivations are noble, but what Adar fails to realize is that he’s turning into the very thing he seeks to destroy, leading his children to battle like lambs to the slaughter – the very thing Sauron threatened to do that resulted in him being Julius Caesar-ed by Adar thousands of years earlier.
Unfortunately, I can’t help but feel (especially in retrospect, now that the season is over) that the series rushed through the steps of Adar’s character devolution, hitting all the vital beats, one immediately after another, without enough time and space between to give each one weight and meaning. Adar is far and away The Rings Of Power‘s most compelling original character, a fascinating and valuable addition to the legendarium, and I’m not sure the writers were fully aware of the potential their own creation had, or he would have been afforded the necessary screentime to let his journey play out organically, at a more natural pace.
In what is becoming a major problem for the show, we bounce back-and-forth between disconnected subplots throughout this episode, never spending quite enough time in one setting to get immersed or totally invested before we’re moving on. In Rhûn, we catch up with The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) towards the tail-end of what has apparently been…days? weeks? months?…of rigorous training with Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), who seemingly advises him – without actually saying it outright – to stop worrying about his friends and start seeking out the staff that will bestow upon him unfathomable power. Of course, such a message would be antithetical to the themes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing, which is why I say “seemingly” because, as is fairly obvious, Bombadil is testing the Stranger. Meanwhile, Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) helps prepare the Stoors for a confrontation with the mysterious masked horsemen who roam the desert, while Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards), who is inexplicably heterosexual in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, shares an eve-of-battle kiss with her Stoor boyfriend of approximately one day, Merimac (Gavi Singh Chera). Aggravatingly, both the Stranger’s and Halflings’ subplots cut off abruptly at this point – before the Stranger’s final test and presumably spur-of-the-moment decision to forsake the quest for his staff and find his friends, or the battle in the Stoor village. Next time we see them, in the season finale, the Stoors are already prisoners and the Stranger has arrived to help, with no connective tissue between these scenes whatsoever.
Tom Bombadil and The Stranger | youtube.com
In Khazad-dûm, Disa (Sophia Nomvete) and her husband Durin IV (Owain Arthur) spend the entire episode engaged in environmental activism, blocking Durin’s increasingly covetous father King Durin III (Peter Mullan) from digging deeper under the mountain. There’s a cool moment where Disa sings to summon a swarm of bats that attack the King’s miners…and that’s pretty much it on that front. For two such vibrant characters, Disa and Durin are routinely given some of the least engaging material to work with, and it’s an injustice to Nomvete and Arthur, who are both delightful actors.
On the isle of Númenor, Elendil (Lloyd Owen) stands accused of treason, while the King’s son Kemen (Leon Wadham), who murdered a man in a place of worship, unsurprisingly gets off scot-free, his “punishment” a governorship in Middle-earth’s Southlands. I must confess to feeling rather miffed that the murdered man in question, Valandil, is never mentioned again after his death – he wasn’t a major character, per se, but he appeared in eight episodes across two seasons, Elendil treated him like a son, and he was the best friend of Elendil’s children, Isildur and Eärien (Ema Horvath), the latter of whom….knows about his death and her boyfriend Kemen’s involvement? Doesn’t know? Will we ever know? I don’t know! What I do know is that the show’s diverse ensemble cast does not immunize it to all criticism of how its predominantly white writers actually handle characters of color (Valandil’s actor Alex Tarrant is of Māori, Samoan and Niuean descent), and fans are well within their rights to raise an eyebrow at The Rings Of Power‘s trend of casually killing off characters of color this season – including Valandil and two out of three non-white named Elves.
On that note, we should probably talk about Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who increasingly feels more like a prop than a person as the season progresses. Míriel, the usurped Queen-Regent, abruptly insists that she be put on trial in Elendil’s place, and upon being cast into the ocean to face judgement from a sea monster, the sequence even more abruptly cuts away before anything actually happens. The scene, which I was excited to see play out, ultimately left a bitter taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons – firstly, because I love a good sea monster, and this is the second time now that The Rings Of Power has teased a sea monster only to show it onscreen for maybe ten seconds: secondly, and more importantly, because this is ostensibly an important beat in Míriel’s fragmented character arc this season, a moment of truth for her and all that she believes in, and yet we as the audience have virtually no access to her thought process and internal conflict throughout. For a sequence which culminates in her staggering out of the ocean, having been found innocent, accompanied by cheers of “Tar-Míriel!” (strongly implying a shift in her favor that was either unintentional or was immediately undone offscreen between this episode and the finale), this scene needed to hold greater weight than it does. Míriel’s lack of interiority is a problem, one that becomes especially apparent any time she’s paired up with Elendil, who has so much.
For example, Elendil’s disintegrating relationship with his daughter Eärien is the focus of a truly moving scene shortly prior to the trial, where the two speak for what they believe to be the last time, Eärien begging him to repent for his crimes and accept Ar-Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), something that Elendil cannot bring himself to do. I mentioned in my review of episode five that Elendil and Pharazôn are more similar than they’d probably care to admit when it comes to parenting, and this scene exemplifies that. Elendil isn’t wrong, but he’s so assured of his rightness that he refuses to explain to a clearly distressed and confused Eärien why he’s choosing to die for his beliefs over staying alive for her, after she already lost her brother (so she thinks); pushing her away instead of letting her in. Is it any wonder that her and Kemen get along, when both their fathers are severe, closed-off, and patronizing? Elendil, to be fair to the guy, is all of those things without meaning to be, but he needs someone to knock some sense into him, and my money’s on Amandil, his own father, whom we’ll presumably meet in season three.
Míriel and Elendil | Twitter @TheRingsofPower
As the episode pinballs between the numerous subplots it’s being asked to rush along, perhaps we do lose sight of our main villain – and The Rings Of Power‘s central throughline – somewhat, making the title “Where Is He?” more apt, albeit ironically. If I were to summarize this episode into a single word, it might be “nebulous”. Not bad, not boring, but unfocused and a bit vague about what it’s trying to accomplish. As a prelude to the Siege of Eregion, it tries to slowly ratchet up the tension, but there’s just no time to make Adar’s dramatic heel-turn feel entirely appropriate for his character at this moment, while as a stepping-stone in various other story arcs, it feels almost irrelevant, with both Míriel and the Stranger undergoing trials we don’t get to see and which don’t move them forward so much as reassure them that they were already on the right path. It’s not my least-favorite episode of the season, but it has the misfortune of being wedged between two excellent episodes that make the dip in quality feel more drastic.
Annatar | Amazon MGM Studios Credit: Ben Rothstein / Prime Video
Just before the premiere of Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power season two in late August, I had the pleasure of speaking with the epic fantasy series’ costume designer, Luca Mosca. We touched on Sauron and Tom Bombadil, but at the time, he couldn’t tell me much about specific characters and their costumes. Now that the season is over, I sat down for another interview with Mosca to talk a little bit more in-depth about the season, specific costumes, and his experience working on The Rings Of Power.
Leith Skilling: So I wanted to start by first saying congratulations to you and your entire team. Season two was so well-received, and the costumes were just beautiful across the board.
Luca Mosca:Thank you so much. I should really stress on the word “Team”, because I was nothing in the face of the skills and professionality and efficiency of my entire Team. Not one of those costumes would be there were it were not for the Team. It takes a village and it’s really like a bee-hive operation and I’ve been chosen to be the queen bee. And everybody around me was just pure excellence. So I wanted to make sure that you are aware that you’re not talking to one person but you’ll be talking to hundreds.
LS: Especially on a production of this scale, I can only imagine how many people are involved at every level.
LM:I think we have been the largest TV show ever made. In New Zealand in particular, one really had the feeling that we were doing something colossal and immense.
LS: Well, on that note, how did you get involved with The Rings Of Power?
LM: I got a call out of the clear blue sky from one of the executive producers who explained that they were sadly losing their costume designer [Kate Hawley] and who invited me to join the show in New Zealand, so I interviewed, put together a few sketches and I was hired.
Luca Mosca with his sister Erica | image courtesy of Luca Mosca
I was coming from the John Wick trilogy but could not joinJohn Wick 4 because I had to go to Italy and join my family for a couple of months because my little sister who had gone skiing off-trail had met her death together with her boyfriend in an avalanche and I had to go tend to my elderly father who had been left alone. That was a true emotional cataclysm in my life. Once my father was taken care of, I was able to leave my dad in capable hands, fly to New Zealand and join the show. It was the proverbial “rollercoaster” or the “peaks and valleys” of life.
LS: Had you read the books or was this world entirely new to you?
LM:Although I was familiar with the trilogy, I read the books again in order to become an “expert” but here’s another intimidating thing: you think you know Lord Of The Rings because you know Saruman and Gollum but then you go into this kind of production and you are surrounded by so much knowledge and you hear people talk and it’s like “what are they talking about?” It’s gigantic, it’s a culture, it’s a language of its own, there are people who know how to write the runes and people who know how to read them, people who know everything and every single detail inside-out, it was an intimidating feeling.
Pharazôn | Amazon MGM Studios Credit: Ben Rothstein / Prime Video
LS: We have to talk about Sauron, because he really is the center of season two. There’s so much fan art that’s been made of Sauron in his “fair form” as Annatar: did you try to reference any of that, and what other references and influences went into creating his new look?
LM: I had to tap into my background, my culture and my heritage and I started researching how in the Middle Ages a good monk would be depicted or a good prophet or a good Samaritan or a good messenger, since we drew a lot of visual inspiration from Middle Ages art or from the Byzantine period or from the Renaissance. One feature of that costume is that it is very drapey even if it looked like it was made out of burlap. The fabric was actually a precious raw silk that looked like burlap because the weave was open and rustic looking. We used this open weave quality and underneath it we put a shiny, silvery fabric that – only at times, only with movement when the knee or the elbow or the chest were pushing against the fabrics and only in places of contact – it shimmered through.
And that to me was one of the most successful costumes because it showed the “deceit” of Sauron: “Oh, look at me, I’m a humble creature, I’m a humble man, I’m dressed in burlap like a poor monk begging for scraps of food”. But in reality, if you dug through his costume, you would find all this decadent luxury underneath the first layer of fabric that is not typical of a monk. It was a beautiful concept and this is what we do as costume designers since we are storytellers and sometimes we even inform the actor of who their character is. Actors sometimes meet their character in front of a mirror in the fitting room, and Charlie Vickers loved that costume.
LS: Sauron and Galadriel obviously have a very close relationship and their journeys parallel each other this season. Do you design one’s outfit with the other one in mind?
LM:Absolutely. Always, always. We prepare “line-ups” of costumes: the illustrations are all lined up on a sheet of paper or on a board, to make sure – and this is something I do in every movie – to make sure that there are no clashes, or no similarities, or if there are similarities, they happen on purpose. Only once I display them out, only after seeing them all together I realize conflicts or issues, so yes: we do design costumes with that in mind, with a palette in mind and the costume of Sauron, the “fair form” at least, had a little bit of an Elven quality. It wasn’t the coloring of Celebrimbor, it wasn’t the greens and the purples of Eregion, but in terms of drape and fluidity and shape, it could very well pass for an Elf. So we do design these things with that in mind, and if you think about it, Sauron’s “fair form” is the same color as Galadriel’s armor, right?
LS: There’s been some speculation online over the similar silhouette and color palette of Sauron’s “fair form” costume and the costume of Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband, in The Lord Of The Rings films – was there any intent behind that?
LM:Not at all, that is not something that we had in mind or that we intended to reference.
Gil-galad and Elrond | Amazon MGM Studios Credit: Ben Rothstein / Prime Video
LS: Is foreshadowing something that you try to incorporate into the costuming? A lot of characters die this season – Celebrimbor, Adar, King Durin – are there any signals to their eventual fates that you incorporate into the costume?
LM: I try to, as much as possible, because us costume designers are psychologists and we try to give hints but sometimes like in the case of the death of Celebrimbor, it’s in the lore and is a known fact, the audience knows in advance. Celebrimbor’s look was one of the big tasks that I was met with when I landed in New Zealand. The Studio wanted a dignified, elegant and elevated Celebrimbor. And again, tapping back into my heritage of history and art, I thought that the best reference for Celebrimbor would have been Dante. Next time you see images of Dante or Dante with Beatrice, note how that kind of fluid gown is kind of translated into Celebrimbor’s costume. This kind of artistic “concept” is very seductive for the audience, for the director, for the actor or the producer. That was another successful translation of cultural elements from my particular background into modern filmmaking.
LS: Do you have a favorite group to design for; Elves, Dwarves, Númenóreans?
LM: You’re basically asking me as a parent to choose his favorite child – that’s impossible! So without telling you what was my favorite or my least-favorite – I can tell you that honestly I did not have a least-favorite, because every world and culture of Rings Of Power was so creatively enjoyable to design and I could go from looking at a bloodied Orc to seeing a celestial Elf during the same costume fitting session and the mental and creative stimulation of going from from Dwarves to Númenóreans or from Orcs to Elves was so satisfying. I particularly loved Númenor. Númenor is to me like ancient Rome at the peak – but at that last day of the peak, when after that the fall of the empire happened. It was at the peak of luxury and decadence and refinement with beautiful fabrics, shiny jewel-tones or primary colors. The Elves were elegant and the Orcs were so creative and designing for the Dwarves was so incredible, but Númenor was a feast of colors, of luxury, of embroidery, it was phenomenal.
LS: When designing armor, what is the process behind that, and especially for the Elves, how do you balance the beauty and aesthetics with practicality and durability?
LM: The first armor that I was tasked to design was for the elven army of Eregion. We looked at brass statues that were becoming tarnished with the verdigris of oxidation. And in my understanding of Eregion – and that’s why I used so much green in it, green and colors of foliage – in Eregion they were master builders and their city was incredible but they never prevented nature from coming indoors. So moss, lichen and creeping ivy were not trimmed but they were invited in and they were part of the environment. So the oxidation concept came up and I applied green “verdigris” to the armor.
How do we make them durable? Durability is a big problem, because much of the armor, just because of the nature of it, goes through battles with a lot of action and gets damaged. But the armor also needs to be made out of materials that are light and safe enough for the actor to wear. Can you only imagine if there were a sharp metal edge and I sent the actor out in it and they fell and got cut and injured? So the choice of materials is very important and is part of a long process. When I pass on the final sketch to the armorer who asks me: “are you sure?”, the little voice inside me says “No, I’m not! I will never be sure, give me another day, give me another week, give me another month”. But we have to move on and to commit to a specific design and to give it to a sculptor who first makes it in clay and also to a metalworker who makes a prototype out of real metal. At that stage I have to pull the trigger and say “this is it” and there’s no going back. For Gil-galad or Elrond the armor was slightly different and personalized, it was similar to the rest of the soldiers yet with slight differences and touches that made it unique to them.
LS: Where do the costumes currently reside?
LM:They’re all back in London at the Studios. As you could see there were a lot of costumes from season one in season two, and costumes from both seasons will also be carried over into the next seasons.
Celebrimbor | Amazon MGM Studios Credit: Ross Ferguson / Prime Video
LS: Lastly, a silly question. When the Lord Of The Rings films came out, there were Barbie dolls of characters like Arwen, Galadriel, Legolas. Is there any chance of a Sauron Barbie doll or a Galadriel Barbie doll for The Rings Of Power?
LM: (laughs) I don’t know, because I’m not involved with that side of marketing. What I do know is that there was a doll of John Wick in the black suit that was not made by the Studio. So these dolls might exist but I am unaware of them.
LS: We have to get on Amazon’s case to make the official versions.
LM:I will definitely make a request and say that Leith requested Barbie dolls.
LS: Well, that is all the time we have. Thank you so much for your time.
LM:You have to shut me up because I could continue for hours as I like to reminisce about all of this; it was a beautiful experience. Let’s hope that the costumes get – that the whole series in general, the actors and the sets and everybody – get the due recognition during awards season.
LS: Emmys all around!
LM:I’m not a big social media person so I don’t have a “thermometer” of what’s going on but I hear a lot of positive stuff so – fingers crossed!
All episodes of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power season two are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE FOUR AHEAD!
Although the term “fan service” used to refer primarily to random scenes of female nudity or gratuitous violence in Japanese anime and manga, in recent decades it has come to be more broadly defined as anything included in a piece of media to please the perceived target demographic, usually the diehard fans of the universe to which that piece of media belongs: and it can range from the inoffensive (a meaningful reference or detail only fans will catch) to the in-your-face (shoehorning in a beloved character just to have them do or say “the thing”, or revisiting an established location when any other would have sufficed). As a rule of thumb, fan service should only have a small, positive impact on a person’s enjoyment of the story being told. It shouldn’t be the story.
Elanor Brandyfoot | youtube.com
Shouldn’t be, I say, but it all too often is, because in every fandom there are some who believe that the sole purpose of stories is to service them, and who consequently treat storytellers as fan servants, with whom they can be as cruel and demanding as they like. These fans do not want their favorite franchises to offer them anything new or unfamiliar – and since they tend to be conservative, straight, cisgender white men, that inevitably includes anyone who doesn’t look like them. Unfortunately, these people have a way of amassing power and influence over fandom spaces by claiming to want what’s best for the fans, and then act as gatekeepers, which is why studios insist on courting them even though it’s been proven time after time that franchises which bend over backwards to try and placate these fans leave themselves nowhere to grow, and for nothing, because these fans will never be satisfied, especially not if they know they can wield their power and influence to prevent their favorite franchises from ever evolving or experimenting, as happened just recently with The Acolyte.
Amazon reportedly has no intention of ending The Rings Of Power prematurely, which is reassuring to hear, but they’re still making efforts to reach “fans” (loiterers, at this point, seems a more accurate term for them) who claim to hate the show; an admirable and probably pointless endeavor, if even the overt fan service in the first season, of both the innocuous and egregious varieties, wasn’t enough. The very act of compressing the three-thousand year timeline of the Second Age, making it possible for the show to adapt all of the major events of the Age without having to switch out the entire human cast between seasons, was a kind of fan service. Bringing in proto-Hobbits and a wizard heavily implied to be Gandalf is fan service as far as I’m concerned, since these characters have yet to fold back into the overarching narrative (and, in fact, stray further afield with each passing episode).
In its second season, and particularly in episode four, The Rings Of Power doubles down on aggressively targeting people who will never admit to watching the show regardless of whether they do, when it should be focused on telling a cohesive story. With everything else the show is trying to accomplish in just eight episodes, there’s simply not enough time to squeeze in appearances from Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), the Barrow-wights, Shelob (in episode three, but she still counts) and the Ents – none of whom have any good reason to be here, with the possible exception of Tom (ironically the last character who should ever need a good reason for anything).
It would be one thing if we didn’t know about most of these cameos beforehand – then at least the shock of seeing a Barrow-wight or an Ent would distract, on an initial viewing, from how extraneous their few scenes really are. But Amazon put it all in the marketing. We’d seen pretty much the entirety of the Barrow-wights sequence, for example, split up across various trailers, teasers, and behind-the-scenes clips long before the episode dropped. Though, to be honest, that was only one of several factors in why that particular scene fell flat for me, not least of which had to do with the atrocious optics of introducing a new Elf, Daemor, played by a Black actor, Oliver Alvin-Wilson, and then killing him off almost immediately; the only casualty of the wights. Never mind that what makes the encounter with the wights so terrifying in The Lord Of The Rings is that they didn’t kill their victims straightaway, instead putting them to sleep and dressing their bodies in the garments and jewelry of the barrows’ original occupants for uncertain, but obviously ritualistic, purposes. The Rings Of Power‘s Barrow-wights are just your run-of-the-mill reanimated skeletons, and not scary in the slightest.
Elrond and Galadriel on the Axa Bridge | youtube.com
Even before they showed up, the wights were getting on my nerves, because I could sense the characters were being forcefully shoved in their direction. My internal alarm bells started ringing when Elrond (Robert Aramayo) mentioned crossing the “Axa Bridge” to reach Eregion. “That’s funny,” I said to myself, “I don’t know an Axa Bridge.” As it turns out, there’s a good reason for that. It was made up for the show, and crosses the River Baranduin south of the Old Forest, on a road leading through the hills of Tyrn Gorthad (better known as the Barrow-downs). All of which is fine. There could conceivably have been a bridge there in the Second Age. It’s just…there’s no reason for Elrond and his company, speeding across Eriador, to go anywhere near it. Draw a straight line from Lindon to the capital city of Eregion on a map of Middle-earth and it takes you across the Baranduin at Sarn Ford, many miles to the south of the non-canonical Axa Bridge, which (according to the map shown in the episode) would have taken Elrond’s company northeast, out of the way entirely.
And that’s not even the most confusing part, nor is it when the group reaches the Axa Bridge, and it’s revealed to span an impassable canyon, deep and wide with sheer sides (on the eastern border of what becomes the Shire, not an area known for having rugged geography). No, it’s the fact that this bridge contrived to take them directly to the Barrow-downs is broken, and so the group’s map expert Camnir (Calam Lynch) declares that to circumvent this canyon that shouldn’t exist, they must turn south through the Barrow-downs…which do not extend south of the Axa Bridge on the map shown to us mere moments before, and in fact, lie somewhat to its north. So either Camnir is extremely, like, embarrassingly bad at following maps, or the writers are. And I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter.
Maybe I’m being nitpicky about the bridge, but I think it’s fair to say that any fantasy story with such a large scope should aspire to give its audience a general sense of where things are in relation to each other, and of the distances between them, especially when that information is often critical to understanding the plot. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elrond traversed the long leagues between Lindon and Eregion in a matter of seconds back in episode one, but three episodes later the same journey in the opposite direction is long, perilous, and requires a map-expert. There’s an even greater distance and many more natural obstacles between Eregion and Mordor, but The Rings Of Power has on multiple occasions treated that span of over a thousand miles as a mere insignificance, easily covered by Sauron (Charlie Vickers) in human form twice, both times while pretending to be wounded, and now by Adar (Sam Hazeldine) and his legions of Orcs, without anyone noticing except a pair of Ents in the Southlands.
But if I don’t stop ranting about maps now, I never will (maybe it’s a subject for a separate post), so let’s move on to the Ents. They’re scarier than the Barrow-wights, which is a surprise. Olivia Williams and Jim Broadbent lend their voices to this dendriform power couple, named Winterblossom and Snaggleroot respectively, who rip people limb-from-limb if they raise axe to tree. They’re great characters: I would have loved to spend time with them in a show that actually had time to spare on an environmentalist murder mystery subplot, but The Rings Of Power is not that show. And although it’s in the process of investigating these Ent serial murders that Isildur (Maxim Baldry) and Estrid (Nia Towle) become conscious of their romantic feelings for each other while Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) proves himself as a father figure to Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), I find it difficult to believe there wasn’t a far more efficient route to the same destination (help, I’m about to make this about maps again). A conflict between the Southlander refugees and those who swore fealty to Adar could have easily provided a backdrop to all of these developments, and simultaneously done more to deepen our investment in the people who will one day become Isildur’s people when he goes on to found the Kingdom of Gondor, whereas following the Ents, even though it’s to rescue Theo, pulls Isildur out of that environment.
Arondir and Isildur | youtube.com
Isildur, marooned on Middle-earth and thrust into a leadership position he didn’t ask for, has an unlikely (but, given his…connection to hobbits, rather fitting) mirror-image in the Harfoot Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), who also finds herself separated from her family and everything that represented home to her in season two, lost in a strange land, forced to take refuge among a people wary of outsiders, and gradually becoming a respected member of their community and helping them in their fight to save their homes. There’s even a burgeoning romance in both subplots, though it’s not Nori herself, but her best friend Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) who falls head over heels in love with one of the Stoor hobbits they encounter in Rhûn; the slightly peculiar Merimac (Gavi Singh Chera). However, seeing as I still strongly feel that Poppy wasn’t originally intended to come back for season two, Nori and Merimac may well have had a relationship in an earlier draft.
But Nori already has a much more interesting relationship with the Stoors through their leader, Gundabel (Tanya Moodie), who reveals to her in a surprisingly powerful scene that the ancestor of the wandering Harfoots was a Stoor, who left the narrow gorge where they’ve always lived in search of a promised land called the Sûzat, a land of rolling green hills and clear rivers. It’s written as Sûza-t in The Peoples Of Middle-earth, but the meaning is the same: it’s derived from a word in the Westron tongue, sûza, which means province, county, or…shire. Sûzat or Sûza-t, therefore, denotes The Shire. This arguably falls under the category of fan service just like Ents and Barrow-wights, but it doesn’t bother me the way those do for two reasons: one, it’s relatively subtle (yes, you can find the translation easily, but the show itself doesn’t provide one), and two, it isn’t just a reference for the fans. This is what Nori’s story has been building towards, all along. She will unite the estranged Hobbit tribes and lead them to a permanent home.
There is one small problem with this, and that’s the timeline. Canonically, the first hobbits to cross the River Baranduin (how do we keep ending up back here?) into The Shire were the brothers Marcho and Blanco in the year 1601 of the Third Age, almost two-thousand years after the events of The Rings Of Power. The showrunners have shown no qualms about compressing three-thousand years of history into what feels like a couple of months, so I wouldn’t be shocked if they extended the history of The Shire back by a millennium, but I’d much rather they didn’t, to be honest.
Alternatively, they could have Nori lead the hobbits to the Gladden Fields, where we know Stoors at least were living about a thousand years into the Third Age, and where Sméagol was born and raised. We’re probably going there one way or another, because the Battle of the Gladden Fields is where the Second Age comes to an end. And it’s worth noting that Isildur, Nori’s parallel, is involved in that battle, so to have their storylines finally segue at the very end would be thematically satisfying. But I’d hate to miss out on the perilous crossing of the Misty Mountains by the hobbits, so maybe Nori will make it to Eriador, and settle her people in the Bree-lands, the only place in Middle-earth where Men and Hobbits coexisted during the Third Age.
Tom Bombadil | nerdist.com
It may come as a surprise to learn that I want more of Nori, Poppy, and The Rings Of Power‘s proto-Hobbits – I’ve been complaining bitterly that the storyline in Rhûn is eating up screentime, after all. And it still is, but the problem is not and has never been the Hobbits. It’s the Stranger (Daniel Weyman), whose search for a gand (a wizard’s staff) is turning into the most frustrating kind of fetch-quest. Weyman is charming, but he can’t elevate relentlessly dull material. Tom Bombadil’s appearance feels timed to inject a shot of energy back into this subplot, but it’s not enough – especially not with how subdued the show’s take on Bombadil is in comparison to the bold, boisterous version we meet in The Lord Of The Rings. I understand that a more book-accurate take on the character, who dances wildly about and breaks into song without the slightest provocation, might have scared off some casual viewers, but that’d be preferable to boring them and underwhelming fans with a solemn and mature Bombadil who mumbles his songs under his breath.
The parts of Tom’s portrayal that I truly enjoyed are all attributable to Kinnear – his hearty laugh and big smile, his ungraceful gait, the twinkle in his eye when he starts to ramble and the distinctive Cornish accent he settled on for the character – all the little things he nails, that assure me he would have been quite comfortable playing Tom as originally written. There’s something to be said for juxtaposing him with Weyman’s reserved and quizzical Stranger, too, as the clear contrast between their personalities makes Tom feel more vibrant and more whimsical than he really is. But as I said back when it was first announced that Tom would be making an appearance in season two, he is a character defined by his refusal to acknowledge the importance or urgency of any narrative that happens to cross his doorstep, and if you, as a screenwriter looking to utilize Tom in your adaptation of a story that didn’t even include him in the first place, aren’t prepared to start there, you’d probably be better off using any other character from the legendarium.
The Rings Of Power‘s Tom Bombadil not only takes an active interest in the Stranger’s journey, but aggressively pushes him to confront the mysterious Dark Wizard (Ciarán Hinds) before his power becomes one with Sauron’s and they set Middle-earth aflame, as the Wizard’s already done to Rhûn. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that the writers went this route, but I’m not happy about it. For all the changes it’s made, The Rings Of Power has never, to my recollection, committed such a blatant mischaracterization – Tolkien having only sketched out in the broadest of terms what most of the protagonists of the Second Age were like as people, and characters like Galadriel and Elrond, whom we know from the books, being significantly younger here even by Elf standards, has given the writers leeway. But Tom is, in his own words, “eldest”, predating the first raindrop and the first acorn. It’s hard to handwave away the differences in his depiction by saying that three-thousand years changed him, seeing as he’s roughly fifty-five thousand years old.
There is one side-effect of Tom’s inclusion, I should note, that almost – almost – justifies his inclusion; that we get to hear his song, lyrics lifted straight from the pages of The Lord Of The Rings and set to music by the brilliant Bear McCreary, belted out by Rufus Wainwright over the end-credits with ethereal backing vocals from Raya Yarbrough, who has a voice cameo in the episode as Tom’s wife Goldberry. It’s a poignant rendition of a nonsensical ditty, befitting the version of the character we see in the show, and it’s never leaving my playlist. McCreary’s work on season one received widespread acclaim but was shamefully snubbed for an Emmy nomination: I pray that voters do not make the same mistake again next year. The technical categories are where The Rings Of Power has its best chance of nabbing gold – in terms of music, visual effects, production design, costume, hair and makeup design, there’s simply nothing else on TV that comes close to matching it. But I don’t seriously expect it to pick up so much as a single nomination in any of the major categories, which might as well forbid entry to non-HBO genre television. And that’s a real shame, because in a fair world, Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards’ symbiotic yet distinct performances as Sauron and Celebrimbor could plausibly secure them both trophies.
The Dark Wizard | radiotimes.com
Their absence from this episode, the first (and thankfully, the last) of the season not to check in on the situation in Eregion, is felt strongly. Without Sauron physically present to keep The Rings Of Power‘s various story threads fastened to the central throughline he represents, they come loose alarmingly quickly, disrupting the smooth flow of the narrative. Bolstering these subplots to the point where they can eventually stand on their own is a matter of finding the time to do so: time, the only resource in short supply on the most expensive television show ever made; wasted – in this episode at least – on superfluous cameos.
