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“The Rings Of Power” Season 2, Episode 6 Is Fine, But Lacks Focus

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.

Charlie Vickers as Sauron, looking into the flames of a brazier standing in the foreground, which have taken the shape of a Balrog with curled horns, glowing eyes, and a gaping maw. Sauron has long blond hair, and wears the faintest of smirks on his face.
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.

Charlie Vickers as Sauron and Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor, standing outdoors in the main square of Eregion. Sauron has long blonde hair and wears a black robe with gold trim and a wide gold belt. He is presenting a gilded hammer to Celebrimbor. Celebrimbor has short brown hair and wears a green velvet gown.
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.

Rory Kinnear as Tom Bombadil and Daniel Weyman as the Stranger, standing with their backs to the camera on the edge of a cliff overlooking a forest of bare-branched trees in a rocky valley. Tom wears a pointed hat and wears a long blue coat. The Stranger has shoulder-length gray hair and wears a mossy gray-green robe.
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.

Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Miriel with Lloyd Owen as Elendil standing behind her, holding her arm steady as she walks up a rocky path between rows of soldiers and citizens. Miriel has long dark curly hair and wears a sleeveless white gown. Elendil has shaggy shoulder-length brown hair and wears a brown tunic.
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.

Episode Rating: 6/10

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Exclusive: “The Rings Of Power” Costume Designer Talks Season Two, Sauron, And More

SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO AHEAD!

Charlie Vickers as Annatar in The Rings Of Power, standing with his right hand raised to his chin in a contemplative gesture. He has long blond hair held back by a serpentine gold circlet, and wears a brown leather apron over a silver robe with minimal silver embroidery around the collar. He also wears brown leather arm-wraps.
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 standing with his arms wrapped around his sister Erica. Luca is wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt. Erica is wearing a blue-green headscarf and black-and-white dress.
Luca Mosca with his sister Erica | image courtesy of Luca Mosca

I was coming from the John Wick trilogy but could not join John 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.

Trystan Gravelle as Pharazon in The Rings Of Power, striding towards the camera with his hands by his side, as a wind whips at him. He has long dark hair going gray and a beard streaked with black. He wears a crimson robe with a long cloak and an ornamental silver breastplate with numerous belts around his waist.
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.

Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad and Robert Aramayo as Elrond, standing side-by-side, surrounded by Orcs. Gil-galad has long dark brown hair and wears a burnished gold breastplate emblazoned with the intertwining gold and silver branches of the Two Trees of Valinor over a long-sleeved pale yellow tunic with large pauldrons and vambraces. Elrond has short, tousled dark brown hair and wears a very similar suit of armor but in silver. He has a deep wound in his right cheek, and blood is running down his face.
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.

Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor in The Rings Of Power, seated at a small desk watching a candle burning. He has tousled brown hair streaked with soot and grime, and wears a brown leather apron over a dark green robe with holly leaves embroidered in spring green and gold around the collar. The tools and accoutrements of a jewelsmith are scattered about him.
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.

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“The Rings Of Power” Season 2, Episode 5 Finally Puts The Rings In Focus

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE FIVE AHEAD!

In Middle-earth, pieces of magical jewelry are almost inevitably the catalyst for widespread death and devastation, and in and of themselves are often objects of psychological horror. The Silmarillion is presented as a compilation of legends recounting how several generations of heroes and villains were driven to self-destruction in their relentless pursuit of the Silmarils, three jewels shaped by the legendary craftsman Fëanor. The Hobbit is a whimsical children’s story that abruptly morphs into something much darker when the Arkenstone is introduced, closely resembling a Silmaril in both appearance and narrative function. The Lord Of The Rings follows the quest to destroy the One Ring, which is semi-sentient and does everything in its considerable power to prevent its wearer from wanting to take it off or give it away, much less do harm to it. And Amazon’s The Rings Of Power attempts to piece together the story of how that and nineteen similar Rings came into being; how they were tainted in the making by the Dark Lord Sauron (Charlie Vickers), and how they almost brought all of Middle-earth under his authoritarian rule forever.

Close-up shot of a gold chalice on a table, around the rim of which are placed seven gold rings, each standing upright and crowned with a heavy jewel.
The Seven Rings | youtube.com

The Rings Of Power is the only one of these stories not told in full by J.R.R. Tolkien. A much abridged version of the tale can be found in the Appendices to The Lord Of The Rings, and slightly more detail is given in a short epilogue to The Silmarillion and in a fragmented outline published in Unfinished Tales, but Amazon only bought the rights to The Lord Of The Rings from the Tolkien Estate, so the Appendices are what their writers have to work with: excepting a few stray names exclusive to The Silmarillion and/or Unfinished Tales (like Sauron’s alter ego in Eregion, Annatar) that were apparently the result of separate bargains. Every interaction between characters on the show has been the invention of other minds and hands besides Tolkien’s own. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because as I’ve said previously, The Rings Of Power thrives when it’s given free rein.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the dynamic between Sauron and Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards). In The Lord Of The Rings, all that is said of the second-greatest Elven craftsman after Fëanor (besides having helped construct the West-gate of Khazad-dûm, an event the show covers very briefly) is that he was deceived by Sauron’s fair form and his promise to help the Elves rebuild Middle-earth after the catastrophic wars of the First Age. Together, they forged sixteen Rings of Power, and three Celebrimbor made separately from Sauron. But were the Rings his idea, or Sauron’s? Was Celebrimbor ever suspicious of his partner before the day, it is said, when Sauron first put on the One Ring he had forged alone and the Elves knew they had been betrayed? What, if any, signs of Sauron’s true agenda did he miss or look past nonetheless? What was their relationship? These and other details simply don’t exist.

Yet The Rings Of Power navigates skillfully through the gaps and cracks in the pseudo-historical narrative, weaving an almost unendurably intimate story of one man (well, elf)’s anguishing descent into paranoia under the soothing manipulations of a sociopathic deity that has only a loose basis in the text but is about as quintessentially Tolkienian as anyone could hope to write, evoking the tragedy of Fëanor, inevitably – but also, and arguably even more so, the deeply depressing Tale Of The Children Of Húrin, or Narn I Hîn Húrin, whose sibling protagonists eventually commit suicide after discovering that they had been bewitched by a malevolent dragon into an incestuous relationship with each other. Obviously, not quite the same situation (though the dragon Glaurung, with his ability to mesmerize and deceive, is actually very similar to Sauron), but as The Rings Of Power‘s Celebrimbor begins to wake from the spell Sauron cast on him, learning from his friends in Khazad-dûm that the seven rings he gifted to the Dwarves have malfunctioned horribly in some way, he experiences all the same emotions – most viscerally, a sense of horror and revulsion with himself.

Sauron, still posing as the lovely Annatar, is there at once to guide Celebrimbor gently but firmly through his crisis, assuring the Elven-smith that even though it was his fault the seven rings do not work as intended, together they can make things right by forging more: nine more, to be precise. Sauron’s unwavering composure, in stark contrast to Celebrimbor’s increasing panic and bewilderment, is another classic manipulation tactic, giving Celebrimbor the illusion of something steady to hold onto as his world seems to be falling apart, while simultaneously misleading onlookers to their relationship into believing that Sauron is the sounding board for Celebrimbor’s erratic outbursts. Within their controlled environment, the boundaries of which continue to shrink as Sauron isolates Celebrimbor from his people, the once-powerful elf retains just enough agency for it to seem plausible, even to him, that he is in fact responsible for all his actions over the past several weeks, intensifying his feelings of confusion because he keeps making choices that seem right and they keep backfiring.

Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor, in close-up, with Charlie Vickers as Annatar standing behind him, looming over his right shoulder. Celebrimbor has short brown hair and wears a forest-green pleated velvet robe with holly leaves embroidered around the frilly collar. Annatar has long blonde hair held back by a golden circlet, and wears a brown leather apron over a plain white robe with moderate silver embroidery.
Celebrimbor and Annatar | msn.com

Vickers and Edwards, separately and especially together, continue to be the season’s standout performers, with Edwards more than making up for his lack of screentime throughout season one and the first half of season two. His mildness, easily mistaken for meekness, belies his true strength and force of will, which Edwards summons to the forefront of his depiction as the two smiths clash more frequently in episode five. Realizing that he cannot convince Celebrimbor of the necessity of the Nine Rings, Sauron enlists their young pupils to help him forge the Nine in open defiance of Celebrimbor’s orders, all before his very eyes. Sauron is not the smith Celebrimbor is, however, and Celebrimbor eventually feels compelled to intervene and lend them his aid, if only to prevent any of his cherished apprentices from being injured or inadvertently killed. No doubt that was Sauron’s intention, to strongarm the stubbornly virtuous smith into finishing the job they started by cruelly exploiting his love for his people, which Celebrimbor could not hide even if he were trying.

Vickers, meanwhile, begins stripping the already thin layers of humanity out of his character, his eyes becoming colder, his posture more statuesque, and his demeanor more aloof and unkind as the project grinds to a halt just inches away from completion. The almost imperceptible fidgeting of his fingers or the twitch in his jaw whenever the forge is briefly still, and his soulless mimicry of Celebrimbor’s genuine care and concern for the smiths all speak to his growing impatience and willingness to start shedding blood to get what he wants.

I should probably mention Mirdania (Amelia Kenworthy) at this point: the only named smith besides Celebrimbor, she acts as a representative for the whole group, and The Rings Of Power inevitably puts her character through a great deal of emotional and mental abuse on their behalf – but where Celebrimbor and other male victims of Sauron’s manipulation are shown to fall slowly under his spell and are allowed to keep their dignity even in their darkest moments, Mirdania is won over by a single compliment about her physical appearance, rather than her skills, and her role almost immediately reduced to Sauron’s hopelessly smitten, willing plaything. Given that she is, in addition to being the only named smith, the only named female character in Eregion and one of a handful of named female Elves on the show, the decision to utilize her in this manner is an extremely unfortunate one.

The Dwarves weave in and out of Sauron’s plans, mostly impervious to his attempted manipulation of their minds, but not entirely incorruptible. The typically sober and cautious King Durin III (Peter Mullan, who has scoffed at fans who take the show “ridiculously seriously”, but is by no means phoning in his performance) is emboldened by the Ring of Power on his finger: at first making use of the heightened perception it grants him to locate a place in the cavern wall where the Dwarves can safely chip away, permitting a thin beam of sunlight to reach the dark-enshrouded underground city of Khazad-dûm. Of course, because we’re already on episode five of eight, it’s not long before the King’s newfound ability leads him in the opposite direction, deeper into the mountain’s ancient foundations, probing for the untapped natural treasury he knows lies just out of his reach.

Concurrently, his daughter-in-law Disa (Sophia Nomvete) takes a wrong turn in the market and ends up on the shores of a vast subterranean lake (hate when that happens), where she makes an unsettling discovery: the Dwarves may not be alone in Khazad-dûm. Something deep under the city is awake, the force of its breath stirring the waters of the lake. But Disa and her husband Durin IV (Owain Arthur)’s attempts to warn the King prove unsuccessful, so together they devise a plan to prevent him from delving any further. The fiery Nomvete steals most every scene she’s in, but Arthur’s performance is equally impressive this episode, as his character finally stops hiding behind his cantankerous humor and opens up about his complicated feelings towards his father.

Sophia Nomvete as Disa and Owain Arthur as Durin IV, in a crowded market. Disa has curly dark hair piled up on her head, and wears a silver-and-gold mantle over a pleated gray dress encrusted with gold. Durin has bushy reddish-brown hair and a long braided beard, and wears a rust-red studded breastplate over a red-and-gold tunic with red leather armbands.
Disa and Durin | geekgirlauthority.com

Fatherhood is a prominent but understated motif in The Rings Of Power, and the show depicts a wide range of father/child relationships, often complex and tense: you have the Durins double, who are at each other’s throats half the time but still love each other deeply, even if they have a hard time expressing that; Adar (Sam Hazeldine), whose name in Sindarin literally translates to ‘father’, doing what he thinks is best for his adopted children, the Orcs, and inadvertently causing them to resent him; the Silvan Elf Arondir, in many ways Adar’s parallel, struggling to form a connection with the mortal youth Theo, whose mother Arondir loved; and you have Ar-Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) and Elendil (Lloyd Owen) in Númenor – two very different men on opposite sides of an ideological divide, who have more in common when it comes to their parenting skills (or lack thereof) than is probably evident at first glance.

That’s not to say they’re equally awful fathers: Pharazôn straight-up does not like his son Kemen (Leon Wadham), and blatantly manipulates him with an empty promise that he’ll tell Kemen what his dead mother foresaw of his future if he agrees to do his dirty work. But Elendil, while he’s a heroic character where Pharazôn is not, is almost as emotionally detached from his children. He loves them, but he doesn’t know how to talk to them, and makes very few attempts (at least that we see). His daughter Eärien (Ema Horvath) is well within her rights to be confused and upset by his actions: he campaigned hard for Númenor to go to war, got her brother killed (so they both think), and now refuses to speak of it, except to spout the vagaries of the Faithful. Unfortunately, she’s had so few scenes this season that her decision to move fully into Pharazôn’s camp and join him in overthrowing the government still feels like a sudden heel-turn, but I get it.

I can’t bring myself to hate Eärien, but Kemen? Well, let’s just say that’s a different story. He may not have willingly ransacked a holy site and intimidated people peacefully praying if it weren’t for his father’s instructions, but goading a man into fighting him, and then killing that man dishonorably by stabbing him in the back after said man spared his life – that was all Kemen’s doing. And it would be bad enough if it were some random Númenórean extra we didn’t know previously, but it’s not: the man in question, Valandil (Alex Tarrant), is an endearing character we’ve known from season one, whom Elendil loved as his own son, and his death comes as a complete shock. The imagery of him bleeding out in Elendil’s arms, while Kemen casually cleans his blade in holy water, cements Kemen as The Rings Of Power‘s worst character – by which I do not mean that Wadham is giving a bad performance, or that the character is poorly-written (underwritten, yes), but rather that he is so despicable he gives Sauron and other, more competent villains on the show a run for their money. He faded into the background in earlier episodes, but no longer.

Episode five, Halls Of Stone, achieves an almost perfect balance between the subplots in Eregion, Khazad-dûm and Númenor that the season as a whole could have stood to replicate. Writer Nicholas Adams, who also wrote the standout sixth episode of season one, Udûn, finds and focuses in on the emotional core in every scene of his precise, yet richly nuanced script; a focus maintained by co-directors Sanaa Hamri and Louise Hooper. Adams will not be returning for the show’s yet-to-be-officially-announced third season, sadly, but this is the quality of writing The Rings Of Power really ought to be matching from here on out (as the second season is now complete, I can say it comes so close as to make little difference in the final three episodes, but falls just a little short).

Leon Wadham as Kemen and Trystan Gravelle as Ar-Pharazon, standing side-by-side in a vast hall, talking. Kemen has short brown hair and wears a russet-brown robe with a gold cape and dark blue sleeves. Pharazon has shoulder-length curly gray hair and a beard, and wears a silver toga-like garment over a dark red robe, with a golden scepter in his hand.
Kemen and Ar-Pharazôn | meaww.com

With this episode, The Rings Of Power rights itself after a short rough patch (short, I say, but two weak episodes still constitute a quarter of the season), and gives us a glimpse of what might have been if the season had been stripped of its slow-burn accessory subplots in Pelargir and Rhûn. Everything falls into place around Edwards’ Celebrimbor, Vickers’ Sauron, and the titular Rings – which are not just props, but protagonists (or antagonists) in their own right, with a degree of sentience and agency. Finally, that’s actually starting to feel like the case.

Episode Rating: 9/10

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“The Rings Of Power” Returns To Númenor In Season 2, Episode 3

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE THREE AHEAD!

The fact that it takes The Rings Of Power three whole episodes, almost half its second season, just to reintroduce all of the major characters from the first is demonstrative of a major structural weakness: it doesn’t have enough time or space for all the far-flung subplots it insists on treating as though they do anything to advance what is in theory if not in execution the overarching narrative of this season. That’s not to say that spending time in Pelargir with Isildur (Maxim Baldry) and the Southlander refugees is unimportant in the long run, but here and now it absolutely is, and every second spent there is a second that could have gone towards further fleshing out Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and his relationship with Annatar (Charlie Vickers), or the bare-bones story of how the titular Rings of Power come to be, which is currently being told in bits and pieces between the substantial blocks of screentime devoted to peripheral characters.

Trystan Gravelle as Pharazon in The Rings Of Power approaches an enormous golden eagle standing on the balcony of the Court of the Kings, just past the wide arched entrance. Pharazon has long curly gray hair and wears a dark red robe.
Pharazôn and the Eagle | youtube.com

Even the most critical subplot on the show, that of Númenor and its people, is being shortchanged. We spend a grand total of fifteen minutes on the island kingdom of Men in the third episode, jumping straight into a funeral ceremony for a character most casual viewers have probably forgotten entirely in the intervening two years since the first season finale where he quietly passed away; King Tar-Palantir. The audience has no emotional attachment to him, which is fine, we don’t necessarily need to care about the guy to understand that his death marks a turning-point in Númenor’s history…unfortunately, the extremely brief sequence doesn’t convey the magnitude of the moment either, instead feeling oddly hollow and mundane.

The parts needed to assemble a compelling story rife with political intrigue are all there – the old king’s unpopular daughter Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), already acting as his regent, stands poised to take the throne, as is her right, while her charismatic cousin Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) is positioning himself as the figurehead for a revolution – but there’s only so much that can be done with them in under a quarter of an hour, and taking time across multiple episodes to build slowly towards the inevitable coup isn’t really an option when the season is already close to being over.

This may be the result of a disagreement between the show’s editors and producers over how much screentime to give the Numenoreans, reported on by Fellowship Of Fans in August of last year, though not knowing how many and what kind of scenes were left on the cutting-room floor, I can’t definitively say that their inclusion would have helped – besides which, I can’t pass judgement on what I imagine we might have seen from this subplot (ideally, a gripping succession drama rivaling House Of The Dragon‘s in terms of complexity and depth), only the version that Amazon saw fit to release into the world: which it brings me no pleasure to report lacks any and all of the aforementioned qualities.

While the character of Pharazôn stands out in his few scenes, entirely due to Gravelle’s spellbinding performance, he is also the greatest victim of the edit – or, perhaps, the writers? Whoever it was, let me say, that made him an opportunistic spectator to the coup we are meant to understand was the culmination of his political machinations. He certainly doesn’t shoot down any of the treasonous ideas being bandied around the dinner-table by the overtly duplicitous Lord Belzagar (Will Keen) and the ambitious young architecture student Eärien (Ema Horvath), but he seems almost disinterested in their conversation himself. It is Eärien who disrupts Míriel’s coronation ceremony by exposing the Queen Regent’s treasured seeing-stone, her palantír, and Belzagar who spins the arrival of an Eagle of Manwë (obviously intended for Míriel) into a sign for Pharazôn and leads the crowd in chanting his name.

Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Miriel, standing with her hands clasped at her waist. She has dark hair hanging in loose ringlets, held back by a silver diadem encrusted with large dark gems. She wears a white gown with a black-and-white mosaic collar.
Queen Regent Míriel | telltaletv.com

Pharazôn, for his part, gives Míriel one last chance before her coronation to simply follow his counsel, offering her a choice between a red gown he says represents Númenor’s glorious future and a white gown representing its  somber past. Míriel chooses the white, declaring it the “humbler” of the two options. Humble is perhaps not the word I would use to describe any dress that comes with a mother-of-pearl mosaic collar, but then, I am not a Númenórean monarch. It is a gorgeous piece, far and away my favorite costume on the show, and you can read my interview with The Rings Of Power‘s costume designer Luca Mosca, where I asked about it specifically, here. Pharazôn, however, is visibly irritated by her virtuosity. If the idea is that he might have called off the coup if she had chosen differently (i.e. demonstrating willingness to be molded into a more pragmatic leader), it’s not explored any further, and just makes Pharazôn seem confused.

It’s a great scene for Míriel, though. Some viewers may find her staunch faith and moral integrity to be uninteresting qualities, but I see her as The Rings Of Power‘s most quintessentially Tolkienian protagonist: noble, fair and cold, in possession of a quiet strength she does not project outwardly, because she does not seek to be regarded as unassailable or unapproachable. This is illustrated beautifully when she embraces a grieving mother who had slapped her across the face just moments before, taking that nameless woman’s pain and sorrow upon herself as if it were her own. She may not have Pharazôn’s skill for addressing crowds and choosing words that can apply to many situations, but one-on-one, she is the more genuinely compassionate of the two. And most of that is down to Addai-Robinson, who on top of everything else, is playing a blind Míriel in The Rings Of Power season two (something that the show, admittedly, hasn’t done much with, but which factors into the fear that she is “weaker” since coming back from Middle-earth).

Apart from these two, no one else in Númenor has had enough screentime to make a strong impression this season. Eärien’s grief and rage over her brother Isildur’s apparent death in the Southlands, the driving factor behind her decision to break away from her father Elendil (Lloyd Owen) and join Pharazôn in overthrowing the Queen Regent, is referenced once or twice, giving her at least the impression of interiority, but her boyfriend Kemen (Leon Wadham), Pharazôn’s son, exists solely to fill out crowd shots as far as I can tell. Even Elendil just stands around. His only scene with any meat on its bones is one that’s been copy-and-pasted over from the first season – specifically, the scene in which Elendil, unable to calm Isildur’s distraught horse Berek, lets the animal run free in the Southlands.

Shelob, a monstrous spider, rears up on its hind legs and lunges forward.
Shelob | youtube.com

The scene ended there in season one, but this time we follow Berek back to the place where he lost his rider, amongst the smoking rubble of what used to be the human village of Tirharad, before Adar (Sam Hazeldine) and his Orcs moved in. Wandering into a nearby cave, he finds Isildur trussed up in webs, in line to be devoured by Shelob. The iconic monster’s inclusion in The Rings Of Power is, unfortunately, the most shameless form of fan-service: she could just as easily have been a creature invented for the show, like the mud-worm in episode four. You won’t learn anything about her that you don’t already know from the books or movies, though in fairness, I suppose there’s not much more to know. She’s a giant spider that eats people (even her brood-mother Ungoliant is just a giant spider that eats everything; these are not exactly Tolkien’s most complex characters we’re talking about here). While the sequence in Shelob’s lair isn’t likely to be anyone’s highlight of the season, it kicks the episode into gear – and as an arachnophobe, Shelob’s design and movements are all sorts of icky. She is smaller and less heavily armored than in The Lord Of The Rings, but what she lacks in size she makes up for with increased speed and agility.

Just as the ancient hero Beren, fleeing from giant spiders, stumbled upon Lúthien dancing in a hemlock grove in the Forest of Doriath, so Isildur escapes Shelob and meets Estrid (Nia Towle) – but the similarities between their love stories end there. Estrid, mistaking Isildur for an Orc, stabs him in the thigh, and then, while apologizing profusely, pulls the knife out of the wound (big no no), setting the tone for their interactions going forward. They make a pretty cute couple, if you like your romantic leads to share exactly one braincell between them. Estrid’s theme, softly undulating with a hint of mystery, also happens to be my favorite track off the OST. But is that enough to justify her and Isildur’s combined screentime greatly exceeding that of Celebrimbor and Sauron in this episode?

Once they’ve reached their destination, the Númenórean outpost of Pelargir, and linked up with the Southlander refugees, Isildur and Estrid’s short-term goals are fulfilled – sure, Isildur wants to go home and reunite with his family and friends, but he’s safe, and the show could have conceivably left him and Estrid there until a more opportune moment to pick up their story thread again. It doesn’t do that, which is why we end up lingering in the Southlands far longer than was probably necessary, with a pair of Ent serial killers and the “Wild Men”, the show’s term for the Southlanders who have chosen to serve Adar (no relation to the Wild Men in The Lord Of The Rings). I strongly suspect that Nazanin Boniadi’s herbalist-turned-reluctant-leader Bronwyn, the season one protagonist of the Southlands subplot, would have somehow provided the connective tissue between these leftover pieces of a narrative: but Boniadi chose not to return for The Rings Of Power‘s second season and the role was not recast. She is instead revealed to have died offscreen, leaving her son Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) an orphan and the Southlanders leaderless.

Regardless of intent, Bronwyn’s death accentuates the themes that underpin all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories of Middle-earth, this one especially: the inevitability of death, and the fear of it. That fear is the driving force behind the creation of the Rings of Power, something the show was trying (albeit awkwardly) to convey in season one when it imposed a deadline on the Elves to either halt the effects of the passage of time on their bodies and souls, leave Middle-earth forever and return west across the sea to the Undying Lands, or fade, becoming intangible and powerless. In season two, the show gets the same idea across more gracefully using the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm, whose survival is dependent on a resource – sunlight – they have precious little of, and less and less with each tremor that threatens to bring the weight of the Misty Mountains down upon their heads. Celebrimbor, the smith who saved the Elves, is happy to help the Dwarves out of their own predicament, and no less so when Sauron shyly confesses that High King Gil-galad has forbade the making of any more Rings.

Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor and Charlie Vickers as Annatar, standing in a forge filled with smoke. Celebrimbor has short curly brown hair and wears a red robe with gold embroidery. Annatar has long blonde hair held back by a golden circlet and wears a brown leather apron over a white robe.
Celebrimbor and Annatar | thedailybeast.com

But while it would be no overstatement to say this is the single most important plot development of the season thus far, The Rings Of Power doesn’t communicate that by giving the lion’s share of screentime to a character like Isildur, who has plenty of time still to morph into a convincing protagonist before he’s called upon to perform the great deeds that will make him a household name. I’m doing my best not to spoil what’s coming for Celebrimbor, but he doesn’t have much time left, and the show needs to do a better job – and quickly – of managing its jostling subplots so they’re not squeezing the “A” story.

Episode Rating: 6.5/10