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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

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Annatar Arrives In “The Rings Of Power” Season 2, Episode 2

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

Ever since it was announced that Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power would be adapting the events of the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, fans have been waiting to hear one name – a name which never appears in the text of The Lord Of The Rings or its Appendices, but has seeped into mainstream perception of the story, by way of fan-art and fanfiction. It is a name I feared we might never hear spoken onscreen, after we learned that Amazon does not have the rights to any of the books in which it was published, including The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales: Annatar…”Lord of Gifts” in Quenya…the name adopted by the Dark Lord Sauron (Charlie Vickers) when he went among the Elven-smiths of Eregion, disguised as an emissary of the Valar, and deceived their wisest. While the writers could have invented their own name for the character, it would have been a blow to The Rings Of Power‘s legitimacy, perhaps a fatal one.

Charlie Vickers as Annatar in The Rings Of Power, facing Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor, whose back is turned to the camera. Annatar has long blonde hair held back by a golden circlet, and wears a white mantle over a white tunic with silver embroidery. Celebrimbor has short brown hair and wears a dark red robe with gold embroidery.
Annatar and Celebrimbor | youtube.com

We still don’t know exactly how Amazon goes about acquiring a name or piece of information from The Silmarillion, etc., and in the absence of official answers rumors thrive. TheOneRing.net reported in January, citing “verifiable spy reports” and some wild rumors started on 4chan, that Amazon had quietly acquired the rights to The Silmarillion, though they said the same thing before season one aired, and only a single Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales-exclusive name – that of Númenor’s capital city, Armenelos – ever popped up in the final product. In February, Fellowship Of Fans reported that Amazon had gone to the Tolkien Estate to negotiate access to specific passages from Unfinished Tales regarding the Istari. For my part, I’ve always assumed that the showrunners are so tight-lipped on this subject because they have to do a fair bit of pleading with the higher-ups at Amazon to in turn go back to the Tolkien Estate (whom they paid $250M upfront in 2017 for the rights to The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, ironically the two least useful pieces of source material for the show they ended up making) and shell out more mind-boggling amounts of money in exchange for the rights to use a name like Annatar.

It’s just the name, nothing more (so far), but the name alone carries weight, and the effect of its use in an already dramatic sequence is immediate and enthralling. Sauron, having weaseled his way back into Eregion disguised as Halbrand, under the pretense of wanting to share with its lord Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) news of the Three Rings – which he has prevented from reaching Eregion – finally secures an audience with the Elven craftsman near the end of the episode…and finds him less amenable than he had hoped to the idea of forging more Rings of Power for the race of Men. Celebrimbor is, in fact, so put off by the very notion of placing objects of such world-altering potential in the hands of “covetous” mortals that he is unwilling to treat with Halbrand further, and the Dark Lord, internally sweating bullets, has no choice but to confess that he is not a man at all. He turns to sorcery, the most advanced form of optical illusions, to convince Celebrimbor that he is in truth a beautiful blonde envoy of the Valar named Annatar in search of an artist, preferably an extremely talented Elven jewelsmith directly descended from the very greatest, capable of saving Middle-earth and its people from imminent destruction.

Annatar’s appropriation of Christian religious imagery, first speaking to Celebrimbor as a disembodied booming voice coming from his hearth and then appearing to descend from the clouds, succeeds in overawing the reverent Elven smith, and his shameless flattery certainly doesn’t hurt either. Poor Celebrimbor; he’s really not a bad guy. It wasn’t arrogance that told him to open the gates to Halbrand, it was frustration with the Elves for keeping him in the dark, and empathy for the man alongside whom he did his best work (and knows it), who tells a similar story of being disrespected and dismissed when he was no longer useful to the Elves. The Rings Of Power makes a point of showing Sauron manipulate his victims not by exploiting their vices but by turning their virtues against them – Galadriel (Morfydd Clark)’s righteous anger, Adar (Sam Hazeldine)’s love for his people, and now Celebrimbor’s kind heart. A person can resist their vices, or overcome them. But if their virtues are so thoroughly corroded that the two become confused, they will never be safe in their own skin.

Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor, in close-up, standing on a mezzanine overlooking his forge. It is dark. His face is lined with worry and possibly fear. He has short brown hair, and wears a red robe with gold embroidery.
Celebrimbor | youtube.com

Edwards, 54, may not physically resemble the image many fans had of Celebrimbor, typically portrayed as a (frankly rather generic) young, square-jawed Elf with long dark hair and broad shoulders, but the star of Britain’s National Theatre carries himself with a dignity that is thoroughly Fëanorian, perhaps most palpable in the scene where he goes to speak with Halbrand at the gates, meaning to turn him away; it is raining, and Celebrimbor is followed by attendants carrying a large and ineffective umbrella over his head, a visual that would be distracting, to the scene’s detriment, if the actor under the umbrella wasn’t unwaveringly convincing as someone worthy of the whole production, but Edwards is. Far from stoic, however, his character is downright excitable, the fast and fluttery mannerisms coaxed out of him by Sauron evoking a moth drawn instinctively to the flame that will consume it. I don’t have much to add about Vickers’ invariably alluring performance here that I didn’t already write in my review of episode one, but suffice it to say that his Sauron remains the dark heart of the season.

Sauron’s gravitational pull, irresistible even when he’s not onscreen, finally knits (most of) The Rings Of Power‘s disparate story threads into a cohesive web. The Rings themselves give him tiny fingerholds in the minds of their wearers, by way of which a shadow may creep undetected even into the golden realm of Lindon. And for Galadriel, wearing a Ring of Power risks solidifying a connection between her and the Dark Lord that was already there. During the brief time they knew each other, Sauron planted a venomous seed in her exposed heart, and Clark, transferring a bit of Saint Maud to Middle-earth, vividly conveys Galadriel’s bewildered horror, disgust and anger at having to share her body with it as it invisibly takes root. I keep coming back to the moment after she instinctively refers to Sauron as “Halbrand” in a heated argument with Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), undermining all her efforts to prove that Sauron no longer has influence over her – the expression that momentarily contorts her face is not comprised merely of predictable regret and shame, but also shock that her tongue could betray her so, the impatient frustration that comes with knowing exactly how her slip-up will be used against her, and the feeling she refuses to confront that tells her Gil-galad is right to distrust her. Layers upon layers of emotions, communicated in a split second.

Underwater shot of a hand, reaching for the bottom of a shallow pool teeming with small fish and a few brightly-colored coral. The hand wears a single golden ring, in which a dark red gemstone is set.
Narya on the hand of Círdan | youtube.com

Other standouts from the cast include Robert Aramayo, playing Elrond as a battered young idealist who would rather see the Elves abandon Middle-earth than become beholden to the Rings of Power (an interesting and important counterargument to Gil-galad’s assertion that their use is justified by the dire circumstances); and the charming Ben Daniels as Círdan, whom I feel obliged to inform you all shaves with a seashell and sea-foam – but unfortunately also has to deliver some of the season’s most perplexing dialogue thus far, including drawing an inapplicable analogy between the Three Rings and the writings of the First Age poet (and notorious drunkard) Rúmil, in a monologue that’s essentially saying “separate the art from the artist, even if the art is magical objects of great power and the artist is the literal Dark Lord”. Elsewhere, The Terror‘s Ciarán Hinds makes a strong first impression in his brief appearance as the unnamed “Dark Wizard”. I speculated that he was being styled to resemble an imagined younger version of Sir Christopher Lee’s Saruman the White, and I would now like to add that if Hinds is playing Saruman, whose airs he affects, he has the potential to rank among the franchise’s greatest casting choices. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d be hoping neither nameless wizard on The Rings Of Power turns out to be a Blue Wizard, but here we are.

There is still alarmingly little to say of the other nameless wizard – Daniel Weyman’s Stranger – walking across Rhûn with only the vaguest sense of a direction, in the company of reliably endearing Harfoots Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards). Their subplot on the edge of the world provides the occasional moment of levity and a welcome change of scenery from the forests and mountains of western Middle-earth, but at the cost of staggering the narrative. Events in this episode result in the Stranger and Harfoots becoming separated, further dividing the story’s time and focus through episode four.

But while I would happily exchange some, most, or all of the Stranger’s scenes this season for a few more fleshing out the seduction of Celebrimbor, the subplots closest to the action in Eregion earn their keep on the show. The Rings Of Power struck gold in season one with the coupling of Owain Arthur and Sophia Nomvete, two equally boisterous and complimentary personalities, as the Dwarven prince and princess of Khazad-dûm, so it’s no surprise to see them back and leading their own storyline under the mountain. Their characters are living a bit more modestly these days (just a bit: Nomvete’s Disa still wears a robe encrusted with chunks of gold, and both her and Arthur’s Durin IV twinkle from all the gold-dust in their hair and beards) but their love for each other is unaffected, and anchors them as their kingdom literally crumbles. It’s particularly exciting to see more of Nomvete’s fire in the scenes Disa shares with her estranged father-in-law, King Durin III (Peter Mullan), and to have her extraordinary singing-voice featured again on Bear McCreary’s beautiful score.

Owain Arthur as Durin IV, reading from a piece of parchment while Sophia Nomvete as Disa stands just behind him, reading over his shoulder. Durin has red hair and a bushy beard. He wears a red-and-gold short-sleeved tunic. Disa has long dark curly hair, and wears a loose gray gown with a cape.
Durin IV and Disa receive Celebrimbor’s invitation | youtube.com

In the episode’s final minutes, Durin and Disa receive a letter summoning them to Eregion to speak with Lord Celebrimbor – an invitation they can hardly refuse, given their present circumstances, but one that will have fateful consequences for Khazad-dûm, the Dwarves, and indeed, all of Middle-earth. Seven more Rings of Power, designed by a well-intentioned Celebrimbor with Dwarven collaboration but sullied in the making by the malicious hand of Annatar, will be brought into the world alongside the Three as a direct result of the meeting, speeding the Dark Lord’s plans along. Although he’s had to backburner his idea of forging additional Rings for Men, Sauron is already almost halfway to his goal of bringing the Free Peoples under his control and in the darkness binding them, to paraphrase the verse inscribed on the one Ring he hasn’t yet spoken of forging to anyone. And he accomplished all of this, mind you, with some hydrogen peroxide and a hair straightener. Morgoth could never.

Episode Rating: 9/10

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“The Rings Of Power” Season 2 Reintroduces Its Villain

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

Just as the first season of Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power opened with Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel narrating over a montage of scenes that followed her progression from a child of Valinorean peace and tranquility to a woman hardened by the ceaseless wars she and her kind brought to Middle-earth’s shores, season two tries to do the same for the character of Sauron and goes to show that Amazon hasn’t “bought” the Tolkien Estate (as some of the series’ detractors claim), seeing as they were evidently denied access to the descriptions of Sauron’s First Age activities found only in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, resulting in a prologue and premiere episode that knows it would be so much stronger if it were free, either to adapt the source material or, barring that, outright contradict what it can’t adapt.

Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad, standing in the foreground, while Morfydd Clark as Galadriel stands behind him, out-of-focus. Gil-galad has long dark brown hair, and wears a circlet of golden laurel leaves and a golden-brown cape over the left shoulder of his gold robe. Galadriel has long blonde hair, and wears a floor-length blue-green gown.
Gil-galad and Galadriel | youtube.com

Until that time comes, The Rings Of Power will continue to dance on tip-toes – whether with the gracefulness of a fleet-footed Elf or a lumbering cave troll is entirely dependent on the individual writer for each episode – to avoid touching anything it legally cannot, including the most detailed account of Sauron’s origins (The Ainulindalë), his motivations (The Letters Of J.R.R. Tolkien and Morgoth’s Ring), and his deeds (The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales), which significantly restricts The Rings Of Power‘s Sauron-centric prologue: from starting at a point in time even remotely equivalent to when Galadriel’s began; from using any of the names for Sauron that he canonically preferred to the one in common use among his enemies; from explaining that he belonged to a class of angelic beings called Maiar, specifically one tasked with maintaining order and coordination; from laying bare his vision, ultimately unobtainable save through the domination of all living things, of the world under his control; and from referring to how the Valar, the pantheon of godlike beings ranked above the Maiar in power and seniority, offered him a second chance after Morgoth’s defeat, which Sauron considered and rejected, being unwilling to part with the power he had obtained in Middle-earth.

Most of what was omitted can be inferred to exist still, offscreen. Sauron is not not a Maia in The Rings Of Power, the word just isn’t used. There are subtle hints in his dialogue that point to his true ideology and aims, maybe a bit too subtle, but they’re there. And for all we know, he could conceivably have had his moment of repentance shortly prior to when The Rings Of Power picks up his story as he gathers the Orcs at his fortress in cold Forodwaith, intending to be accepted as Morgoth’s successor. Jack Lowden’s Sauron is rather more pitiable than intimidating (and I can’t say that would be an entirely unfounded read of the villain), but his face befits the name Mairon, nowhere used in this sequence but plausibly still the name he wore as a Maia. The very best version of The Rings Of Power often isn’t the one onscreen, but the one hiding between-the-lines.

Jack Lowden as Sauron in The Rings Of Power. He has long blond hair, slicked-back, and wears black armor over a red-and-gold robe.
Sauron | slashfilm.com

With that said, this episode is extremely entertaining in its own right, and again, we need only turn to the prologue – a very effective microcosm of the entire season so far – to understand why. It may be sacrilegious to suggest, but The Rings Of Power feels most at ease when it’s having fun playing in the vast sandbox that is Middle-earth, using the building-blocks at its disposal, but arranging them in ways that J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn’t have, like when it implied that Sauron and Galadriel had romantic feelings for each other, or when it invented an extremely compelling half-Elf, half-Orc character named Adar (Sam Hazeldine), whom Sauron inherited at the end of the First Age along with everything else that once belonged to Morgoth. Perhaps The Rings Of Power‘s single most valuable contribution to the Middle-earth legendarium is Adar, who not only straddles the line separating good and evil, but forces Middle-earth’s heroes and its villains alike to grapple with the disturbing implication that all Orcs straddle that line as much as any people – something that Tolkien himself was coming to acknowledge near the end of his life, but was never able to reconcile with his earlier depictions of the Orcs.

Adar’s decision, solidified in secret while Sauron addresses the Orcs and makes it increasingly clear that he not only doesn’t see them as his people but assumes it is in their nature to serve a Dark Lord (the same prejudice he accuses Elves and Men of holding), to kill Sauron then and there with his own crown, transforms a coronation into an execution, and all the Orcs get in a stab, until the bloodied heap that remains of Sauron erupts, sending shockwaves across Forodwaith. But while Adar and the Orcs depart in search of a new home, the camera tracks Sauron’s pooled blood as it runs in rivulets through cracks in the stone, coagulating deep underground into something utterly repulsive and somehow mesmerizing to watch, a mass of tiny feelers groping back towards the surface, absorbing small animals and insects; a sort of reverse-Gollum that gradually becomes more humanoid as it slithers purposefully out of the mountains, eventually getting stuck to the wheel of a merchant’s cart, consuming her, and thereafter wearing the body of Charlie Vickers’ Halbrand.

Charlie Vickers as Halbrand, standing at the back of a covered wagon, looking around. He has shoulder-length, shaggy brown hair, and wears brown rags.
Halbrand | youtube.com

At this point (and through no fault of a consistently exceptional Vickers, I must add), the prologue gets bogged down contriving a string of unremarkable scenes intended to signal to the audience that Sauron’s pursuit of redemption under a new name throughout season one was not entirely a deception, as well as retroactively justifying how he came across the heraldry that allowed him to pass himself off as a lost king of the Southlands, and why we and Galadriel first encountered him on a raft in the middle of the Great Sea. The answers to these outstanding mysteries are linked, but neither is particularly interesting. It’s when Sauron returns to the Southlands in the body of the episode that Vickers gets to show off his strengths as an actor, an opportunity that season one deprived him of until its final few minutes. In his scenes opposite Adar (now the Lord of Mordor), Sauron, still disguised as Halbrand, manipulates masterfully – exposing the feigned weakness he wants Adar to believe he can wield as leverage over him, his concern for his people, and using that very same weakness on Adar’s part to begin amassing an army. There is such salt-of-the-earth sincerity in Sauron’s ruggedly handsome face and in his folksy accent that the absence of it in the half-smiles which crook the corners of his lips and never quite reach his steely eyes escapes notice initially.

If Vickers’ performance embodies the idea put forward in The Lord Of The Rings that the agents of evil “seem fair, and feel foul”, Hazeldine’s is the inverse: the grim set of his mouth and the slow, seemingly methodical way in which he moves do not betray emotion, but it roils under the surface and shimmers faintly far behind his eyes. Hazeldine is a less lanky man than Joseph Mawle, who played Adar in the first season, and his version of the character is physically imposing where Mawle’s was frail, without a trace of trembling rasp in his voice. But Adar’s love for the Orcs, the enveloping and unconditional love of a parent for their children, is as genuine coming from Hazeldine as it was from Mawle in season one, and both actors deliver the best performances of their respective seasons.

In comparison, the evolution of Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel and Robert Aramayo’s Elrond from one season to the next may not seem significant, but there is a newfound surety in their performances, with which comes the ability to turn over their characters and explore their different facets. Galadriel is still impulse-driven by nature, but she let those impulses drive her straight into a ditch in season one, forcing her to consult other emotions besides her shattered sense of self-righteousness as she tries to back out of her current predicament without accidentally entrenching herself any deeper. Elrond, by contrast, has never been more certain in his definition of “right” and “wrong”, and is aghast when High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) doesn’t see it the same way, putting the idealistic young politician in an uncomfortable and isolating position where people he’s regarded his whole life as fundamentally good appear to be shedding their morals all around him.

A cliffside in Lindon, upon the edge of which grows a tall mallorn tree with golden leaves. Within its shade sits a dais, encircled by a stream falling off the edge of the cliff, and upon that dais stands a basin filled with water. Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad is approaching the basin. He has long dark hair and wears a golden robe. Nearby stands Robert Aramayo as Elrond. He has short brown hair and wears a blue robe. In the background stand two Elven soldiers in gold cloaks, wielding spears, and Morfydd Clark as Galadriel. She has long blond hair and wears a green mantle.
Lindon | youtube.com

Having Elrond grab the Three Rings and leap off a waterfall into the Gulf of Lhûn to prevent the Elves from using the devices of Sauron isn’t exactly subtle storytelling, but I respect The Rings Of Power for unapologetically foregoing subtlety in favor of spectacle every now and then. It’s the rare fantasy show in the post-Game Of Thrones television landscape that gets a kick out of testing its audiences’ suspension of disbelief. If we accept that Elves exist and can walk over snow without sinking and tell a person’s height and hair color from over fifteen miles away, why can’t they also survive a fall of many hundreds of feet into the ocean? What’s important is that Elrond isn’t just jumping off a waterfall for the sake of having something cool happen in an episode light on action, but because The Rings Of Power has exponentially raised the stakes by having Sauron involved in the forging of the Three Rings (a controversial deviation from the canonical account, where the Three are created behind Sauron’s back, after the Seven and the Nine) and deliberately obfuscating the extent of his involvement. It is a choice that the show proudly owns, taking advantage of the opportunity that’s emerged to closely and critically examine the Three Rings and the potential consequences of wearing them.

Enter the character of Círdan (Ben Daniels), the oldest and wisest Elf in all of Middle-earth, who harbors Elrond when he washes up in the Grey Havens and offers to discard the Three by dropping them into a submarine trench…only to have a change of heart and do the exact opposite of what he promised Elrond, putting on one of the Three himself and delivering the other two to Gil-galad and Galadriel. The Elves are able to slow their inevitable fading and continue the fight against Sauron in Middle-earth, but at the cost of becoming bound to the fate of the Three Rings (and therefore also Sauron, which, to be honest, does make a lot more sense if he had a hand in their creation). It may have been their best choice, but was it the right choice? The Rings Of Power leaves the audience with that question. Although, as a fan of Círdan, who has never had a speaking role in an adaptation of Tolkien’s works before, I’m also left wondering why the writers chose to utilize him in this way. Daniels is perfectly cast in the part, make no mistake, but the narrative does him no favors by having Círdan betray Elrond’s trust the way a parent might an errant child and then fall victim to the temptation of the Rings, all before most viewers will even have picked up his name.

Ben Daniels as Cirdan in close-up. He has long gray hair, slightly curly, and a gray beard. He wears a gray robe with golden waves embroidered around the collar.
Círdan | nerdist.com

I have no idea how to elegantly segue into talking about The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), still following the stars eastward into the land of Rhûn, where he believes he will learn, or relearn, his true name and purpose. Unfortunately, he’s no closer to finding any of those things after the first three episodes of season two, and spends almost the entirety of the premiere lost and going in circles, his genuinely charming banter with his stalwart Harfoot companion Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) the only highlight of this subplot. I’m not sure how much longer The Rings Of Power can even keep up the pretense that the Stranger’s identity is a mystery, when the magic staff that he keeps seeing in his dreams is referred to on several occasions not as a staff, or a stave, or even a wand, but a gand, derived from the Old Norse word gandr, one half of the name Gandálfr or, you guessed it, Gandalf (“wand elf”). There is no reason, none whatsoever, to use this particular word if the Stranger is not Gandalf. And if it’s a misdirect, I’ll be furious.

While the Stranger and Nori can certainly keep a conversation going, the return of Nori’s friend Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) is a welcome relief at a particularly slow moment in this storyline, giving them both another person to bounce off. I’m inclined to believe, however, that her inclusion was the result of rewrites, because of how little effort is put into explaining why she decided to follow Nori after turning down the chance to travel with her and the Stranger last season or how she even caught up with them, and once added to the party, she does nothing that Nori could not also have accomplished. But I always wanted the three of them together anyway, so I can’t object to her reappearance, only to the fact that it doesn’t save this subplot, which continues to waste time in a season too short and too crowded already to spare even a second.

Close-up image of a person of indeterminate age and gender, wearing a brown hood over an ornate bronze mask shaped into a leering skull with gaping eyesockets.
Easterling | youtube.com

That’s the other big problem lingering over The Rings Of Power season two: the story it’s telling, spanning seven kingdoms and all the lands between, is simply too large to be condensed into a season of just eight episodes. Of course, it would help if every subplot was equally engaging, but regardless, there’s not enough time for them all to be fully fleshed-out. And the first episode is only juggling three, mind you, divided between Lindon, Mordor, and Rhûn – in the episodes that follow, The Rings Of Power makes its way around Middle-earth, revisiting Eregion, Khazad-dûm, Númenor, and the Southlands. Every location is its own enormous, fully-realized world, but the time we’ve spent in each is just barely enough to get reacquainted with the characters we already met last season. I’m not demanding twenty episodes, each an hour long, per season (though I wouldn’t object), but surely the most expensive show on television can afford ten?

Thankfully, The Rings Of Power is in no other aspect stingy. The first episode of season two boasts CGI more convincing than most blockbuster movies, breathtaking locations ranging from New Zealand to the Canary Islands, extensive practical sets, a panoply of props including the titular Rings, and gorgeous costumes (for more on that subject, see my interview with the series’ costume designer, Luca Mosca), of which my favorite is, perhaps surprisingly given its relative simplicity, the gray robe embroidered with golden waves that Círdan wears in his introductory scene: an unpretentious but beautiful garment well-fitted to its owner’s personality. Through the lens of director Charlotte Brändström (who directed the sixth and seventh episodes of season one) and cinematographer Alex Disenhof, Middle-earth bursts to life.

Wide shot of a round stone dais in the shade of a tall tree with golden leaves. Ben Daniels as Cirdan and Benjamin Walker as Gil-galad stand upon the dais, while Morfydd Clark as Galadriel ascends the dais by a flight of short steps from the left. Cirdan has long gray hair and wears a gray robe. Gil-galad has long dark hair, a crown of golden laurel leaves, and wears a golden robe. Galadriel has long blonde hair and wears a green gown. Veiled attendants and soldiers wearing gold cloaks and winged helmets, wielding spears, stand nearby.
(left to right) Galadriel, Círdan, and Gil-galad | youtube.com

The flaws that have always held The Rings Of Power just a hair’s-breadth back from greatness continue to do so, but the series strains against its bonds and makes a valiant push forward in this episode, a reintroduction to the world and its characters that doesn’t seek anyone’s forgiveness for sizable changes to the source material, whether smart or baffling, but asks only for patience. If not all fans will be inclined to give it even that much, there are many still who will be intrigued by what the series is doing to grapple with the broader themes of Tolkien’s work, and I see enormous potential yet in this unconventional adaptation.

Episode Rating: 8/10

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Rohan Rises In First Trailer For “War Of The Rohirrim”

Whether he wants to be or not, Peter Jackson is bound to Middle-earth, and no amount of success as a groundbreaking documentary filmmaker will ever put distance between him and the twenty year-old adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings that, both as a result of his indisputable talent and in spite of his worst impulses as a director, is still rightly regarded as a masterpiece by most and as the only “true” iteration of Tolkien’s world and characters by some. His stay in that world could have ended on a high note, with the thirteen Academy Awards he and his crew earned for The Return Of The King in 2004, but Warner Brothers wasn’t satisfied, even if he was, so they got him back for The Hobbit – robbing us of a Guillermo del Toro-directed two-part adaptation of the slim children’s book that would probably have been much better, and saddling Jackson with a mess that would become his to bear the blame for as it bloated into a trilogy of unfocused and almost unwatchable films.

The animated character of Hera in The War Of The Rohirrim, riding a white horse straight towards the camera. She has flame-red hair in a braid, and wears a flowing white gown. She carries a round shield emblazoned with a golden sun. Her horse wears golden armor.
Hera | ign.com

And yet…he’s back again, his name all over the first trailer for the feature-length anime The War Of The Rohirrim (written by Philippa Boyens, Jackson’s co-writer on both the Rings and Hobbit trilogies), which also incorporates footage from Jackson’s films. And this isn’t a one-off, but the first of many prequels to The Lord Of The Rings that Warner Brothers, under the backwards-looking leadership of David Zaslav, is hoping Jackson will produce and help to promote, if not direct. The Hunt For Gollum, featuring the return of Andy Serkis, is already set for 2026. The cynic in me warns that Zaslav’s end goal here is to remake the original trilogy in ten years time with Jackson at the helm once more, starring a digitally de-aged Elijah Wood and an AI deepfake of the by-then 95 year-old Sir Ian McKellen. But I can take some comfort in the fact that The War Of The Rohirrim, at least, is a stand-alone, and the story it tells is removed from the events of The Lord Of The Rings by hundreds of years, and features only a handful of characters and recognizable locations from the films.

Granted, one of those characters happens to be Éowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan – voiced by Miranda Otto, who originated the role in Jackson’s films. Her return is admittedly a big factor in my excitement for The War Of The Rohirrim, so I can’t say I’m entirely immune to Warner Brothers’ blatant nostalgia bait, but actresses are so rarely invited to come back to franchises more than twenty years on (one particularly egregious example of this is Julia Sawalha, 55, being told she was “too old” to reprise the voice-role of Ginger in the recent sequel to Chicken Run) that Otto being the nostalgia bait feels significant.

The animated character of Wulf in War Of The Rohirrim, in close-up. He has long dark brown hair, and wears a light brown cloak with a dark brown fur-lined collar.
Wulf | youtube.com

Éowyn serves as the film’s narrator, helping to ease the audience into the history of Rohan and preface the story of the actual protagonist, a woman named Hera (voiced by Gaia Wise) with a similar disposition to Éowyn herself, who was born prior to the year 2754 of the Third Age (for context, The Hobbit takes place in the year 2941, and The Lord Of The Rings between 3001 and 3021). Hera is a non-canonical name for a canonical character, the daughter of Helm Hammerhand, the ninth King of Rohan (voiced by Succession‘s Brian Cox). Tolkien, whose strengths as a worldbuilder did not include fleshing out female characters, writes of her only that her hand in marriage was sought by Lord Freca on behalf of his son Wulf (voiced by Shadow And Bone‘s Luke Pasqualino). Her name, deeds, and dates of birth and death are nowhere recorded, so War Of The Rohirrim has had to invent these and all other details about her from scratch. In the film, she appears to be Wulf’s childhood friend, but the two are estranged after a duel of words between their fathers escalates into a literal duel that ends with Freca’s death at Helm Hammerhand’s hammer hands.

In the war that follows, an army of Dunlendings led by Wulf and based out of the old fortress of Isengard (not yet occupied by Saruman) are joined by Haradrim sweeping across Gondor, no doubt due to Sauron’s meddling. Helm is forced to retreat to a citadel in the White Mountains that he fortifies, which in later days will be known by the name Helm’s Deep (yes, that Helm’s Deep). There, the Rohirrim make what they believe will be their last stand, all through the Long Winter (also probably attributable to Sauron). No spoilers, but it’s a gripping tale even briefly sketched out in the Appendices to The Return Of The King. And animated? It’s nothing short of stunning.

Director Kenji Kamiyama, whose previous work includes Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Blade Runner: Black Lotus and The Ninth Jedi (one of my favorite episodes of the anime anthology series Star Wars: Visions), brings to War Of The Rohirrim the clean and exceptionally fluid animation style that characterizes his output and befits Middle-earth. It is a far cry from Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, which has acquired a cult-classic status for its janky rotoscoping, but also serves as a great example of why rotoscoping, as an animation technique, isn’t in common use nowadays. War Of The Rohirrim, by contrast, feels like it has the potential to raise the bar exponentially for future animated films set in this world (not that any have been announced, but if War Of The Rohirrim is a success, it won’t be long before other stories in the Appendices get the same treatment). And in a rare show of confidence from a studio that has been pretty risk-averse under its current leadership, Warner Brothers is giving it a coveted December release in theaters, on IMAX screens, where it will be going up against Kraven The Hunter, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and Mufasa: The Lion King, as well as the previous month’s presumably leggy blockbusters Wicked: Part One, Gladiator 2, and Moana 2.

Animated wide shot of the city of Edoras, burning. Four figures on horseback are visible in the foreground, riding away from the city.
Edoras aflame | youtube.com

The big question now is whether audiences will show up for an animated Lord Of The Rings prequel featuring the voice of only one supporting cast member from the original films. The power of Peter Jackson’s name is not as strong as it once was: Mortal Engines, the biggest flop of 2018, was also a Jackson production, albeit unassociated with Middle-earth. And Amazon is hoping to sate nostalgia for Lord Of The Rings with the second season of The Rings Of Power, releasing in just a few days. But there’s no good reason that adaptations can’t coexist, and War Of The Rohirrim draws on a completely different period of Middle-earth’s history than Rings Of Power and visually is more in line with Jackson’s (hugely successful) trilogies. Personally, I haven’t tired yet of seeing these stories brought to life, and I think some competition would be healthy for the franchise, if franchise it has become. We’ll just have to wait and see if general audiences are accepting of the distinction.

Trailer Rating: 8/10