MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE SIX, AHEAD!
The question posed in the title of The Rings Of Power season two, episode six – “Where Is He?” – is one the show has already answered: in fact, to clear up any confusion on that front, we were given the full rundown on everywhere Sauron (Charlie Vickers) has been in the last millennia of Middle-earth’s history. We’ve followed his movements so closely this season that there can be no doubt as to where he is at any given moment (usually Eregion, but he does make a quick excursion to the Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm in this episode). The suspense comes from waiting for the characters in-universe to figure it out for themselves, with the limited information they have at their disposal.
Sauron and the Balrog | youtube.com
Ironically, the person closest to Sauron physically, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), is the furthest from the truth, his mind beginning to fracture under the pressure of constant emotional abuse and manipulation tactics, even as his soul stubbornly defies corruption. Having waxed poetic about Edwards’ masterful turn as the tortured Elven-smith many times already, I always fear that I will run out of words to express the fullness of my awe and admiration for his talent, or that they will begin to feel hollow, but as his performance evolves subtly from episode to episode, new praises always rise in my throat. Edwards conveys his character’s deeply internal disintegration with discomforting palpability while never resorting to trite affectations – one particularly forceful example of his unconventional, heightened approach to the subject matter his fiery reading of an almost Shakespearean monologue as he labors over the Nine Rings. Something that Edwards ensures we never forget is that Celebrimbor is not a human, and he’s not just any Elf either – he is one of the mightiest of the Noldor, proudest and wisest of all Elves.
Per usual, Vickers matches Edwards beat-for-beat, his “Annatar” morphing into a more overtly devilish figure with each day that passes, trading out his humble white garments for a somewhat unsubtle black robe with gold trim. The seemingly genuine regret with which Sauron tortures Celebrimbor makes him a far more terrifying villain than if he took great pleasure in his atrocities – he has convinced himself that his ultimate goal, building a utopia in Middle-earth, will justify the suffering he must necessarily inflict on its denizens to force them to accept him as their rightful ruler, but he hates that he feels he has to be violent. After all, he was originally an angelic being who delighted in perfection and order, and abhorred chaos. In a sequence near the end of the episode, Sauron ensnares Celebrimbor in a wide-scale simulation of Eregion at peace – while in reality, the city is under siege by Adar (Sam Hazeldine)’s army of Orcs – and although the deception is intended to pacify the Elven-smith and keep him in his forge, Sauron himself is deeply immersed in the illusion.
Sauron and Celebrimbor | msn.com
The elaborate transition back from hazy, gold-hued fantasy to stark reality, a combination of complex camera-work, practical effects, and VFX, has become one of the season’s most talked-about moments: a showcase for director Sanaa Hamri and cinematographer Alex Disenhof. As the camera circles Sauron, the last vestiges of illusion fall apart, day turns into night, and the quiet sounds of idyllic life give way to weeping and wailing. On the other side of the river, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) begs Adar to stop his assault on Eregion, warning him that he’s playing right into Sauron’s hands, but Adar is intent on ridding the world of Sauron once and for all, and he feels that the Elves have failed, now it’s his turn. His motivations are noble, but what Adar fails to realize is that he’s turning into the very thing he seeks to destroy, leading his children to battle like lambs to the slaughter – the very thing Sauron threatened to do that resulted in him being Julius Caesar-ed by Adar thousands of years earlier.
Unfortunately, I can’t help but feel (especially in retrospect, now that the season is over) that the series rushed through the steps of Adar’s character devolution, hitting all the vital beats, one immediately after another, without enough time and space between to give each one weight and meaning. Adar is far and away The Rings Of Power‘s most compelling original character, a fascinating and valuable addition to the legendarium, and I’m not sure the writers were fully aware of the potential their own creation had, or he would have been afforded the necessary screentime to let his journey play out organically, at a more natural pace.
In what is becoming a major problem for the show, we bounce back-and-forth between disconnected subplots throughout this episode, never spending quite enough time in one setting to get immersed or totally invested before we’re moving on. In Rhûn, we catch up with The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) towards the tail-end of what has apparently been…days? weeks? months?…of rigorous training with Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), who seemingly advises him – without actually saying it outright – to stop worrying about his friends and start seeking out the staff that will bestow upon him unfathomable power. Of course, such a message would be antithetical to the themes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing, which is why I say “seemingly” because, as is fairly obvious, Bombadil is testing the Stranger. Meanwhile, Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) helps prepare the Stoors for a confrontation with the mysterious masked horsemen who roam the desert, while Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards), who is inexplicably heterosexual in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, shares an eve-of-battle kiss with her Stoor boyfriend of approximately one day, Merimac (Gavi Singh Chera). Aggravatingly, both the Stranger’s and Halflings’ subplots cut off abruptly at this point – before the Stranger’s final test and presumably spur-of-the-moment decision to forsake the quest for his staff and find his friends, or the battle in the Stoor village. Next time we see them, in the season finale, the Stoors are already prisoners and the Stranger has arrived to help, with no connective tissue between these scenes whatsoever.
Tom Bombadil and The Stranger | youtube.com
In Khazad-dûm, Disa (Sophia Nomvete) and her husband Durin IV (Owain Arthur) spend the entire episode engaged in environmental activism, blocking Durin’s increasingly covetous father King Durin III (Peter Mullan) from digging deeper under the mountain. There’s a cool moment where Disa sings to summon a swarm of bats that attack the King’s miners…and that’s pretty much it on that front. For two such vibrant characters, Disa and Durin are routinely given some of the least engaging material to work with, and it’s an injustice to Nomvete and Arthur, who are both delightful actors.
On the isle of Númenor, Elendil (Lloyd Owen) stands accused of treason, while the King’s son Kemen (Leon Wadham), who murdered a man in a place of worship, unsurprisingly gets off scot-free, his “punishment” a governorship in Middle-earth’s Southlands. I must confess to feeling rather miffed that the murdered man in question, Valandil, is never mentioned again after his death – he wasn’t a major character, per se, but he appeared in eight episodes across two seasons, Elendil treated him like a son, and he was the best friend of Elendil’s children, Isildur and Eärien (Ema Horvath), the latter of whom….knows about his death and her boyfriend Kemen’s involvement? Doesn’t know? Will we ever know? I don’t know! What I do know is that the show’s diverse ensemble cast does not immunize it to all criticism of how its predominantly white writers actually handle characters of color (Valandil’s actor Alex Tarrant is of Māori, Samoan and Niuean descent), and fans are well within their rights to raise an eyebrow at The Rings Of Power‘s trend of casually killing off characters of color this season – including Valandil and two out of three non-white named Elves.
On that note, we should probably talk about Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who increasingly feels more like a prop than a person as the season progresses. Míriel, the usurped Queen-Regent, abruptly insists that she be put on trial in Elendil’s place, and upon being cast into the ocean to face judgement from a sea monster, the sequence even more abruptly cuts away before anything actually happens. The scene, which I was excited to see play out, ultimately left a bitter taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons – firstly, because I love a good sea monster, and this is the second time now that The Rings Of Power has teased a sea monster only to show it onscreen for maybe ten seconds: secondly, and more importantly, because this is ostensibly an important beat in Míriel’s fragmented character arc this season, a moment of truth for her and all that she believes in, and yet we as the audience have virtually no access to her thought process and internal conflict throughout. For a sequence which culminates in her staggering out of the ocean, having been found innocent, accompanied by cheers of “Tar-Míriel!” (strongly implying a shift in her favor that was either unintentional or was immediately undone offscreen between this episode and the finale), this scene needed to hold greater weight than it does. Míriel’s lack of interiority is a problem, one that becomes especially apparent any time she’s paired up with Elendil, who has so much.
For example, Elendil’s disintegrating relationship with his daughter Eärien is the focus of a truly moving scene shortly prior to the trial, where the two speak for what they believe to be the last time, Eärien begging him to repent for his crimes and accept Ar-Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), something that Elendil cannot bring himself to do. I mentioned in my review of episode five that Elendil and Pharazôn are more similar than they’d probably care to admit when it comes to parenting, and this scene exemplifies that. Elendil isn’t wrong, but he’s so assured of his rightness that he refuses to explain to a clearly distressed and confused Eärien why he’s choosing to die for his beliefs over staying alive for her, after she already lost her brother (so she thinks); pushing her away instead of letting her in. Is it any wonder that her and Kemen get along, when both their fathers are severe, closed-off, and patronizing? Elendil, to be fair to the guy, is all of those things without meaning to be, but he needs someone to knock some sense into him, and my money’s on Amandil, his own father, whom we’ll presumably meet in season three.
Míriel and Elendil | Twitter @TheRingsofPower
As the episode pinballs between the numerous subplots it’s being asked to rush along, perhaps we do lose sight of our main villain – and The Rings Of Power‘s central throughline – somewhat, making the title “Where Is He?” more apt, albeit ironically. If I were to summarize this episode into a single word, it might be “nebulous”. Not bad, not boring, but unfocused and a bit vague about what it’s trying to accomplish. As a prelude to the Siege of Eregion, it tries to slowly ratchet up the tension, but there’s just no time to make Adar’s dramatic heel-turn feel entirely appropriate for his character at this moment, while as a stepping-stone in various other story arcs, it feels almost irrelevant, with both Míriel and the Stranger undergoing trials we don’t get to see and which don’t move them forward so much as reassure them that they were already on the right path. It’s not my least-favorite episode of the season, but it has the misfortune of being wedged between two excellent episodes that make the dip in quality feel more drastic.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO, EPISODE FOUR AHEAD!
Although the term “fan service” used to refer primarily to random scenes of female nudity or gratuitous violence in Japanese anime and manga, in recent decades it has come to be more broadly defined as anything included in a piece of media to please the perceived target demographic, usually the diehard fans of the universe to which that piece of media belongs: and it can range from the inoffensive (a meaningful reference or detail only fans will catch) to the in-your-face (shoehorning in a beloved character just to have them do or say “the thing”, or revisiting an established location when any other would have sufficed). As a rule of thumb, fan service should only have a small, positive impact on a person’s enjoyment of the story being told. It shouldn’t be the story.
Elanor Brandyfoot | youtube.com
Shouldn’t be, I say, but it all too often is, because in every fandom there are some who believe that the sole purpose of stories is to service them, and who consequently treat storytellers as fan servants, with whom they can be as cruel and demanding as they like. These fans do not want their favorite franchises to offer them anything new or unfamiliar – and since they tend to be conservative, straight, cisgender white men, that inevitably includes anyone who doesn’t look like them. Unfortunately, these people have a way of amassing power and influence over fandom spaces by claiming to want what’s best for the fans, and then act as gatekeepers, which is why studios insist on courting them even though it’s been proven time after time that franchises which bend over backwards to try and placate these fans leave themselves nowhere to grow, and for nothing, because these fans will never be satisfied, especially not if they know they can wield their power and influence to prevent their favorite franchises from ever evolving or experimenting, as happened just recently with The Acolyte.
Amazon reportedly has no intention of ending The Rings Of Power prematurely, which is reassuring to hear, but they’re still making efforts to reach “fans” (loiterers, at this point, seems a more accurate term for them) who claim to hate the show; an admirable and probably pointless endeavor, if even the overt fan service in the first season, of both the innocuous and egregious varieties, wasn’t enough. The very act of compressing the three-thousand year timeline of the Second Age, making it possible for the show to adapt all of the major events of the Age without having to switch out the entire human cast between seasons, was a kind of fan service. Bringing in proto-Hobbits and a wizard heavily implied to be Gandalf is fan service as far as I’m concerned, since these characters have yet to fold back into the overarching narrative (and, in fact, stray further afield with each passing episode).
In its second season, and particularly in episode four, The Rings Of Power doubles down on aggressively targeting people who will never admit to watching the show regardless of whether they do, when it should be focused on telling a cohesive story. With everything else the show is trying to accomplish in just eight episodes, there’s simply not enough time to squeeze in appearances from Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), the Barrow-wights, Shelob (in episode three, but she still counts) and the Ents – none of whom have any good reason to be here, with the possible exception of Tom (ironically the last character who should ever need a good reason for anything).
It would be one thing if we didn’t know about most of these cameos beforehand – then at least the shock of seeing a Barrow-wight or an Ent would distract, on an initial viewing, from how extraneous their few scenes really are. But Amazon put it all in the marketing. We’d seen pretty much the entirety of the Barrow-wights sequence, for example, split up across various trailers, teasers, and behind-the-scenes clips long before the episode dropped. Though, to be honest, that was only one of several factors in why that particular scene fell flat for me, not least of which had to do with the atrocious optics of introducing a new Elf, Daemor, played by a Black actor, Oliver Alvin-Wilson, and then killing him off almost immediately; the only casualty of the wights. Never mind that what makes the encounter with the wights so terrifying in The Lord Of The Rings is that they didn’t kill their victims straightaway, instead putting them to sleep and dressing their bodies in the garments and jewelry of the barrows’ original occupants for uncertain, but obviously ritualistic, purposes. The Rings Of Power‘s Barrow-wights are just your run-of-the-mill reanimated skeletons, and not scary in the slightest.
Elrond and Galadriel on the Axa Bridge | youtube.com
Even before they showed up, the wights were getting on my nerves, because I could sense the characters were being forcefully shoved in their direction. My internal alarm bells started ringing when Elrond (Robert Aramayo) mentioned crossing the “Axa Bridge” to reach Eregion. “That’s funny,” I said to myself, “I don’t know an Axa Bridge.” As it turns out, there’s a good reason for that. It was made up for the show, and crosses the River Baranduin south of the Old Forest, on a road leading through the hills of Tyrn Gorthad (better known as the Barrow-downs). All of which is fine. There could conceivably have been a bridge there in the Second Age. It’s just…there’s no reason for Elrond and his company, speeding across Eriador, to go anywhere near it. Draw a straight line from Lindon to the capital city of Eregion on a map of Middle-earth and it takes you across the Baranduin at Sarn Ford, many miles to the south of the non-canonical Axa Bridge, which (according to the map shown in the episode) would have taken Elrond’s company northeast, out of the way entirely.
And that’s not even the most confusing part, nor is it when the group reaches the Axa Bridge, and it’s revealed to span an impassable canyon, deep and wide with sheer sides (on the eastern border of what becomes the Shire, not an area known for having rugged geography). No, it’s the fact that this bridge contrived to take them directly to the Barrow-downs is broken, and so the group’s map expert Camnir (Calam Lynch) declares that to circumvent this canyon that shouldn’t exist, they must turn south through the Barrow-downs…which do not extend south of the Axa Bridge on the map shown to us mere moments before, and in fact, lie somewhat to its north. So either Camnir is extremely, like, embarrassingly bad at following maps, or the writers are. And I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter.
Maybe I’m being nitpicky about the bridge, but I think it’s fair to say that any fantasy story with such a large scope should aspire to give its audience a general sense of where things are in relation to each other, and of the distances between them, especially when that information is often critical to understanding the plot. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elrond traversed the long leagues between Lindon and Eregion in a matter of seconds back in episode one, but three episodes later the same journey in the opposite direction is long, perilous, and requires a map-expert. There’s an even greater distance and many more natural obstacles between Eregion and Mordor, but The Rings Of Power has on multiple occasions treated that span of over a thousand miles as a mere insignificance, easily covered by Sauron (Charlie Vickers) in human form twice, both times while pretending to be wounded, and now by Adar (Sam Hazeldine) and his legions of Orcs, without anyone noticing except a pair of Ents in the Southlands.
But if I don’t stop ranting about maps now, I never will (maybe it’s a subject for a separate post), so let’s move on to the Ents. They’re scarier than the Barrow-wights, which is a surprise. Olivia Williams and Jim Broadbent lend their voices to this dendriform power couple, named Winterblossom and Snaggleroot respectively, who rip people limb-from-limb if they raise axe to tree. They’re great characters: I would have loved to spend time with them in a show that actually had time to spare on an environmentalist murder mystery subplot, but The Rings Of Power is not that show. And although it’s in the process of investigating these Ent serial murders that Isildur (Maxim Baldry) and Estrid (Nia Towle) become conscious of their romantic feelings for each other while Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) proves himself as a father figure to Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), I find it difficult to believe there wasn’t a far more efficient route to the same destination (help, I’m about to make this about maps again). A conflict between the Southlander refugees and those who swore fealty to Adar could have easily provided a backdrop to all of these developments, and simultaneously done more to deepen our investment in the people who will one day become Isildur’s people when he goes on to found the Kingdom of Gondor, whereas following the Ents, even though it’s to rescue Theo, pulls Isildur out of that environment.
Arondir and Isildur | youtube.com
Isildur, marooned on Middle-earth and thrust into a leadership position he didn’t ask for, has an unlikely (but, given his…connection to hobbits, rather fitting) mirror-image in the Harfoot Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), who also finds herself separated from her family and everything that represented home to her in season two, lost in a strange land, forced to take refuge among a people wary of outsiders, and gradually becoming a respected member of their community and helping them in their fight to save their homes. There’s even a burgeoning romance in both subplots, though it’s not Nori herself, but her best friend Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) who falls head over heels in love with one of the Stoor hobbits they encounter in Rhûn; the slightly peculiar Merimac (Gavi Singh Chera). However, seeing as I still strongly feel that Poppy wasn’t originally intended to come back for season two, Nori and Merimac may well have had a relationship in an earlier draft.
But Nori already has a much more interesting relationship with the Stoors through their leader, Gundabel (Tanya Moodie), who reveals to her in a surprisingly powerful scene that the ancestor of the wandering Harfoots was a Stoor, who left the narrow gorge where they’ve always lived in search of a promised land called the Sûzat, a land of rolling green hills and clear rivers. It’s written as Sûza-t in The Peoples Of Middle-earth, but the meaning is the same: it’s derived from a word in the Westron tongue, sûza, which means province, county, or…shire. Sûzat or Sûza-t, therefore, denotes The Shire. This arguably falls under the category of fan service just like Ents and Barrow-wights, but it doesn’t bother me the way those do for two reasons: one, it’s relatively subtle (yes, you can find the translation easily, but the show itself doesn’t provide one), and two, it isn’t just a reference for the fans. This is what Nori’s story has been building towards, all along. She will unite the estranged Hobbit tribes and lead them to a permanent home.
There is one small problem with this, and that’s the timeline. Canonically, the first hobbits to cross the River Baranduin (how do we keep ending up back here?) into The Shire were the brothers Marcho and Blanco in the year 1601 of the Third Age, almost two-thousand years after the events of The Rings Of Power. The showrunners have shown no qualms about compressing three-thousand years of history into what feels like a couple of months, so I wouldn’t be shocked if they extended the history of The Shire back by a millennium, but I’d much rather they didn’t, to be honest.
Alternatively, they could have Nori lead the hobbits to the Gladden Fields, where we know Stoors at least were living about a thousand years into the Third Age, and where Sméagol was born and raised. We’re probably going there one way or another, because the Battle of the Gladden Fields is where the Second Age comes to an end. And it’s worth noting that Isildur, Nori’s parallel, is involved in that battle, so to have their storylines finally segue at the very end would be thematically satisfying. But I’d hate to miss out on the perilous crossing of the Misty Mountains by the hobbits, so maybe Nori will make it to Eriador, and settle her people in the Bree-lands, the only place in Middle-earth where Men and Hobbits coexisted during the Third Age.
Tom Bombadil | nerdist.com
It may come as a surprise to learn that I want more of Nori, Poppy, and The Rings Of Power‘s proto-Hobbits – I’ve been complaining bitterly that the storyline in Rhûn is eating up screentime, after all. And it still is, but the problem is not and has never been the Hobbits. It’s the Stranger (Daniel Weyman), whose search for a gand (a wizard’s staff) is turning into the most frustrating kind of fetch-quest. Weyman is charming, but he can’t elevate relentlessly dull material. Tom Bombadil’s appearance feels timed to inject a shot of energy back into this subplot, but it’s not enough – especially not with how subdued the show’s take on Bombadil is in comparison to the bold, boisterous version we meet in The Lord Of The Rings. I understand that a more book-accurate take on the character, who dances wildly about and breaks into song without the slightest provocation, might have scared off some casual viewers, but that’d be preferable to boring them and underwhelming fans with a solemn and mature Bombadil who mumbles his songs under his breath.
The parts of Tom’s portrayal that I truly enjoyed are all attributable to Kinnear – his hearty laugh and big smile, his ungraceful gait, the twinkle in his eye when he starts to ramble and the distinctive Cornish accent he settled on for the character – all the little things he nails, that assure me he would have been quite comfortable playing Tom as originally written. There’s something to be said for juxtaposing him with Weyman’s reserved and quizzical Stranger, too, as the clear contrast between their personalities makes Tom feel more vibrant and more whimsical than he really is. But as I said back when it was first announced that Tom would be making an appearance in season two, he is a character defined by his refusal to acknowledge the importance or urgency of any narrative that happens to cross his doorstep, and if you, as a screenwriter looking to utilize Tom in your adaptation of a story that didn’t even include him in the first place, aren’t prepared to start there, you’d probably be better off using any other character from the legendarium.
The Rings Of Power‘s Tom Bombadil not only takes an active interest in the Stranger’s journey, but aggressively pushes him to confront the mysterious Dark Wizard (Ciarán Hinds) before his power becomes one with Sauron’s and they set Middle-earth aflame, as the Wizard’s already done to Rhûn. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that the writers went this route, but I’m not happy about it. For all the changes it’s made, The Rings Of Power has never, to my recollection, committed such a blatant mischaracterization – Tolkien having only sketched out in the broadest of terms what most of the protagonists of the Second Age were like as people, and characters like Galadriel and Elrond, whom we know from the books, being significantly younger here even by Elf standards, has given the writers leeway. But Tom is, in his own words, “eldest”, predating the first raindrop and the first acorn. It’s hard to handwave away the differences in his depiction by saying that three-thousand years changed him, seeing as he’s roughly fifty-five thousand years old.
There is one side-effect of Tom’s inclusion, I should note, that almost – almost – justifies his inclusion; that we get to hear his song, lyrics lifted straight from the pages of The Lord Of The Rings and set to music by the brilliant Bear McCreary, belted out by Rufus Wainwright over the end-credits with ethereal backing vocals from Raya Yarbrough, who has a voice cameo in the episode as Tom’s wife Goldberry. It’s a poignant rendition of a nonsensical ditty, befitting the version of the character we see in the show, and it’s never leaving my playlist. McCreary’s work on season one received widespread acclaim but was shamefully snubbed for an Emmy nomination: I pray that voters do not make the same mistake again next year. The technical categories are where The Rings Of Power has its best chance of nabbing gold – in terms of music, visual effects, production design, costume, hair and makeup design, there’s simply nothing else on TV that comes close to matching it. But I don’t seriously expect it to pick up so much as a single nomination in any of the major categories, which might as well forbid entry to non-HBO genre television. And that’s a real shame, because in a fair world, Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards’ symbiotic yet distinct performances as Sauron and Celebrimbor could plausibly secure them both trophies.
The Dark Wizard | radiotimes.com
Their absence from this episode, the first (and thankfully, the last) of the season not to check in on the situation in Eregion, is felt strongly. Without Sauron physically present to keep The Rings Of Power‘s various story threads fastened to the central throughline he represents, they come loose alarmingly quickly, disrupting the smooth flow of the narrative. Bolstering these subplots to the point where they can eventually stand on their own is a matter of finding the time to do so: time, the only resource in short supply on the most expensive television show ever made; wasted – in this episode at least – on superfluous cameos.
POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO AHEAD!
The Rings Of Power attracts a lot of undue hate, but of all the many criticisms directed at the show in its first season, one with which I think most, if not all, fans would agree is that the forging of the titular Rings and everything leading up to it was handled rather clumsily. While the show was inevitably going to disappoint somebody no matter how it adapted this pivotal moment in Middle-earth’s history for the screen, on account of how many times Sauron’s deception of the great Elven craftsman Celebrimbor, in his “fair form” as Annatar, has been depicted across art, fanfiction, cosplay, and video games, resulting in just as many highly distinct opinions of how these two characters – whose actual appearances and personalities were sketched out in the broadest of strokes by J.R.R. Tolkien – “should” look and interact, it is quite impressive that The Rings Of Power managed to upset basically everybody.
(left to right) Galadriel, Cirdan, and Gil-galad | youtube.com
To recap: Sauron, disguised not as Annatar but as a grungy Southland prince named Halbrand, is injured in battle when the Southlands fall to Adar, just badly enough that the Númenórean medics can’t do anything for him, but not so badly that he can’t apparently withstand a journey of a least a month or two on horseback at breakneck speed to the nearest Elven kingdom, Eregion, a thousand miles away. There, Halbrand instantly recovers, wanders seemingly by accident into Celebrimbor’s forge and meets the legendary smith, who is despondent, having failed to produce anything that can prevent the fading of Elvendom – which the Elves have decided is imminent because a tree in Lindon is dying (long story). Halbrand explains to Celebrimbor what an alloy is, at which point Celebrimbor decides to trust this random stranger unreservedly and work with him. But Galadriel grows suspicious of Halbrand and does some digging, discovering that there is no prince of the Southlands. She confronts him privately about her suspicions that he’s actually the Dark Lord Sauron, and thankfully he is, or that’d be really awkward. He leaves Eregion, Galadriel decides not to tell anybody, and a clueless Celebrimbor proceeds with his and Halbrand’s plan to create powerful circular objects out of mithril – but where Halbrand wanted two crowns, one for him and one for Galadriel, Galadriel advises Celebrimbor to make three Rings. And all of that in the final episode of the season, which also had to accommodate a totally isolated subplot involving Harfoots and wizards on the other side of Middle-earth.
Now, I am not a “book purist” by nature, so deviations from the source material do not inherently bother me – as long as they contribute to a better (or at the very least equally compelling) version of the story being told. I have accepted that for the show’s purposes, the Three Rings had to be forged before the Seven and the Nine, and I probably could have gotten over my disappointment that Sauron appeared to Celebrimbor as a mortal man instead of an Elven emissary of the Valar, but I cannot make excuses for the hectic pacing, plot contrivances, and inorganic character beats required to bring everything together in the final few minutes of the season finale. The forging of the Rings neither lives up to expectations nor makes for entertaining, well-crafted television in its own right.
I can’t say I’m surprised, then, that the marketing for season two – culminating in the trailer released at San Diego Comic-Con – has made it very clear that the story of Sauron and Celebrimbor, far from being over, will instead begin anew in the upcoming second season, with Celebrimbor taking on a much larger role and Sauron finally adopting the name and guise of Annatar when he returns to Eregion. I admit to wondering whether this was planned from the outset or a direct response to the first season’s mixed reception, but either way I can guarantee you that some book purists will claim responsibility for the show course-correcting if they deem it a success and insist that the showrunners ignored the fandom entirely if not. Amazon probably doesn’t care as long as they tune in – and they will. Even if they feign morbid curiosity, the chance to endlessly critique the shortcomings of an adaptation promising to adhere closer to J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings is like catnip for some book purists.
And not that you would be able to tell from the comments section under the trailer on YouTube, where miserable internet trolls have shown up to spam the dislike button and scream into the void about Amazon “desecrating” Tolkien’s legacy (I don’t even consider these to be book purists; most have never read the books and only know what they’ve been told by right-wing rage-baiters), but the upcoming season actually looks good. In this post we’ll be going over all the new footage shown at San Diego Comic-Con, as well as a few shots from other teasers and promotional materials Amazon has put out since then that I wouldn’t be able to talk about otherwise. I’m divvying up this breakdown into smaller segments focused on each of the five main storylines: Eregion and Lindon, Khazad-dûm, Númenor, the Southlands, and Rhûn. I’ll do my best to keep spoilers to a minimum even as I try to arrange images from the trailer into chronological order based on my knowledge of the books.
EREGION AND LINDON
Lindon | youtube.com
For reasons that The Rings Of Power has never felt compelled to elaborate on, the Elves have until next spring to find a cure for a specific tree in Lindon or they will fade, if they do not escape over the sea into the West. Obviously, the idea of Middle-earth slowly becoming uninhabitable for the Elves is an ever-present theme in all of Tolkien’s writings that deal with them: they were meant to live forever in the Undying West, but many of them followed Fëanor to Middle-earth in the First Age and tragically fell in love with a world that was always intended to belong to humans, who would inevitably drive them out. The forging of the Three Rings does indeed constitute the last attempt by the Elves to prevent the doom that awaits them in Middle-earth, but the arbitrary urgent deadline and the magical mood-ring tree are clunky and overly literal means of conveying all of that.
Thankfully, The Rings Of Power will be pressing pause on this storyline by having Galadriel and Elrond arrive in Lindon with the Three Rings in the nick of time to save the tree before it dies. Galadriel isn’t being forthcoming about the fact that Sauron was involved in the creation of the Three, but Elrond (who was already catching on last season that Halbrand wasn’t what he claimed to be) seems to have reservations about the Elves putting on the Rings and probably communicates this to the High King Gil-galad, because we see that in a last resort, as the ceremony is failing and the Rings have fallen useless to the ground, one of them – Nenya – bounces down a flight of steps and comes to a stop in front of Galadriel. The whole sequence evokes how the One Ring made its way deliberately to Bilbo Baggins in the prologue of The Fellowship Of The Ring, and suggests that the Three Rings possess wills of their own. With no other choices left to her, Galadriel picks up the ring, slips it on her finger, and seals her fate.
Nenya | youtube.comNenya and Galadriel | youtube.com
And with that, I’m sure, the tree will put forth a single fragile leaf and the sky will begin to clear. Gil-galad and Círdan the Shipwright will hastily put on the other two rings, and in a matter of moments, Lindon will be returned to a state of perpetual autumn – not spring or summer, notably, because the Rings can only roll back time so far and winter cannot be held at bay forever. But with the crisis temporarily averted, Gil-galad has bought himself time with which to question Galadriel and Elrond about what went down in Eregion, and Galadriel will be made to reveal the true identity of Halbrand.
Gil-galad questions Galadriel | youtube.comHalbrand in Eregion | youtube.comHalbrand in Eregion | youtube.com
Cut to Halbrand, returning to Eregion one dark and stormy night, and being welcomed back into Celebrimbor’s house by the Elven-smith himself. I expect Celebrimbor to be wary of Halbrand at first, as he remembers Galadriel’s vague warning not to engage with the Southlander, but believing him still to be just that, he will make the decision not to turn away his unexpected visitor. After all, Celebrimbor is the Lord of Eregion; how much trouble could one man be? Well, lots – you’d think Celebrimbor would have learned that lesson the hard way from having lived in Nargothrond in the First Age – and of course, Halbrand is no man, but a few red flags can’t stop Celebrimbor. Which…I mean, fair.
In a featurette titled Forging The Rings, we see Halbrand and Celebrimbor discussing the Three Rings while Halbrand dries off by the fire. Celebrimbor asks if they worked, and the response – “They worked wonders” – puts a huge smile on his face. Sauron will probably keep up the pretense for Celebrimbor that he was in Lindon to witness the ceremony, but in truth, I think Sauron is attuned to the Three Rings and can sense when and in what ways they are being used (when worn), even if he cannot tell who’s wearing them.
That same evening, if Celebrimbor’s clothing is anything to go by, Sauron will cast off the disguise of Halbrand and reveal to Celebrimbor that he has been sent by the gods to do for all of Middle-earth’s Free Peoples what he has done for the Elves – and to that end, they must make more Rings of Power. A wide-eyed Celebrimbor, who by this point is mentally forging their wedding-rings for each other, asks for his name, and Sauron, now fair-haired and clean-shaven, replies “a sharer of gifts”; which isn’t an exact translation of Annatar (lord of gifts) but is close enough that I’ll forgive it, even if Tolkien probably wouldn’t.
The forge of Celebrimbor | youtube.com
The forges of Eregion will play host to some intense interpersonal drama between Celebrimbor and Annatar over the course of the season, as Celebrimbor gradually becomes aware that the sixteen Rings of Power they’ve made together – including seven gifted to Celebrimbor’s close friends among the Dwarves – were tainted from their very conception. But with Annatar simultaneously amassing an army of orcs to blockade Eregion from Lindon, Celebrimbor’s only hope is that Galadriel, Elrond, and a small band of Elven warriors carving a path through the perilous wilderness of Eriador will reach him in time to stop Sauron before it’s too late, ahead of a larger army led by Gil-galad making its way more slowly by road.
Elrond and Galadriel in Eriador | youtube.com
The eventual Siege of Eregion will sprawl across two episodes, altogether apparently comprising one of the largest and longest battles in television history. If I had to guess how everything plays out, I’d tentatively speculate that after Sauron’s disguise is finally penetrated by Celebrimbor, the Elven-smith will make an unsuccessful attempt to capture him on his own, Sauron will escape, and before Celebrimbor can assemble a defense, the Dark Lord’s armies which have been lying in wait will already be at the gates (hence why the only bridge leading in or out of Eregion, which the Elves likely would have destroyed if they’d had time to do so, is still intact in the image below). As Eregion falls, a distraught Celebrimbor throws the nine remaining Rings of Power into the fires where they were made, intending to thwart Sauron, but then reaches into the flames and retrieves the Rings (I say this because in the previous trailer, he was seen cradling one hand, which looked blackened and burned).
The Siege of Eregion | youtube.comSauron in Eregion | youtube.comCelebrimbor looks upon his creation | youtube.comCelebrimbor destroys the rings | youtube.com
Galadriel and her Elves, mere miles away, have run into one last insurmountable roadblock between them and Eregion: Adar, whose Orcs make up the bulk of Sauron’s army. Adar will capture Galadriel, and relate to her how he “killed” Sauron at the end of the First Age, and how he plans to do so again, for good this time. His line in the trailer, “Leave Sauron to me”, is presumably directed at Galadriel, who might even plead with him to join forces with the Elves.
While Sauron goes to Celebrimbor and demands that he relinquish the Nine Rings, Elrond coming back from a last-resort mission to Khazad-dûm (more on that in a minute) meets up with the army of Gil-galad and leads a cavalry charge to rescue Galadriel and relieve the Siege of Eregion. I’ll let you all discover the outcome of this clash for yourselves when the episode airs, but I will say this: behind-the-scenes footage confirms that Arondir will both arrive on the battlefield at some point, and it’s strongly implied in the trailer that an army of Dwarves under Prince Durin IV will join the fray at Elrond’s behest. It’s shaping up to be a convergence of many different plotlines.
The last we saw of the Dwarves in season one, Prince Durin IV and his wife Disa had gotten just enough mithril to Celebrimbor for him to make the Three Rings, but were obstructed from mining more by Durin’s conservative father Durin III, who worried that the risk to Dwarven life and limb outweighed the benefits of helping the Elves. In season two, Celebrimbor reaches out to the younger Durin again, this time with an invitation to visit Eregion and receive a gift on behalf of all the Elves.
Durin IV and Disa receive Celebrimbor’s invitation | youtube.com
I suspect that by the time Celebrimbor’s letter reaches Khazad-dûm, the underground kingdom of the Dwarves will already be in danger of collapsing in on itself, making the offer of a few Rings of Power hard to resist, even for King Durin III. Furthermore, I think it’s Sauron’s doing. We see him at one point standing over a flame that he has manipulated into the shape of a Balrog, spirits of fire that long ago became beastly servants of the Dark Lord Morgoth, and over whom Sauron exercises a degree of control as Morgoth’s successor. One of the few Balrogs that survived the cataclysmic end of the First Age now hibernates deep underneath Khazad-dûm, and as Sauron prods it from afar using sorcery, its stirrings have caused the bedrock of the Dwarven kingdom to tremble.
Sauron and the Balrog | youtube.comKhazad-dûm coming apart at the seams | youtube.com
Durin and Disa, therefore, leave for Eregion to see if Celebrimbor can be of any assistance, and discover that the Elven-smith has prepared for them seven Rings of Power, one for each of the leaders of the seven Dwarven clans (of which Durin III is one), and each one capable of slowing or reversing time like the Three. But when the Dwarves return and present the Rings to Durin III, his downward spiral into madness begins almost immediately and is noted by everyone around him, including his son and daughter-in-law.
Durin and Disa in Eregion | youtube.comDurin III calls a feast | youtube.comThe Seven Rings | youtube.com
Durin III becomes afflicted with a heightened form of “dragon-sickness” that affects Ringbearers (Dwarves, canonically, much slower than other races, but I guess there’s an exception to every rule). In his paranoia, he can’t bear the thought of losing the ring and aggressively reacts to his son trying to remove it from his hand with a full-bodied slap that sends Durin IV flying, but at the same time, he seems almost eager for someone to try and take it by force, prowling around his treasury with an axe so he can assert his claim to the ring with blood.
Durin III and Durin IV | youtube.comDurin III rejects Durin IV | youtube.com
While Disa goes spelunking in search of the root cause of Khazad-dûm’s recent troubles, Durin IV receives a visitor – Elrond, who makes a bold and desperate request of his old friend, asking for an army of Dwarves. I’m throwing out a guess here, but I think that when Galadriel and Elrond’s band of Elven warriors run into Sauron and Adar’s armies in the woods encircling Eregion, Elrond breaks away from the group and rides past Eregion to Khazad-dûm, knowing that a handful of Elves can’t possibly take on the might of Mordor alone and that Gil-galad’s armies coming down from the south will not make it to the field of battle in time. And Durin IV moves quickly, rallying the Dwarves to fight.
Elrond beseeches Durin IV for help | youtube.comDurin IV delivers a rallying speech | youtube.comThe Balrog | youtube.com
Since Disa isn’t standing alongside Durin IV while he’s delivering his speech to the Dwarves, she’s probably still poking around at the mountain’s roots, which can’t possibly be a good idea when a Balrog is in the vicinity. We catch a brief glimpse of the creature fully awake and enraged, wielding a sword of flame; raising the distinct and frightening possibility that Disa gets burned to a crisp. If she lives to tell the tale of what she saw (again, assuming she runs into the Balrog at all), I wonder if her efforts to stop the Dwarves from mining too deeply in search of mithril will put her in direct conflict with her husband, as he wants to supply the Elves with more mithril.
NÚMENOR
In the wake of a devastating defeat for the Númenórean ground armies in the Southlands last season, Queen-Regent Míriel and Lord Elendil weren’t expecting to be welcomed back at the end of season one by crowds cheering their names, but nothing could have prepared them for the news that Míriel’s elderly father, Tar-Palantir, had passed on in their absence, leaving his throne temporarily vacant and allowing the prospective Queen’s charismatic cousin Pharazôn to step in, ostensibly on her behalf. Míriel, dealing with the permanent loss of her eyesight, and Elendil, pushing through grief over his son’s death, must now take command of the island kingdom as it oscillates wildly between the time-honored traditions of the Faithful that have led to so many dead and wounded in a far-off land, and the aggressively isolationist policies held by Pharazôn and his followers.
Elendil | youtube.com
In the books, it’s not a specific military blunder that causes the division, but changing Númenórean attitudes towards death – which, among the Faithful, is regarded as a gift, while Pharazôn and others like him see it as a curse, and become increasingly envious of the Elves, who enjoy immortal lives in Middle-earth and can leave at any point for the Undying Lands in the West, while mortal Men are forbidden to travel west beyond Númenor, even to visit their friends. Unfortunately, The Rings Of Power hasn’t really touched on any of these concepts, and the show – which has compressed the events of thousands of years into a few months, at most – just doesn’t have the multi-generational scope necessary to effectively convey how death gradually becomes a fixation of the Númenóreans, to the point where they are unable to find pleasure in living and can only derive transient satisfaction from taking out their fear and anger on the natural world and the native peoples of Middle-earth. This is all kind of important, though, for future storylines, so expect some mention of these things in season two.
As the rift in Númenórean society widens, even separating Elendil from his daughter Eärien, Míriel is put on trial (I think willingly) for her deeds and for her very beliefs. Her judge is to be the sea itself, or rather, what dwells within it – a tentacled leviathan that will spare her life if it finds her innocent and rip her to pieces if not. A crowd gathers to watch the ceremony, including Eärien, who makes a fateful choice to stand with Pharazôn, not her father. Whether their shocked expressions are in reaction to Míriel walking out of the water unharmed or to her mangled corpse floating to the surface is anyone’s guess.
Pharazôn and Eärien | youtube.comMíriel | youtube.comMíriel stands trial | youtube.comPharazôn and the Eagle | youtube.com
I can’t pinpoint exactly when we see the Eagle of Manwë landing in the Court of the Kings, but I’m inclined to say that by this point Pharazôn has either declared himself King (following the results of the trial, perhaps?) or Míriel is being held in prison awaiting her trial and Pharazôn is acting again as Regent in her stead, as she is nowhere to be seen during this sequence and thematically, the arrival of an Eagle can only be interpreted as a warning from the gods that Númenor is straying down a path to certain ruin under Pharazôn’s leadership. Even Pharazôn knows that, but he also knows that many Númenóreans harbor a long-simmering resentment towards the gods (for all the reasons listed above) that they will never dare to speak aloud unless their leader does so first, and that these people are waiting with bated breath to see if he will be just another leader guided by signs and omens, like Míriel and Tar-Palantir before her. So he responds to the threat – with one of his own, brandishing his sword at the virtuous bird: a gesture of defiance which certainly won’t appease the gods, but in the short term, elicits awe from his surging supporters and fear from his opponents.
THE SOUTHLANDS
I’ve mentioned Elendil’s dead son, but of course, fans of the books and films know that Isildur – destined to play a role of singular importance in the War of the Last Alliance, still a few seasons away – didn’t actually perish in the cataclysmic eruption of Orodruin. He is, however, thousands of miles away from Númenor when he comes to in season two: and that’s not even the worst of his problems. Isildur is alone (apart from his faithful horse Berek) and surrounded by Orcs, in what was once the Southlands and is now the burnt and barren land of Mordor, where everything from the air to the local vegetation wants to kill him.
Shelob | youtube.com
Escaping Mordor means crossing the mountain-range that forms a jagged fence along the country’s western, northern, and southern borders, in which there are only two clear points of entry – the vale of Udûn in the north, where the Black Gates will later be built, and the Morgul Pass (not yet known by that name) in the west. But as would still be the case thousands of years later when Frodo Baggins found himself stuck on the opposite side of these mountains looking for a way into Mordor, these two passes are not only known to the Orcs but frequently used by them, leaving Isildur with no choice but to attempt the treacherous Pass of Cirith Ungol dizzyingly high above the Morgul Pass: the same path, if it can even be called a path, that Frodo would ultimately be forced to take. Mordor’s Transportation Department says they’ve been meaning to get that road fixed for a while now, but I’m starting to think someone over there just enjoys diverting foot traffic into the lair of an enormous and bloodthirsty spider.
In their defense, Shelob is quite a small and bloodthirsty spider in the Second Age when Isildur runs into her. Some might even call her cute (not me, but some). Personally, I’ve never had such a visceral, full-body reaction to the creature as originally written or depicted in The Return Of The King, and I’ll explain why: Peter Jackson’s Shelob, like most “giant spiders” in fantasy, is so large that my brain doesn’t really register it as a spider, if that makes sense. I mean, I know it’s supposed to be a spider and it looks like a spider, but the size difference between spiders in the real world (the largest of which, the goliath birdeater, can grow up to 12 inches long) and Jackson’s Shelob (which is the size of a small car) is so great that I can just about turn off my arachnophobia. Not so with The Rings Of Power‘s Shelob, which, while definitely larger than the goliath birdeater, is just small enough that it’s still feasible to me. It can’t be much larger than megarachne, a prehistoric eurypterid discovered in 1980 and misidentified as a spider until 2005, that clocked in at around 21 inches long. I guess that’s how I measure a giant spider’s scariness: if I can convince myself that it or something akin to it could have existed at some point, I will never sleep again for fear that it will come back.
Evidently, Isildur escapes Shelob’s lair (Berek, on the other hand, may not be so lucky), but the land he descends into on the other side of the Mountains of Shadow is no less dangerous than the one he just left. It is here, though, that he makes some new friends, running into Arondir, a battle-hardened Silvan Elf leading the Southlander refugees who fled before Adar; Theo, an embittered young boy whose mother Bronwyn, one of the protagonists of the first season and Arondir’s love interest, has died offscreen in the intervening time because the actress, Nazanin Boniadi, left the show; and Estrid, a human woman whom we see handcuffed in some shots, suggesting that she’s either a liberated prisoner of the Orcs or a prisoner of Arondir himself, who has been said to distrust her.
Arondir and Isildur | youtube.comEstrid | youtube.comEstrid confronts a swamp creature | youtube.com
As this odd little foursome moves across Middle-earth in search of a new home for the Southlanders, they encounter a number of creatures the likes of which we’ve never seen in this franchise before, including a giant centipede that tries to make a quick snack out of Estrid, and an Entwife, tall as a house, that effortlessly swats Estrid into the air (this woman cannot catch a break). What happened to the Entwives is one of Middle-earth’s greatest unsolved mysteries: long ago, in the First Age, they left the unkempt forests and built well-ordered farms and gardens in Rhovanion where they taught agriculture and horticulture to humans, but near the end of the Second Age, war swept across their lands and the Entwives vanished from history entirely. They may have been slain, or been taken captive by Sauron, or fled far east and south, into Rhûn and Harad. No one knows. Looking ahead for a moment, I almost hope The Rings Of Power doesn’t give us closure one way or another, leaving the audience with profound sorrow and a glimmer of hope to hold onto – but for now, I’m just excited to finally see an Entwife onscreen, and I would love for the show to visit their gardens in a future season.
Somehow, perhaps by hitching a ride on the Entwife’s shoulder, Arondir makes it to Eregion in time for the battle that concludes the season, but I would be surprised if Isildur, Estrid, or even Theo followed him. Their story lies in the Southlands, where the three of them will begin building something out of their weary and leaderless people; the indomitable kingdom of Gondor.
RHÛN
While Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot and the Stranger will face countless perils in the literally uncharted land of Rhûn beyond the eastern border of J.R.R. Tolkien’s map of Middle-earth, at least their story is in no immediate danger of linking up with the central narrative. Fitting, then, that one of the first characters they’ll meet in Rhûn is Tom Bombadil, an enigmatic character best known for being so extraneous to the plot of The Lord Of The Rings that he’s been left out of nearly every adaptation of the books thus far. In all seriousness, though, Bombadil’s incompatibility with the story is deliberate: Tolkien considered him the embodiment of a “natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war”, someone who takes delight in “things for themselves, without reference to [him]self”, and considers “the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control….utterly meaningless….and the means of power quite valueless.”
Tom Bombadil and the Stranger | youtube.comTom Bombadil | youtube.com
With that in mind, something feels slightly…off about The Rings Of Power‘s take on Bombadil telling the Stranger that “Every soul in Middle-earth is in peril; will you abandon them to their doom?” I’ll reserve judgement until I hear it in its proper context, but it’s hard to imagine Bombadil saying those words in that order. This is the same person Gandalf warned would be “a most unsafe guardian” when he spoke out in opposition to a proposal put forward by the Council of Elrond to bring the One Ring to Bombadil for safekeeping. “He would soon forget it, or most likely throw it away.” And Gandalf would know: after Bombadil’s wife Goldberry and Farmer Maggot, he seems to be Bombadil’s closest friend in the books, and the Stranger in The Rings Of Power is heavily implied to be Gandalf, so there’s that.
On that note, I really don’t know how the show could get away with revealing that the Stranger is anybody other than Gandalf at this point. And I’m not just talking about his “always follow your nose” line to Nori in season one that Gandalf uses thousands of years later – also directed at a Hobbit – in The Fellowship Of The Ring. Thematically, his story is just not building towards him being Saruman, Radagast, or one of the two Blue Wizards. I do believe we’ll see these characters, most of them, arriving in Middle-earth to combat Sauron over the course of the series, but the writers chose to have the Stranger come in on a meteor specifically so he could bypass everyone and everything else, Sauron and the Elves, all of it, and land where he would be discovered, nurtured back to health, and befriended by a Hobbit. I know I’ve entertained the notion that he’s a Blue Wizard in the past, but this man is Gandalf. There’s no getting around it.
The Stranger | youtube.com
The Mystics in season one seemed to reach the same conclusion when they named him “the other”. Some took this to mean “the other” Blue Wizard, since there are two, but the full line was “He is not Sauron, he is the other”, which to me feels like another compelling argument for the Stranger being Sauron’s counterpart, the literal Enemy of Sauron, i.e. Gandalf (although I acknowledge that Saruman may have been the original Enemy of Sauron, if it was ever anything more than a title, and Gandalf may have adopted it when he “became” Saruman). Regardless, the fact that the Mystics knew in advance of both Sauron and the mysterious “other”, but had no way of distinguishing between the two until he turned on them, always implied to me that they were followers of a third and perhaps more sinister entity. Normally I’d say you know where I’m going with this, but honestly, I don’t even know if I know where I’m going with this, so bear with me.
What we know for certain is that Ciaran Hinds plays a wizard in The Rings Of Power, who appears to be the leader of the Mystics. We caught a glimpse of him in the trailer, and got a better look in a teaser posted on Twitter – and I don’t know about anyone else, but I get the distinct impression from the image above that the costume designer, hairstylists, and makeup artists were instructed to try and make Hinds pass for Sir Christopher Lee as Saruman, as he might have looked a few thousand years younger than when we met him in The Lord Of The Rings. He’s very clearly wearing off-white, which isn’t necessarily indicative of anything, but you’d think if he were a Blue Wizard, there’d be a hint of…I don’t know, blue, in his costume somewhere.
The interesting thing to consider here is that Tolkien actually sets a precedent for Saruman having traveled in the east, alongside the two Blue Wizards, in a 1954 essay published in Unfinished Tales. The Blue Wizards, according to this text, never returned, and what became of them was a mystery. In 1958, Tolkien wrote in a letter that they had likely strayed from their mission and established “secret cults and “magic” traditions” in the east. Near the end of his life, he revisited the topic, gave the Blue Wizards new names (Morinehtar and Rómestámo), and wrote that they arrived in Middle-earth much earlier than the others and were successful in undermining Sauron’s influence amongst the people of Rhûn and Harad, supporting those who rebelled against him.
Easterlings | youtube.comEasterling | youtube.com
I believe that The Rings Of Power is pulling bits and pieces from different versions of the story, creating a situation where Saruman and/or one of the Blue Wizards has set up a cult, while the other has stayed true and is leading the opposition to Sauron in the east. I don’t have much in the way of evidence to support this theory, but the writer in me says that if you have two characters and two equally compelling but contradictory versions of their shared storyline at your disposal, you simply adapt both versions using both characters, consequentially putting them on diverging paths, which in turn leads to more potential conflict and drama. I mean, that’s how I’d go about it.
Elanor Brandyfoot | youtube.com
My one concern is that Nori Brandyfoot, who was the clear protagonist of this subplot last season, will see her screentime and relevance to the story diminish as the Stranger comes into his own as a character and acquires all kinds of new powers. When the Stranger was placed among the Harfoots, and the question of how he would choose to repay their kindness was the primary source of tension, Nori’s perspective was essential as the person who took the Stranger in, vouched for him when no one else would, and had the most at stake when it was revealed to her – and the audience – if she had made the right choice. But now that we know the Stranger well enough to say with some surety that he is “good”, and with Nori and him leaving the Harfoots behind, what will she bring to the table in season two as the focus shifts to fulfilling the Stranger’s objectives?
I want to bring up showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne’s response to being asked point-blank at a San Diego Comic-Con panel if we’ll see LGBTQ+ characters on The Rings Of Power: “Maybe you have already”. Earlier at the same panel, they teased a romance involving Poppy Proudfellow; Nori’s best friend, who stopped short of joining her and the Stranger as they embarked on their adventure but works up the courage to go after them in season two. I was one of many fans who caught their breath when Poppy ran up to Nori and seemed poised to give her a kiss goodbye as they parted ways in the season finale, but I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t actually happen, because queer characters and relationships in Middle-earth has always seemed like too great an ask. I hesitate to get my hopes up even now, for fear that the showrunners were only baiting their LGBTQ+ fans, as is still so common.
And I think that just about does it for me. How did you enjoy the epic trailer out of San Diego Comic-Con, and which storylines and characters are you most excited to see when the first few episodes of The Rings Of Power season two drop August 29th? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
I’m aware of how ridiculous this will sound, but J.R.R. Tolkien actually showed remarkable restraint as an author and worldbuilder. Yes, he seeded historical detail and mythology throughout his writings, and squeezed as much of it as possible into the Appendices to The Return Of The King, but as anyone who’s ever gone looking there for more info about the Entwives, or the Blue Wizards, or the cats of Queen Berúthiel can tell you, it’s still a pretty bare-bones summary of Middle-earth’s fictional history. The published Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales are a bit more useful, but sometimes, Tolkien would write something down and simply refuse to elaborate any further. And there’s no better example of this anywhere in his work than the character of Tom Bombadil.
Tom Bombadil | Twitter @TheRingsofPower
Most people, if they’re familiar with Tom Bombadil at all, will know him as the capering curiosity who strays into the central narrative of The Lord Of The Rings, rescuing Frodo Baggins and his friends from a sentient and decidedly malevolent willow-tree in the Old Forest, entertaining them for a few nights at his home deep in the Withywindle river-valley before sending them on their way without even so much as a magical gift of no readily apparent purpose or a piece of advice that will prove particularly helpful in the future, the sorts of things that heroes typically earn from seemingly trivial side-quests. Nope, nothing of the sort. Technically, Tom comes back in the very next chapter and saves their lives again, this time from Barrow-wights, and he does tell the hobbits to help themselves to the wight’s treasures, including the swords that Merry, Pippin and Sam use throughout the rest of the book, so that’s something, but it’s not a gift from Tom, per se.
And with that, he’s gone (for real), and the hobbits very soon find themselves surrounded by dangers that push all memory of Tom Bombadil to the back of their – and our – minds, like an odd but not unpleasant dream. Most authors, upon realizing that they had accidentally written three straight chapters of what might arguably be called “filler”, would have either cut this section entirely or retroactively amended it to have some plot-significance, but J.R.R. Tolkien, thankfully, was not most authors. He left Tom in, and later justified his decision in a letter to Naomi Mitchison:
“Tom Bombadil is not an important person – to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a ‘comment’. I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in the Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function.”
— The Letters Of J.R.R. Tolkien, #144
As Tolkien makes clear, Tom actually originated in a poem published two decades prior to The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, and later republished in a 1962 collection of Tolkien’s poetry titled The Adventures Of Tom Bombadil (a slight misnomer, as only two of the sixteen poems feature him). The original poem follows Tom as he prances unconcernedly around the Old Forest in his iconic bright blue jacket and yellow boots, racking up a rogue’s gallery to rival Batman’s, including creatures such as Old Man Willow, the Barrow-wights, and Goldberry, who becomes Tom’s wife by the end of the poem. At this point, Middle-earth already existed in Tolkien’s mind, and had begun spilling over into the settings of his poetry and short stories, but he had not yet expanded the scope of his invented world’s history beyond the bleak First Age, in which a character as whimsical as Tom would have felt utterly out-of-place. It wasn’t until several years later, while writing The Lord Of The Rings, that Tolkien would finally yank Tom out of the nebulous space where he had existed and into the Middle-earth mythos – the book, conceived as a sequel to The Hobbit written in the same whimsical style, was getting out of Tolkien’s hands, becoming larger, darker, and more complex by the moment, and Tom Bombadil might have seemed like the perfect character to help get the story back on track.
It’s interesting to think about, the possibility that Tom feels like such an interloper in the story because he represents Tolkien’s last desperate attempt at “righting course” before he gave in and let the book lead him in a different direction entirely. When Tom conveniently shows up in the nick of time to save the hobbits from murderous willow-trees and the vengeful undead, a trick straight out of Gandalf’s playbook in The Hobbit, maybe it’s not so much for their sake as it is for Tolkien’s – but that’s just my speculation. Regardless of whether Tom responded to a subconscious cry for help from the author or not, once he arrived, he became as intrinsic a part of Middle-earth as characters that had lived there much longer, and even more so than most.
It’s not for no reason that fans have long speculated as to whether Tom and his wife Goldberry are the gods Aulë and Yavanna made flesh, or if Tom is Middle-earth’s maker, Eru Ilúvatar, Himself (a theory Tolkien rebuked, for what it’s worth). At the very least, Tom is older than anyone or anything else in the world. In his own words, “Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the King and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside.” Look past the use of third-person pronouns for a moment, and focus on the phrasing and ominous capitalization that seems to suggest Tom is not from “Outside”, i.e. the universe or Eä, where all the gods including Melkor (the Dark Lord of whom Tom speaks) were gathered before they descended to earth. Of course, if that were the case, it would mean Tom Bombadil was already on earth from the very very beginning, and we can’t even begin to comprehend what that makes him. The only other lifeforms of a possibly comparable age to Tom are the “nameless things” gnawing at the roots of the Misty Mountains, which are said to be older than Sauron; himself a lesser god. Maybe some questions are better left unanswered…
Tom Bombadil | Twitter @TheRingsofPower
While we’ll never know for sure what Tom Bombadil is, I for one have made peace with that, because I’m frankly more interested in the function he serves, as Tolkien put it. He is more than merely “the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside”, though that description may have been sufficient when used in 1937 by Tolkien, before The Lord Of The Rings had even begun to take shape. Allow me to share with you another illuminating excerpt from his letter to Naomi Mitchison:
“The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side….moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. But if you have, as it were, taken ‘a vow of poverty’, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war.”
— The Letters Of J.R.R. Tolkien #144
It’s for this exact reason that the Council of Elrond decides against giving the One Ring to Tom when the matter is discussed. Ironically, it would have too little effect on him! He would never use it, but neither would he remember to hold onto it, and after a while he might throw it away or misplace it, and give it no further thought until Sauron was on his doorstep. Would that be selfishness on his part, or on the part of those who gave him the Ring? It is not within Tom’s abilities to destroy the Ring, anyway, so this course of action would only stall Sauron for a short time, during which he would muster more force with which to crush the Free Peoples.
Tom’s neutrality, so to speak, is as much a factor in the decision by multiple filmmakers to leave him out of adaptations of The Lord Of The Rings as his insignificance to the plot or his garish wardrobe and tendency to break into song in the middle of a sentence. Especially in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, where even the Elves are villainized for not doing enough to help humans and have to be “redeemed” by sending an army to the Battle of Helm’s Deep, or by Elrond hand-delivering Andúril to Aragorn in Dunharrow, it’s hard to imagine Tom Bombadil being let off the hook. I can all too easily envision a scenario where a staunchly isolationist Tom Bombadil has to be coerced into fighting Sauron somehow, or leading the Ents into battle against Saruman.
But I don’t yet know enough about how Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne operate to predict how they’ll utilize Tom in the fast-approaching second season of Amazon’s The Rings Of Power, which will become the first major film or TV adaptation to feature the character (a bizarre 1993 Finnish miniseries titled Hobitit technically has the distinction of being the first). Tom, played by Rory Kinnear of Black Mirror, will be one of the first characters that Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot and the Stranger will encounter in the lands of Rhûn, which stretch beyond the easternmost boundaries of Tolkien’s map of Middle-earth, encompassing an inland sea. Tom has come to Rhûn, the showrunners revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair, to see for himself what effects the power of Sauron seeping from Mordor is having on the plants and animals there. He’s built a house in the wasteland surrounded by cacti and lemon trees, with star-charts etched on the ceilings. He’s been waiting for the Stranger, who “he knows will eventually protect the larger natural world that he cares about.”
How large a role Tom plays in the story will, I think, decide how I ultimately end up feeling about his inclusion – if he shows up out of nowhere to save Nori and the Stranger from a carnivorous cactus, gives them directions, maybe teaches them both the same song that Frodo uses three-thousand years later in the barrow to summon Tom back to his side, and rescues them once more at most before vanishing, preferably never to be seen again on the show, that could work. But if at any point he starts to move the Stranger’s subplot along a little too forcefully, or if he takes any interest in the plot at all, I’m afraid of “contrivance” becoming an issue. Tom is an anti-contrivance, if you will, his house standing not at a figurative crossroads but somewhere on a scenic detour.
Tom Bombadil | Twitter @TheRingsofPower
As for his look, I have very little to say on the subject. His clothes are maybe a tad shabbier than I imagined, and he’s standing still in the first-look images, which I think is jarring because Tom Bombadil is so often described and depicted in artwork as “hopping and dancing”, “leaping up in the air”, “clattering in the kitchen”, “waving his arms as if he was warding off the rain”, or “charging through grass and rushes like a cow going down to drink”, but he’s instantly recognizable regardless, and I’m very excited to hear Kinnear speaking and singing in the Cornish accent he says he and dialect coach Leith McPherson settled on for the character. Oddly, there’s no sign of Goldberry anywhere. Maybe the showrunners want her to be a surprise, or maybe she’s elsewhere in Middle-earth, or not even Tom’s wife yet, but it’s a curious omission.
But I’ve rambled long enough. What are your feelings on Tom Bombadil? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
