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!
There’s never been a better time to be a fan of three specific consecutive chapters of The Fellowship Of The Ring that have never been adapted from page to screen. The Old Forest, In The House Of Tom Bombadil, and Fog On The Barrow-downs make up a strange, at times surreal, and largely self-contained story that seemingly holds up the book’s overarching narrative instead of moving it forward – and for filmmakers Peter Jackson and Ralph Bakshi, that’s justification enough for their decision to pretend the Hobbits made it from the Shire to Bree without incident along the way. The plot is essentially unaffected (the Hobbits are given their swords by Aragorn, who conveniently has three small swords on his person), and moves to its destination quicker. But so much texture is lost. The world of Middle-earth is less rich, less vibrant, without Tom Bombadil and Goldberry; less dangerous, less of a character in its own right, without Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights. These chapters play an underappreciated role in making The Lord Of The Rings, and this year, they’re finally being paid their dues.
Barrow-Wights (artwork by Einar Martinsen) | empireonline.com
As previously revealed by Vanity Fair, the upcoming second season of The Rings Of Power will feature Tom Bombadil, an enigmatic character who was already capering about in J.R.R. Tolkien’s head years before he started writing The Lord Of The Rings, but became so firmly grounded in Middle-earth as to now be frequently associated with the in-universe God. Recently, Empire Magazine confirmed that the Barrow-wights, terrifying adversaries of Bombadil, would also appear in season two; which did not come as much of a surprise to keen-eyed fans who had already caught fleeting glimpses of them in the trailer and accompanying behind-the-scenes video released over a month ago, but did allow us to get a much closer look at how Amazon is adapting these iconic monsters for television. So let’s get into it.
First, however, I feel like “barrows” and “wights” are sufficiently unfamiliar concepts to the general audience that a brief explanation is in order. Barrows, or tumuli, are tombs covered by a mound of earth, and while the practice of building them was fairly common across the world in ancient times, with examples everywhere from France to Japan to Australia, Tolkien’s barrows are distinctly English, while the incorporeal, undead monsters inhabiting these mounds come from Norse folklore. There are several words in Old Norse to describe such a creature, including draugr or vættr, which was translated into English as wight (an existing, if somewhat archaic Old English word that once applied to just about anything living, but came to refer almost exclusively to supernatural beings). Tolkien had probably also encountered the specific term “Barrow-wight” at least once, in Eiríkr Magnússon and William Morris’ Grettis Saga (1869), which adapts the Old Norse word haugbúi or “barrow-dweller” thusly.
Galadriel vs A Barrow-wight | empireonline.com
Draugar, traditionally, are understood to be something other than ghosts, a kind of parasitic spirit that possesses and reanimates dead bodies for its own malevolent purposes, and may fiercely guard a treasure (hence their association with barrows in particular, which often housed a deceased ruler’s riches as well as their remains), or wander around by night in search of its prey. Tolkien’s wights check all the boxes. Though little is said of how they came to be, we know for a fact that they were not innate to the barrows:
“In the days of Argeleb II the plague came into Eriador from the South-east, and most of the people of Cardolan perished, especially in Minhiriath. The Hobbits and all other peoples suffered greatly, but the plague lessened as it passed northwards, and the northern parts of Arthedain were little affected. It was at this time that an end came of the Dúnedain of Cardolan, and evil spirits out of Angmar and Rhudaur entered into the deserted mounds and dwelt there.”
— The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King: Appendix A; (iii) Eriador, Arnor, And The Heirs Of Isildur
In Unfinished Tales, the appearance of the wights in Cardolan is explicitly linked with the Witch-king of Angmar, mightiest of the nine Ringwraiths, whom Tolkien at one point conceived of as wights themselves:
“[The Witch-king] had known something of the country long ago, in his wars with the Dúnedain, and especially of the Tyrn Gorthad of Cardolan, now the Barrow-downs, whose evil wights had been sent there by himself.”
— Unfinished Tales: The Hunt For The Ring
Whether the wights were creations of the Witch-king or had merely fallen under his control is a mystery. During the events of The Lord Of The Rings, he again “roused” the wights in an (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to blockade the Shire and prevent Frodo Baggins from escaping to Rivendell. The wights may have perished off-page when the Witch-king was killed in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, or afterwards when the power of the Nine Rings was ended, but for my part I believe they were older than either Rings or Ringwraiths. The wight’s song speaks of a “dark lord”, which can be read as a reference to Sauron, of course, but looks forward to a time when he will lift his hand to bring about death and destruction on a cosmic scale, extinguishing the sun, moon and stars in a black wind. Sauron, for all his many faults, is not a nihilist (part of what makes him so interesting to me), and the wight’s imagined future sounds a lot more like the universe according to Morgoth.
All of which is to say that I personally have no problem with wights appearing in The Rings Of Power, an Age of the world before the wars in Arnor where they make their official entrance into historical record. The show could call them wights rather than Barrow-wights to clear up any lingering confusion, but even that I think is unnecessary as long as these wights are not already inhabiting the Barrow-downs east of the Shire – and from the looks of it, they’re not. The trailer and first-look images show Galadriel, Elrond, and a squadron of Elven warriors surrounded by wights in a swampy forest, while the Barrow-downs are described and consistently depicted in artwork as “a country of grass and short springy turf”, devoid of trees or visible water. One could argue this is the result of unchecked deforestation by Númenórean colonizers, and while I wouldn’t normally expect a commitment to fictional ecohistorical accuracy from a show, I remembered that the marketing for The Rings Of Power kicked off with a remarkably accurate map of Middle-earth in the early Second Age, so I checked…and the forests, while blanketing much of Eriador, deliberately skirt around the Barrow-downs.
Stoney Littleton Long Barrow | worldhistory.org
So then, where are these wights from? That’s a question that has become especially relevant now that we’ve seen the wights up-close via Empire, because their costumes – specifically their headwear and jewelry – have raised legitimate concerns of orientalism. Regardless of whether or not The Rings Of Power‘s costume department meant anything by dressing monsters in what is seemingly SWANA and Central Asian traditional clothing, I believe it is important to amplify these concerns. The Rings Of Power, and all adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, have a responsibility to tackle head-on the orientalist and racist tropes that he wove into the text (again, whether intentionally or not). I would not see The Rings Of Power repeat the critical mistake Peter Jackson made when he opted instead to ignore and arguably even lean into the xenophobic connotations of a story about predominantly white heroes from the West cutting down hordes of nameless dark-skinned enemies out of the East, which in the aftermath of 9/11 made the films and books extremely popular amongst white Christian nationalists and Islamophobes (including Gimli actor and voice of Treebeard, John Rhys-Davies), who have dominated the fandom space and tried to shape mainstream perception of The Lord Of The Rings as an exclusively white and Christian story for the last two decades, in part because they were never challenged.
The Rings Of Power played an indirect role in exposing the fandom’s racism and revitalizing interest in the study of racist themes in Tolkien’s works, but has actually done surprisingly little in and of itself to challenge the status quo, and in some ways is decidedly regressive. Many fans raised eyebrows at the decision to erase important examples of gender nonconformity in Middle-earth by depicting most Elven men (and only the men) with short hair and Dwarven women without facial hair, while others noted how odd it was that most of the nameless Elven women in Lindon wear veils and nun-like garments. Some of these issues have been addressed heading into season two (there are more Elven men with long hair now, and Princess Disa is growing out her sideburns), but the Barrow-wights serve as a reminder that The Rings Of Power still has a long way to go in confronting the legacy of orientalism in Tolkien’s works that has overshadowed every adaptation. With the series expanding its scope to encompass the eastern lands of Rhûn, while in the real world, Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric against SWANA people is on the rise, it’s more important than ever that they make the effort.
What do you think of the Barrow-wights, their look, and the role they could potentially play in The Rings Of Power season two? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
