Folks, in the past I’ve gone low spoilers in the post, and kept high spoilers for the comments, but uh, it’s going to be much too hard to try and navigate that this time around. II’m hoping that anybody really hoping to dodge spoilers has taken in Episode 8 at this point, but if you haven’t, you can just skip this for now and come back to it later. As the header above this post indicates, I’ll offer a few thoughts about the season overall in retrospective, once I’ve commented on the final episode.
The most succinct summary I can offer of Episode 8 is one I’ve offered to a couple of people I’ve talked to in the last week – which is to say, the episode basically gave me exactly what I’ve been saying for weeks I did not want. And I have to admit…it worked for me. On rewatch, honestly, it REALLY worked for me. Okay, maybe it didn’t work as smoothly as I feel like my own perfect headcanon version of this story would have worked had I written it all out for myself, but also I didn’t do that – I don’t know how my imagined version of this series would have worked practically, and it’s possible I’d have found it too hard to realize my own ideas for how to reveal Sauron, etc. So, yeah, Halbrand was apparently Sauron all along (as some of you suspected and as I have been arguing for weeks he couldn't be). And the Stranger was apparently Gandalf all along (as most of us have been hoping he wouldn’t be, me certainly included). And, again, I’m not mad about it, somehow? Let’s talk briefly about why.
So, let’s not kid ourselves, so much of what makes the Sauron reveal work is that everything involved was turned up to 11 – Charlie and Morfydd are bringing 100% of their very considerable talents as actors, the cinematography and visual effects were brilliantly done (and this is even down to really subtle shifts in the lighting and camera work in the false Valinor, which helps establish that eerie this-is-Finrod-except-no-it-isn’t feeling), the score which has always been a series strength was maybe at the best it’s been at underlying the scenes with tension and power, and the writing which has NOT always been a series strength (but which I think has clearly improved and which also was never as bad as some critics wanted to pretend it was) was really on point. I mean, “I have been awake since before the breaking of the first silence, and in that time I have had many names.” ??? Shivers up my spine.
Also, I do think that the particular vision of Sauron presented here helps resolve at least a lot of my unease with the idea that the reluctant smith we’d seen all season could be the Dark Lord in hiding. Based on what he says in this episode, and my reflection back on the season (though I need to do a full rewatch), here’s my take on what I think happened – Sauron meant to go to Numenor. His goal was to start at the bottom (since he’s arriving empty-handed) and work his way up the one way he knows how – playing one person against another, drawing on people’s fears and uncertainties, etc. If you believe in a repentant Sauron, you can believe I guess that he’s imagining a new, better life for himself, but I don’t buy it – I’m reading him as remorseful, maybe, driven by fear and regret, but not any willingness to take responsibility. He knows how to ACTUALLY make things right – by submitting to the Valar. But instead he’s decided that he can fix things himself, without recognizing that his pride and willfulness will lead him right back to cruelty and evil, and the more he goes down that path, the more impossible it will be for him to resist (or even bother attempting to resist) that familiar path. Anyway, he’s got that mindset and then he finds a Noldor adrift in the ocean – and not just any old member of the Eldar, but Galadriel of the Golden House of Finarfin. And he thinks “she’s an asset” – he doesn’t know exactly how she’ll be useful, but he knows arriving with her in Numenor leaves more options open for him than he’d anticipated. And her drive for vengeance proves too tasty a path to power for him to avoid – he’d kind of rather stick around Numenor, wheedle his way into Pharazon’s trust, undo the kingdom and establish his own power base. But there’s just too delightful a possibility that he can get this elf to lead an army to crush his rival, Adar – maybe even help him infiltrate the highest ranks of Elven society in Eregion, if chips fall right? So he keeps reluctantly going along with her plan instead of sticking to his original ideas, and it works out for him. I think that holds together – it explains his willingness to save her life, explains his waffling on the subject of accepting his destiny as “king of the Southlands”, etc. – well enough. There are gaps but they’re less pronounced than I was expecting them to be. And it’s a cool arc, and one really consistent with some things Tolkien said over time – and Charlie Vickers in interviews is citing Tolkien’s letters and The Silmarillion and Morgoth’s Ring (a HoME title obscure enough that I’ve never even picked it up), so he’s done some serious background work picking up on all the ideas Tolkien invested Sauron with. The interviews with the show runners, too, reveal that they’re basing some of this Galadriel/Sauron relationship on some lines from Fellowship itself that I’ve never thought hard about, but they clearly did – in other words, the perfect example of an adaptation choice where, sure, it’s not where my imagination had gone, but I get why theirs did. It’s reassuring, too, that Vickers in particular is clear that he never saw their connection as romantic – that for them both the electricity of the pairing is about the possibility that the other one was the perfect means to an end they had long hoped they could achieve. The dream of power – one which he will utterly give into and one which she will ultimately reject, saving her soul and her passage back to Valinor – was alive in them both. Okay, yeah, that really works.
Stranger as Gandalf…look, folks, I wanted a Blue Wizard too. And I guess there’s a 3% chance he still might be. But all these little Gandalf nods? It’s him. And here’s the thing – I was reflecting on this, and I realized, yeah, this is a story I didn’t want, and don’t want, except that also OF COURSE I want it. Gandalf going on a journey with a reluctant hobbit? That’s my favorite story. I have liked it every time it has ever happened. I like him dragging Bilbo off to Erebor. I like him getting Frodo up to speed about his terrifying heirloom. I like him scooping up Pippin and riding for Minas Tirith at the very end of The Two Towers. So of course I’m excited to follow him and Nori, who is a delight (my only regret is them leaving Poppy behind, but I’m sure there will be reasons and we’ll get it eventually). And honestly, here’s my theory – we will get to meet the Blue Wizards. Young Gandalf here is a fellow from the main office, come out to check up on the two operatives who were sent East years ago. I presume he will encounter and then either need to restore or else openly fight with the two wizards who, whatever they’ve been doing, have gone off mission. There’s an arc there that’s very grounded in the lore, that keeps him way out of the way of the other events of the second age (which is important, and has been one of my grouses about the possibility of him being involved). I don’t know how Nori will ever get home again but maybe she’s a better traveler than he is. And for the many film fans who don’t care about the lore (who frankly probably have no idea there’s any rules about who goes where when), surely this is exactly what they’d expect – we’re seeing the growth of a younger Galadriel and Elrond, and they know Gandalf too was impossibly old, so why not see him and how he became who he was? To not supply that, to them – I get how it would feel like a really weird disappointment. Yeah, to me as someone a bit more invested in the twists and turns of the legendarium, I don’t see that as being as fruitful as lots of other choices they could make. But I’m also willing to believe they can give me a story I’ll love.
Because, folks, I really am falling for this series. I got choked up today briefly just thinking about the speech Largo gives Nori when he’s telling her to leave with the wizard, and sure, I’m a dad of a daughter and there’s extra resonance there, but also I feel like you’d have to be made of stone not to mist up at least a little. I’m excited about the possibilities we have in the new cast members who will be joining (they’ve definitely confirmed we will meet Cirdan the Shipwright next season, and another new cast member was leaked playing a role the leak called “VIRAN” but come on, that’s clearly an anagram for Narvi, the craftsman who wrought in ithildin the secret, silvered door into Moria that the Fellowship will escape into, chased by the monstrous Watcher in the Water). I’m struck by how the show’s writers have turned Numenor’s Wave into this Rorschach test – it made Miriel paranoid and isolationist, it drove Galadriel to excessive haste in getting Numenorean troops deployed to Middle-earth, and I think now clearly it will have made its mark on Earien (I think surely driving her closer into the camp of the King’s Men), and who knows, maybe it’s made its mark on Pharazon as well, whose tearful eyes at Tar-Palantir’s bedside may have been for the mortality of all Numenor and not just its frail king. The music has been so great throughout and that Fiona Apple rendition of the Ring poem is really good – is it Enya May It Be good, or Annie Lennox Into the West good? No. But you’re talking about two of the most compelling singers of all time (sorry Fiona, you’re not quite in their league, for me). It’s still really good.
I want to note, too, that part of what’s made this season work for me — and this would sound ironic if you follow the much-more-heat-than-light arguments online where being a fan of Tolkien’s written mythology means people presume automatically you’re a critic of the series – was the #JamesAndTheSecondAge journey I went on. Because I’ve seen Tolkien play endlessly with this era and I’m struck at how well the writers know it, and how serious they are about bringing it to life – sure, not always picking up every granular detail in the lore (most of which isn’t licensed to them, as far as we know) but doing a fine job thematically. The Second Age is about Elvish pride and overconfidence, a conviction that they could rid Middle-earth of its shadows – and while canonically that’s located much more in the smiths of Eregion, the show’s decision to extend those tragic qualities to our beloved Galadriel brought them home really effectively, to me. They allowed me to recognize that those qualities could arise from real virtue, instead of just seeing them as the flaws of characters I’m less invested in (and anyway I think clearly Celebrimbor still has those qualities). The Second Age is also about the Edain, specifically the people of Numenor, whose fear of their own mortality leads them to the most shockingly profane and catastrophic choice made by any children of Iluvatar in the whole of the legendarium – and in this show I’m seeing really vivid portrayals of how the fear of death (one’s own death, the death of family, the death of one’s own people, the death of a place one loves) might drive some wild and destructive choices. To the extent that there are canonical dwarven and hobbitish tales in this era, they should be tales of (for Dwarves) uneasy alliance with Elves combining with isolation and self-reliance, and (for Harfoots) life on the fringes of the world in a community still developing its own sense of identity, and without yet a clear understanding of its place. And isn’t that just where we’ve been? So sure, I get folks griping about where Celeborn’s been (I have theories) or why the Stranger’s mind was clouded (I honestly DON’T have theories), etc. – since I’ve spent 20 years goodnaturedly grousing about Glorfindel and Faramir and the Entmoot and plenty more besides in Jackson's movies. But I wish the griping was more goodnatured. Because the films we got twenty years ago were beautiful and introduced a TON of people to a world I love. And I’m positive this series is going to have the same place in culture and experience for a new generation. I just wish it was being released at a quicker pace! But I’m willing to attempt to be patient – as others have observed, a season is never late, nor is it early. It’ll arrive exactly when it’s meant to. :-)
One last thing, and it’s buried down here since this one’s only for the real diehards. :-) I’m about to go through The Rings of Power withdrawal. I mean, first I’m going to watch the season straight through once or thrice, but eventually I’ll need to take a break from that. And at this point I really feel like, having closely chronicled all of the Third Age in my Pandemic LOTR project – link in the comments if you missed that one – and having closely chronicled all of the Second Age in this #JamesAndTheSecondAge stretch these last few months, it’s time for me to take on the First Age. I think some of you are likely up for a read through The Silmarillion, too – or at least for commenting occasionally on me “blogging” a chapter at a time from the Silmarillion here. But is that true? Let me know, if so – it won’t take much encouragement for me to decide that’s something I’ll take on, maybe starting early in 2023. [Website note: I will in fact be doing that here in 2023 -- a link to that project will appear here when it's launched: URL PLACEHOLDER.]
Okay, please feel free to use the contact form on the home page to send your reactions to anything about the season, and conjectures about where the story’s going, or theories about things as yet unresolved, etc., etc. – I’ll be glad to chat The Rings of Power, while we begin the long slow wait for Season Two! Thanks for being along for the ride!