Welcome back, anyone and everyone, to my series of posts about The Rings of Power. Now, the way I approach these episode writeups is to post essentially non-spoilery material here in these posts, and to post very very spoilery comments in the comments. That way if you’d like to see some thoughts prior to diving into the episode, you can, and for those who’ve seen the episode already and want to talk it out, we’ve got space in the comments. I’ll just have to add this time around that I’m taking for granted that any references to events from Season 1 aren’t spoilers. I know some of you didn’t see it when it first aired, and all I can say is, it’s all on Amazon Prime still and you can give it a watch if you like – you can even use that website of mine to read what I was saying about each post as it happened. :-) Okay, now that all that preambulatory material is out of the way, let’s talk about Season 2, Episodes 1-3, in an essentially non-spoilery fashion.
Firstly, I have to say, it’s a little bit of a bummer that the story’s already so sprawling that they have to give us three episodes right at the drop because not all the storylines even come up in the first two episodes. I did like getting that immediate infusion of 3+ hours of Rings of Power, of course! But there’s a part of me that wishes it was a little easier to integrate the storylines together enough to keep folks on screen more regularly. It’s exciting, too, though, that the story is that sprawling – we really have a lot of different irons in the fire, and no matter where the camera cuts to, there’s real tension now and challenges for characters to overcome. I know some people found the pacing of the first season slow, and while that wasn’t my experience as a viewer, I did understand what they were talking about. Well, I find it hard to imagine you could critique Season 2 for being slow – the pace is getting so swift that there’s a part of me that worries events will rush up on us before we have time to be ready for them. It’s pretty clear from the trailers, etc., that some pretty major canonical Second Age events are happening this season.
Secondly, and maybe I should have led with this – this season feels great off the bat. The main characters have all been established (and the integration of new ones feels smooth) so that it’s easier to just jump into where they are in the narrative and what they’re up against. The production design and effects work is fantastic as ever, and in some ways I’d say that the show’s done even more to make vistas eye-popping and shots cinematic. There’s still some slightly clunky dialogue at times, but for the most part these characters speak the ways we know them to speak, and the touch with both elevated oratory and light humor is successful in my opinion. The music is fantastic as always, and the new sand intro is even more cryptic in intriguing ways than last season’s. In some ways, getting into canonical Second Age material a little more fully makes it easier for me to settle in as a viewer who knows what to expect – it feels less like Original Screenplay and more like Adapted Screenplay to use Oscars terminology – and there’s therefore a different thrill of excitement when moments happen (as they already have) that make me say “ooooh” as I realize I know what’s going on. And I do think that works better in most series than the attempts they made in Season 1 to “keep the audience guessing” – and in particular, their attempt to keep Tolkien nerds guessing. I get that it was theoretically exciting to feel like we didn’t know who Sauron was or where he was, and to be second guessing things about tales of mithril’s origins or the fading elves, but after a while all the uncertainty and the bait-and-switch was honestly a little tiring. I rewatched the whole first season in August to prep for the return, and I definitely had a fun time, but honestly the “make the audience guess” elements are the portions that aged least well for me – once you know where your card went, the magician’s act is a little less mesmerizing.
I’m struck – and again, this is the non-spoiler version, there’s more detail in the comments – about the ways the thematic material is working here. The show is leaning into the idea of power – what does it mean to be powerful, or to wield power? Does all power corrupt, or can it be used responsibly? Do we have to be strong to be powerful, or are there other ways, other means? A lot of this is extending the work they did in the first season, but I’m appreciating it more now – like, honestly, the whole “The Stranger can’t control his magic” situation in season one often felt a bit plot-determined, to me. Like, he needed to keep failing in inexplicable and humiliating ways in order for the plot to keep on the rails – I had a hard time understanding what the underlying cause of his troubles could possibly be. But I’m less restless about that kind of thing this season, because it’s clearer to me why every powerful character has to struggle with feelings of powerlessness. The show is interested in what that feeling makes us vulnerable to, makes us willing to compromise for, makes us struggle to overcome. Gil-galad’s often intensely frosty, forbidding qualities in season one, which to me felt like a slightly overcooked determination to make him an obstacle (again for plot reasons), lock in this season in ways I wasn’t quite expecting. I’m realizing what his character can and cannot do – I like it. There’s a lot circling around the question of truth, too – when you choose to speak the truth and when hide it, how much of the truth to tell and how much to conceal. Maybe, too, the question of how your life leads you to turn your head away from seeing the truth, or turn your head towards it. Isildur’s arc (okay, this is technically a spoiler since he “died” in season one, but since LOTR as both the novel and the movies clearly tells us he DIDN’T die as a young dude in a burning building, I figure I’m okay) is interesting to me – we’re well clear of anything canonical right now, and I wasn’t sure I loved where season one had left him, but I’m getting it now. He needed to be somewhere that he could face the truths he had to hide from in Numenor…and I suspect he’s also got to be taken in by some of Middle-Earth’s lies if we’re going to understand how he will become both the hero who saves the world and the tragic figure who fails to keep it safe. We’re on a journey with him and it’s delightful to see the ways it unfolds.
Honestly, the overwhelming sense I get is that the people running this (unlike the people who ran that OTHER long-running and very famous fantasy adaptation series, the one on HBO) have very long range planning in place driven by a desire to make the final outcomes make sense. Part of what made season one trickier to consume for a lot of folks is that they were laying groundwork for seasons ahead, and we couldn’t always see it at the time. But it’s getting clearer now, at least to me, and it’s exciting – it suggests they have a steady hand at the tiller, and that if we let them they’re ready to tell some really deep stories driven by characters who’ve developed organically and intentionally over time. I love that kind of storytelling and I really hope I’m right to detect it here. It suggests it was a good idea to (for instance) devote thousands and thousands of words to writing about the dang thing. :-)
As the season progresses, I think I’ll have more to say at the post level about how I’m seeing it develop – in part because each time I’ll assume that you all have seen all but the latest episode, at least. For now, since I’m working from the idea that some of you won’t have seen the new season at all, I feel like to say much more would be to say too much. I guess I’ll say in general terms that I thought the first episode was a little choppier / more reminiscent of season one, but the second and third episodes just flew past – if you get through the first one and think “I don’t know, am I hooked yet?” just give the next episode a go, and I think you’ll find yourself drawn forward pretty urgently from there. A lot more awaits in the comments – otherwise, folks, enjoy your day and enjoy the first three episodes of Rings of Power whenever you watch them!
Comments:
Okay, as usual, I’ll try to devote a comment apiece to different things I’m thinking about and am curious how you all feel. Let’s start with what’s clearly the season’s big arc – the Elven rings and the forging of the others in Eregion. I have been pretty impressed with how the first eps explored all the angles on the Three – can we trust them or not? Does it matter how much or how little Sauron knew about them or affected them? What does it mean that the rings do seem to have picked their bearers – is this ominous or is it destiny (or is it both)? And I have to imagine some of you nerds gasped like I did when Sauron calls himself Annatar in reintroducing himself to Celebrimbor – that’s a name he has in the Silmarillion, but never in the LOTR and Appendices, which means that Amazon somehow got the rights to use that name from the Tolkien Estate. And if they got that, what else did they get? Really exciting! Anyway, obviously we already had it out two years ago about the Three Rings being first instead of last (as they were canonically) but the more I’m seeing this unfold, the more this makes better sense to me than Tolkien’s narrative – the forging of Elvish rings creates a sort of arms race, a power vacuum. It’s much easier to imagine Celebrimbor handing a flashy ring to King Durin, for instance, knowing he’s already given an even better version of his craft to Gil-galad. I don’t know how it worked for you all, but for me this whole ring-forging situation is right on track and moving great – I can tell we’re going to get a pretty epic battle for Eregion, I can see how Elrond’s being positioned to step into the role of founder of Imladris, etc. What are you seeing/noticing?
I want to talk about the season’s being a lot bolder with the deeper lore – did others notice this? Like, we’re getting much plainer statements about the Valar and their intentions here. Manwe has been invoked by name, which I think he never was in season one. We get a reference to Rumil – which, as a guy who read The Book of Lost Tales (the oldest Middle Earth material Chris Tolkien ever published from his father’s papers) this spring, was really amazing, Rumil is one of the first Elvish characters JRRT ever devised and fleshed out at all. We get a reference to Daeron, the minstrel and loremaster of Doriath – again, another of the Book of Lost Tales characters who survives into the legendarium proper. I mean, the people who want to crap on Rings of Power can like what they like I guess, but I can never understand them asserting so loudly all over the Internet that the creators of the series clearly hate the source material – WHO would be name-dropping Rumil and Daeron in the mouth of Cirdan the Shipwright other than a couple of nerds who frankly wouldn’t seem out of place here in this comments section? :-) Anyway, I am of course loving it, but here’s the question I want to throw to you here among the spoilers: what do we think the series’s conception of the Valar is? Like, the Eagle’s appearance I think is clearly meant to be significant, but what was the intent? The Eagle didn’t talk, after all, even though many Eagles do in the legendarium. Or the wave that shakes Cirdan’s boat and prevents him from dropping the Three Rings into the deep – was that Ulmo? Osse? Uinen? Is the blast of wind that throws open Celebrimbor’s shutters when Sauron’s lying to him about being a messenger from the Valar a bit of Sauron’s theatrics, or a breeze flung from Manwe on Taniquetil? How active do we think the show believes the Valar to be, and what’s the guiding principle that governs when they do or don’t act?
After all the fussing about the Stranger last season, it does feel like they’ve given the game away now (as I said above – thank goodness, I’m happy to be done with guessing games for the most part) – if we didn’t think he was Gandalf when he headed off with his hobbit buddy “following his nose”, all the talk about his “gand” and the need for a new “gand” just seems so thoroughly coded for that moment when Poppy looks at Nori and says “he’s a bit like an elf, ain’t he? A gand-elf?” and then the Stranger turns slowly with a wild look on his face and says “Poppy, say that one more time? What was it?” Anyway, it means we can dial into the I think much more interesting speculative question of who/what exactly this dark wizard being played by Ciaran Hinds is – is it a foregone conclusion that the Dark Wizard is one of the Istari? If so, surely he’d be one of the Blues – Radagast wouldn’t make sense at all, and if Saruman had already gone this freaky-weird in the Second Age Gandalf’s trust of him in the Third Age would be just as weird – but if that’s true where did the other Blue Wizard go? Should we seriously entertain, though, the idea that this isn’t one of the Istari – that he’s some other Maia spirit, maybe, similar to the “acolytes” he references, the three who attacked the Stranger in season one? If this IS a Blue Wizard, too, then how the heck did it go this wrong – do these Second Age Istari really come with no instructions from the Valar whatsoever? It’s a little odd, I guess, to feel like the Valar simultaneously care enough to send Eagles or waves to rock Cirdan’s boat but their messengers are arriving without even a note pinned to their jackets. Can we make any sense of this?
One more big spoilery conversation to have – that is, one more I want to start, though you all should start any and all conversations in this space as much as you like. So, as I mentioned, the show has gotten itself onto more canonical ground by getting slotted into the Annatar & Celebrimbor forge rings together and then there’s a war in Eregion narrative. We’ll see exactly how closely they hew to the version of these events in the Appendices / Silmarillion but it feels like they’re pretty dialed in. Here’s the problem, though, and it’s a problem those of us who know the Second Age have seen coming from a while back – the canonical Numenor timeline is radically out of sync with this. As you may remember from my writeups on the Second Age, canonically an Elf-loyal Numenor shows up to turn the tide of battle in Eregion (thanks to the empire having gotten more engaged with establishing good footholds in Middle-Earth) but it doesn’t feel like we’re in that sequence at all – I had wondered if the show would leave Miriel in power until the Eregion piece concluded, but clearly that doesn’t look likely right now, right? What do you all think – will Numenor show up after all? But motivated by what? Or will it be some rogue group of Miriel/Elendil folks not connected to Numenor’s military proper? Will they detach Numenor from this narrative entirely…yet if so, how will Numenor intersect with events this season? Also, while we’re speculating about Numenor, what do we think will happen with Elendil and his kids this time around – right now we’ve got one kid he thinks is dead but isn’t, one kid who seems ready to side with EVIL out of fear/grief, and one kid we think surely is still alive somewhere but we haven’t seen on screen yet. He can’t stay estranged/alone from all three all season, right? What do you reckon, though, is the trajectory he’s on?