The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 goes out with a fun, messy bang

The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power ends with a bang: a big, loud, fun, kind of scattershot bang. The show blitzes through climaxes in this finale, some more satisfying than others.

Let's start with the first biggee: King Durin takes it upon himself to mine deeper and more greedily into the mountain than any dwarf before him, unveiling untold riches in mithril. He also wakes up the balrog of Morgoth living under the earth, which looks a lot like the balrog as depicted in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies...like, so much like it that I wonder if there's grounds for legal action, since the studio that makes The Rings of Power is not the same as the one that made those movies. Anyway, King Durin realizes that his ring of power has driven him too far; he takes it off, leaving it to his son, and leaps into the fray.

The hole in the rock wall that Durin opened up is blocked by falling rubble, so I assume the balrog won't become a huge problem for the dwarves until later on in the show, which is a little disappointing; we know that the balrog is eventually what drives the dwarves out of Khazad-dûm, and this feels like the show stringing us along. This particular Chekhov's gun has been hanging on the wall since the season 1 finale. The season 2 finale cocked it, but didn't pull the trigger. Let's see some boom.

That said, I like Durin the Younger and have been moved by his relationship with his father. I was sad to see it end and happy for Durin to be installed as the new king. I think he had the most successful arc of the season. And the balrog itself looked fantastic, as did King Durin leaping in to fight it, in dramatic slow-mo.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power review, season 2 finale

The bulk of the action takes place in Eregion, which Adar is attacking from without. Within, Sauron is inside torturing Celebrimbor for information on the nine rings of power meant for mortal men. Sauron in general has been the most entertaining part of this season, and he continues to be a wicked delight here. He pelts a bloodied and dying Celebrimbor with arrows and sincerely says, "Look what you've done to yourself," which is hilariously twisted. Celebrimbor has a good and noble ending as he resists Sauron's attempts to pry information out of him. He prophecies Sauron's doom and calls him "the lord of the rings." Sauron cracks and impales the last descendent of Fëanor on a pike. These two also had a good run this season. This scene represents the peak of their plotline, and maybe the season as a whole. Lots of fun layers here.

Sauron manages to take control of Adar's armies, and not with some magical I-take-over-their-minds kind of trick like I was fearing. The orcs are getting fed up with Adar, who has them throwing themselves against the walls of Eregion even as they die by the score. Sauron, ever persuasive, talks them into betraying Adar, who dies by the hands of his children in a cool "Et tu, Brute?" moment.

I haven't been the biggest fan of Adar, who seems like another stalling tactic, a character invented for the show so the writers can pad out the story of the Second Age. But I did like the poetic twist of his death: Adar puts on Galadriel's ring of power and is able to turn back into the elf he was before he was corrupted by the dark. That puts him in touch with the better angels of his nature, and he agrees to work with Galadriel to defeat Sauron and then to withdraw to Mordor, never to trouble the free people's of Middle-earth again. And just as he makes this noble choice, he is killed.

That leaves Sauron alone with Galadriel; the two have a extended sword-fight where Sauron shape-shifts into various people from Galadriel's past, the better to mess with her mind. I was never especially invested in their connection, but the show finds ways to keep this fight spicy and fun. And Sauron maintains his psychotic hubris, stabbing Galadriel with Morgoth's old crown and demanding she give him the rings of power she's carrying. He gets the nine, but she grips Nenya and lets herself fall over a cliff, sacrificing her life rather than help the new dark lord build his power.

But of course she doesn't die, and is instead nursed back to health by Gil-galad and Elrond, who lead those elves who survive the siege of Eregion out of the ruined city to a new site it is heavily implied will become Rivendell, the last homely house we all remember from The Lord of the Rings.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power review: season 2, episode 8

That's where the second season of The Rings of Power ends. It's as good a place as any, but it did leave me leaving a little hollow, something I often feel when watching this show. The surviving elves lift their fists and cheer as they see Galadriel alive...or maybe because Gil-galad raises a sword, or maybe because Galadriel uses her ring to bathe the survivors in the warm light of heaven, or...I don't know. I often don't know. I feel like The Rings of Power keeps telling me that this or that moment is epic and important, but I don't feel it often enough in my chest.

The Rings of Power has a problem with instant climaxes; too many big moments come upon us without much in the way of preamble or setup. So it is with the scenes on Númenor this episode. Last time we visited the island, Queen Regent Míriel had regained some of the power she'd lost to Ar-Pharazôn after she survived an encounter with a sea monster, which the Faithful take as a sign of favor from the Valar. I figured maybe Pharazôn would now plan his next move, try to get around Míriel some other way, or perhaps offer to marry her, which is what happens in the books. But when we check in on him, he's already declaring all the Faithful traitors and rounding them up. There's no planning, no build; I wondered if I'd missed an episode.

Eärien warns Elendil that Pharazôn's followers are coming in time for him to hightail it to a less fanatical part of the island. Meanwhile, Pharazôn's son Kemen shows up in the Númenórean colony in Middle-earth where Isildur has been hanging out; Isildur featured so seldom this season that I sometimes forgot he was on the show. Kemen being here is another did-I-miss-something moment. Was there a scene where Pharazôn told Kemen to travel to Middle-earth to mind the colonies? He just kinda pops up.

Anyway, Isildur travels with Kemen back to Númenór, leaving behind his underdeveloped love interest Astrid. Tune in next season to see how that turns out, if you can remember who these people are through the two-year wait.

Verdict

Meanwhile, in Rhûn, the Stranger is just kind of wandering through the Stoor village, which again made me wonder if I'd missed something; when and how did he find this place? We get another instant climax as the Dark Wizard shows up and spends a minute playing nice before suggesting that the two of them fight Sauron and inherit his power, an offer the Stranger flatly refuses. The Dark Wizard immediately turns heel and brings a bunch of rocks down on the town, although the Stranger uses his powers to prevent a slaughter.

So we get a confrontation, but it's between two characters who remain mostly blank slates, especially the Dark Wizard. And then the Dark Wizard leaves and we're asked to wait until 2026 to see what happens next. We do learn that the Stranger is indeed Gandalf, something I think most fans guessed the moment he showed up in the series premiere.

The best part of this story is Nori and Poppy leading the now homeless Stoors on a migration, transforming from followers into leaders. Nori and Gandalf share a brief goodbye, and it's nice, although it doesn't hit as hard as it should. The relationship between these two was once the heart of this plotline, but this season devoted more time to Gandalf confering with Tom Bombadil, a character who's emotionally distant by nature.

When it comes to the harfoot-Stranger-Rhûn storyline this season, I think the focus was way off. It pinned too much on nebulous characters like Tom Bombadil and the Dark Wizard when it should have zeroed in on the Stranger's bond with Nori. It's the weakest storylines this season.

And so I leave the second season of The Rings of Power feeling more or less as I did going into it: some of the plotlines work better than others, the show leans too hard on Lord of the Rings fan service, and everything is moving too slowly. There's entertainment to be had, but I suspect I'm going to forget a lot of what happened this season in a few months time, and will remember little by the time season 3 rolls around. Ah well.

The Bullet Points of Power

• In J.R.R. Tolkien's books, Sauron later uses Celebrimbor's body as a banner he parades before his armies of orcs. That would be pretty wicked to see.
• The dwarves show up to Eregion at the last minute and prevent the siege from turning into a total rout. This is an invention for TV and does not happen in the books.
• Arondir and Theo were in this episode. I feel like they were especially forgettable in the back half of this season.
• The Dark Wizard says he was convinced to come to Middle-earth by the Stranger. That sounds like the relationship between Alatar and Pallando, the two Blue Wizards about whom we learn almost nothing in J.R.R. Tolkien's books; according to Tolkien, Alatar asked Pallando to accompany him as a friend. So is that who they are? And yet the show all but tells us that the Stranger is Gandalf, an entirely different guy. I'm not sure what to make of that. It seems we now have two wizards with mysterious identities — the Stranger and the Dark Wizard — rather than one.

Episode Grade: B

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