The Rings of Power returns with bold visuals, okay drama (Episodes 201-203 review)

The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is here! The first three episodes have dropped all at once on Prime Video. Are they worth a watch? Do they improve on the first season? Is the show $500 million well spent? Let's break it all down below:

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 201 review, "Elven Kings Under the Sky"

The season 2 premiere begins with a flashback. Morgoth, the dark lord of all evil familiar to fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, has fallen. Sauron, his chief lieutenant, is attempting to consolidate his new position as the leader of Morgoth's orcish armies, but he is betrayed by the corrupted elf Adar, who stabs him in the back with the crown that would have made him king. The orcs tear Sauron apart, but he turns into a gloopy gloop and gloops away to parts unknown, slowly rebuilding himself into the man we know as Halbrand.

We heard that the second season of The Rings of Power would be about "the villains," and this episode makes good on that promise by focusing on Sauron. The extending opening was my favorite part. Sure, this Adar guy appears nowhere in Tolkien's lore and is a complete invention of the show, but making like you're going to crown somebody only to literally stab them in the back is a fun move and I liked it. I felt like I was seeing a side of Sauron I hadn't seen before, and yet he's still the villain. He's worming his way back into Adar's confidence as Halbrand, he's magically touching the minds of big mean warg dogs and making them eat people who mistreat him, etc. He's entertaining, and now he's with the elf Celebrimbor, ready to make rings and corrupt the whole of Middle-earth. I like this much more than season 1, where we suspected Halbrand was really Sauron but weren't sure and were waiting for the other shoe to drop. The shoe is here. Now walk.

That said, I think the show wrote itself into a bit of a corner by coming up with the whole Halbrand plot in the first place. It's going to revert to form in this season, having Sauron take on a guise much more pleasing to the eye as he helps Celebrimbor forge the rings of power. Only now the show has to account for why people in Celebrimbor's orbit aren't aware of who Sauron really is. I found Galadriel's reluctance to admit she had been taken in by Sauron's charade in the first season a little bit extremely silly. In The Silmarillion, the elves are a tight-knit group, and the thing to do now is for all of them to be informed that Sauron is in their midst. But that wouldn't be good for drama, so we have to ignore it.

I'll forgive the contrivance so long as Sauron continues to be deliciously evil. And y'know what, I enjoyed his time as a pile of gloop. More gloopy Sauron.

This episode only focuses on a few storylines: Sauron's manipulations, the elves figuring out what to do with the three elven rings of power, and the Stranger's journey into the land of Rhûn with Nori the harfoot. I don't think there's a single human being in this episode. Where's the human representation?!

The sections with the Stranger and Nori are fine, although we still don't know what it is they're looking for because they don't know what it is they're looking for. Whatever, the scenery looks nice and their chemistry is fun. This episode also marks the return of Nori's friend Poppy, who apparently decided to abandon the harfoot caravan and travel with her buddies instead. That's neat, although I wonder why the show made a point of separating the trio in the season 1 finale if Poppy was just going to join them the episode after.

As for the Elves, I found Elrond's freakout over what do to with the three Elven rings a touch melodramatic, especially considering it didn't come to anything. He jumps down a waterfall with the rings in hand and seeks out the elder elf Círdan (an elf so old he has a beard). Círdan agrees to dispose of the rings rather than risk the elves becoming corrupted — Sauron may not have made these directly, but his knowledge helped Celebrimbor crack the code, so they're suspect — but changes his mind when...I dunno, he finds them pretty? And then he, Gil-galad and Galadriel slip them on and the leaves bloom on the trees and the light shines through yonder skylight and the elves who were faded are restored to full bloom.

This is essentially the purpose of the Elven rings in The Silmarillion — to hold off decay and preserve the vitality of times past — but I wish the show found a way to depict their importance that wasn't so bluntly literal. AND (this is the last whiny book-reader complaint of the review, I swear), it's weird that the show switched the order of events so that the Elven rings were made first rather than last. In the book, Celebrimbor was only ready to make the Elven rings after working on the others with Sauron, using the knowledge he'd obtained but not exposing the process directly to Sauron's corrupting influence. The Elven rings are supposed to be the pinnacle of his craft, all the rest merely first drafts. Now it's going in reverse and it's awkward.

But look, it's very obvious this show isn't overly interested in staying true to Tolkien's lore, so it's kind of pointless to call out these sorts of textual inconsistencies. Did I enjoy watching the episode? Yes. Was it pretty? Yes. Did I wish it aspired to be something more than very expensive dumb fun? Yes, but let us not shit overmuch on dumb fun lest we lose our sense of wonder and play. Sounds like something Gandalf might say, minus the profanity.

Episode Grade: C+

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 202 review, "Where the Stars are Strange"

In The Silmarillion, we learn that Sauron disguises himself as a divine being named Annatar and helps the elven smith Celebrimbor make the Rings of Power. I knew the show was going to bring Annatar into the fold this season, but didn't know how they were going to pull that off given that, in this continuity, Sauron had already disguised himself as a completely different guy and been found out.

This episode marks the introduction of Annatar, and it mostly works, if only because Galadriel was too stupid and embarrassed to share the details about how Sauron deceived her right after it happened. In criticism, an "idiot plot" is a plot that is "kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot," and there is a bit of that going on in The Rings of Power. But I want to focus on the things that I liked, and I liked Annatar revealing himself to Celebrimbor. It was overwrought, it was glowing golden guadiness, it was nigh-Biblical in its opulence. Sauron is supposed to be a being who can dazzle lesser creatures with his splendor, and this qualified. I also like how Celebrimbor clearly wants to be thought of as someone who can accomplish things of great importance, which makes him easy prey for someone like Sauron, the master manipulator.

Gears are slowly turning elsewhere in the elven part of the story. High King Gil-galad sends Elrond to Eregion to check in on Celebrimbor. Galadriel will go with him, which means that they're either going to run into Annatar and expose him once again or Sauron is going to have to pretend to be too sick to come to dinner and meet them or something. There's more feather-light conflict between Galadriel and Elrond; she thinks he should trust her, he's skeptical of her because she was working with one of the most evil beings to ever walk Middle-earth and didn't know it. Círdan, who is seen shaving for some reason (I thought Círdan's whole thing was that he was the elf with a beard, but okay), advises Elrond to believe in his friend. Círdan flip-flopped just last week on destroying the rings, so I'm finding it hard to get my bearings with this group, motivation-wise.

We continue to follow the Stranger and the harfoots (harfeet?) this week as they push deeper into the desolate land of Rhûn. They're being hunted by some mysterious man played by Game of Thrones veteran Ciarán Hinds. This character also appears to be a wizard, and I'm getting pretty tired of guessing which famous wizard character from The Lord of the Rings we're looking at. Is this evil Saruman before he become good and then switched back to evil? Is the Stranger actually Gandalf? Are these two Alatar and Pallando, two wizard characters Tolkien mentions in his books but doesn't give us many details on? I just wanna know answers at this point. I enjoy the banter between the Stranger and the harfoots, but let's hope the show doesn't take the whole season getting there.

The new mysterious wizard guy sends out his flunkies to find the Stranger and the harfoots. The Stranger summons a great cyclone of dust to beat back this new foe, but loses control and Poppy and Nori are blown away. And that's where we leave them. Tune in next week.

Finally, we stop by Khazad-dûm to visit with the dwarves for the first time this season. Part of the mountain wall falls in and blocks off the underground city's sun shafts, which means the dwarves can no longer grow crops. I'm sure that will tie into the wider story eventually, but mainly I was excited to see Durin IV and his wife Disa, who were among the most likable characters in the first season of The Rings of Power. These two aren't fretting about saving a civilization from decay or searching for a strange constellation; they're a married couple with children, he's in a fight with his dad and having trouble adjusting at his new job, and their kids are being brats and not coming to dinner.

There's something refreshingly normal about these characters. Of all the running storylines on this show, I think I'm most invested in seeing whether Durin IV can patch things up with his father King Durin III, who disowned his son at the end of season 1. They both want to apologize but they're both too proud, and Disa is stuck playing the role of mediator. By the standards of The Rings of Power, it's a pretty simple family drama and I like that.

But we have six more episodes to go, so let's not be hasty. On the other hand, they dropped the first three episodes together, so we can dig into the next one immediately:

Episode Grade: B-

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 203 review, "The Eagle and the Sceptre"

The third episode of season 2 finally catches us up with Isildur and the other Númenóreans in the cast, and reminds me why I was kinda bored by these people in season 1. The Rings of Power has several storylines with different characters running concurrently, much like Game of Thrones did back in the day. The issue is that some storylines are more interesting than others. The dwarves are almost always entertaining, the elves are hit and miss, and I have yet to be thrilled by anything the Númenóreans do.

But they get a lot of attention in this episode, so let's get into it. After being left in Middle-earth after last season's big battle, Isildur has to fight his way out of a tight spot to stay alive, with the help of his loyal horse, who is the best horse and I hope nothing ever happens to him. He battles past a pack of deadly giant spiders, with Shelob showing up for a second pretty much for fan service. Then he puts together his D&D party, meeting a scrappy newcomer named Estrid who is absolutely destined to become his love interest — I liked their first stabby encounter but it has all the markings of a Middle-earth meet cute — and then coming across Arondir, the Sindarin elf we got to know in season 1.

Arondir saves lsildur and Estrid from a band of highwayman in a fun action scene before bringing him back to his community of wayward Southlanders. They're burying Bronwyn, Arondir's love interest from the first season; for whatever reason, actress Nazanin Boniadi didn't return to the show, and I give the series credit for killing Bronwyn off between seasons rather than recasting her. It creates a potentially interesting dynamic between Arondir and Bronwyn's son Theo, since they're now basically step-father and step-son, with the one an elf and the other man. What awkward situations might arise?

Right now Theo is in her moody teenager era and wants nothing to do with Arondir. He's more drawn to Isildur, who has a heart-to-heart conversation about regret with Estrid that I found it hard to get invested in. I also didn't quite understand the scene where Isildur and Theo team up to steal Isildur's horse back from...I guess another band of brigands? Who were those people and why were Isildur and Theo confronting them solo? This plot kinda lurched around a bit. It ends with an action scene where the whole gang is attacked by what I assume we will learn next episode were Ents...or maybe Entwives.

Meanwhile, back on Númenór itself, the queen regent Tar-Míriel, now blinded after her brush with battle in Middle-earth, is coronated as queen proper...or at least that's how it was supposed to go. A lot of her people are ticked off about a Númenórean army travenling to Middle-earth only to get its ass handed to it, and a lot of them support the ambitious Ar-Pharazôn over Tar-Míriel, especially when an eagle of Manwë turns up. Ar-Pharazôn's supporters take that as a sign that he should be king, although I don't know why it couldn't be interpreted as a sign of support for Míriel. People will read into things what they want, I guess.

I dunno, the Númenór sections feel a bit like marking time to me. Maybe it's because we haven't seen them in a few episodes and I wanted to be eased back in, or maybe it's because I'm familiar with Tolkien's original story and the whole journey to Middle-earth last season was added in and felt like padding. I feel similarly about Adar. Sam Hazeldine does a fine job playing the evil elf character, but whenever he's onscreen I can't help asking myself the question: why does Sauron need a rival? Isn't he villain enough for this show?

That said, I did enjoy the sections with Sauron, now using the name Annatar, and Celebrimbor, who together are making the rings of power. Sauron is supposed to be a great manipulator, and I liked how neatly he played on Celebrimbor's pride. Sauron has a harder time convincing Durin, who arrives in Eregion with Disa to hear about the rings of power: perhaps they could help with the problems the dwarves are having in Khazad-dûm?

Durin and Disa are delightful onscreen because they seem like an ordinary couple who love other even through their disagreements. They joke, they fight, they make up...the dwarves are relatable in a way a lot of the other characters on this show aren't. The best scene of the episode is when Durin finally reunites with his father and apologizes for disrespecting him at the end of season 1. It's effective, tear-jerking family drama, just with a fantasy glaze.

I'm sure things will get complicated now that the dwarves are accepting rings of power. But that, at long last, is a story for next week.

Episode Grade: B-

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