The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is on its way, and it looks entertaining. Monsters everywhere, people with English accents clashing swords, magical rings that could put the peoples of Middle-earth under the thrall of the Dark Lord Sauron...what's not to like?
If you're a hardcore Lord of the Rings fan who cares about the particulars of J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology, The Rings of Power will probably raise your hackles a bit, because it's not trying overly hard to stay true to the source material. Sauron is a dude named Halbrand, Tom Bombadil apparently helps out a wizard who may or may not be Gandalf, Galadriel's husband Celeborn is MIA...but if you treat the show as a fun lark that happens to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, it works better.
That said, there's one thing that might strike even the most casual viewer as absurd. Like I mentioned, in the first season, the Dark Lord Sauron was disguising himself as a man named Halbrand, played by Charlie Vickers. In this guise, he helped the elves forge three rings of power, which can do great good but are also somewhat corrupted by virtue of Sauron having been involved with their creation. Galariel exposed Sauron for who he was at the end of the first season, and he was driven away.
The main elven smith is Celebrimbor, who met Halbrand in the first season. In season 2, Sauron will return in a new guise: he now looks like a blonde-haired elf. In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, when Sauron assumes this visage, he calls himself Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. So disguised, Sauron will approach Celebrimbor again.
The question a lot of fans have is: how is Celebrimbor, not to mention any of the other people who know Halbrand was Sauron, fooled? Charlie Vickers plays both versions of the character; it's just that he has elf ears and a blonde wig as Annatar. It's led to some fun comments on pretty much every Rings of Power trailer Amazon has put out, like so:
"Sauron: "It's my disguise."
Celebrimbor: "But I can clearly see that it's you."
Sauron: puts on bad wig "Not if I do this you can't.""
Let it not be said that the internet doesn't bring the sass.
It's looking like Celebrimbor might realize that Halbrand and Annatar are one and the same but choose to work with him anyway, which presents a new problem: Sauron is a famous wicked leader who served as lieutenant to Morgoth, the original dark lord. For Celebrimbor to know that Sauron is plotting evil but work with him anyway seems out of step with the way Tolkien depicted the elves. And at this point it basically goes without saying that this scenario isn't part of the source material.
But I am prepared to set this thought aside and see how things go, because life is too short for this kind of constant stress headache. Look at how many creatures there are!
The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Amazon Prime Video on August 29.
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