Look, it’s been two years since the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power aired on Prime. Anticipation is high, and you’ve got questions. I’ve seen all eight episodes of Season 2, the first three of which drop on Thursday.
I will endeavor to answer the questions you’re likely to have about the season, while being careful to avoid specific spoilers. So, go ahead. Fire away.
How is it, overall?
Fun but frustrating. Some storylines zip ahead with vigorous purpose, but others crawl along or, worse, move in lazy circles as characters make weird choices designed to keep them locked in stasis until Season 3. There’s more spectacle – battle scenes, magic, action set pieces – than in Season 1, but a lot of that action feels familiar; one impressive sequence can’t help but play like a riff on The Two Towers’ Battle of Helm’s Deep, instead of carving out much in the way of new visual ground. Many Season 1 characters – Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Nori (Markella Kavenagh), Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) and Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), especially – get less to do, and new characters like the Southlander Estrid (Nia Towle) struggle to earn the screentime devoted to them.
It’s been two years since Season 1 aired, as you mentioned. Where does everything stand?
Season 2 picks up precisely where Season 1 left off. Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) has just revealed to Galadriel that he is actually the Dark Lord Sauron. Under his guidance – but not his direct involvement, which will turn out to be crucial – the elven-smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) has crafted three rings of power for the elves, which they hope will restore their spirits (read: perform mystical-magical tree-surgery, or something) and allow them to remain in Middle-earth.
In the Southlands, Sauron’s onetime lieutenant Adar (Sam Hazeldine, taking over the role from season one’s Joseph Mawle) has triggered the volcano Mount Doom, which in turn blackened the sky and turned the region into Mordor, a homeland for orcs and all things evil. The Southlanders are now refugees, and the Numenoreans, who under the leadership of Queen Regent Miriel came to the Southlanders’ aid, have returned to their island kingdom in defeat.
The mysterious amnesiac being known only as The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) has been revealed as a wizard, though we still don’t know for sure which one, and with his friend Nori has taken off into the East of Middle-earth, toward the land of Rhûn. Rhûn, you’ll recall, is the very place where those three weird creeps who were following them last season came from. He is seeking answers, and the ability to master his powers, which continue to endanger those around him.
Has Season 2 learned any lessons from Season 1?
Yes and no. Be more specific, and I’ll try to answer without giving too much of the game away.
Ok, like for example: It seemed like Galadriel spent most of Season 1 trying to convince pretty much every character on the damn show – elves, Halbrand, the Numenoreans – to listen to her concerns about the return of Sauron, only to have them all dismiss her, over and over again. Elrond (Robert Aramayo) tried to convince the elves to work with the dwarves, Durin (Owain Arthur) tried to convince the dwarves to work with the elves. Does Season 2 realize just how frustrating it was to watch characters spend several episodes locked in the same extended, repetitive, circular arguments?
Nope! In terms of pure plot mechanics, Season 2 offers more of the same: Characters decide on clear courses of action, then question them, then – far too often – reverse them. Factions that need to work together are prevented from doing so by artificial plot obstacles that have less to do with characterization and much more to do with the logistical need to fill eight hours of television: small disagreements fester, information gets needlessly hoarded, nonsensical choices keep getting made.
At one point two characters refuse to speak to one another because each is waiting for the other to apologize. So for all of you out there who thought that what Season 1 of this Lord of the Rings prequel was missing was a little Real Housewives of Khazad-dûm, lucky you.
Season 1 concerned itself with introducing this show’s version of well-known book characters to the audience – as a result, they tended to come off a bit one-note, each with a single, defining characteristic. This Galadriel, we learned, was blinded by vengeance. This Elrond was torn between his friendship with the dwarf Durin and the needs of his people. Several new characters felt thinly-drawn, as well: Nori was sweet, the Stranger was confused, Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) was surly. Have the events of season one informed how any of these characters’ think and act?
Think, maybe. But act? Not so much. Galadriel, for example, realizes she’s been deceived by Sauron, and certainly talks a big game about feeling introspective and remorseful about it, but we don’t see any of that onscreen – instead, she continues to bully everyone around her with the same tiresome my-way-or-the-highway attitude she always has. Elrond, for his part, gets a brand new motivation this season, which has to do with those three elven rings. (Said new motivation won’t make a lick of sense to anyone who knows the books, yet he clings to it all season long.) He does get to assume a more direct role in the conflict with Sauron, though, which is welcome. But Nori’s still stuck in plucky naif mode, the Stranger still spends all of his screentime questioning himself, and Theo’s still an obnoxious little jerk.
In general, characters created for the series get afforded more emotional nuance and roundedness than those taken from Tolkien. The mysterious orc-general Adar, for example, remains compelling, and the posh Numenorian dweeb Kemen (Leon Wadham) emerges in just a handful of scenes as a juicy, eminently hissable villain.
Ok, but what about the characters from Tolkien that will be introduced to the series this season, according to the trailers? How do they work? The elf shipwright Cirdan, for example?
Cirdan’s cool. Like, emotionally cool. In fact, as played by the great Ben Daniels, he’s more than cool, he’s chill. Daniels chooses to play one of the oldest and wisest elves in all Middle-earth like a grinning, blissed-out Weed Guy who doles out platitudes along with the sativa. It sort of works, and makes you want more of him than this season gives us.
Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) shows up this season too, which is a big deal. How does the series handle a character so weird and narratively incongruous – he’s the embodiment of Nature itself, or something – that Peter Jackson couldn’t figure out how to include him in the films?
You’re right that in the books, Bombadil doesn’t make a lot of sense on a plot level. He spends his chapters prancing about, singing at the top of his fool lungs and just generally representing the capricious, ephemeral nature of … well, Nature. Tolkien takes pains to establish just how blissfully unconcerned he is with anything going on in the other chapters. He’s his own creature, the very free-est of free agents.
In the series, not so much. This is a surprisingly dialed-in, alert, even a bit world-weary Bombadil, who acts as a kind of emissary for this universe’s Powers That Be. He’s expressly there to guide another character along their journey of self-discovery. It’s a very odd choice, but Kinnear, who’s no stranger to acting from beneath goofy wigs (did you see Alex Garland’s Men?) makes it work.
In the trailer, we get a glimpse of another wizardy-looking dude played by Ciaran Hinds. He’s who we think he is, right?
Probably. He never gets named, and he’s not in it much but: Probably.
Hinds is terrific in everything, and he’s terrific here. If at times you think you can glimpse a twinkle of self-aware amusement in the classically trained actor’s eyes as he’s declaiming some particularly hokey snatch of dialogue from behind that fake beard, you’re not wrong.
What about The Stranger? Do we at least find out who he is, once and for all?
Eventually. Not immediately (nothing in this series happens immediately; the stuff with real, lasting significance is saved for the last two episodes of the season), but eventually. The precise way we learn his name is, it has to be said, a bit of a groaner, but it’s a fun one.
Fine. So, what about the rings, then?
Well, this may just be me, but the design of the rings of power in the Peter Jackson films – the elven rings, in particular – always seemed sleek and elegant: tasteful, even. The show’s more garish versions are so bulky they’re practically Ring Pops; in any given scene you half-expect their wearers to stop everything and start sucking away.
No, I meant: This show is about how the rings of power were created in the first place. That has all the makings of an epic, tragic tale, but the first season played a bit fast and loose with how the three elven rings came to be, and it felt rushed and confusing as a result. How does the show handle the making of the other rings?
We have at last alighted on the very best thing about the season, the single most effective element that makes it all worth watching.
Liberties continue to be taken with the chronicle of events as Tolkien laid them out, but that’s fine – any adaptation needs to make its own choices, or it risks devolving into mere transcription.
So while the specific events of the crafting of the other rings by the elven smith Celebrimbor in partnership with Sauron (in his guise as beatific and beautiful Annatar) differ in various particulars, the show deftly captures the crucial emotional stakes of the story.
That’s thanks, in large part, to Charles Edwards’ performance as Celebrimbor. The actor started laying the necessary track for this season’s narrative arc all the way back in season one. In his very first scene with Robert Aramayo’s Elrond, Edwards clearly established that Celebrimbor may be wise and skillful, but he’s vulnerable to flattery – even hungry for it.
So when Vickers’ Sauron shows up this season as the mysterious and sexy Annatar, with his pointy ears, soulful eyes and Gregg Allman wig, we know that Celebrimbor will all-too-willingly fall hopelessly under his sway. Vickers, for his part, doesn’t push it – he occasionally lets Annatar’s caring, dewy-eyed life-coach facade drop to let us see just exactly how much fun Sauron is having, manipulating absolutely everyone around him. Any scenes these two actors share feel layered and emotionally resonant, on a show that too often permits its characters to declare everything that they are thinking at the precise moment they think it.
So wait, that’s a yes on this season, then? After all that negative stuff you said about the plot and the pacing?
What you’re picking up on is the aforementioned frustration. Most of us who watch this particular show go into it having a fairly clear idea of what needs to happen, purely on a broad, plot level. So we can’t help watching with a simmering sense of impatience. Whenever the series finds places to insert fresh new ideas and characters (like Adar, for example), or captures something the books could only hint at (the Celebrimbor-Annatar stuff), that impatience dissolves completely.
But when, as often happens in both this season and the one before, the series seems content to pad itself out with needlessly discursive developments, that frustration, that impatience, starts to color everything we see. On first viewing, especially.
I’ve recently rewatched Season 1; with a bit of distance, it’s easier to forgive the stuff that rankled, two years ago: That clumsy Numenorean “elves won’t take our jobs!” storyline, that forced elf-Southlander romance, the jaw-dropping slowness of the burn with which The Stranger and Nori’s slow-burn plot proceeded.
Because at the end of the day, we’re back in Middle-earth, among its elves, dwarves and orcs. We’re walking the streets of Numenor, and Lindon, and Eregion. We’re deep beneath the Misty Mountains, in the halls of Khazad-dûm. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power may not be everything we hoped it would be – how could it?
But for now, it’s enough.
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