Crafting any sort of compelling prequel is a daunting prospect, especially one destined to have a largely tragic ending. The Rings of Power knows that most of its storylines will end in despair at some point or another—and the ones that don’t are, by and large, waiting to pass on the torch to a new age to really finish the job. At its best, Rings of Power relishes in this challenge, finding the pockets of hope that define Lord of the Rings‘ timeless appeal amid the darkness. At its worst, it backs itself into a corner and is forced to make its characters acquiesce to dramatic tension we know is undermined by the future story. Season two’s trio of premiere episodes understands this narrative tight rope… for the most part.
The first three episodes that open Rings of Power‘s second season—”Elven Kings Under the Sky,” “Where the Stars are Strange,” and “The Eagle and the Sceptre”—do a noble job of catching us all up on the different narrative threads left in the wake of season one’s climax actually inching its slow-burn narrative forward (itself, perhaps, another price of that aforementioned daunting prospect). It’s a dense amount of television to ask an audience to dig in in time for things to really begin cooking next week, but understandable in terms of a singular release: these episodes, while containing those occasionally meaty pockets to chew on, largely have one reminder to give us: unless your name is Halbrand, Sauron, or Annatar, right now you are not having a good time in Middle-earth.
The even worse news for Middle-earth that all three of those people are actually the same person, and the villain of this tale. From an opening that takes us back to the First Age to witness Sauron’s betrayal by Adar (with Sauron’s elven form played by Jack Lowden), and his first rebirth into human form, all the way to the horrifying, awesome transformation he makes again to Celebrimbor in revealing his “true” guise as Annatar the Lord of Gifts, these opening episodes are about an ascending darkness that is no longer lurking in shadow, but well and truly already here.
Charlie Vickers clearly relishes being allowed to be a little bit of a shit here, after having to play Halbrand as a largely mysterious foil before his secret was revealed last season. There’s a fun twinkle in his eye, like he knows that you know, whenever Halbrand is interacting with anyone, whether it’s at first in “captivity” as Adar’s prisoner, playing the desperate dealmaker (and yet cackling with delight when he leaves the ruined Southlands, having freed a wolf to specifically, pettily feast on one of his wildmen captors), or when he shows up on Eregion’s doorstep looking like a kicked puppy to get Celebrimbor to treat with him, despite Galadriel’s orders at the end of season one. It’s an instance where that audience foresight really works, because the show allows itself to be in on that knowledge too, and while we’ll have to wait and see how much Rings of Power can really wring out of Annatar leaning over Celebrimbor’s shoulder and looking extremely ominous, for now, it’s fun to just watch him cook as he sets the stage for Celebrimbor’s hubris and vanity to get the better of him.
One area where that foresight doesn’t quite work so well is our initial re-introduction to the rest of the Elven storyline. Having discovered that Galadriel knew Halbrand wasn’t the heir to the Southlands he claimed to be, we open with what is essentially an extended chase sequence where Elrond decides to tattle on her by going to the teacher, except in this case the teacher is the High-King of all Elf-kind, Gil-Galad, literally as he is preparing to announce to the Elves that their time in Middle-earth has ended. It’s silly, and it gets sillier when Elrond’s response to Gil-Galad hearing Galadriel out about the rings Celebrimbor forged, and Sauron’s return, is leaping off the side of a nearby cliff face with the rings. The chase sequence is now a manhunt, and has time to get sillier still when it ends with Elrond going to hide from Gil-Galad’s soldiers with his old friend, shipmaster Círdan in the Grey Havens (played here by Ben Daniels).
There is interesting drama here, especially in Elrond and Galadriel’s fractured relationship, but did we really need this song-and-dance to get to that drama? Even if there are members of the audience who don’t know Círdan is one of the three bearers of the Elven rings before he gifts it to Gandalf, they know the Elven rings of power aren’t going to get destroyed by him. They know they’re going to get back into Gil-Galad’s care, and be used. Does the show really need the manufactured drama? Sure, Círdan and Elrond don’t know that, but does it work for Círdan’s character, or for Elrond’s, to have the dread inevitability of the rings and their allure play out this way?
Instead, it feels like we’re kind of just left to introduce Círdan and immediately compromise him in some form (and of course get a few lovely lavish shots of the Grey Havens, to boot). At least there’s some tension beyond the chase, as Elrond and Galadriel’s friendship is truly left on the rocks by the end of these three episodes (especially so when Gil-Galad decides to have Elrond lead the Elven expedition to Eregion, rather than Galadriel), but contrasted with the intrigue and tension that plays out between Halbrand/Sauron/Annatar and Celebrimbor in Eregion, it leaves this main thrust—you know, the part of the show that actually has rings of power, for now—feeling a little listless.
There’s a similar feeling over in Númenor as we begin to catch up on the island nation. With the blinded Míriel and the remnant of her expeditionary force’s return and the king’s death, no one is particularly pleased with the outcome of the already controversial decision to have Númenor act on the will of an Elf—setting the stage, again, for book readers in the know, for the rise of Pharazôn as he makes ready to capitalize on Míriel’s misgivings. There’s flickers of actual dramatic intrigue here, as Pharazôn begins to plot while Míriel mourns both her father and what she lost going to Middle-earth, but if the merry chase with Elrond and Círdan’s date with prescribed destiny was about padding out something that only had one given way to end, Rings of Power‘s approach to Númenor seems to be actually ignoring any opportunity to do something interesting, and getting to its perilous fate in Tolkien’s lore as soon as possible.
Almost as soon as we’re introduced to Pharazôn’s little coterie of political allies (including, interestingly, Elendil’s daughter Eärien!), we go to Míriel’s formal coronation as successor, only for it to be disrupted and have an eagle to show up out of nowhere, leading to everyone starting to chant Pharazôn’s name. It ties into the opening episodes’ overall theme of discontent and darkness taking hold all over Arda, but in what are arguable two of Rings of Power‘s most important plotlines, the show seemingly has swapped priorities on how we get from one dramatic point to the next, and it’s easily the weirdest, weakest part of the premiere.
Thankfully, while the check-ins with the remaining plotlines are for less “important” stories, at least as far as Sauron’s plots are concerned—the plight of the Dwarves in Khazad-dûm, the beginning of the Stranger and Nori’s (and Poppy’s, it turns out) journey to Rhûn, and the dire circumstances of the Southlander survivors (joined by Isildur, who gets a completely unnecessary but suitably creepy encounter with young Shelob before making his way to the village of Pelargir)—Rings of Power uses their relative freedom from the immediate constraints of the overarching plot to set the stage for much more intrigue beyond the audience knowing what’s to come. Even before the Dwarf-Lords are brought into Celebrimbor and Annatar’s plans to forge further rings, the show gets a lot out of the strained relationship between King Durin and his son Durin IV, stripped of his princely titles as season one drew to a close.
Facing a sudden crisis of light—literally, the mountains are rumbling and closing up all around Khazad-dûm, plunging it into the most literal darkness of these opening episodes—it’s in this sort of messy family drama that Rings of Power really finds heart, rather than in the overbearing dire portents of Lord of the Rings hanging on its shoulders. So much of season one of Rings of Power was about finding hope and strength in connection and communication, and it’s exactly what the Durins deny each other out of stubbornness until they realize they have to work together for the good of Khazad-dûm. And unlike in Númenor and with Círdan? In this moment their ultimate fate—that the Dwarf-Lords will receive Celebrimbor and Annatar’s rings, and their power will begin to convince them to delve too greedily, and too deep—is not the decisive factor of the drama. We get a touching moment as father and son reconnect, and open themselves to each other, as a glimmer of hope in the darkness, to remind us of what actually matters in terms of the stakes here: it’s not rings and grand machinations, it’s people and their relationships with each other.
We likewise see the inverse of that in Pelagir and Rhûn. With the Southlanders, that connection has been shattered by Adar’s armies and the rise of Mount Doom: we learn almost immediately upon Isildur making his way to the village that Arondir and Theo, as well as the rest of the survivors, are wrestling with the tragedy of Bronwyn succumbing to her wounds from the battle. Everyone in Pelagir has lost someone, but in losing Bronwyn, they’ve lost the source of strength that got them through Adar’s assault in the first place, and now everyone is as King and Prince Durin were before they found the strength to reconcile: mistrusting, unable to let people in, and broken by circumstances they’re in (especially Arondir and Theo). And it’s there that evil can begin to take root, it seems, as we learn that a surviving Southlander that Isildur found on his way to the village, Estrid (Nia Towle), is seemingly either formerly aligned with the humans that broke with Adar, or an agent in Pelagir’s mists, as she uses a brand to disform the dark mark of her allegiance, former or otherwise.
Meanwhile, on the way to Rhûn things start out at least much nicer. The Stranger and Nori are beginning to get on more and more, as he begins to open up as best he can and actually have conversations. They’re likewise bolstered on their journey when they discover that Poppy has been trailing them, eager to see the world and unable to leave her friend to go it alone. It’s the most Lord of the Rings-y thing in the whole premiere, even with Sauron and rings aplenty, because it’s all about that sense of hope, that romantic wanderlust for the world, and, well, it’s a wizard and two halflings walking through gorgeous scenery. But even this distant pocket of Middle-earth has to contend with darkness, and we find it once again in those mysterious acolytes who were chasing the Stranger all of last season. It turns out they’re based in Rhûn too, and have a master: a Dark Wizard himself (not named yet, but played by the delightful Ciarán Hinds doing his best not-Saruman—we already have a few theories as to who he could be!), eager to hunt down this encroaching power. Just as the Stranger, Nori, and Poppy are really getting into the swing of things in their journey, they find themselves waylaid by the Dark Wizard’s agents, leading to a brief skirmish where the Stranger taps into his unwieldy magic power and summons a vast tornado… one that separates Poppy and Nori from him, momentarily, at least, severing that bond and connection we’d seen flourishing. We can’t even have a nice little unexpected journey! Curse you, evil.
But that’s the name of the game this season on Rings of Power, it seems. For all of season one championing that need to connect and communicate, already the fallout of its dire climax is shattering those nascent bonds all over Middle-earth. No one knows what these rings are really capable of, no one really knows Adar’s plans, and no one but Sauron himself really knows what strings he’s begging to pull now that he’s putting his long plans into action. It is in that uncertainty that evil festers, more than it could from any dark lord or army of orcs at the moment, sowing mistrust and tearing people apart just when they were ready to stand as one against the darkness. Which is only going to make it easier and easier, as the season progresses, for that dark lord and those armies to come swooping in and deliver a fatal blow.
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 is now streaming on Prime Video.
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