Review: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, "Elven Kings Under the Sky" | Season 2, Episode 1
Sauron gets his anti-hero groove on
Welcome back to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. While three episodes went live this week, we’re going to take our time and review one at a time over the next few days. Zack only watched one episode at a time when reviewing, so there is no advance knowledge at play. To learn more about what else we’re covering currently, stay tuned for a full fall schedule early next week alongside our yearly subscription drive.
Opening up Google Docs to write this review, I had to search around for the file I’d been using, and I hadn’t realized: it’s been two years since this show’s first season ended. That’s a long time for a show to be off the air, and going into the first episode of season 2, “Elven Kings Under the Sky,” I wondered how much of the story I’d remember. I am, after all, not a huge Lord of the Rings fanatic. I loved the original trilogy (and The Hobbit), I loved the Peter Jackson movies (not The Hobbit), but I’ve never read the Silmarillion, and I think the only time I poked around in the Appendices of Return of the King, I was just looking to see what happened to Sam. (He does end up going to the Gray Havens one day.) Would I need a refresher? Was there lore, context, names that I’d somehow forgotten?
Going by episode one, not really. I remember enough of the basics. Sauron, who I mostly knew as a terrifying set of armor and/or a very large Eye, is now a hot dude who lied to Galadriel about being evil for a while. Eventually the truth revealed itself, but Galadriel decided not to tell everyone right away because, I dunno, Elves are really into idiot plots. Celebrimbor made three rings for the elves in a desperate attempt to stop their light from fading, but Elrond decided—having realized Sauron’s identity on his own—that the rings were too dangerous to be used. Also, Definitely Gandalf and a nice little person named Nori are going on a quest so Definitely Gandalf (who has not yet officially been named) can do… something. It is unclear. But he is Definitely Gandalf.
These, more or less, are the story beats you need to keep in mind watching the 70+ minute long premiere. It is, when you can actually see what’s going on, a very pretty premiere, but if you were hoping the show spent the past two years regrouping and trying to figure out a reason for existing (beyond Amazon exploiting a once popular I.P.)…well, hold on to that hope. “Kings” is, as best I can remember, basically the same as season one. Lots of gorgeous landscapes, lots of noble beings arguing about things for reasons that don’t entirely make sense (and sometimes seem to exist solely to make sure the episode isn’t ten minutes long), and a vague sense of urgency that dissipates the moment you remember that this is a prequel.
The latter, admittedly, is more a fault of the genre than anything Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is doing, and I’m sure we don’t need to have another conversation about how prequels are, by and large, pointless and bad. (Yes, there are exceptions; yes, Better Call Saul is brilliant.) There are three storylines running through “Kings:” Sauron getting his groove back; Galadriel, Elrond, and Gil-galad (ie, The Dude Who Always Looks Disappointed And Bored) arguing over the use of the Elf rings; and Definitely Gandalf and Nori wandering around a bit. Of these three stories, Sauron’s seems to deviate most from Tolkien’s text, in that it’s doing anti-hero/villain stuff in a way that feels almost recognizably human. But this is also the best of the bunch, because at least stuff happens in it.
In season one, it took some time for me to turn on the show because, again, it’s very pretty, and it does a good job of pretending like it’s important and meaningful, even if the actual storytelling is mostly a lot of three card monte tricks to stall until the season finale. “Kings” isn’t a miserable watch, but I found it much easier to recognize the futility of the Elf storyline if only because by now, I understand the tricks the show is trying to use to keep things moving.
After a long Sauron-focused cold open, we join up with Galadriel and Elrond mid-chase. Elrond has the Elf rings and is trying to get to Gil-galad, who he believes will agree with him that they are too dangerous to use. Elrond wins the race but loses the battle; while Gil-galad is furious at Galadriel for hiding Sauron’s identity (this is still an odd character choice, by the way; I guess she assumed that Gil-galad and the others would think she betrayed them, or that she was foolish, but wouldn’t keeping it a secret just ensure that they would?), he agrees with her that the rings are a necessary evil in order to prevent a larger evil from taking over Middle Earth.
Elrond disagrees with them both and dives off a cliff. The next we see him, he’s delivering the rings to Cirdan, who looks to be some kind of Elvish boatsmith (I know he’s more important than that, I’m just going off context clues), begging Cirdan to destroy them. Given that Cirdan’s plan appears to be to “throw them into the sea,” I’m not sure why Elrond couldn’t do this himself, but I’m sure there’s a reason I’m missing; regardless, Cirdan decides the rings are too important to destroy, and he brings them back to Gil-galad at the end of the episode, just as the last light of the tree is fading. Gil-galad, Galadriel, and Cirdan all get magic rings, the tree lights up again, and Elrond is unhappy but he’ll get over it.
This isn’t the worst kind of padding, but it is padding; if you’re familiar enough with The Lord of the Rings to be watching a prequel show, you likely already know that the Elven rings of power were untouched by Sauron. Galadriel even showed hers off to Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring. I was wrong last season: Sauron’s single conversation with Celebrimbor while he was making the first three rings wasn’t the “corruption” that led to the ring of power, and the doom of Men and Dwarves. But spending so much time on Elrond running to the wrong people to fail to achieve something we knew wasn’t going to happen doesn’t make for great drama. Just because it technically makes sense doesn’t mean it comes across as much more than busy work.
I had more fun with Sauron’s storyline, if only because it’s fun to watch a bad guy manipulate people. The cold open is an abbreviated version of how he ended up on the raft last season; apparently he tried to rule the orcs and Adar was able to temporarily best him. Fun or no, it doesn’t exactly make Sauron look like a genius: he speechifies and then a bunch of orcs stab him until he explodes in blue fire and turns into a pile of goo. Said goo slowly turns into something like a torso, then crawls down a mountain and eats a lady and becomes the handsome fella we’ve come to… recognize, I guess.
His play this season appears to be taking apart Adar’s operation from the inside, which gives Adar a chance to be the idiot. Sauron keeps up the “I’m a human” ruse, swears allegiance in Adar’s presence in a way that’s suspiciously vague (but which Adar buys without questioning), and then shows up at Celebrimbor’s door again. Because hey, we’ve still got a bunch more rings to make, and it’s not like they’re going to corrupt themselves.
Meanwhile, Definitely Gandalf and Nori, as mentioned, are looking for Ruhn. Nori’s friend Poppy catches up with them, and, well, that’s it, mostly.
For an episode that runs as long as this one does, very little of what happens in it feels particularly essential. At best, it’s fun to watch Sauron running his schemes; at worst, it’s like a very expensive screensaver you can leave running on your television to show off the ultra HD visuals. I went into this with an open mind, but at this point, I’m switching from “maybe this will be good?” mode and going right to “this is pointless, but let’s have some fun with it.” It would be nice if I was once again proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.
Stray observations
Maybe it’s my TV set-up, but there were several scenes in this episode where I couldn’t see what was happening on screen.
Adar is being played by a new actor this season, with Sam Hazeldine replacing Joseph Mawle. Mawle was one of the bright spots of the first season, so Hazeldine has big shoes to fill. (I have no idea why Mawle left the show.)
No dwarves! Again!
I kept cranking up the screen brightness despite being in a dark room to see what happened.
One bothersome element of the stalling plotting of this show is that people keep going back and forth between places making the world really small. Remember, both Bilbo and LOTR is about how bothersome and slow it is to get from point A to point B in a pre-industrial world. This lesson is totally lost on these writers. It would actually still work if time passed in the show, after all it is portraying things that happened over a thousand years. But for some reason they decided that the elven lands were dying within the timespan of a few months. I simply don't get why TV and movie writers are so afraid of time passing.
Well, unlike you, I had forgotten a lot and got confused multiple times. Thanks for the info on the Elven rings because I also thought Sauron had a hand in their making.
So, see, your reviews are invaluable for those of us who can't suss out all these details.