The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (TV Program)

Something is wrong with the candles in Celebrimbor’s workshop. Things are even worse outside.Season 2, Episode 7: ‘Doomed to Die’At the start of this “Rings of Power” season, Sauron — still in his Halbrand form — allowed himself to be captured in Mordor so that he could manipulate Adar into marching his orc armies toward Eregion. Sauron then arrived in Eregion well ahead of the orcs, transformed into Annatar and began manipulating Celebrimbor into forging rings for dwarfs and men, tainted with Sauron’s corrupting influence.This has been Sauron’s big plan in Season 2; and in the penultimate episode, it’s all starting to come to fruition. Throughout this episode, a battle rages outside Eregion, while inside Annatar pushes Celebrimbor to complete the rings — at the cost of the elf-lord’s reputation and sanity. Sauron is getting one step closer to his ultimate goal: total control of Middle-earth and what he promises will be “a perfect and lasting peace,” very different from the cruel rule of Morgoth.But does he actually believe his own pitch? Or is he more like some politicians, promising his future constituents whatever he has to in order to acquire enough power to never have to listen to them again? These are not idle questions. Whether Season 2 ends in hope or hopelessness will depend largely on whether Sauron can win enough small victories to tip the balance in his favor, forever.These are the stakes in an eventful and action-packed Episode 7. Here are four takeaways and observations:Celebrimbor sees the light … and then the darkAt the end of last week’s episode, we saw how Annatar had cast a spell to hide from Celebrimbor the reality of what Adar’s armies were doing to Eregion. This week, in a few remarkable scenes — notably and disturbingly quieter than the combat throughout the rest of the episode — we see more of how this illusion looks from Celebrimbor’s perspective as he works on the next set of rings, on what appears to be a lovely day.But there are glitches in the mirage. Celebrimbor keeps seeing the same mouse scurrying in the same way across the same stretch of floor. The gems in his hammer come and go. His candles never burn all the way down. Sometimes he catches a reflection of himself that shows how haggard he actually looks.Finally, Celebrimbor confronts Annatar and accuses of him of malicious trickery, howling, “No emissary of the Valar would do this!” He smashes a window, revealing the true horrors happening outside. But it’s too late. Annatar has effectively seized control of Eregion, having convinced the elves that Celebrimbor has become dangerously delusional. The city is already in ruins. And the worst is yet to come.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Miriel tests the waters. Sauron tests everyone’s sanity.Season 2, Episode 6: ‘Where Is He?’By the end of this week’s episode of “The Rings of Power,” Adar’s Orc army is fully besieging Eregion, beginning a battle that will play out in the next episode. But before the show shifts into military mode for a while, the show’s creators, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay (along with this episode’s credited writer, Justin Doble, and director, Sanaa Hamri), reset the stage across Middle-earth and far away in Numenor, to make sure we know exactly where all the players are, as Season 2 enters its endgame.The result is an unusually busy hour for this series. Every major character makes an appearance, in scenes that run a bit shorter than usual. This is a welcome change of pace from last week’s sometimes interminable conversations, which kept circling topics long after they had been exhausted. Granted, some of this episode’s segments — like most anything involving the Durin family or Annatar — do hit familiar beats, dredging up those old arguments for another round. But there is some forward progress here, even if everyone is now racing headlong into various bloody melees.Here are five takeaways and observations from Episode 6:The Valar decidesIn a startling turnaround, the Numenor sequences in this episode are responsible for one of the most thrilling moments of the season — although, typical of the Numenorians, we have to get a few speeches out of the way first.The matter before the island’s leadership is whether Elendil will apologize for the crime of sedition, bend the knee to Pharazon and be spared a death sentence. When he refuses to comply fully, Miriel comes to her loyal subject’s aid, claiming an ancient legal right to face the judgment of the Valar in his place. This requires Miriel to wade into the surrounding seas and wait for an enormous underwater beast — “the sea worm” — to swim up to her, at which point this slimy thing will either swallow her up or deem her worthy.The buildup to the big plunge takes a while. But the payoff is sublime, in a terrifying sequence of the sea worm yanking Miriel into the deep, staring her down, surrounding her with giant tendrils and then letting her live. The assembled crowd — with the exception of the new king’s partisans — erupts into jubilant shouts, dubbing her “queen of the sea.” Pharazon tries to recover from this setback by scrambling into his chambers to consult the palantir.What does he see? A dark, fiery future. And a face familiar to us: Sauron’s.Going battyI don’t want to dwell too much on what goes down in Khazad-dum this week, because frankly the dwarf story line has fallen into a deep, deep rut. The underground sets remain amazing, and the performances by the actors — some of them sporting thick beards, no less — remain impressive. But the plot is going nowhere new. King Durin III is still being driven mad with greed by his ring and making decisions that endanger his people, while Prince Durin IV keeps arguing with Disa about how they should handle the situation. There are some strong emotional underpinnings to the father-son relationship; but those bonds have been well-established and don’t need as much screen time as they get.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

This week’s focus was largely on the deepening political drama in Numenor and Khazad-dum, where things have gotten predictably messy.Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Halls of Stone’After last week’s delightful panoply of ents, barrow-wights and stoors (and Tom Bombadil!), this week’s episode of “Rings of Power” shifted away from fantastical action and got back to the slow, hard grind of politics. Because this is a prequel series, it has a fixed endpoint to reach, involving a lot of dangerous jewelry getting distributed to folks who will not end up seeing eye-to-eye on how use it. But before we get there, all of these humans, dwarves and elves still have a lot of talking to do — whether we enjoy hearing it or not.Episodes like this week’s are necessary in a story like this, even if they aren’t as much fun as the ones with angry trees and killer skeletons. The whole point of “Rings of Power” is to flesh out the sketchier summaries of events in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books — all of the deep “this king was succeeded by this other king after this battle” lore — and, in doing so, to give us a fuller sense of all the ancestors to “The Lord of the Rings” heroes and villains. Rather than hearing that long ago there was social unrest in Numenor or Khazad-dum, we get to see firsthand how the conflicts played out, and why.Myself, I like these characters and this world enough to find the predicaments interesting. That said, I do recognize that all of the high-volume speechifying that holds this kind of storytelling together can be a drag sit through. This week, I did find myself occasionally entreating the Valar to tell everyone involved to get on with it already.With that in mind, here are four takeaways and observations from Episode 5:Holy wars in NumenorThe most volatile and complex political drama happening in “Rings of Power” right now is taking place in Numenor, which — as I mentioned in a recap of Episode 3 — hasn’t really gotten enough screen time in this series to make the stakes as clear and urgent as they should be. This episode offers a corrective of sorts, showing just how deep and dangerous the divisions on this island have become.We last left Numenor at a tense moment, when the queen regent Miriel’s coronation was disrupted repeatedly: first by hecklers, then by Earien, who revealed the royal family’s overreliance on a future-telling elfin orb called a palantir. Then it was disrupted again by the portentous arrival of a giant eagle, which the shady opportunist Pharazon co-opted into a divine endorsement for his claim to the throne. The aftermath of all this proves predictably messy.Miriel, who seems to have lost whatever lust for power she may have had before her traumatic adventures in Middle-earth, seems willing to let Pharazon win this one, despite the objections of her trusted adviser (and potential romantic partner) Elendil. She urges him to remain “the calm at the storm’s eye” and asks him to carry on the fight from the inside, saying that “not every battle must be fought to be won.” She says that the palantir has shown them a path for once that doesn’t end in Numenor’s downfall. He is meant to be a leader on that path, inspiring the faithful with his nobility.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

This week’s episode, which included several Tolkien fan-favorite characters and creatures, is the best of the season thus far.Season 2, Episode 4: ‘Eldest’“Rings of Power” Season 2 debuted last week with three plot-heavy episodes, which was probably necessary given that the show had been on hiatus for nearly two years — and given that it took all three to get each of Season 1’s story lines back into play. Unfortunately, Episode 3 was easily the dreariest of the first batch, ending last week’s three-part premiere on a sour note. Light on action and heavy on earnest proclamations, the episode represented “Rings of Power” at its stiffest.Episode 4, though? It’s the best of the season thus far. It’s thrilling and strange, and populated with J.R.R. Tolkien fan-favorite characters and creatures. Even the opening scene has an uncommon flair, transpiring across a single shot that begins on an idyllic image of the waters outside Lindon before tracking a contentious conversation between Galadriel and Elrond, then rising into the sky. It sets the tone for a lively hour.Here are five takeaways and observations from Episode 4:Enter the entsIn Episode 3, Theo encountered some wild men out in the wilderness, and with them he was menaced by some unseen creature — and apparently a very tall one, given the high camera angle on Theo’s face before the scene ended. This week, Isildur enlists Arondir and Estrid in a search for Theo; and the three of them have a wild adventure, which includes Isildur and Arondir getting pulled under quicksand by a huge, writhing mud-beast (which the trio then slays and eats).The massive worm-thing isn’t even the party’s most bizarre encounter. Not long after Arondir warns his companions about the ever-present possibility of “nameless things in the deep places,” they discover that Theo and the wild men are being held captive by sapient trees. These are the forest-guarding entities known in Tolkien lore as ents — seen in “The Lord of the Rings” movies in the form of Treebeard, a brave and helpful ent who nonetheless laments the damage done to the trees during centuries of war in Middle-earth.The ents in this episode are more angry than wistful, because Adar’s orc army has recently marched through, “maiming” the forest. It takes some diplomacy from Arondir to calm the ents’ leader, Snaggleroot (voiced by Jim Broadbent), and to convince them to release Theo.In terms of this season’s plot, the scenes in and around the ancient town of Pelargir serve a few purposes. Arondir’s rescue of Theo helps to soften the kid’s resentment toward the elf. In this section we also see Isildur helping the Southlanders understand the Numenorean technology of their new home, and we hear Estrid confess to having been branded by Adar.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The new season picks up roughly where Season 1 left off — with most of the same strengths and flaws.Amazon released the first three episodes of Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” at once; read the recaps for Episode 2 here and Episode 3 here.Season 2, Episode 1: ‘Elven Kings Under the Sky’When last we visited Middle-earth in the Amazon Prime Video series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” our heroes were recuperating from two massive blunders. An army of Númenóreans had failed to prevent the orc-father Adar (Sam Hazeldine) from establishing the shadowlands of Mordor in the realm formerly known as the Southlands; and the regal elf warrior Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) had failed to recognize that Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), the man she intended to install as the Southlands’ rightful king, was in fact her sworn enemy Sauron, in human form.Good effort, everyone. But not exactly a rousing success.The same could be said of “The Rings of Power” itself, which had a first season that delivered a lot of what its creators, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, said they had intended: blockbuster-level special effects and scenery, spectacular action sequences, an epic sweep and a deep exploration of the fantasy world created by the author J.R.R. Tolkien (arguably even deeper than any of Peter Jackson’s gargantuan “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies).But what the show failed to deliver was the kind of “Game of Thrones”-level cultural buzz and critical acclaim that such an expensive project needs to survive. So just as Galadriel and her allies have a lot to prove as Season 2 begins, so do Payne, McKay and their “Rings of Power” cast and crew.In the season’s first three episodes, released all at once on Prime Video, very little has changed in the creative team’s approach to telling a story. The action picks up roughly where Season 1 left off and continues in the same basic format, with each episode following just a few of the show’s many story lines, in long sequences that resemble chapters in a book. (It takes all three episodes to bring back every character and plot from the previous season. If you’re anxious to find out what’s happening in Numenor, you’ll have to wait a couple of hours.)The flaws of Season 1 are still evident, right from the start. The novelistic approach leads to some sections that drag on too long; and the series on the whole can feel a bit over-serious and leaden. That said, the Season 2 premiere also contains everything that worked well in the previous season: the visual splendor, the wide narrative canvas, the rich performances and the complex consideration of how and when to wield extraordinary power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The Stranger tries his hand again at magic but with mixed results. For now, Sauron does it better.Amazon released the first three episodes of Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” at once; read the recaps for Episode 1 here and Episode 3 here.Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Where the Stars are Strange’The Halbrand heel-turn at the end of “The Rings of Power” Season 1 brought focus to a story that, to a degree, had lacked a clear antagonist. Yes, Galadriel had sensed Sauron was still alive; and yes, she had persuaded the Numenoreans to secure the Southlands against Adar’s orcs, as a bulwark against whatever Sauron might have in mind. But this big enemy, while having a name, still remained somewhat theoretical.To quote “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” at times last season it was hard to hear Galadriel’s plans without asking: “Who versus? Who are we doing it versus?”As Season 2 began, the existence of Sauron had been confirmed. But because he fled after helping forge the first three rings of power, at this point he remains — to our heroes at least — a chilling shadow, not a present threat. So this season’s second and third episodes, while revealing some of Sauron’s secret schemes, also returns to some of the minor villains and complications introduced in Season 1, showing how the elves, dwarfs and humans still have a lot of conflict to sort through, internal and external, before they can unite to vanquish their Big Bad.Here are five takeaways and observations from Episode 2:Those weird witches are back!Remember how at the end of Season 1, the Stranger had to protect his harfoot friends from three mystics dressed in white who referred to him as “the Dark Lord?” This was a clever bit of misdirection from the “Rings of Power” writers, meant to keep the viewers from catching on too quickly that Halbrand was secretly Sauron. But the incident also helped the Stranger remember that he is actually of the Istari, an ancient order of wizards who in various forms have often intervened in the affairs of Middle-earth.In this season’s second episode, those mystics return to their home base to report to the Dark Wizard (Ciaran Hinds) on their encounter with the Stranger. The sequence is one of the show’s most visually inventive to date, involving a woman bleeding onto the floor while surrounded by hundreds of butterflies — the form the mystics dissipated into after the Stranger violently attacked them — which flutter about and then reconstitute into a different woman.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Arondir is back, along with some other major characters not yet seen this season. And this installment asks: Is Mordor maybe an OK place to live?Amazon released the first three episodes of Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” at once; read the recaps for Episode 1 here and Episode 2 here.Season 2, Episode 3: ‘The Eagle and the Scepter’One of the central themes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is the alliance. Given the inspiration the author reportedly drew from his personal experiences fighting in World War I — and given that World War II was raging during the years he was working on the books — it’s not too difficult to read into his story a strong endorsement of the idea that brave men and women of different backgrounds should come together to thwart a common enemy. Their cause then becomes a bond that holds, even after the battle is over.But because “The Rings of Power” is more of an origin story, it makes a related but distinct point to Tolkien’s, which is that alliances are never easy. Even if everyone can agree on what they oppose — armies of orcs, for example — that may not be enough for them to overcome their old grudges. If, say, the humans resent the elves, the elves distrust the humans and the dwarves would rather be left alone, that’s a big gap for these various factions to bridge before they can take up arms together.And that’s not even taking into account all the factions within factions: the rural humans who struggle to get along with the rich city-dwellers, the half-elves who feel disrespected by elfin aristocrats and so on.In the third episode of Season 2, the last of the main Season 1 characters who had yet to be seen this season finally reappear; these are the “Rings of Power” story lines in which the acrid aroma of racism and classism sours the air. They will come together some day, we know. But it will be a long, winding road.Here are four takeaways and observations from Episode 3:Numenor is for the birdsThe wealthy and sophisticated island kingdom of Numenor was one of the most stunningly opulent locations in Season 1 and the source of a lot of political intrigue that, frankly, did not get its full due in that season’s eight episodes. As soon as Numenor’s queen regent, Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), made the controversial decision to lead an expedition to the Southlands, her home became more or less an afterthought in the season until the finale, when she returned — blinded from battle — to find her father had died.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More