Honestly, at this stage of the game, the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power should be providing more answers than they are posing questions. If there’s a tone of annoyance in this review, that’s intentional. While I am an unabashed Tolkien nerd and I’ve enjoyed quite a bit of what the series has offered up to this point, I’m starting to get a more than a little tired of the constant set up with very little pay off that so far has been the modus operandi of this series.
Spoilers ahead, so don’t read if you haven’t watched the fifth episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
For a season that is only 8 episodes in length, more than half of that has been spent setting up the characters and locales where the story will take place, constantly moving about from Khazad-dûm, Lindon, Númenor, Rhovanion, and the Southlands. The lack of a singular focal point for the season to build around has hurt the narrative thrust of the series for me. We’re given snippets of each plotline but only enough to move it incrementally forward, without really having time to soak in the implications of what the series has to offer. This was also a hazard that HBO’s Game of Thrones had to deal with. When it was at its best, we had entire episodes devoted to characters in a given location, such as the epic battle at the Wall between the Night’s Watch and the Wildlings. At its worst, we were constantly bouncing around the map for multiple episodes. I had hoped that The Rings of Power would take a lesson from that series but sadly, they seem to have taken the wrong one.
This isn’t to say that there weren’t some interesting developments in the fifth episode of the season, titled “Parting”. There two major developments that didn’t manage to annoy me and two that really did, so I’ll go through each of them.
First among them was the story of Halbrand. The wayward King of the Southlands has felt like a less interesting version of Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. In this episode, though, he has a heartfelt, soul-bearing conversation with Galadriel in the smithy workshop he’s taken to working in. Both people are damaged by the traumas they’ve experienced, with Galadriel incapable of putting down her sword until she has avenged her brother. Halbrand alludes to some terrible misdeeds in his past (intercut with some of the Southlanders pledging their allegiance to Adar, which leads me to believe there’s some seriously dark mistakes Halbrand has made prior to his arrival in the series). I liked this scene between the two as they came to understand one another, which led to the ending of the episode with Galadriel and Halbrand aboard the ships of Númenor as they sail to Middle-Earth.
Second was the revelation that Adar is not a servant of Sauron but someone who is attempting to usurp Sauron. When half the villagers of the Southland decide to submit to Adar, one of them named Walgred (who had spoken to Theo about being a servant of Morgoth and Sauron) prostrates himself to Adar, professing his devotion to Sauron. The vehemence and sudden violence Adar showed to Walgred leads me to belief that Adar is raising these orcs to be a force under his command and that he is not working for Sauron to pave the way for the creation of Mordor. I find this a rather interesting wrinkle in the Southlands arc, since it could set up a potential conflict when Sauron finally makes his appearance in the show.
On the flip side, the Stranger plotline is starting to bore the pants off me. While I do genuinely enjoy Nori and the other Harfoots, the introduction of three white-robed figures (who are called in the credits The Dweller, The Ascetic, and The Nomad) who are tracking the Stranger just adds another subplot onto one that is fast wearing out its welcome. Dragging out the identity of the Stranger to this extent has really been a miss from the writers. I’m all for dropping hints here and there alluding to an identity but the writers have left this purposefully vague for no real reason other than to have a mystery. It smacks of J.J. Abrams infamous “mystery box” method of storytelling, which I absolutely loathe.
The Southlands story arc centered around Arondir, Theo, and Bronwyn is also not coming together as well as I had hoped. I did enjoy the moment where Theo revealed to Arondir the broken sword hilt he’s been messing with but from the little tidbit of information Arondir provided about the broken blade being some kind of “key” makes me rather frustrated. The upcoming battle between the orcs and the remaining Southlanders is no doubt going to coincide with the arrival of the Númenóreans, who will get their first taste of real battle and the carnage that entails. I’m expecting a number of the Númenórean characters, such as Isildur’s friends, to meet particularly violent ends during that conflict.
There was also the reveal of Gil-galad and Celebrimbor’s reason to send Elrond to treat with Durin and secure the assistance of the dwarves. The idea that mithril contains the essence of one of the Silmarils (the great jewels said to house the light of the Two Trees of Valinor) is not canon as far as I’m aware but it does give a sufficiently good reason for the subterfuge. I laughed quite hard at Durin pulling a fast one over on Gil-galad and absconding with the fine table the Elf King was dining at. This mystery I wasn’t that greatly annoyed with, despite my misgivings listed above, mainly because the central relationship of Durin and Elrond is the most entertaining pairing the show has created thus far. I’m almost saddened by the inevitable split that will occur between these two characters.
Five episodes in to the first season and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power still hasn’t moved into the endgame yet. With only three episodes left, the writers are going to have to work overtime if they plan to explain at least a good portion of the mysteries they’ve laid out. I don’t expect answers to all of them, since there are future seasons of the series, but I feel that the showrunner and writers would be better suited to center the second season on two or three main story arcs instead of the five we currently have. There’s too much time spent moving about from place to place and not having enough time simply letting a particularly plotline breathe and grow organically. If there’s one failing of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it’s that much of the plot arcs feel manufactured for length rather than letting them grow naturally toward a conclusion.
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