The first season for Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has come to a close. After spending 8 hours watching this series, the only thing I can say at the end of it is… meh. The final pair of episodes after the fine showing in Episode 6 continued the trend I had begun to fear from the start. This series felt like a checklist of bullet-pointed plot moments rather than a cohesive story.
Spoilers ahead, so don’t read if you haven’t watched the Season One Finale for The Rings of Power.
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way, starting with the reveal of Halbrand as Sauron. I wasn’t surprised by this reveal. At the end of Episode Six, I had a feeling that Halbrand’s animosity toward Adar was related to Adar’s statement that he had killed Sauron. Halbrand being Sauron should have felt like more of an impactful reveal. Instead, it felt like lazy storytelling, mainly because there wasn’t enough foreshadowing to lean in that direction.
I will give credit to the confrontation between Galadriel and Sauron. This is only due to natural chemistry Charlie Vickers and Morfydd Clark possess. It’s obvious from the start that Sauron is manipulating Galadriel, trying to string her along just enough to reel her in. The moment of revelation where Galadriel hears Celebrimbor use the same phrasing as Adar also felt forced. It felt like the writers didn’t trust the audience enough to put the pieces together themselves.
The other major arc of the episode was the showdown between the Stranger and the weird sisters (the Dweller, the Nomad, and the Ascetic). While I have generally enjoyed the Harfoot characters, this entire arc felt like a waste of time. Finding out at the end that the Stranger was not Sauron but one of the Istari was a letdown. The writers and showrunner didn’t need to spend 8 hours just to reveal that the Stranger is Gandalf. To add to that frustration, the writing staff still refuses to name the Stranger, only hinting at his identity with a line from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The battle between the Wraith Sisters and the Stranger was visually spectacular. While I have major issues with the storytelling used by the creators, they have not skipped out on the visuals. The Wraiths being convinced the Stranger is a resurrected Sauron (which we know is not the case thanks to the other storyline) also felt like a waste. If the writers had wanted to make this more impactful, they should have spent more time developing the three Wraiths. Instead, they kept their identities veiled in secrecy just for the sake of keeping it secret.
I was saddened to see the character of Sadoc Burrows die in the battle with the Wraiths. While a curmudgeonly old man, Sadoc showed over the course of the season he was a loving and wise man. Having him die while trying to help the Stranger felt like the right way to end that story. There should always be high stakes in this series, something that have generally been lacking. Seeing Nori finally leave the safety of the Harfoot community to travel with the Stranger also felt like the right call. Nori fits the same mold as Frodo and Bilbo, the every-person character who will have a larger impact on the story.
Last but not least, the final moments of the episode see the creation of the Elven Rings of Power. What should have felt like a climatic moment, especially given the musical score used for the sequence, fell flat for me. The idea that Galadriel’s dagger, her one keepsake from her brother, would be used was a nice touch. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to salvage this scene to being anything more than the writers checking a box on a list of plot points they had to get through.
That last observation, more than anything, is how I feel about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s first season. Rather than a cohesive, well-structured story, we as the audience got a jumbled mix of half-formed ideas, paper-thin characters, and paint-by-numbers plotting. For all the issues I had with The Wheel of Time’s first season, the season at least felt like a passion project where the creators took the time to tell a cohesive story. They weren’t always successful, largely due to forces outside their control, but the final few episodes felt like they were building toward something.
The Rings of Power never felt like it was building to a crescendo as the season went on. Instead of building to the creation of the Rings, we were sidetracked by pointless mysteries that never should have been mysteries. Instead of building up Sauron as the Big Bad, we had Halbrand standing in the background letting others do all the heavy-lifting. I sincerely hope the writers and showrunners listen to the honest feedback from critics of the show and make improvements next season. If not, then this is going to be one of the biggest wastes of money seen on TV since the last two seasons of Game of Thrones.
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