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Rings of Power: Season Two Review

“It is not strength that overcomes darkness, but light.”

This review spoils mostly everything, none of which is very surprising.

After watching the first six episodes of this second season of Rings of Power, I mentioned the show to a colleague. “Oh,” she said. “I stopped watching that because nothing was happening.”

“Yes,” I responded. “It’s mostly just hanging out with dwarves and elves.”

Admittedly, that was before I’d seen the seventh episode, with its very impressive battle sequence. But “hangout vibes” still represents my overall impression of this season.

That is not a criticism. Although I don’t know all the lore, I know where Rings of Power is headed, because I’ve read Lord of the Rings. Since there’s not much tension regarding endgame, the pleasure—if you can find pleasure in this show, which I do—is watching how the denizens of Middle Earth get there.

The elves are the focus of this season, especially Celebrimbor, the great elven smith. He’s something of a tragic Daedalus figure, tempted to create rings for dwarves by Sauron, who masquerades as a sort of elf demigod. Watching the elves fall for the Great Deceiver’s tricks was frustrating, because it left me not with the impression that Sauron is a master manipulator, but that everyone else in Middle Earth is really naive.

And maybe they are, at least in part. The various races/species of Middle Earth are all very human-ish, but pride, greed, envy, and lust don’t play as large a part in their makeup as they do in ours. That I expect them to by as savvy as a typical twenty-first century human... well, I think Tolkien himself would be very sad to know how distrustful we all are now. This show does tend to challenge my faith in the accuracy of my own cynicism.

Gandalf is a good example of the same theme: when charged by Tom Bombadil with finding his path, he’s given a choice between friendship (with Nori) and destiny (becoming who he’s meant to be). Gandalf chooses friendship. And, of course, that was his destiny all along. He even gets a nice staff to prove it.

The focus on friendship, and the overall impression that innocence requires a certain naiveté, somehow doesn’t turn this season into a bad Hallmark movie. Take Tom Bombadil, played by Rory Kinnear, who is basically the tahini sauce of actors: he makes everything taste 100% better.

Hey there, handsome.

When I read the books, I'd hated Tom Bombadil, a bouncy cupcake of a man who was unconcerned with the possible destruction of the world. (I was more cynical then.) In this version, Rory Kinnear gives Tom a gimlet-eyed cheerfulness. I'm tempted to call it optimistic stoicism, if we could use that term divorced from its ancient Roman militaristic origins. Tom is almost a being out of time, since he has existed for so long. (He calls the stars newcomers.) His optimism is Tolkien’s larger eucatastrophe plan, but he’s not cheesy here. Just... hmm... solid. He’s like an oak tree. Or whatever. Basically, I really like Tom Bombadil and how this show handled his character.

I also like—nay, love—Durin and Disa, who are one of my favorite married couples in all of TV. Watching the King Durin’s gradual descent into ring-induced greediness through his son’s eyes was almost unbearable. That King Durin redeemed himself (via Balrog!) was bittersweet, at best. The Great Deceiver, who tricked the father but not the son, managed to cause terrible divisions in a kingdom that deserves better.

Durin and Disa’s plot this season puts them firmly in the ranks of the other obvious heroes: Galadriel and Elrond (who have a romantic chemistry, of sorts?). Elendil, exiled from Numenor, and of course Isildur when he finally joins the main cast. Gandalf and the Harfoots will help somehow. Various other elven, dwarven, and human characters. I’m sure we’ll see them all again soon.


To be honest, this is a hard season to review. This season's stance isn’t substantially different from the first season, and most of the events were easy to anticipate. I didn’t read any reviews of this season as it aired, aside from an article on Slate that disliked the choices the showrunners made with Tom Bombadil. But I did get the impression—from headlines I didn’t click on, colleagues, etc.—that most people felt this season was too slow, too much of a placeholder before we get to the real meat of the plot.

But, in a happy Tolkien-esque coincidence, I’m currently reading Erich Fromm’s To Have or To Be?. I’ve mentioned his work before, in a review of the mediocre heist movie Lift. In To Have or To Be? Fromm explores how our consumerist culture creates a desire to have, to hoard, to retain: a perpetual scarcity mindset. He contrasts this with the healthier attitude of being: not a rejection of objects, but a refusal to be possessed by our possessions, or consumed by our consumption.

That’s basically King Durin’s struggle: he stops being a king and starts hoarding wealth. Or the struggle of the leaders of Numenor, who want to have power rather than take care of their people. Or, obviously, Sauron's rings overall. Or even Gandalf’s big test: should he have a destiny or be a friend?

I wonder if our relationship to television is one of having rather than being. We want to consume a show, to finish it, with a focus on efficiency. Completion is the point more than enjoyment of spending time in a magical world. But Tolkien’s own texts, especially when they get into endless songs like Tom Bombadil’s, remind us that, although the destination is important, the journey is sorta the point. Why would I want this show to be faster or more efficient? Why should it use shorthand to flesh out character, theme, and concept?

This season ends with the elves saying that “it is not strength that overcomes darkness, but light.” It’s incredibly cheesy and more than a little nonsensical, but I think the spirit of the idea is that light–that is, goodness–must be celebrated. Strength is efficient. Lightness, goodness, optimism, and trying to do the right thing are long-term concepts that require actual action, not just a vague sense that we’re supposed to root for the pretty characters. Rings of Power does a good job of showing how goodness takes work, and time.

Very Random Thoughts:
  • I get the desire to make Nori, Poppy, and even Tom Bombadil “apple-cheeked,” or however they’re described in the books, but the makeup department went a bit too heavy on the blush. As someone with rosacea, I felt seen, but also like I needed to encourage all of those characters to see a dermatologist, or at least cut down the spicy food.
  • Especially in the early episodes, I spent way too long trying to determine of the elves’ robes were made out of silk or polyester. I mean, in real life: obviously they’re meant to appear to be silk. But they didn’t look as luxe as they were meant to.
  • Numenor. Dude, that’s not going well. Sea serpents are cool, though.
  • I felt really bad for the orcs this season.
  • I didn’t talk much about Galadriel here, because her plot was just her not being able to do her plot until the very end, when it was too late for her plot to be useful.

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

6 comments:

  1. "The tahini sauce of actors." Josie, I love you. :)

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  2. One of the peculiar things about this series is that it takes huge liberties with what is known about the 2nd age from Tolkien that seem almost calculated to annoy the fanbase while simultaneously making choices that are only explicable as nods to trivia known only to Tolkien nerds. A case in point: the "Dark Wizard"'s robe is clearly blue, an obvious reference to the Blue Wizards, the additional two Istari who vanished into the East...and that's surely the only reason Gandalf was sent out to Rhun.

    While I do agree that the journey in Tolkien is as important (or more so) than the plot, I'm not willing to cut the story writers as much slack here. Because while Tolkien certainly meandered at times (the Old Forest chapters in LOTR as a case in point), it was never his style to jump around between six different stories at once. I don't feel that the plot advances slowly because they're taking time to let characters develop and enrich the world so much as because they keep cutting to other story lines. In particular, I felt King Durin's descent into insane greed was way too fast and too obvious. I still see no real reason for Gandalf and the hobbits in the story, and don't see a need for the story of Numenor to be told concurrently with the story of the rings of power. I'm guessing the nine will turn their owners immediately into slaves if not ringwraiths because there's no time for Sauron to gradually subvert the kingdoms of men before finally bringing about the downfall of Numenor.

    I agree with you about feeling bad for the orcs, Josie. Of the completely invented elements in the series, Adar and the orcs storyline is the one I see the most value in. The concept of the orcs as a slave army is sort of present in Tolkien but they're never portrayed with any real sympathy.

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  3. Magritte, I was looking forward to your comment!

    It's weird to consider who this show is for. I seem to like it more than most people because I'm not that passionate about it. Is this an adaptation for tepid fans only?

    I also agree with you about too many stories. (Especially if Numenor isn't supposed to be happening at the same time at all!) It felt more like the show wanted to respect the actors' contracts by keeping them permanently employed, rather than serving the story first.

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  4. Not watching the actual series but watching through the lens of seeing Mark tweet about the show. I've also seen some stuff on Tumblr (yes, I'm still on Tumblr...) and the costumes are so low quality compared to the films. I mean, is it a budget thing? Did they just do things the quick and easy way?

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    Replies
    1. So it's not just me?! A few episodes in I messaged Billie that I felt like the show looked simultaneously really cheap and really expensive.

      If I understand textiles correctly--which I might not--you can't get silk to be permanently pleated unless you sew the pleats. (Like how the pleats in a schoolgirl skirt are sewn into the waistband of the skirt.) For pleats to just always be there, never unfolding, you need polyester. So Disa's gown must be polyester.

      Even knowing that, I thought her clothes were the most expensive looking, but that may have just been the dim lighting.

      Some of the elf costumes just looked like a weird 1980s music video.

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  5. Maybe they blew all their budget on the sets? I'm flattered that you were awaiting my opinion, Josie...it hasn't changed a whole lot from the first season (I looked back at what I said there), I felt the season got a little better as it moved along...I really found myself wondering in the first episode if I wanted to bother continuing.

    It's hard for me to be entirely fair to the show because it's clearly not trying to be what I would want a 2nd Age show to be. I'm not a fan of shows with too may story arcs going simultaneously (it's the thing I like least about Game of Thrones as book or show), and in my case it's exacerbated by knowing that Elendil was born 1500 years after the Rings of Power were forged and Gandalf doesn't belong in the 2nd Age at all. Neither does the Balrog, but I don't mind the show using it to dramatize the consequences of ring-inspired greed.

    That said, they really have delved deep into Tolkien's work. I was only aware of the references to the Blue Wizards in the appendix of the Lord of the Rings. Apparently, in one of the works published posthumously, the missing two wizards of the five mentioned by Saruman in LOTR did in fact oppose Sauron in the 2nd Age, rather than "falling into shadow" as stated in LOTR. Though the character of the Dark Wizard seems to suggest he's somewhere in between those two concepts and it appears as though Gandalf may be taking on the role of the other Blue Wizard.

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