RoP : S2 Ep 1: Elven Kings Under the Sky

Here is an admittedly long bullet list of some of my thoughts and opinions concerning the first episode of the Rings of Power episode 1, “Elven Kings Under the Sky.” I say “some” because I simply cannot contain them all! Spoilers, of course, abound.

An important disclaimer: I do not hate The Rings of Power. I’m still watching and I am very entertained. I do wish I was more than entertained by it, because it’s inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien. The show is still far and away the best fantasy television series around.

But here I would like to record many of my opinions. And they are only opinions.

Let’s begin.

Prologue

• An evil crown in the dark: cool starting visual. Same with the fortress itself.
• The music is, as always, great. Bear McCreary’s work is one of the best parts of the show.
• I wish this prologue-flashback visually matched the prologue-flashback of season 1. It’s jarring that it doesn’t; it’s smaller, and so much less grand.
• We get a red-haired and smartly dressed Sauron who just looks like some guy. Could be a Man, could be an Elf. He’s very out of place, and not in the I’m-bigger-and-scarier-than-everyone-else way.

• Sauron appears to be at the tail-end of a speech in which he is introducing himself to the Orcs, as if he’s new to them. As if he wasn’t Morgoth’s right-hand man for centuries, maybe millennia.
• Why? What do we suppose Sauron was doing up until now? Did season 1, episode 1 lie?
• In Galadriel’s voiceover in that first prologue, we were informed, even after the defeat of Morgoth, the orcs had . . .

“spread to every corner of Middle-earth, multiplying ever greater under the command of his most devoted servant, a cruel and cunning sorcerer. They called him Sauron.”

• That Sauron was more fitting and more intimidating. Better suited to commanding Orcs. The Orcs in this much smaller cave (are we to think this is the last of them? what happened to “multiplying ever greater”?) are not impressed with fancy Sauron.
• This Sauron cannot read the room. He doesn’t seem very wise, much less a “cunning sorcerer.” Why is he bothering to project his new and largely non-violent approach to the domination of all the races of Middle-earth to this crowd? Orcs in this assembly are actively drooling black saliva and snarling a lot. He sees that, right? He knows what Orcs are.
• Why would, for example, a high-level evil scientist give a speech to the grunt workers in his evil factory about the new technology he wants to explore that won’t really require them? Where do they fit into his vision? And oh yeah, some of his workers will die in the development of this technology. Hey, why aren’t they digging this?
• This Sauron is coming in like a new CEO from outside the industry who doesn’t know anything about the company but plans on making big changes to seem important.
• Adar looks skeptical from the get-go, like he’s also not sure about this new guy the board brought in. Which is odd, because we’ll later learn from Adar himself that Sauron was there from the start, back when Adar was one of thirteen Elves chosen to be “blessed of Morgoth” for torment and corruption (which, it’s understood, is what led to the race of Orcs). Adar should already know how Sauron is, right?
• More important, Sauron should know better; he should know that explaining his new vision isn’t going to land well with the Orcs. It’s a vision which doesn’t involve the successful slaughtering of their enemies—some of whom, incidentally, probably look a lot like Sauron right now. Enemies with clear skin, nicely groomed hair, and expensive-looking clothing. How is this selling his idea?
• Why does Sauron even need to convince them of anything? He deigns to be the new Dark Lord. Dark Lords don’t need to get Orcs’ consent and cooperation. They rule out of fear, not respect. Where there’s a whip, there’s a will!
• Does Sauron want a change of direction? Yes. Now, that does track, at least, with what’s said about him in an essay in Morgoth’s Ring that contrasts him with Morgoth. But this Sauron isn’t being smart about it. Why is he pitching that they all be “worshipped as the saviors who finally healed” the world and doing so as if he needs their approval or cooperation?
• This Sauron has been seriously “nerfed,” to use a gaming term. In season 1, Adar’s setup was actually intriguing. It was interesting. When he was Galadriel’s captive, he said that Sauron “devoted himself to healing Middle-earth” and to achieve it, he was seeking . . .

“to craft a power not of the flesh but over flesh. A power of the Unseen World. He bid as many as he could to follow him far north. But try as he might something was missing. A shadow of dark knowledge that kept itself hidden, even from him, no matter how much blood he spilt in pursuit.”

• Where is all that now? Sauron’s speech is clearly taking place before such a process has begun (else he wouldn’t need to pitch it to his public). So this feels like a retcon.
• “Many orcs will die,” he says, still not reading the room.
• Adar told Galadriel in season 1:

“For my part I sacrificed enough of my children for his aspirations.”

• Did he? When? When were Sauron’s experiments, right there in that very fortress, merging orcs into walls, the remains of which Galadriel discovered in S1E2. She’d immediately recognized the orcs-in-walls tableau as “meddling with the powers of the Unseen World.”

• After foiling an assassination attempt in a very mundane way, Sauron throws a short tantrum because they’re not falling into line. What part of we’re-going-to-do-things-differently-now-in-a-way-that-will-kill-some-of-you didn’t they accept?
• I keep wondering: Why isn’t he in a grander, armored form? Why is he standing on a stone stage at the same level as a bunch of the Orcs and Adar? Why isn’t he at least on a throne or dais or raised platform? He’s not doing the Dark Lord thing right, and it’s not like he didn’t have a front row seat on how Morgoth did it for thousands of years.
• Unsurprisingly, Sauron gets Julius Caesar’d before he can even start seeking the power “over flesh” he was just talking about. Also, this sidestepping of the season 1 prologue plot feels like a missed opportunity, or simply the consequence of the shifting of writers or directors. Like how The Last Jedi doesn’t fit neatly with A Force Awakens or The Rise of Skywalker due to behind-the-scenes logistics. It breaks many fourth walls.

Next begins the first in a long stream of Peter Jackson film callbacks. These moments could feel like genuine moments of homage or tribute, if they were done sparingly. They’re not; they’re just splashed over the place.

• So Sauron is “killed” just by getting stabbed in the shoulders by a spiky crown, then by a lot of normal Orc-blades. Even the Lord of the Nazgûl will one day be impervious to normal blades. What gives?
• When Sauron’s body is slain, he explodes in white light that knocks all the Orcs down . . . just like in Jackson’s films!

• In season 1, Adar said to Galadriel:

“I split him open. I killed Sauron.”

• Split open! That wording was cool, and freaky, and evocative! Why did they leave that idea behind? A retcon? Was Adar just exaggerating to be dramatic? Or are we to suppose Sauron’s body exploding was the “splitting,” except clealry that’s just a chain reaction to his “dying.”
• Sauron’s seeming death leaves behind a pile of empty clothes. The Rings of Power really just pulled an Obi-Wan. “If you strike me down, Adar, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

Aside, for anyone unfamiliar with Tolkien’s books, Sauron’s body is only *defeated* three times: (1) Second Age 3319 when Númenor itself is drowned; (2) Second Age 3441 when Elendil and Gil-galad take him down on the slopes of Mt. Doom (after which Isildur claims the One Ring); and then of course Third Age 3019 when the Ring is destroyed.

So now The Rings of Power has added a fourth prequel-style instance of Sauron being “slain,” which feels especially odd because we’ve just been told Morgoth himself was just defeated and removed. What’s wrong with Sauron just going into hiding for hundreds of years first? Why the Adar plotline? That said, I did like Adar a lot in the first season.

• Sauron’s reduction into black blood-goo and then into an animate black-sludge looks cool at first. But I don’t love the physical nature of Sauron’s dissolution. The cinematic effect of time passing and the appearance of larger stalagmites and stalactites around the puddle that he becomes—that is neat.
• I don’t love the Gollum’s cave parallel. Thematically that should work but it feels like more imitation.
• I’d have preferred Sauron’s dissolution be more fitting for a nebulous spirit. Then again, this show has never called Sauron a spirit at all, just a sorcerer. We’re not told he’s a Maiar. So in this version of Middle-earth, Sauron maybe isn’t, I guess?
• The existing in a lower form and subsisting on other creatures just feels like imitating Voldemort’s deal. With a healthy dose of Venom-style symbiosis. None of this feels original or Tolkienesque.
• The snowy and mountainous vistas are amazing.
• Seeing Sauron sliding and flopping around said snowy landscape is more comical than not.
• I like the refugees! Sauron-Halbrand joining up with them is interesting. The exchanges with the older man with the heraldric pouch are good ones.
• Where are these Men going? Do they think they can sail to the West, or are we to think they’re seeking Númenor and would be allowed there? Most likely we’ll never be told.
• Visually, the rest of the prologue is great. I don’t mind Sauron’s ability to detect, and then steer away, the sea monster—although every time we’re in the Sea, I recall how Morgoth (and presumably his servants) hated and feared the Sea because he never could command it. Notice there is never a naval force of Orcs.

Lindon

• Galadriel and Elrond race across Eriador. She’s chasing him. That’s a lot of ground to cover! Did they stop and rest and camp and feed the horses and such?

• I don’t mind our not having seen Elrond actually swipe the Three Rings from Celebrimbor’s forge room. It’s understood. And I really like Robert Aramayo’s performance. He’s won me over. Even when given bad dialogue and bad plot choices, he makes the best of it.
• I don’t even mind Morfydd Clark’s performance as Galadriel most of the time, even though I chafe under the character choices given to her.
• But hang on it. We’re to understand that Galadriel, in the present time knows Sauron is alive and well and free, clearly able to deceive and shapechange, and is, as far as she knows, just loitering in the woods outside Eregion . . . and she’s told no one about this yet? How many days have gone by? She’s left that perilous situation hundreds of miles behind her. That’s crazy! Sauron is the literal heir of the devil of Middle-earth. It wasn’t enough that she actively coaxed him to come to Middle-earth and then brought him right into the midst of the Elves, but now left him lurking nearby and not warning anyone?
• We will soon learn that Galadriel only asked Celebrimbor to promise not to “treat” with Halbrand anymore. That’s it. No better heads-up than that. Poor Celebrimbor. No wonder he’s going to be such easy prey.
• So in this case, Gil-galad is right to be mad. The one moment I agree with his demeanor is when he makes that exasperated sound after she confessesed Halbrand was Sauron.
• But I sure don’t like this generally contemptuous Gil-galad, who just seems to scorn everyone. I don’t dislike Benjamin Walker. I’ve seen him in other stuff and he’s fine. Even in Rings of Power interviews, I instantly like him more. He’s animated, and has an energy totally absent in the High King of the Noldor. But when he’s in character, he’s awkward and ponderous, scolding and jerky.
• As always, the sets are amazing. Lindon is beautiful, I wish we could see more locations so we know it’s not just the two places: the ceremonial overlook under the great tree and the memorial wood.
• Gil-galad’s guards are stiff. In fact, all the Elf minor characters and extras in this show are stiff. Vulcanesque. This isn’t unique to Rings of Power; Jackson’s Elves were just as wooden and unemotional. The extras always look like extras. I get that the director doesn’t want them doing anything to upstage the lead Elves in any given scene, but they all look like they’ve been instructed to exude no personality whatsoever, so as not to draw the eye. They stare, unimpressed at what’s going on, and act as though they expect only to remain in the viewer’s peripheral vision. But I’m looking at them. I want immersion. I was my disbelief suspended. Help me out, extras! Don’t hinder me!
• Though I love Aramayo’s performance, nearly everything about this scene—the dialogue, the plot playing out—makes me groan. We’re now learning that Galadriel has traveled hundreds of miles across Eriador, taking who knows how many days and weeks, without having told anyone (not even Elrond) that Halbrand is Sauron.
• I had major problems in season 1 with how much they’ve made Galadriel complicit, even critical, to the rise of Sauron (in a way very anathema to Tolkien’s writings). In season 1, they took one of Tolkien’s most powerful female characters and threw her under the bus. But this is . . . almost worse. Season 2 has backed the bus up and run over her again.

• Except, of course, she totally did just that.
• “He is no man.” Ugh, Jackson callback #373.
• I do not have a problem with a fiery, less patient Galadriel. I’m going to say that again: I do not have a problem with a firecracker Galadriel on principle. Not one bit. I’m not one of the haters who expects to see an ethereal Cate Blanchett–style calm Galadriel. I accept that this is a much younger character, even though she’s still not young and should be hundreds if not multiple thousands of years old at this point. (And, it should be noted, she should also be older than both Gil-galad and Celebrimbor, as neither of them is mentioned in The Silmarillion until well into the First Age.) I don’t even mind her having a vendetta. I just wish (1) we saw other Elves bear some of the same trauma so she’s not just some outlier and (2) that her vendetta was based on more than the loss of one brother (since in the book she lost three to the wars against Morgoth). Even in just this show, we’ve been told she had and lost a husband in the war, too. She doesn’t seem to miss him in the way she does for Finrod. They’re making it weird.

Quick aside: I love Finrod. He’s my favorite Tolkien Elf. But the Rings of Power Finrod is a wholly different Finrod. This one is an amalgam of different Elves (more like Galadriel’s other brothers, perhaps: Angrod and Aegnor). Book Finrod is quite the opposite of a take-up-a-sword crusader specficially on the hunt for Sauron.

• When Gil-galad tells the guards to seize Elrond, they advance on him with no real plan, with their big shields and their spears. I half imagine one of them saying, super politely, “Errr, my king, would you mind holding these for a moment so I can grab him?”
• These are Elves! Have we not seen Arondir and his acrobatics?! These Lindon Elves are probably even Noldor, at least some of them would be. We’re talking Calaquendi, Elves of the Light, who’ve seen the light of the Trees of Valinor before Morgoth darkened them! They should be badass and very physically capable. Not so stiff. These guys are like when Darth Vader took his first steps in his new suit.
• Even Elrond, who pulls a Dr. Richard Kimble over the waterfall, has not seen the light of the Trees and wouldn’t have that extra Valinorean mojo that many of these Elves should have.

• In The Silmarillion, Elrond’s own mother, Elwing, leaps from a cliff to deny the Silmaril in her possession from falling into the treacherous hands of the last sons of Fëanor. Is this a tribute to that? Maybe that’s the way the showrunners see it. But in season 1, Celebrimbor refers to both Elrond’s father and mother. He says: “I heard your mother asking him, imploring him, why, why must it be him?” So in The Rings of Power‘s version of the past, Eärendil set out to save the world by sailing to the West, and his wife took no part but in fact tried to keep him from going. She implored him. No mention of how vital her role was in his success or that she herself went with Eärendil. Another female character sidelined when she didn’t need to be, when Tolkien himself didn’t sideline her. It’s 2024, isn’t it?
• It’s a bummer that the Three Rings were made when they were made, and that this show is telling an all-new story where the sequence is wholly different than Tolkien devised. But, we gotta roll with it.
• The effect is that the Three might now have some sinister quality to them, where they clearly do not in The Lord of the Rings. Galadriel insists that they do not have Sauron’s influence on them, but Elrond disagrees. We’re in he-said-she-said territory and the ominous whispers we hear whenever we get Galadriel or Gil-galad staring at the rings means Elrond isn’t wrong.
• Cut to the Grey Havens: Círdan the Shipwright! At last. He doesn’t disappoint too much yet, even though I find his whole setup a little bit underwhelming for who this guy is. But the actor himself is doing a fine job with what he’s been given.
• The exchange between Elrond and Círdan is all good. I like that Elrond confides in him. He would. Círdan is a monumentally important character in the legendarium, the epitome of loyal, faithful, and selfless. He longs to sail West but instead holds down the coastal fort and facilitates others’ passage before his own.
• I don’t like that the show holds the viewer’s hand so often, dumbing things down. Example: Elrond calls Círdan “the oldest and wisest of our kind” right to him, then in the very next scene when Galadriel and Gil-galad are trying to locate Elrond, she says that he would seek out someone he can trust, someone “older, wiser,” and neither she nor Gil-galad say Círdan’s name. They just look at each other knowingly.

I cannot count how many times it feels like the showrunners are metaphorically leaning into the shot and winking at us. *Nudge-nudge*, get it? Get it? Older, wiser, just like Elrond said a couple of minutes ago? Do they imagine the viewer sits up, poiting at the screen. “Oooh! Oooh! The blond Elf-girl must mean the bearded Elf we just saw Elrond talking to!” Clever.

• I’m still mulling over how to feel about this “scar” in the seabed “so deep is its end none but Manwë himself knows.” I mean, okay. As the means of disposing of unwanted rings, though . . .
• Also, does the show have permission to name Manwë, Annatar, the Valar . . . but not Ulmo? How about Ossë and Uinen? Prolly not. Never mind that Círdan knew them pretty well in his day. Still, I can feel the names not mentioned due to rights.
• Elrond to Galadriel: “What time do you think you have?” Jackson callback #379. Turns out Elrond beat Saruman to that statement.
• I would very much like to discover what bumped Círdan’s little sailboat such that he took as it as omen to examine the Three Rings for the first time when otherwise he wasn’t planning on it. Or will they X-Files this plot point and have no actual answer in mind, and have no plan to reveal it?
• Benjamin Walker’s take on “Golden Leaves” song is lovely. I wish we got a lot more like that. I wish the public singing of a melancholic song, that’s clearly meant to temper the sorrow of his people, seemed like a natural thing for this take on Gil-galad to do. But it actually seems a little out of character for him. Since when has he said or done anything uplifting on this show that’s not merely politic?
• I want to love this Círdan, but I don’t like that he breaks Elrond’s trust the moment he shows up at this ceremony (which I guess he apparently wasn’t invited to). That’s not cool. It’s one thing if he takes the Three Rings as “perfect” and important—in which case, just say so!—but to just walk right past his young friend without so much as a “Sorry, my boy,” is uncool of him.
• The Three Rings are placed on three fingers. It’s magic time!
• Gil-galad gets one, naturally, adding it to his copious collection. Galadriel takes hers, of course. And . . . Círdan just assumes he gets one? Argh. What imposter is this? Or did I miss the passage in the books where Círdan puts himself first, before others?
• Book Círdan never uses any ring; when he is actually given Narya, the Red Ring, by Celebrimbor directly, he merely keeps it to guard it. He then hands it over to Gandalf when Gandalf arrives in Middle-earth (not by meteor). Círdan is wise indeed, and foresighted enough to see that Gandalf will have greater use for the Ring of Fire than he ever would. That Círdan always puts others first.
• Except not this time! The Ring of Fire is his, hahaha. No one can take it from him! Go ahead and try!

• Check it out! The Three Rings, when merely worn and not even used, automatically destroy the tree’s blight. The whole Elven face is apparently saved! And now they won’t, in fact, have their immortal souls dwindle “into nothing, slowly diminishing,” until they are “but shadows swept away by the tides of time forever.”
• The Elves, here, are way too quiet. All those extras are still being stiff. The director told them to all look up at the sky, at the tree, smile and look glad, but any enthusiasm feels quelled by an insistence to not upstage any of the leads. But these are Elves. They should be singing.
• Not one shot of Gil-galad looking at least a little pleased. Not one smile.
• Everything’s awesome now. Now we never need to talk about that again or explain how it came to be that Elves quite suddenly needed mithril to survive past spring of this particular year in the Second Age? No speculation on how to maybe identify and prevent any such future tree-and-Elf-soul rot ever again?
• Meanwhile, far away, the Elves in Eregion and everywhere else in Middle-earth are apparently none the wiser. They all dodged a massive metaphysical bullet and didn’t even know it. Whew!
• If I was an Elf in that assembly, I’d be wondering: So did three of our elders need to just put on those Rings and now the tree, and all Elves, are saved? Can they walk away from the tree safely, or should maybe three Elves (any Elves) stay near the tree while wearing the Rings? Was this a one-time fix? What are the rules here?

Rhûn

• The Stranger and Nori travel east, looking for Rhûn. I’m generally enjoying all the Harfoot and Stranger interactions, even when I’m giving it a bit of side-eye. I’m reserving judgment on this whole plot because we don’t yet know how it will factor into the Sauron saga.
• I genuinely like both these characters! I enjoy spending time with them and their friendly banter.
• I don’t appreciate the continued mystery box that is the Stranger. Clearly, they’re angling towards the reveal and dropping either hints or deliberate red herrings—the word gand that Nori keeps using is apparently the Harfoots’ term for branch or staff—but the showrunners constantly being coy is a near-constant breaking of the fourth wall. It denies immersion.
• I’m guessing his final name reveal, when it’s either discovered or merely assigned to him, will end up being a Harfoot invention in this show. Instead of what we have in Unfinished Tales:

Mostly he journeyed unwearyingly on foot, leaning on a staff; and so he was called among Men of the North Gandalf, ‘the Elf of the Wand’. For they deemed him (though in error, as has been said) to be of Elven-kind, since he would at times work wonders among them, loving especially the beauty of fire; and yet such marvels he wrought mostly for the mirth and delight, and desired not that any should hold him in awe or take his counsels out of fear.

• Poppy is great, but . . . didn’t we just say goodbye to her? We sure did! It was a big teary farewell scene in the last episode of the first season.

• A script was written, lines were memorizes, it was sweetly acted, music was composed and performed and recorded. All that now that means nothing now, especially if you rewatch it. This is the stuff that keeps this show from being timeless.
• Maybe Poppy’s a fan favorite? A Daryl Dixon, as it were. Or maybe she’s just a showrunners’ favorite, sort of like how Alfrid was for Philippa Boyens in The Hobbit films (ooof). I genuinely like Poppy! Truly. Maybe the show will be better for her presence. I remember feeling sad with Nori and impressed with the showrunners for allowing their painful separation.
• I remember thinking, Ah, okay, so they’re not going to make her Sam to Nori’s Frodo all throughout. Good for them. Strike a new path!
• Never mind.
• I guess I’m just not a fan of takebacks and backpedaling. Not a fan of cinematic stories working up for a big payoff at the end, only to undermine that ending in the very next installment.

Mordor

• Ehh, it’s all fine. I don’t quite see what Sauron gained by “surrending” to Adar only to get himself freed. Planting seeds, I suppose. To harnessing Adar’s Orc-army later.
• Adar seems a bit less nuanced than he was in season 1. I know it’s a new actor, and that’s probably a big part of it.
• Now it’s established he’s one of thirteen Elves. The show doesn’t dive enough into the lore to know, but if he’s one of the original Elves captured by Morgoth and used to breed Orcs, then he’s crazy old indeed. Like Círdan old! No, probably older than Círdan. I hope we learn more about this. I don’t actually mind this.
• A new Warg! Sauron was once Lord of Werewolves, so I guess his power over it should be automatic. Why does he have to try so hard to take charge of it? He still seems nerfed.
• Waldreg deserved that fate, I’d say.

But seriously, for all of that, I do not hate The Rings of Power! I only wish it was more than it is. When I can, I’ll share some thoughts on episodes 2 and 3. Disa is still great, Durin’s fun, and I see Celebrimbor is still wearing the drapes.