There actually are some things I’m going in hoping to enjoy and appreciate. I’m not all gripes here. These things include . . .
These guys!
That is, the Men doomed to die before they are truly doomed (and in fact, kept from dying). I’m looking forward to meeting the nine dudes before they become wraiths. They look scary, they look fun to watch.
My hopes: That there are nuanced. That they’re not already a faceless crowd. Each should have his own story, and they shouldn’t be the same story. In LotR, we don’t get much about them at all. We know their captain, the Lord of the Nazgûl (aka the Witch-king of Angmar), was a sorcerer. Only in The Silmarillion are the Nine referred to, as a whole, as “kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old” (meaning, for example, three might have been actual kings, three sorcerers, and three warriors), who “obtained glory and great wealth” probably because of the rings they’re given. There’s a lot of room to flesh them out. I know in this season they’re going to be mortal men first, as they should be. I believe they’re given the name Nazgnagôl (ring-servants), which . . . sure. That’s fine.
My fears: I hope we don’t get all nine all in one go. I hope at the start of episode 1 they haven’t all already been scouted / recruited / ring-gifted, off-screen, and mostly faceless (helmed at all times) from the start, and are all ready to go now. It will be a bummer if all nine were already gathered between seasons. The central opportunity in this series is to show (and not merely tell) how the Rings of Power came to be made and dispensed. I keep going back to how both the Seven Rings were forged entirely off-screen between episodes and in a very short period of time. Which felt like such a wasted opportunity.
For the Nine, I always felt like one of the great tragedies of what they became is how they’re kept from death (butter scraped over waaaaay too much bread), and how in the service of the Dark Lord they’re completely lacking identity. They’ve sold everything to Sauron and are truly slaves. Even in the extraneous materials (Unfinished Tales, notably), we only get the name of one of them. That’s how stripped of their stories they became in time.
Anyway, when I’m at my most optimistic, I have to see Amazon’s series as a supposal of how the Rings of Power story line might have been made if you couldn’t secure the rights to the actual written story.
Next we have . . . these folks . . .
Except for the premature Balrog and the method and speed of the Seven Rings being given out, I’ve loved almost everything about the Khazad-dûm part of the show. Even the way-too-late-in-the-timeline discovery of mithril would have been forgivable had it not been turned into an out-of-left-field physical substance (drug?) that all Elves apparently needed to avoid dwindling “into nothing” and “slowly diminishing,” until they are “but shadows swept away by the tides of time forever.” Yeesh.
But Durin IV, Disa, their relationship to each other, their friendship with Elrond, and all the rest . . . great fun, good characterizations. I hope it proceeds well!
Even these guys!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: The original elements of The Rings of Power have actually been pretty great. That includes the characters like Arondir, Disa, Bronwyn, Theo, and Adar. Their stories are fresh, even when some of the details are wonky (like Arondir’s background), and there’s room for narratives compatible with Tolkien.
What was the disposition of orcs in the Second Age, particularly before Sauron rose and officially become the new Dark Lord? We don’t know. Even in the text, orcs weren’t a particularly big problem between the end of the First Age and the time that Sauron assumed the mantle left behind by Morgoth. So is there room to imagine that an orc-like Elf (or an Elf-like orc) like Adar could have tried to create some kind of society for them? Sure, there’s room for that. Adar was identified as one of the original Elves captured by Morgoth and tormented in such a way that the entire race of orcs were bred from him. But Elves are immortal, so if he never fell in battle, then yup, Adar could still be around all these millennia later.
I never had a problem with that. The only part of Adar’s story that I didn’t like were the particulars of his interactions with Sauron. It never added up well. But in the wake of his character arc (which ended in season 2), is it possible there are still some orcs, who once served under Adar, who aren’t particularly pleased with Sauron or properly cowed by him yet? For sure. I’m interested to see where they go with that.
That doesn’t make orcs wholly redeemable. We don’t know. Even Tolkien didn’t.
- “Tolkien’s Orcs: Bolg, Shagrat, and the Maggot-folk of Mordor” — A discussions of the nature of Orcs as depicted in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
- “Tolkien’s Orcs: The Din-horde of Morgoth” — A discussions of the nature of Orcs as depicted in The Silmarillion
- “Tolkien’s Orcs: Boldog and the Host of Tumult” — A discussions of the nature of Orcs as explored by Tolkien in the various History of Middle-earth books
The point being, there’s room to explore. It’s in the established lore-characters where I think The Rings of Power show has fallen far: Particularly with Sauron, Galadriel, Gil-galad, and to a lesser extent Elrond, Celebrimbor, Círdan, Gandalf, and some of the Númenóreans.
But, fingers crossed with the Ringwraiths, the Dwarves, and the orcs.
