Spider-Man: No Way Home, not just an MCU movie but a finale for one of Marvel’s most famous characters, cost about $200 million. Horizon Forbidden West, not just a huge, AAA, open-world game but the sequel to a huge, AAA, open-world game (and supposedly “the most expensive media ever produced in the Netherlands”) cost about $118 million. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films cost, collectively, about $494 million (adjusted for inflation).
Season 1 of Rings of Power cost about $465 million. If you add in the cost of the rights, it cost more than the Jackson movies plus your pick of Spider-Man or Horizon. It is, per episode, the most expensive TV show ever made. It’s budget was bigger than the GDP of some countries.
And you know what they say about things that are big and how hard they fall.
* * *
This is not going to be a comprehensive review of Rings of Power Season 1. I tried to write that, and it broke my brain. So instead I’m going to focus on the season finale, tracing the threads of its major plot-points back to what I think are the show’s core problems and how the dollar signs in their eyes blinded them to the fact that they had no idea what they were doing.
That being said, I do want to briefly address a few other facets of the show before I get to my main argument. Think of these as sort of critical appetizers.
* * *
First, the good. In general, I enjoyed the acting. I liked Morfydd Clark as a younger, more impetuous Galadriel, yet still with a hint of the nobility and grace that Cate Blanchett brought to the role. Owain Arthur, despite only being in half the episodes, delivers probably my favorite performance as Durin IV, neatly balancing the comic relief aspects commonly thrust upon Dwarven characters with a more richly dimensionalized, emotional depiction (which is pretty good for a character who’s just a Simon Tolkien self-insert.)1 And Markella Kavenagh’s earnest and adventurous Nori Brandyfoot helps ground what are probably the worst sections of the show.
While those are the highlights, most of the rest of the cast is also pretty good (the best of the rest would probably be Sophia Nomvete and Megan Richards, with neither really being given enough to do for them to shine).2
The only two performances I really chafed against are Ismael Cruz Cordova as Arondir (which arguably has less to do with his acting and more to do with the slightly soapy romance plot he was written into…but also maybe a little bit to do with his acting), and Robert Aramayo as Elrond, who isn’t bad but bears very little resemblance to Hugo Weaving’s definitive portrayal of the character, to the point that it’s impossible to see how this gentle, unimposing diplomat and speechwriter is somehow going to be marching with Gil-Galad during the Last Alliance.3
Oh right, I said this was the good stuff. Well, thus endeth the good stuff. On to the bad.4
* * *
Composing for films and composing for television are probably two very different tasks, given the different production processes and the different units of time (1 episode < 1 film, but 1 season > 1 film). That being said, it’s impossible not to compare Bear McCreary’s work on Rings of Power with Howard Shore’s iconic Lord of the Rings scores (especially since McCreary himself invites this comparison), and McCreary does not fair well in the matchup.
The most notable issue is that McCreary’s work lacks Shore’s memorable melodies and clear motifs. Compare, for example, the use of motifs in Shore’s “Minas Tirith” and “The Steward of Gondor” with McCreary’s much more subtle similarities in “Khazad-dûm” and “Durin IV.” This may just be a matter of personal preference, but while intellectually I enjoy the game of digging through McCreary’s music to find an echo of a melodic contour or a familiar rhythmic pattern at a different tempo, it feels like so much clever seasoning on an ultimately duller, more forgettable, less emotionally engaging main course. Ironic given that McCreary characterized his score as depicting “these societies at their peak,” compared to Shore’s “wistful” and “melanchol[ic]” music depicting them thousands of years later.
* * *
Then we have the visuals. Rings of Power, as previously stated, has a substantial budget. It’s natural to assume that a lot of that budget went into to what you’re seeing on screen, and it’s certainly easy to find people saying exactly that:
And yes, the examples are indeed very pretty—and are on-screen for about 5 seconds before we cut back to close-ups of people talking in front of (surely beautiful) out-of-focus backgrounds. At times you instinctively crane your neck to try and see anything interesting. When we do get to actually see where our characters are, it’s usually a tiny room, a cave, a ditch, a forest clearing, a rundown village, or somewhere equally bare and non-descript.
Compare this (as, again, you can’t help but do) to Jackson’s films, where you’re constantly aware of the space the characters are in, and the memorable setpieces are actual setpieces. Take, for example, when Gandalf and Pippin arrive in Minas Tirith. You don’t just get a pretty establishing shot and then cut to them in a tiny room where you can sort of see a blurry suggestion of Minas Tirith out the window, you see them actually making their way through nearly every tier of the city.
Armenelos, the capital city of Númenor (which the show might not even bother to name?) is surely vaguely impressive for the few moments we see it, but you don’t get anything like the sense of scale you do with the films’ locations.
The fight scenes are also lacking in visual flair. Aside from the slow-mo, which may or may not be to your taste,5 there’s just a general lack of interesting choreography, and a weird emphasis on Arondir doing martial arts over any actual swordplay. The best fight scene isn’t even a fight scene so much as a training scene.
The scene that maybe best sums all of these points up comes early on in the show. While exploring an abandoned stronghold of The Enemy, Galadriel and company encounter a snow troll. What follows is perhaps the second-most boring action scene in the entire show:6 the snow troll, after crushing some random Elf soldiers that we were maybe supposed to care about, walks into the middle of the room and then just kind of stays there, occasionally beating someone to pulp, until Galadriel walks in, does a weirdly well-choreographed maneuver (by which I mean, weirdly well-choreographed in-world), and takes him out in a few hits. The action is boring, the set is barely visible, and it’s over in about a minute.
Compare that to the cave troll fight in Balin’s Tomb, in Fellowship of the Ring. The tomb isn’t much bigger than the corridor the snow troll fight takes place in, and yet they make so much more use of that space, with the troll (and the camera) moving all around the room. And the action lasts nearly 5 minutes, with each Fellowship member getting to contribute.7 It’s just a more entertaining scene.
All of which is to say, if you can see all $465 million of that budget on screen, then you’ve got better eyes than me. Or rather, you’ve got better eyes than me when I’m wearing my glasses. Which I was while watching the show. And it didn’t help. Is the point.
* * *
I just want to note here that before watching the season finale, this was going to be the main point of the essay, that they spent an ungodly amount of money on one of the most boring-looking shows I’ve ever watched. I was going to do several more side-by-side scene comparisons, really get down to the micro level. Obviously I had problems with the writing, especially with how they adapted the story, but it didn’t feel worth getting into that when I had so much to say about the visuals.
Then I watched the season finale and nearly hyperventilated while yelling about it for like 20 minutes. So this is all you get about how the show looks like ass, because we need to talk about the writing.
* * *
Before we get into the writing, though, it would probably help to explain what this show is actually adapting, in case you’re not aware. Because the thing about Rings of Power is that it doesn’t have the rights to the actual story of the Rings of Power.
Intellectual property rights are complicated, and with a collection of works as varied as Tolkien’s, they only get more complicated. In modern times this is perhaps most noticeable in video games, with some games having the rights to the movies but not the books, and other games having the rights to the books but not the movies, which is very fun.
However, what pretty much no one has ever had the rights to is The Silmarillion,8 Tolkien’s magnum opus covering the creation of his world and all the significant events that occured in the many thousands of years before those described in The Hobbit. Which events include the forging of the Rings of Power.
Per The Silmarillion, Sauron appears to the Elves both “fair and wise” and introduces himself as “Annatar, the Lord of Gifts.” While Gil-Galad and Elrond are suspicious, the Elven smiths of Eregion are like “this dude seems cool” and learn all about forging Rings of Power from this cool dude who’s definitely not Sauron. This is also how Sauron approaches the Dwarves and Men, hiding his true identity and gifting them some of the many Rings he helped the Elves forge.
What Rings of Power actually has the rights to is The Lord of the Rings trilogy, namely The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, including the Appendices, and since RoP takes place in The Second Age, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, it’s really just that last one that matters.
Here’s what the Appendices (specifically, Appendix B) have to say about the forging of the Rings of Power:
“1200 Sauron endeavours to seduce the Eldar. Gil-Galad refuses to treat with him; but the smiths of Eregion are won over.
….
c. 1500 The Elven-smiths instructed by Sauron reach the height of their skill. They begin the forging of the Rings of Power.
c. 1590 The Three Rings are completed in Eregion.
c. 1600 Sauron forges the One Ring in Orodruin.”
The important thing to note is that no mention is made here of Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. Which means Rings of Power, the show about the Rings of Power, can’t mention the persona by which Sauron convinces the Elves to forge the Rings of Power.
This will be important later.
* * *
Indeed, the Appendices are generally lacking in detail. The fall of Númenor is actually sketched out pretty well, and there was a brief moment when I let myself hope that they might just stick to Númenor and it might even be good—until they announced the title of the show, anyway.
Even with Númenor, though, while we get the general story beats we don’t get a lot of specific scenes. And there’s even less detail for the other aspects of Tolkien’s legendarium the show touches on.
Keep in mind, the Appendices are not a novel or an in-world memoir but a history, so their style and content varies significantly from that of the main text of The Lord of the Rings. Even where they include narrative elements, such as the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen,” such stories are told in a classic historical style, with dryer language and sparse details.
All of which is to say that the biggest difference, in terms of the writing process, between Rings of Power and the Jackson films is that most of what’s in the show is not in the book. So when Galadrial is leading an expedition to the North and fights a snow troll? Not in the book. When Durin IV has an argument with his dad? Not in the book. When Ar-Pharazôn’s son is somehow the good guy for being a nationalist? Not in the book. When Celebrimbor talks to Elrond about his dad and makes what I found to be a very annoying grammatical error that everyone else says I should shut up about? Not in the book. When a proto-Hobbit sings a painfully bad song about travel or whatever that’s somehow supposed to have survived 4-6000 years for Bilbo to have been influenced by it while writing a poem about Aragorn? Definitely not in the book.9
Basically, pretty much none of the dialogue in the show is from Tolkien, and much of the story is filling in gaps left by the lack of detail in the Appendices and/or the fact that they don’t have the rights to The Silmarillion. So it’s no wonder that a lot of the show feels like fan-fiction with a film budget; it basically is.
Perhaps the most fan-fictiony part of the show is their origin story for mithril, which apparently is as light as Good but as tough as Evil because an Elf and a Balrog were fighting over a tree on top of the Misty Mountains and then the tree got struck by lightning, an explanation that no one asked for and makes no sense. Also, because this tree was, improbably, yet another tree that contained the light of Valinor, mithril contains the light of Valinor and without it the Elves have to leave Middle-earth or they’ll die.
Now you might think that it would’ve been fine for mithril to just be this cool ore that happens to exist in this fantasy world and is not suddenly the most important material in existence (and boy howdy, imagine if the Elves in Rivendell knew about Bilbo’s mithril vest? They’d have never let Frodo take it), but that’s because you haven’t read the end of this essay where I explain why the show had to come up with such a stupid idea.
* * *
At this point, if somehow you think you might still want to watch Rings of Power, just be warned that I’m about to spoil the entire first season. But also this is, like, the main part of the essay, so if you do want to watch the show please go do that now and then come back and finish reading.
*waits approximately 9.28 hours*
Wow, you watched all the credits and everything. I appreciate the dedication, and I question your sanity. Anyway, now we can proceed.
So, the most important change to the story, the plot device that the show decided pretty much from the get-go to hang its hat on, is a question that can only be asked because they don’t have the rights to the real answer: who is Sauron?
Remember, Sauron can’t be Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, or even Dannatar the King of Presents.10 He has to be a different character. And for the first 7 episodes there were two prime suspects: Halbrand and The Stranger.11
* * *
We first meet Halbrand on a raft with a ragtag crew of misfits, who probably all have rich internal lives and complex backstories but they’re all dead a few minutes later so who cares. It’s not entirely clear why Halbrand is there—was he exiled, condemned to death at sea, running away? We don’t know, but we can tell he’s in dire straits; his skin is sallow, pockmarked, he’s dressed in rags.
From the way he handles Galadriel’s appearance and the death of his companions, we can see that he’s cunning, slow to trust but quick to see value, and not particularly bothered by a bunch of people he presumably knew getting eaten by a giant sea creature.
To conclude from this that he’s evil is maybe unfair, but he definitely doesn’t seem great. Sure, he saves Galadriel from drowning (twice), but is he just trying to help himself? (Although it’s unclear how saving her actually helps him, but it’s way too soon to get into the weeds so we’re moving on.)
In Númenor it is further established that he’s a bit of a smooth talker, seems to know how to ingratiate himself (up to a point). And he does use this to help Galadriel figure out the Queen’s whole deal…before immediately betraying her to Ar-Pharazôn.12 Also, he really doesn’t want to admit that he’s the rightful King of the Southlands. And granted, Aragorn was hesitant to take up his role as the King of Gondor,13 but he at least still wanted to help Gondor. Halbrand just wants to stay in Númenor and forge stuff.
Did I mention he’s really into forging? Hm. Remind you of anyone? And when I say he’s into forging, he’s so into forging that he steals a guildsman’s seal so he can try to get a job at the forge, only to get in a fight with the guildsmen when they figure it out—a fight in which he is, uh, pretty brutal. Like, uncomfortably brutal, to the point that he maybe seems to be enjoying it? Also, what was that he said about being known by many names?
So, yeah, still doesn’t seem like a great guy, and there are some worrying red flags.
But, you know, characters have arcs, and he does eventually agree to go to the Southlands. We even get that shot where he tosses the king’s signet pouch thing away but then comes back for it, this little private moment of doubt and then renewed conviction, and I’m sure I won’t be mad about that later.
So they go the Southlands and defeat Adar and his orcs, and Bronwyn asks if he’s the King they’ve been waiting for, and he gives Galadriel a look, and then says yes, and…is this good? Should we feel good about this? Does he seem like a good King? And what was that look?
In the eruption that follows, he’s mortally wounded, and must be taken to the Elves to be healed. And so he goes to Eregion.
* * *
The Stranger arrives in Middle-earth as a meteor at the end of episode 1.14 From this we can conclude that he’s definitely not Sauron because Sauron has been in Middle-earth this whole time. The end.
Hm? Oh, you’re going to spend the next 7 episodes trying to make us think he could be Sauron? Because either you’re incredibly stupid or think we are? Well, then. Let’s look at the evidence. Even though we’ve already proven he’s definitely not Sauron.
The Stranger is a tall man dressed in grey, with grey hair and a beard. He does magic. He befriends Hobbits (well, proto-Hobbits, but we’re calling them Hobbits from this point forward). He can make himself appear larger than he his. He talks to little flying insects.
Oh no, he killed the little flying insects. But it was clearly an accident and he feels bad about it.
Oh no, he froze a little Hobbit’s hand. But it was clearly an accident and he feels bad about it.
Oh no, he nearly dropped a tree branch on a Hobbit. But it was clearly an accident and he feels bad about it. And somehow this also results in healing the sick grove.
Why, you’re right of course, he’s definitely Sauron, that’s what makes the most sense and not that he is obviously Gandalf with contrived amnesia.
* * *
So this is where we were at going into episode 8. Up to this point my prediction had been that Halbrand, if he was evil, which I was hoping he wasn’t for reasons we’ll get into but also which he pretty obviously was, was the future Witch King, and that the The Stranger was very clearly Gandalf or, in what would have been a really shocking twist, a Balrog.
Of course, both of these predictions were, to some extent, based on this not being a garbage show (or less garbage, anyway). But it is a garbage show. So going into the finale all I really knew is that it could still be basically anyone.15
* * *
Episode 8 begins with the reveal that The Stranger is Sauron. And then 20 minutes later it’s revealed that no, obviously he’s not Sauron16, he’s Gandalf,17 you fools, you absolute fools, aren’t we so clever.
Meanwhile, Galadriel has been getting more and more suspicious of Halbrand, especially after Celebrimbor says one of the worst lines in the show.18 And Halbrand said he’s giving them a gift, a thing which legally can’t be suspicious but definitely is. And he’s just generally being kind of a creep.
All of this culminates in Galadriel confronting Halbrand with the proof that he lied about his identity, and Halbrand drops the act, revealing that he is, in fact…Sauron. DUH DUH DUUUUUUUH!
(That was supposed to represent a dramatic musical sting, but also…duh. So, an onomatopoeic pun.)
* * *
A good twist should be a revelation. It should leave the audience going, “Oh, that makes sense now.”19 The show is so certain that they’ve accomplished this that they take a minute to let Galadriel be the audience stand-in while they, as Halbrand, pat themselves on the back for being so gosh-dern cunning.
Let’s list the four parts of this exchange:
- Galadriel: “The last man to bear your crest died over a thousand years ago. He had no heir.”
Halbrand: “I told you I found it on a dead man.” - Galadriel: “[O]n the raft you saved me.”
Halbrand: “On the raft you saved me.” - Galadriel: “You convinced Míriel to save the Men of Middle-earth.”
Halbrand: “You convinced her. I wanted to remain in Númenor.” - Galadriel: “You fought beside me.”
Halbrand: “Against your enemy and mine.”
I’ll give them points 1 & 4 (in terms of them being true, not in terms of them being brilliant ploys or whatever), but I have to hold them up on points 2 & 3. Because they’re lying.
Galadriel did not save Halbrand on the raft, and in fact he saved her twice. Neither of them should be confused on this issue, so Halbrand saying she saved him…doesn’t make sense? Like, sure he could be trying to lie but what an incredibly stupid thing to lie about to the only other person who knows you’re lying. But apparently Galadriel has amnesia because she doesn’t call him out on it.
This amnesia carries over to point 3, because why would Galadriel think that Halbrand convinced Míriel? Literally the entire time they were there she was working on Míriel and he was telling her to give up, at what point would she think he did anything to convince Míriel?
Neither of these situations are ambiguous or up to interpretation. The show is just trying to gaslight us about how clever it’s been.20
That, and/or they’re trying to keep us from asking questions like, “Why did he save her on the raft? Why did he want to stay in Númenor? Why was there that one shot of him tossing his little pouch thing away and then coming back for it? You know, that little private moment of doubt and then renewed conviction that I was sure I wouldn’t be mad about later? Why was that in there if he’s actually just Sauron, who definitely wants to be King? Was it maybe that you were trying to manipulate us into being invested in the character, an investment you had no intention of paying off or subverting in an interesting way? Was it just a cheap trick because you’re a bunch of fucking hacks? Well? Was it?”
Also, what is Halbrand’s deal during this whole exchange? Like, is he trying to be all, “Muahahaha, this was my plan all along?” In which case, again, why did he want to stay on Númenor? Or is he trying to say none of this was his plan, in which case…why did he do any of it? If this wasn’t his plan what was his plan? Just bounce around until he winds up in Eregion somehow?
For that matter, what’s his plan now? The Elves needed to forge the Crown to survive…why was he helping them? And now that they didn’t do that but made Rings instead…now what? Like, what was he doing? What is he doing? What is going on? What does any of this have to do with him making the One Ring if the only Rings that have been created are the ones that we know are the most resistant to the One Ring’s powers and that he doesn’t even know exist? I cannot exaggerate how much none of this makes any sense.
Then there’s the actual mechanics of the twist. Let’s look at it from two different perspectives, two different viewers who are both taking the show at face value and assuming its writers are acting in good faith.
One is the casual viewer with little to no preexisting knowledge of the story. Someone who, at best, knows Sauron as the mace-wielding badass and the giant Eye, and is maybe still confused about how those are both the same character.
For this noob, anyone could be Sauron. Sure, Halbrand seems pretty evil, but what’s going on with this Stranger guy and all his fire magic and killing bugs and whatnot? And what about that Adar dude, he’s with the orcs and Sauron’s all about the orcs, right?
Heck, if they’re avoiding the online discourse they might not even be wondering who Sauron is at all, which honestly is probably the best way to watch the show. (But that’s absolutely not how the creators want you to watch it, which we know from interviews where they kept saying how surprised we’d be when we found out who Sauron was.)
So, for this viewer, is the twist…a twist? For that ultra-casual I just mentioned who’s not even thinking about Sauron, maybe, sure, but anything would be a twist for them. But for the people who are suspecting everyone? Not really. It’s just one of the possibilities they were already considering.
No, who I think this twist was really designed for is us. The Tolkien nerds. See, we know that Sauron isn’t going to seem evil, right? Not only because that’s his whole deal during the Second Age, but because it’s a key theme in Tolkien’s work. As Frodo says when they meet Strider at The Prancing Pony: “I think one of [Sauron’s] spies would — well, seem fairer and feel fouler.”
The most powerful Evil characters in Tolkien’s work are constantly trying to hide their identity in fair guises. It is only the lesser Evil characters, or the powerful once they’ve been brought low (such as Sauron after the Fall of Númenor), who show their true nature openly.
So, the logic goes, since Halbrand seems foul, he must not be Sauron. Not to mention, Sauron is incredibly arrogant and narcissistic and would never stoop to pretending to be some uncouth, pockmarked peasant. That’s just not him.
This is what I mean when I say that the twist was designed for Tolkien nerds, because we’re the ones who, if we take the show at face value, are least likely to suspect Halbrand. Because we understand who Sauron is. Because we see how Halbrand fits in that fair/foul dichotomy, indeed specifically mirroring Strider, another wanderer whose gritty appearance belies his kingly nobility. Because we recognize that him being Sauron would be bad storytelling, a big middle finger to Tolkien and to us.
Of course, if we’re not taking the show at face value because it so obviously doesn’t deserve to be, then it’s not much of a twist at all. Still a big middle finger though.
And really, what did all this get us? How did any of this serve the story? Why invest us in Halbrand’s fake character arc if it doesn’t mean anything? Why do that cold-open “reveal” that makes no sense (because, again, The Stranger can’t be Sauron), builds no tension (because it’s resolved 20 minutes later), and doesn’t develop the plot or the characters?
Compare the show’s lackluster attempt at narrative intrigue with how Tolkien uses hidden or mistaken identities: Turin is constantly changing his name in a futile attempt to escape his fate; Sauron adopts a fair guise to enlist the Elves’ help in forging the Rings (and can no longer do so after this form is destroyed in the Fall of Númenor); Aragorn, hiding (or hiding from) his royal heritage, goes by several other names, some he chooses and some that are bestowed upon him, including Strider, as he’s known around Bree, and Thorongil, the name he uses when serving under King Thengel of Rohan and Ecthelion II of Gondor; Gandalf is briefly mistaken for Saruman in Fangorn Forest; and Saruman himself goes by Sharky when he takes over the Shire. All of these serve to tell us about the character and the world.
And not all of these are immediately revealed to the reader—I’m not arguing that withholding that kind of knowledge from the audience is inherently bad, that would be a silly argument to make—but even in those cases where this information is withheld, it serves a purpose: as previously stated, the Aragorn/Strider dichotomy is tied to one of Tolkien’s key themes; Gandalf is mistaken for Saruman so that we see how much he’s changed, and because the two are foils for each other; and discovering that Saruman is Sharky shows us just how low he’s fallen, a glorified mob boss who can’t even live up to his own name.
But Rings of Power doesn’t want you to learn anything, it just wants you to be surprised. Because for some reason so much of modern entertainment is in this combative relationship with the audience where they always have to make sure they’re one step ahead of us, not understanding that satisfaction can be just good as, if not better than, surprise. The Jackson films understood this, which is why they just took a good story and told it well, and didn’t spend half of Fellowship trying to make you think a character was Strider when it actually turned out to be Bill Ferny.
Or, for a different example that will serve as a transition into my conclusion, imagine if somehow George Lucas didn’t have the rights to the character of Anakin so he spent most of the prequels making you think that the character that looked like Alec Guinness and was constantly telling people that things weren’t the droids they’re looking for is definitely Darth Vader, and then the third movie begins with the reveal that he’s totally Darth Vader, and then two scenes later it’s revealed actually no he’s Obi-Wan, that dude who breathes weird and keeps telling people he’s their father is Darth Vader, who for some reason has been helping Yoda make a lightsaber.
* * *
Rings of Power was doomed from the start. Well, maybe that’s being too generous. More accurately, the moment they decided to make any part of their show about the forging of the Rings of Power, they set themselves a series of writing challenges that they completely failed to meet.
It starts with them not having the rights to Annatar. Not having the rights to a main character in the story you’re trying to tell isn’t great, but in this case they do still have “Sauron endeavours to seduce the Eldar. Gil-Galad refuses to treat with him; but the smiths of Eregion are won over,” so the basic outline is still there, and I can think of a few decent options for how to adapt it.
In the text, the Rings are forged about 1600 years before Sauron is captured by the Númenorians, ultimately leading to their downfall. One option, consistent with how the show has condensed the chronology (though I don’t necessarily agree with that choice), is to switch the order of events a little and elide Sauron’s capture by the Númenorians with the forging of the Rings. Maybe the Númenorians, who Galadriel has convinced to renew their connection with Elves, bring Sauron with them to visit the Elves, a sort of victory tour that’s both about showing the Elves their defeated enemy and, because the Númenorians can’t be expected to have completely changed, bragging about how powerful the Númenorians are for having defeated him.
Sauron pleads mercy and claims to want to help the Elves heal the damage he’s caused, could he interest them in some nifty magic Rings? Gil-Galad’s not buying it, but Celebrimbor can’t deny his curiosity. Sauron starts teaching the Elves how to forge the Rings (and maybe Elrond convinces them to start distributing them to the Dwarves and Men in order to make their mission of healing Middle-earth more efficient), but meanwhile he’s also working on Ar-Pharazôn (who has accompanied the Queen on this diplomatic mission).
Around the time Celebrimbor (and/or Galadriel if she’s still the main character of our show) starts to get suspicious of Sauron, Ar-Pharazôn, convinced that Sauron can help him invade Valinor, takes Sauron and heads back to Númenor, maybe murdering the Queen on his way out if this is the season finale.
Et voila! The Ring-forging story and the fall of Númenor are both pretty much intact, and even mostly in the right order, and we didn’t have to violate any intellectual property rights.21
Instead, the show decided to make a completely new identity and character arc for Sauron in the form of Halbrand, who, crucially, is human. Now, this random human dude can’t just come to the Elves and say, “Hey, want to learn how to make some nifty magic Rings?” Because random human dudes don’t know how to make nifty magic Rings, no matter how horny for forging they are.
So in order to justify the making of the Rings, the need for them has to already exist, and then Halbrand is just providing forging advice having already been given the “these things are gonna be magic” brief (or, in this case, “this thing.”)
Again, we could just go with the Elves wanting to heal the damage done to Middle-earth by Sauron (and Morgoth and I guess Adar if you insist). And as for the magic part, I don’t know man, Elves are pretty magic, I’m not too bothered by where specifically the magic is coming from. Tolkien is pretty vague, particularly in Lord of The Rings, about how magic works in his world, so you can be too. And again, why that many Rings? To make the work of healing Middle-earth more efficient (or, more poetically, to make it a shared task that brings together all of Middle-earth’s peoples).
But no. The show decided the reason the Rings of Power (or, to start with, the Crown of Power) need to be made is because the Elves need to surround themselves with the light of Valinor or else they’ll die if they remain in Middle-earth. Or rather, that’s the reason why the Elves need seemingly a metric buttload of mithril, which the show has decided is magic because it contains the light of Valinor after a tree got hit by lightning while an Elf and a Balrog were fighting over it and how could you possibly keep a straight face while pitching that. But somehow the Elves go from seemingly needing to, like, coat everything in mithril to being able to somehow make do with just a Crown, for reasons that are pretty much unexplained beyond “a Crown will be powerful because it’s a circle.” Power to do what? I thought they just needed the light to not die?
Anyway, this inexplicable Crown gets split up into three Rings on Galadriel’s orders for what is actually a pretty logical reason: three Rings means no one person ever has the most power. Of course, this happens after Sauron has already left, so as far as he’s concerned they made a Crown, right? One Crown. Which doesn’t exist. So we went from “Sauron teaches the Elves how to forge the Rings of Power so that then he can make the One Ring to rule them all” to “Sauron teaches the Elves how to forge a Crown which, unbeknownst to him, they don’t actually do. Also apparently you need mithril to forge Rings of Power (or Crowns or Anklets or Hoola Hoops), and they used the one piece of mithril that anyone outside of Khazad-dûm has access to.” No Rings for Elven-kings under the skys, none for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, none for Mortal Men doomed to die. And where does that leave the Dark Lord on his dark throne? “Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit?”
And all this because they tried to tell a story that, quite literally, wasn’t theirs to tell.
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So no, Rings of Power was not doomed from the start. A good creative team, one that respected the source material and the audience, could probably have pulled it off even given the rights limitations. What we got instead was a creative team that, at best, doesn’t understand Tolkien or good storytelling, or know how to handle the vast resources they were given. At worst, they do understand Tolkien and good storytelling, but care more about distancing themselves from the source material and previous adaptations, and creating meaningless twists…and still don’t know how to handle the vast resources they were given.
With all the money in the world they still couldn’t buy themselves a good show.22
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Footnotes
1 I’m half joking, “son rebelling against conservative father” is hardly a novel dynamic, but still, there is a temptation to read some autobiographical daddy issues into it, especially since this apparently wouldn’t be the first time. At least Durin IV doesn’t also have a cold, unloving stepmother.
2 Also Lloyd Owen as Elendil is perfectly cast, looks exactly like a combination between Sean Bean and David Wenham (though I guess Aragorn would be the better reference but let’s be generous here).
3 My most controversial opinion on Rings of Power is that Elrond should have been Black, for two reasons. First, they clearly want to delineate themselves from the Jackson films, and what better way to do that than to cast a main character, who we’ve seen before, as someone who looks completely different than that original portrayal? It would certainly quash my “he’s not like Hugo Weaving” critique. Secondly, and more importantly, if you’re trying to correct for the lack of diversity in previous adaptations of a work, it’s debatable how meaningful it is to cast people of color as 1) side characters, 2) characters you made up that didn’t exist in the original work, or 3) villains. This is especially true of an ensemble show like Rings of Power. By relegating people of color to those aforementioned rules, you’re still completely centering white people in the story, and in some ways it just makes it more noticeable.
Obviously with something like Lord of the Rings multiracial casting is a tricky needle to thread for a variety of reasons (most of them bad), but there was no way to do it that wasn’t going to piss people off, so you might as well go for broke and actually cast a main, pre-existing, non-villainous character as a person of color. Of the options we’ve seen in the show thus far, I feel like Elrond would’ve been the best choice, though I could also see Isildur if they wanted a slightly safer option.
4 That’s is maybe a little unfair, there are other aspects of the show I liked, but at this point we’d be getting into individual episodes or even individual scenes, and that doesn’t seem worth doing for a show that, I would argue, you should not watch.
5 I honestly didn’t mind the slow-mo until the scene where Nori leaves with The Stranger and she and Poppy have a slow-mo hug, which was just too much.
6 Arondir fist-fighting an orc is the worst, though.
7 Also, you don’t get a sense of how dangerous the cave troll is because it easily wipes out some randos, you get a sense of how dangerous it is because of the difficulty our heroes have in bringing it down. Given the ease with which Galadriel defeats the snow troll, it’s less that the troll is dangerous and more that the Elves who died just weren’t lucky enough to be born a protagonist.
8 Except apparently EA had the Silmarillion rights and just sat on them for a year until they ran out, because I guess no one could figure out how to make a fun game out of EPIC BATTLES WITH BALROGS AND DRAGONS AND GIANT SPIDERS AND JUST STRAIGHT UP GODS, famously a thing that has never worked SIX TIMES.
9 No shade on Megan Richards’s performance, I just think the lyrics are dull and artless, and the “not all who wander” line is incredibly forced.
10 Or even Pat Bannatar, the Breaker of Hearts.
11 When I say “two prime suspects” that’s a bit of an oversimplification; according to the internet and the showrunners, pretty much anyone could have been Sauron, but that’s because the internet and the showrunners are stupid. But for people who actually knew what they were talking about there were only ever two options. Or zero options, but we’ll get into that later.
12 Really don’t have the time or the space to go into how much this scene takes away from Galadriel as a character, or how little Halbrand’s betrayal actually matters, so little that I was really confused when Galadriel was still mad about it 2 episodes later. One of the worst scenes in the show.
13 Except, that’s just in the movies. In the books Aragorn is actually pretty stoked to be King. So they’re trying to make Halbrand mirror a version of another character that they don’t actually have the rights to. Which would be bad writing if it mattered. Which it doesn’t, for reasons that will become apparent.
14 We do need to take a second to point out that there are 4 unnamed characters in this show: The Stranger and the three Mystics: The Nomad, The Dweller, and The Ascetic. These titles are, if you’ll pardon my French, conneries grossières et odieuses. (Ok, well, Google Translate’s French.) See, everyone in Tolkien has a name. So to have four characters with boring, vague, half-assed titles that are clearly just supposed to sound “cool” and don’t have any roots in Tolkien’s work and, in the case of the Mystics, are probably never even going to be explained—it’s incredibly disrespectful. Dude wrote entire books to justify a language he made up, you can come up with a handful of plausible-sounding names.
15 It being a garbage show actually gave me some hope that it wouldn’t be Halbrand. See, in a good show, Galadriel would be the first character to meet Sauron, given that she’s the POV character with the closest narrative connection to him. That being the case, Sauron would pretty much have to be Halbrand, or I suppose a new character we hadn’t seen yet, though it was pretty clear from interviews that Sauron was going to be revealed this season, and that he was going to be a character we already knew.
But this isn’t a good show, so it could’ve been any equally terrible option. Heck, it could’ve been Theo, which at least would’ve been interesting.
16 Terrible scene, but almost worth it for the hilariously bad dialogue: “He is not Sauron, he is the other. He is the Istar, he is—” “I’m good.” Setting aside the obvious heavy-handedness of The Stranger’s line, what are The Mystics even talking about? Like, “the other?” What do you mean, “the other?” What logical set are he and Sauron the only two members of? Because I honestly have no idea. Are they the only two Maiar in Middle-earth? Nope, there’s at least one Balrog. I guess they could be the only two Maiar in human form? I mean, no one knows what Tom Bombadil is, so I guess there’s an argument to be made.
Also, while The Mystics being bad at their job is very funny, it’s also emblematic of how bad the show is. As I’ve pointed out, Sauron was already in Middle-earth, so why were the Mystics following the guy who just showed up? Because the show doesn’t care if it makes sense, their sole narrative purpose is to be nebulously scary for a bit and then give us that stupid fake reveal, and as soon as they’ve done that they’re gone back to where they came from, which is The Pool of Plot Devices So Stupid They’re Not Even Plot Devices. Nothing about them matters, not their names or where they’re from or what they want or what they do. They are farts on the wind of bad storytelling.
Oh god, and I didn’t even mention the staff with the eye, why does the staff have an eye? Sauron doesn’t adopt that…*ahem*…iconography until well into the Third Age, there’s no reason for this.
17 I say he’s obviously Gandalf because he’s obviously Gandalf, but the show has refused to acknowledge that: no one calls him Gandalf (or any of Gandalf’s many other names) even after the reveal that he’s not Sauron, he’s still credited as The Stranger, and I can’t find anyone from the show confirming (or denying) he’s Gandalf. This even after he says, “When in doubt, follow your nose,” which is literally quoting Gandalf.
The fact that he and Nori are headed east suggests that they might be attempting to make him one of (or rather, a stand-in for) the Blue Wizards—who they don’t actually have the rights to. Making him look and sound and act like Gandalf may be to give more casual fans something familiar to grab on to, or may be to give the showrunners plausible deniability if they get accused of using a character they don’t have the rights to. Or, more likely, both, so they can have their cake and eat it too.
At least we know he’s definitely not a Balrog.
18 The line is, “His suggestions were but the key that unlocked the dam.” This gets Galadriel’s attention, thought it’s a later line about “power over flesh” that she calls him out on, which is weird because I think the first line is much more suspicious, given that THAT’S NOT A THING THAT ANYONE WOULD EVER SAY. EVERYONE in that conversation should have stopped him and asked him what the hell he meant.
“Oh, you know, how you unlock a dam with a key?”
“No, Celebrimbor, I don’t know that, because that’s not a thing that happens. Dams don’t have keys. Some canals have locks, and the windlasses used to operate some of these are sometimes called ‘lock keys’ according to Wikipedia, but none of that really amounts to ‘a key that unlocks a dam.’ Also I’m pretty sure none of that has been invented yet—definitely not Wikipedia.”
Of course we the audience know that there is, in fact, one dam that inexplicably has a key, but personally I didn’t take from that that we’re supposed to assume that all dams have keys in Middle-earth, because that would be silly. So even if you’d heard about that dam, you wouldn’t turn that into a saying, because other people would have no idea what you’re talking about. So yeah, it’s a terrible line.
Though, for sheer artlessness, “I’m good.” is probably the worst line in the show.
19 Slight spoilers for a show you won’t watch anyway: The Nevers does a great job of sneaking in little details that, if you’re paying attention, seem almost like plot holes or bad writing, but then you watch episode 6 and they all make sense. And not only do they all make sense, they’re all justified, which is to say they don’t feel forced or artificial even once you know why they’re there. It’s brilliant writing and you should watch it (somehow) but also you won’t.
20 And if you want to argue that it’s not the show gaslighting the audience, it’s Halbrand gaslighting Galadriel, fine, but then it’s still bad writing because his goal, as we see later in the conversation, is to convince her to join him, so first convincing her that he’s been less good than he actually has been would be entirely counterproductive. Which would still be true even if this is just the show gaslighting the audience. So no matter which way you slice it, this scene is bad writing. It’s just a question of whether it’s cynically bad or thoughtlessly bad.
21 And honestly, not to give notes to Tolkien, but doesn’t it feel better for the Númenorians to be able to defeat Sauron before he’s forged the One Ring, and then for it to take the combined might of Elves and Men to defeat him only once he has the Ring?
22 On January 18th, 2022, Amazon announced it was ending its AmazonSmile program, through which 0.5% of a customer’s purchase was donated to a charity of their choice, because their “ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.” Over the lifetime of the program it donated about $450 million. This is only slightly less than Rings of Power‘s $465 million production budget, which…you can do with that what you will, but keep in mind AmazonSmile started in 2013—meaning one episode of Rings of Power cost more than AmazonSmile donated to charity in a year.
Certain of Eventual Failure 