<i>The Rings of Power</i> Introduces Someone Who Is Fond of Parties in &#8220;Eldest&#8221;

Elrond leads a party of five elves, including Galadriel, to Eregion. Sauron has destroyed a bridge they need to cross, and although Galadriel advises against it, Elrond decides to travel south into a dark wood. In Rhûn, the Stranger searches for Nori and Poppy. He meets Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) and attempts to ask for directions. Encountering an old tree, he tries to take a branch for a staff and the tree absorbs him.

Nori and Poppy wake somewhere in the wasteland. Running from their strange pursuers, they encounter Merimac (Gavi Singh Chera), a halfling called a Stoor who lives in the area. When Nori tells his village about her friend, the leader of the Stoor, Gundabe (Tanya Moodie) tells them that the only wizard in the area is the Dark Wizard. Bombadil rescues the Stranger from the tree. He says that the Stranger has proven that he is not yet worthy to wield a wizard’s staff. The Stranger realizes that he was meant to find Bombadil, and Bombadil tells him that it is the Stranger’s duty to face the Dark Wizard and Sauron, before the two can combine forces.

Elrond’s party finds two dead messengers and realize that the warning from Gil-Galad never reached Celebrimbor. They are attacked by barrow-wights. Elrond discovers that only the weapons the wights were buried with can destroy them. Galadriel explains that Sauron is awakening evil across Middle-earth. The people of Theo’s village want to go to war against the Wild Men, but Arondir does not believe Theo was taken by men. Arondir realizes that Estrid is one of the Wild Men, sworn to Adar. Isildur and Arondir force Estrid to lead them to the other Wild Men.  They travel along a muddy swath of damaged forest. When Isildur and Arondir are sucked down under the mud, Estrid fetches a stick to try to help them, and then is attacked by a monster. Arondir cuts his way out of the creature’s belly, freeing himself and Isildur. Theo awakens in a cage, with other humans, located on the top of a tree.

Gundabe and Nori discover that the harfoots were once part of Gundabe’s clan. Saddoc Burrow’s ancestor left with some followers to look for a green place for their people to live. But they never found it, and Nori tells Gundabe that they are still wandering, without a home. Gundabe hides Nori and Poppy from the Dark Wizard’s masked riders. Elrond’s party buries a fallen comrade. Galadriel tries to convince Elrond that her ring is guiding her, not deceiving her, and they discuss the duty of the elves to protect the fragile things of the world from evil. She asks him to promise to put the defeat of Sauron before all other things, and he agrees.

Isildur forgives Estrid for her deception, but she fears that the villagers will cast her out. Their standoff is interrupted by the arrival of two ents, who came to help save the trees destroyed by the orc army, but were too late. Arondir promises to seek their forgiveness for the damage done, and to protect the trees of the wood. The trees set Theo and the other prisoners free. One of them is Estrid’s betrothed. Theo thanks Arondir for coming for him. Arondir declares his intention to find the orc army and confront Adar. 

Elrond and his party discover the orcs marching on Eregion. Camnir (Calam Lynch) is hit by a stray arrow, and Galadriel uses her ring to heal him. She gives her ring to Elrond and leaves to distract the orc party. Elrond tells the others that she didn’t do it to protect them, but to protect the ring. Galadriel fights the orcs, but is defeated and captured when Adar arrives. He greets her in her own tongue.

Is it just me, or do the opening credits of Rings of Power look a lot like those sped-up videos of ants you get in nature documentaries? 

I mentioned this in a review last season, but it continues to be disappointing that the opening credits also look (and sound) so much like the opening of The Wheel of Time, except that The Wheel of Time’s opening is much more beautiful and better executed, not to mention being thematically more connected to the show itself. This comparison is indicative of the main problem with Rings of Power as a whole—it fails to be anything original, but also fails to live up to the source material, or to the films that came before it.

I was very interested in the scene with the barrow-wights for this reason. It’s not certain that these wights are the same ones that are encountered by Frodo and his friends when they flee Hobbiton, but they are in the right area of the world so they certainly could be. Watching, I at first found myself feeling very hypocritical since I didn’t like how they were different from the way they were in The Fellowship of the Ring. But eventually I realized that it wasn’t the fact that the barrow-wights were changed that was the problem, but how they were changed.

In the books, the wights are more creepy, unseen, and seductive. What is terrifying about them is in the power they have over the hobbits’ minds, the power to bewitch and draw them in and bury them alive under the earth. And I think that kind of atmosphere would have been equally effective if encountered by Elrond and Galadriel in their travels to Lindon. The zombie-like nature of the wights in this episode doesn’t add anything to the story. Not everything should be horror-movie jumpscares and shrieking, and making everything the same that way just means that the tone of the show becomes flat. After orcs and giant spiders (which I am already accustomed to from the films) these flying-zombies didn’t really make an impression, although I did think the visuals were pretty good. 

The barrow-wights were a neat concept to bring into the show, something that wasn’t used in the films and which had a lot of potential to be unique and different. In the books, the barrow-wights were one of the first threats Frodo and the other hobbits encountered when they left home. Though a formidable threat, they were a lesser one than the dangers they would face in time to come—the danger scaled up as the story progressed, and as our heroes grew stronger and more capable of facing them.

As both Galadriel and Arondir point out, the monsters that we have been encountering in this season—the giant spiders, the mud-creature that eats Isildur, and the wights—show that Sauron’s growing power is awakening evil that was dead or slumbering until recently. What we are learning in this season, what we are supposed to be learning, anyway, is that the elves are emerging into a world that is different from the peaceful one they have known since Morgoth’s defeat. The wights could have served the same thematic purpose here as they did in The Fellowship of the Ring, but the show misses the chance to offer a building sense of tone and scale.

The Stranger’s encounter with the man-eating tree also runs parallel to the early adventures of Frodo and friends, and although it might come off as a little too wink-nudge to fans of the books, for those who have never read The Lord of the Rings it is tonally very different from the perils the Stranger has faced thus far, and adds nice little bit of mystery and suspense.  

Unsurprisingly, the clumsy dialogue continues to be a problem in this episode, with the same kind of cliché lines and cyclical conversations we’ve come to expect. This is particularly frustrating in the scenes between Elrond and Galadriel, and you can see Clark and Aramayo struggling to act through them. The conflict between Elrond and Galadriel has already been well-established in the previous episodes, but they still have several conversations in episode four, rehashing the same argument without making any progress, as though the writers are afraid the viewers will forget what their conflict is?

But what is interesting—perhaps perplexing is a better word—about episode four in comparison to the three that came before it is that this time, it feels as though the show intends for the viewer to trust Galadriel’s instincts over Elrond’s. The scenes between them are framed to bring our focus onto Galadriel’s expressions and to center her words, while in the previous episodes the reverse was true. Of course the story should center different characters’ point-of-view at different times, but this particular switch lacked clarity. Which is incredibly frustrating because this conflict, this question, is a fascinating one to explore.

In season one we had Elrond and Durin IV’s conflict over the mining of the mithril and whether or not the dwarves will help the elves, and it was by far the most interesting and well-executed part of the show. Elrond and Galadriel’s conflicting instincts towards the Elven rings, the fact that the fate of Middle-earth may hang on the answer to the question of who is right, is a great place to take the story. It also allows for their personal journey as friends to be as important to the story as whether or not they can defeat Sauron—just as Elrond and Durin IV’s friendship was in season one. All the potential is there and Aramayo and Clark could do something really beautiful, if given the chance.

Embarrassingly, I have to acknowledge a silly mistake I made in last week’s review, when I predicted that the Stranger would heal the Halfling’s ancestral land and it would become Hobbiton. The land Rhûn is, of course, north of Mordor and east of everything else, and very far from the area where Hobbiton and the Shire are/will be. I’m not sure why I forgot this, but on the other hand, the actual reveal about why the harfoots are wanderers is about as cliché as the one I predicted. Although Kavenagh’s performance did make me feel it in the moment.

There are some other really good acting moments in this episode, and some details and scenes I really enjoyed. I was very happy to see Arondir back to fighting form, and for Córdova to be given real acting to do. The conversation with the ents was a bit clumsily written, but still enjoyable, and connected nicely with Arondir’s past both as a Greenwood elf and as a former prisoner of Adar’s. The fact that fate seems to be directing him Galadriel’s way again feels right, like how fate or chance or the Valar should work in this universe. Córdova’s delivery of his comedic line after Arondir defeats the mud monster was absolute perfection, and my favorite moment of the episode.

The character of Merimac is very charming, and Poppy and Nori have some very good bits as well. Poppy’s crush on Merimac is incredibly cute, as was the way she threatened him to make him take them to his village. I especially enjoyed Nori and Poppy’s little exchange after being given the rules for talking to Gundabel, in which they admitted to each other that they weren’t really listening.

Bombadil’s conversation with the Stranger about hearing a woman’s voice was also very funny, and the best part of Bombadil’s scenes. I really like Rory Kinnear as an actor, and he does a good job with what the script gives him, but I think most of the choices made around the character weren’t good ones; despite his explanation of who he is, Bombadil doesn’t feel any different than the wizards, nor does he look any different, nor does he behave very differently. Bombadil should feel strange, otherworldly, alien, to both the Stranger and to the viewers.

This also might have been a great place to cast an actor of color. Despite having a good deal of diversity in the extras, few of the principal characters are played by people of color. Both the Dark Wizard and the Stranger are white, bearded men, and so is Bombadil. Gil-Galad is white, as are Elrond, and Galdriel and Durin III—all the most powerful people in this world are white, and most are male. It is impossible not to compare the casting of Rings of Power to The Wheel of Time, which does better in this respect, and to note the missed opportunity for Rings of Power to do better than the film trilogies did. Disa and Arondir are two of the best characters in the series, but although the stakes around Míriel’s story should be riveting, the script doesn’t know how to center it, and although Addai-Robinson’s performance itself is very powerful, the moments are too disconnected for it to be effective overall.

I will say, however, that I am curious to see if Addai-Robinson might have more interesting things to do if her throne is indeed usurped, and I would enjoy it if both she and Lloyd Owen had something more complex to do. I’m also intrigued to see if and how Elrond and Arondir meet up, and to see more of how Hazeldine embodies Adar.

Favorite Line: “There are nameless things in the deep places of this world. This one, we shall call supper.” —Arondir of the Greenwood

Least favorite line: Tom Bombadil introducing himself like he’s James Bond??

We’ll return next week!