Rings of Power it was always, mostly, a slow show. At least on purpose sometimes, I want you to be happy with the dollar spent on the fully armed and effective firepower of the Jeff Bezos-backed broadcast media empire with its extravagant images and rich sets. Otherwise, it’s just a setup for the show; with so many different lineages all spread across Middle-Earth, it takes time to find each one. That said, when a show breaks that pace, it’s noticeable. And sometimes it works—a short sharp shock that reminds you what’s really at stake. And sometimes… a strange reminder about the nature of this whole dynamic endeavor.
After last week we got news of the Elven, Harfoot, and Southlands (which, it turns out, everyone is sad about), this week’s “Halls of Stone” gets us Rings of PowerSpinning plates remain in Eregion, Khazad-dûm, and Númenor. It turns out that everyone is still sad!
But if last week’s episode was a bit of a slog—as evil grows among the flora and fauna of Middle-earth—this week is one of fast-paced action: things go wrong suddenly, very quickly, and no. one can stop the wheels of Sauron or general decay in the air having begun to turn. At least in one of our stories, down with the little ones, things are starting outside it’s relatively fair. After seeing his underground kingdom plunged into total darkness by an earthquake for the first time, King Durin accepts Celebrimbor’s gift of seven rings for him and his fellow Dwarf-Lords, and almost immediately sets to work (and Disa from her chanting job, it seems) to find the exact locations his son and his fellow miners need to record themselves in order to restore light to Khazad-dûm again. Yes!
No. No. In fact, the exact opposite of yay. As soon as we see the light come to Khazad-dûm again, we soon begin to see Durin wearing his ring. Everything is very good The Lord of the Rings-y, because the show knows that’s exactly what you want: you know that these rings are bad, even if the characters don’t, so you want to see their faces fall, you want to see them grip and panic when they can. Don’t get their precious jewelry, you want to see them get carried away, then shoot people, turn around and go inside. That’s what you get, and it’s really disturbing to watch unfold—especially with the underlying tragedy that young Durin and his father were just beginning to mend their broken relationship after the events of the first season. His intense fear of his father’s sudden change brings all these complex emotions, and Owain Arthur is perfect as the son watching his father slip before him.
But the opportunity is there so fast—King Durin puts on the ring, quickly hears the light-shaft, and quickly begins to find his best Bilbo-in-.Participation the idea goes—that while the uptick in immediately side effects kick back Rings of Power needed for this season to kick into high gear, there’s this inevitable sense of suddenness that doesn’t sit well. There’s no real time to dwell with Durin’s lineage, because he has to start badly the second he sees the ring, it gets worse, and then the problem has to explain itself seven times when he starts planning to go deeper (greedily, I mean, because that’s how we are. get a shout out to that famous Tolkien name) into the depths of Khazad-dûm and send the remaining rings to the other six Dwarf-Lords.. There is no time for any kind of moral confusion or controversy over their use; Rings of Power it gets to a place most of its viewers are familiar with, but as it goes along, it harms the characters along the way.
It’s the same story in both the other episodes of the episode. Let’s start with the most adjacent ring in Eregion, where all is not well soon for his best friend Annatar and Celebrimbor in the Forge. Just as the blacksmiths and the Dwarves celebrate the renewed relationship with the creation of the Doors of Durin (yes, “speak ‘Friend’ and enter”) there are Annatar and Celebrimbor with each other over previous plans to create nine more. rings, this time for human leaders. At least there’s an interesting follow-up to the bad parts of Celebrimbor’s character here to make Sauron’s deception sink in: even if he’s meant to celebrate an alliance with the Dwarves, he makes racist jokes about their own values. in front of them, and when Annatar gives the power to create one last set of powers, Celebrimbor arrogantly dismisses humanity too weak and easily swayed to match his skill. Celebrimbor’s downfall is not as sharp as King Durin’s, because we already see aspects of his character that Sauron uses, but even then, there is a similar rush to the Eregion plot here that weakens the role played.
If people don’t immediately tell something is wrong with the rings, which forces Annatar to go gaslight gatekeep girlboss (even Galadriel, comparing the young wizard Mirdania to a potential champion of Halbrand, as she wraps him around her fingers) to try to separate the smiths away from the leader theirs is more depressing, it makes Sauron’s main plans feel less calculated and more slapdash. Even if the elements are there for him to use with characters like Celebrimbor, he starts to break down so quickly it feels like a clever trick and like a script call. We know The Rings are bad, and the show does, we all know how this is supposed to go—so when we get there, we get there in a way that feels very broken, and in a way that feels like it. a sudden pivot from the slow pace of the first half of the season. The twist here doesn’t feel like a shock, like the explosion of Mount Doom did in the first season, but it goes from one extreme to another.
It’s even more surprising in the setting of Númenor, because even then they don’t really have the excuse of the Magic Rings of Evil to make everyone suddenly decide to turn up the turbo-asshole levels. Pharazôn has just been made king over Míriel (that eagle authority really went a long way), but he’s already becoming a ruler, dismissing the sea guards on Míriel’s expedition, and sending his son in drag of Kemen to destroy the memorial services of the Númenoreans. he was defeated in the battle of the Southlands. We know the island nation’s doomed future as part of the script for a while, at least, through Míriel’s visions at the palantir—the very thing that lost her support—but again, none of this feels well-constructed. , and like things have to go from 0 to 50 because we haven’t watched anyone get stabbed lately (RIP to Valandil, just to make Elendil’s plight even more visible), and the show suddenly remembered that the audience really liked it when things started . what is happening.
Things in Númenor feel like a much longer game than Sauron’s pace for his Eregion (his Era-gion?), because all of this will at least pay off when Sauron gets there and starts his treachery anew. , but for the time being, the expansion feels too short for any tension that is causing him—Pharazôn got what he wanted, Míriel seems to at least admit that now he has to play the long game to avoid the future he’s shown to the palantir. , Elendil still has a long way to go before he becomes the future king of the survivors of Númenor—and it’s an uphill climb that’s accompanied by a shift in vibe throughout the region. Rings of PowerStory lines.
Part of this, of course, is because Rings of Power he has (I should say) chosen to condense what were hundreds and thousands of years in Tolkien’s vision of the Second Age down to what is, ultimately, the life span of your average Númenorean. When characters like Elendil and Isildur are already in the show, you that way be to lay a road to march down Mount Doom at that time Rings of Power it’s nearing the end. Good programs that last for centuries, corruption that continues and grows, can take root for a long time, the impact should be immediate. I’m not saying the show needs to show the passage of eons for this to have an impact—it’s slow enough, too bad—but it’s hard to feel like the stakes here are really heavy when everything goes wrong in time. the drop of a hat or the best magical artifacts Middle-earth has ever seen is done in what feels like hours and days, rather than some effort.
That is ultimately the problem the series is facing as it begins to clash with the ending we know is coming this season. The episode even ends with a laugh at that, as Elrond returns to Lindon to find that it’s too late to redirect Gil-Galad’s forces from Mordor to Eregion, and a captive Galadriel finds herself face-to-face with Adar (and her offering of a tenuous alliance). as they stood on the outer edge of the Elven realm, ready for the battle to truly begin. If it can’t find a middle ground to develop its characters, the impact of the spectacle to come will be blunted, because we wax and wane between too little happening and too much happening suddenly. To borrow another Tolkienism, just as this episode did, is the proverbial butter slathered on too much bread: there are moments here of something satisfying to chew on, but they are thrown aside too quickly, too much feast after so much hunger, that you. don’t really get time to swallow.
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