I just finished Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, saw an earlier thread discussing earlier episodes, figured it’s worth discussing now that it’s all out.
Obviously spoilers for season 2.
(I’ll dump my thoughts in a comment below.)
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Overall I enjoyed it, probably a little more than season 1,but it is still far from a great show.
Sauron and his story is easily the savior of the season, without it or with a weaker version of it this season would be a flop.
First Sauron and his relationship with Celebrimbor was done beautifully. The slow take over, giving him everything he wants, taking over the city. Then Celebrimbor and the mouse, slowly figuring it out. Slowly defying Sauron, removing his finger, it was excellent.
Then we have Sauron and Adar. It started and ended the season. I really wish Adar could have survived and lived on. I think the Orcs and the Elves could have gotten along. But… that’s the point. Adar was keeping the Orcs from Sauron, so he had to go.
And finally shout out to Durin, Disa & King Durin. I’ve always loved dwarves so I’m always going to love their stories. It wasn’t perfect and there are a lot of wrap up conversations needed, but Durin & Disa are a great couple, the relationship between Durin & Durin was well told, and the late King has a beautiful send off.
Ok. Now that I’ve spoken about the good. The bad.
The Stranger and the Harfoots. The scenes with Tom Bombadil were great, and that’s it. The aimless wandering. The Dark Wizard. Just a slog to watch.
Numenor. I don’t think I can tell you any of these characters names or purpose. A lady was in charge, but then a bird shows up so a dude is in charge, the dude is clearly a corrupt dick and then some other dude has to leave. I don’t care where he is going and I don’t know why I should care.
Isildur. I know that’s an important character later on, but I don’t think he did anything this season?
Arondir. Actually he didn’t do anything this season. I’m not even sure he had a line of dialogue apart from apologizing to the Ents. I liked the Ents.
Theo. Ok he actually didn’t do anything this season. I seem to recall he was a whole big mystery in season 1, now he’s just a background NPC.
Galadriel & Elrond. I feel like they just spent the season wandering around and reacting to Sauron & Adar. Obviously as characters I like them, but I don’t actually think we needed their POV on anything this season.
Oh and Sauron killing Mirdania (Smith apprentice) by twitching Celebrimbor’s hand was beautiful. What a evil evil thing to do.
I agree in general with your points. Sauron was a compelling villain and I love how he never lies and lets people do his bidding by themselves. His manipulation of Celembrimbor was easily the best parts of the season. The dwarves come in second. I didn’t really care about the Numenorians and the Harfoots/Stranger. I’m sure they’ll have more interesting arcs on the following seasons.
The Sauron and Celebrimbor relationship was pretty cool and I was invested in this story.
Also enjoyed the dwarf storyline a lot!
I was very disappointed the Stranger actually turned out to be what everyone suspected from day one. Why keep this fact hidden for two whole seasons if it’s not even surprising?
Cool to see Tom Bombadil. I expected him to be much quirkier from the books though.
Adars end was underwhelming. His whole arc never really went anywhere or wasn’t clear enough.
I agree with you the Numenor stuff is confusing and not interesting at all.
All in all I liked the second season a lot more than the first but it all feels a bit aimless as there are many parallel stories that don’t seem to relate to each other (at the moment) and there is no main goal.
The first and second season both have moments of brilliance mixed with mediocre and outright cringe material. The passage of time is terribly communicated, if at all. Geography seems to be nonexistent as characters pop up all over middle earth almost instantly. The world feels small somehow. The locations, cities, and battles seem small. The extras aren’t directed well and just hang around. The editing is often weird. The battles are terribly directed as well. There’s no presentation of what’s going on tactically, it’s mostly random brawling in mud of two dozen stunt men.
The whole show feels rushed. They spent a huge amount of money only to end up with a meh script, soso props, costumes, and sets. A lot of the creative decisions feel like the checklist provided by a committee of producers: hobbits and Gandalf need to be in there without plot reason, action and fight scenes in every episode, mystery boxes that go nowhere, contrived conflict between friends, pathetic memberberry references to the far better Peter Jackson movies. The rushed production also explains the meh costumes and where all the money went. To get things done quickly, you have to spend more, but still get worse results. Peter Jackson spent years in preproduction designing costumes, props, and building sets.
There’s barely any breathing room for characters, plots, and just ambiance and world building. Lots of things seem to happen all the time, they’re mostly inconsequential though. So it’s high tempo and boring at the same time.
Tolkien’s themes aren’t well understood either, is my impression at least.
I’m still watching, because it has its moments, and I will watch everything Tolkien apparently.
it all feels a bit aimless as there are many parallel stories that don’t seem to relate to each other
That’s exactly how it feels. I was thinking about Game of Thrones & House of the Dragon, and why those feel so much more connected.
In Game of Thrones all (except Dany) meet in Winterfell in the first episode. In House of the Dragon it’s similar, but generally everyone meets in the beginning. I guess technically Galadriel & “Halbrand” met almost everyone in season 1, but they just sorta wandered through and didn’t set the stakes.
It’s also uneven when we do visit our storylines. Almost like we spend too long with them, and then forget the other ongoing stories.
It might be the „fault“ of the material as it is based on books like the Silmarillon which in itself is a collection of (not very exciting) stories. It might have been more fitting to have multiple limited series or movies about each story. On the other hand, that’s how Star Wars became such a mess that no one cares about anymore…
No, they butchered the creation of the rings for example. The order is wrong. Tolkien has the rings for the elves created last without Sauron’s presence or collaboration. It’s a major point that they remain untainted by Sauron’s hand.
The story of the Numenor and also the rings takes place over almost two thousand years and many generations. The rings are forged over a period of 90 years.
Of course telling a story over such a long time on a tv show isn’t easy, so they compressed the timeline. The show makes no real attempt to show how much time passes or how long the distances they travel are. People seem to teleport around. The seasons haven’t changed once over the whole show. That implies everything happened over the course of a few months.
Adar, the black elf, Durin’s wife, the hobbits, and all southlanders are completely made up for the show. The stranger’s (Gandalf) and dark wizard story are also inventions of the show.
Multiple shows or a long running animated show might have been a better fit, I agree. Possibly make the first season only about the elves and dwarves. Then the second season about Numenor. Third season brings them together in the war of the last alliance.
Your point about teleporting is so true! I haven’t thought about that but noticed how small this world seems. I had the same feeling in the last seasons of Game of Thrones but there it was very noticeable because earlier seasons really managed to give a sense of time and distance and then it changed.
I don’t mind the sped up timeline as long as the story is told well. The rings taking a couple of months to be made versus 90 years is fine. I suppose if you had a story that had to be told over 90 years, then do that, but if it’s just 90 years for the sake of it, I prefer the smaller timeline.
Sure, it makes sense to compress the timeline for a tv show.
I love the dwarf stuff so much, they look amazing. Would love Amazon to make a whole show about dwarves, like a dwarf fortress show or something
I’m a huge Dwarf fan and for that reason I’m also a little more excited about season 3. I’m guessing we’re going to learn more about the dwarven rings next season. New King Durin has them all and old King Durin offered them to the other dwarf lords, so to me that means next season has to include some major dwarf story.
It’s been 5 hours!
Sauron ate, it was a great final scene with Celebrimbor. i did not particularly dig the actor for Celebrimbor at first but towards the end of the season i could see it better. Gil-Galad grew on me by the end of this season too, he got slightly more to do other than just look grumpy & beefy. Arondir seemed to get almost nothing to do until the last minute? i quite liked him in s1 but it felt like they didn’t know what to do with his character after that so he just sorta ran around being awkward.
i am hoping never to see the Harfoots again after this, i tried to like them but i find them so painfully twee & boring, i would rather focus on the Dwarves than spend any more time on Harfoot meanderings. the Dwarves can be a bit twee too but at least they have more edge to them and some politics in there too so they are much more interesting to me, and i enjoy the relationship between Durin & Disa a lot, they are the heart of the show for me.
mainly i feel so sad not to have Adar anymore, he was my favourite by a long way. also i feel like his was the only actor in the show to have any chemistry with Morfydd Clark. so i really would have liked more Adar time across the season.
overall i dont exactly regret staying on board the RoP train because i did find some things to enjoy, but it is still so patchy in its quality. it also felt like the season was maybe 1-2 episodes too short (or, that they could have spared us from the Harfoots and spent more time fleshing out the other stories 😇).
yet i still find it hard to get excited about a third season, especially being Adarless, i feel like there aren’t any characters left besides Durin & Disa that i feel any emotional attachment to. i suppose i will still watch it but i will be keeping my expectations low in the hopes of being pleasantly surprised as that worked ok for me this season, heh.
edit: i forgot to add, imo the rings themselves look heinous, like the type of jewelry you get for $15 at the local witchy/hippie shop. i know they probably wanted designs that significantly differed from the movies, but the chunkiness makes them look really cheap :( i would never get trapped by those rings of power simply because i would not wear a ring that fugly.
Adar was definitely among my favorites. On the one hand, getting rid of him is terrible for future seasons, on the other his story was tragic and worked well.
Also I have no opinion of Gil-Galad, but I guess of the characters I don’t dislike him, so I guess he’s a winner.
Thank you for the post!
