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Some of the Rings of Power Reviews I Wrote During Season 2

Some of the Rings of Power Reviews I Wrote During Season 2

Last updated on: October 5, 2024 at 3:39 pm by Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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Some of the Rings of Power Reviews I Wrote During Season 2 2024-10-05T15:39:32-05:00 Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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Last year after Rings of Power was over I collected all my reviews into one post, which you can read here. If you look at my ending predictions, you’ll see I only got one and a half of the things I hoped for in Season 2. But I did get a lot of other good stuff. Anyway, here you go. These got longer this year so I’m going to have to break it up into several posts.

One: Elven Kings Under the Sky

-If you haven’t watched it yet, be aware that the first ten minutes or so, while extremely important to the plot, are also really really gory. I put my sweater over my face and had the kids narrate what was going on to me.

– I remember reading last year that in Charlie Vickers’ audition they had him read lines from Richard III and other classic villains. This season it is a whole lot easier to see that he has the range to do that. He is excellently creepy. (Edwin and I are divided over whether it makes sense that Sauron comes back to Mordor to challenge Adar, though. That’s a bit of a spoilery sentence, I guess, but not really.)

-I missed Elendil and the other Numénoréans, and the Durin family. Hopefully they will be in the next episode. (Arondir also isn’t in this episode, but I didn’t really miss him.)

-Lots of dramatic irony, especially at a couple of key points. One involves a boat, the other involves kneeling.

-Love Círdan. (Edwin thinks it’s too early for him to have a beard, but ROP is sticking with the lore that he is the only bearded elf.) Also thought I couldn’t love Elrond any more, but I do.

-Gil-galad, who was not my favorite part of last season, is growing on me. (Also he has the best outfits).

-Lindon is gorgeous. Fading London is heartbreaking. The last three minutes spent in Lindon in this episode are unfortunately mostly really cheesy. The final shot in Lindon is epic though.

-The Gray Havens on the other hand look like a soundstage. Only time when someone was supposed to be outdoors that I didn’t believe them. Even though they were riding horses.

-Nori and the Stranger continue to be great. (He called himself a wizard. I’m trying to remember if he’d realized that at the end of the last season or not). Could have done without some of the bug dialogue. A little of Poppy goes a long way though.

-Character named Díarmid (according to the closed captions) steals every scene he’s in. His dialogue is stodgy, but also very Tolkienesque. It’s even clearer this season, and I think very true to Tolkien, that we make choices to move towards either good or evil, and those choices begin to define us, and the choices that eventually led to the Third Age of Middle-earth could, achingly and heartbreakingly, have been made differently.

-Bear McCreary is the best and all the music is great. The song the elves sing in Lindon right before the cheesy bit realistically feels like it could have evolved over several millenia into the song Galadriel sings when she says farewell to the Fellowship in Lórien.

EDIT: I forgot to say earlier that we now know how to say “Who’s a good doggie” in the Black Speech, though we may not want to.

Two: Where the Stars Are Strange

-Yay, Durin and Dísa are back (and some bearded dwarf women in the background, too.) One of my favorite things about this show is the way it treats the dwarves. They are very, very dwarven, in ways that sometimes include dry humor, but we are never meant to laugh AT them.

-Edwin, who has claimed the job of Pointing Out Plot Holes, is annoyed that Durin III did not exile or imprison Durin IV when he disowned him, which is apparently What Kings Do in these situations.

-Also: Narvi!!! Go Narvi!!!!

-If Galadriel would just say what she actually knows to people instead of ALWAYS being cryptic, so much trouble would have been avoided. Edwin thinks this is a Plot Hole but I think it’s what they’re going for with her character, to show the pride she will eventually have to overcome to become the sadder but wiser mystic we find in the Third Age.

-I’m hoping that they are not allowed to say that Galadriel is Gil-galad’s aunt (because I think we only find that out in the Silmarillion) rather than that they’ve chosen to not say so as a dramatic choice, because it’s a dumb choice unless they’re actually forbidden to mention it, as it makes sense of G and G’s continued working and even trusting relationship even after he knows she trusted freaking Sauron. (Although I can also see this version of Gil-galad wanting to keep his friends close and his enemies closer.)

-For those who were listening closely, a crystal clear confirmation of the Stranger’s identity was given.

-Why did Círdan shave his beard off? Obviously it’s supposed to be some indication of the power of the ring, but what kind of indication? Maybe one of you can explain it to me?

-No, I don’t think the Eastern wizard is Saruman, who would not have been evil (outwardly anyway) at this point, even if he had arrived already. I am hoping for the Witch-King, who was canonically known to be a great sorcerer ruling in the East.

-Elizabeth thinks the desert the Stranger and Poppy and Nori are in, and their pursuers, all look like they wandered in out of Star Wars.

-Having Halbrand/Sauron/Annatar actually come out of the forge was genius. Having him look like the Warner Sallman Jesus in the process was super cheesy.

-Robert Aramayo is perfect in this episode. No notes. Elrond as Cassandra is not where I would thought to have gone, but it absolutely works.

-Finally next episode we get Numénor! Elendil! Míriel! Hopefully some great scheming from Ar-Phârazon.

EDIT: Almost forgot! You will hear the verse of the rings for the first time in this episode, in the Black Speech no less, and it is one of the most brilliant bits in the whole series so far.

EDIT #2: Why does Celebrimbor say when he learns that the rings have worked that he hasn’t invented anything for millennia – when he literally lives in a town of smiths and just came up with something else new and later famous _in the same episode_? Does he mean he hasn’t invented anything that does magic? Do the beautiful things they make in Eregion not count as inventions? I even will call that one a Plot Hole, unless somebody’s got an explanation.

PS I love Celebrimbor’s umbrella though.

Boy howdy, these ARE longer this year. Stay tuned for . . . .three more posts?

Photo by Marina Grynykha on Unsplash

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