The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Season 2 (2024) Round-Up

How big a budget is too big a budget? There’s a lot to be said for being economy-wise with blockbuster IP; if your fanbase rejects the latest mushed-up remix of their childhood, it’s probably better to keep things cheap. In that respect, there’s perhaps no bigger gamble currently in production than Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon’s record-breakingly expensive event TV show that is allowed to use some, but not all of J.R.R Tolkien’s rich fantasy world for its own ends, notably excluding the dense and valuable Silmarillion novel from Amazon’s piece of the pie. With two seasons (out of a planned but uncertain five) under their belt thus far, creators J.D Payne and Patrick McKay have accepted this particular burden Frodo-style: against all odds and mostly in the dark.

A prequel set thousands of years before Peter Jackson’s unimpeachable original trilogy, their Rings of Power takes the War of the Rings from Middle-earth’s Second Age and fleshes it out in a way that only hubristic prestige television can, throwing tremendous amount of money at a state-of-the-art production that will most likely only be seen on tablets and telephones. Creative liberties (please also see: necessary subversions) were taken in the first series that cast a volcano-sized shadow of doubt over the new take from many so-called RingsHeads, leaving season two with a big hurdle to pull off in both respecting the source material and satiating the fans (same difference in many instances). Over another eight episodes that further widen the scope and darken the tone of this noticeably more violent and inscrutable strand of Tolkien’s beloved universe, it’s with great pleasure that we can announce that the wheels of industry are turning in a positive direction, despite a few squeaky rotations and rusty parts along the way.

Season two kicks off in atmospheric fashion: following the cataclysmic end of former dark lord Morgoth thousands of years before the main narrative, current big bad Sauron (a scene-stealing Jack Lowden) is due to be coronated in his place. A coup led by fallen Elf and self-declared Uruk Adar (Sam Hazeldine, impressively replacing and improving upon Joseph Mawle’s season one iteration) sees Sauron massacred, his liquid remains sinking into the bowels of the earth. There, his malevolent matter mutates over centuries, before slithering out like a Tom Hardy-friendly symbiote up to the surface to become the Great Deceiver we know presently as Halbrand, an imposter heir to the throne of Middle-earth’s Southlands (Charlie Vickers in an increasingly versatile performance). His actions in the first season led to the creation of the first Rings of Power, an all-powerful limited edition collection of Elven bling for Elven fingers, worn by the biggest movers and shakers of the highborn race. With his sights set on making more with the unwitting help of Elven smith Celebrimbor (an excellent Charles Edwards), his endgame is in sight as the fractious forces of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and High-King Gil-galad (former Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Benjamin Walker) race to stop the dark lord from enslaving the leaders of Middle-earth with sweet promises of ultimate power at their fingertips. Other plots running parallel are that of amnesiac enchanter ‘The Stranger’ (Daniel Weyman) and his Harfoot friends Nori and Poppy (Markella Kavenagh and Megan Richards) venturing east to lands unknown, the internal struggles in the Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm and the island realm of Númenor, and the uphill battles of the Southlands refugees against their new butt-ugly Uruk neighbours, who have designs on killing Sauron all over again.

With so much narrative and physical ground to cover, it’s a feat that The Rings of Power’s sophomore season works at all, let alone to the engaging level it does. The feeling of improvement from season one’s pretty but blank-faced origin story is seen in almost every area, spurred on and given depth by the unknowable and influential power of the rings themselves. Their tightening grip on King Durin III (Peter Mullan, born to play a gravel-voiced cantankerous Dwarf) is the lynchpin of the series’ drama, making real what was largely abstract in Peter Jackson’s version. His growing obsession with stripping the mountain bare of its endless jewels not only forms a strong tragic relationship with his namesaked son Durin IV (Owain Arthur), but a much-needed escalation of stakes in a show that often coasted by on the implications of action happening in the future rather than its action happening right in front of its audience. The power struggle between Sauron (in a gorgeous new Elven model as false Lord of Gifts, Annatar) and Celebrimbor in the high reaches of Eregion is season two’s other masterstroke, a sickly, sycophantic flattery fest from manipulator to manipulated, showering the expert blacksmith with riches and false promises in an arc that helps Vickers spread his dramatic wings and instil a rare quality in Edwards that reaches maximum sympathy by the season’s grim climax. The Rings of Power finally feels like a show with a purpose by the time its titular trinkets are assembled.

That being said, it still retains some of its tawdrier aspects on the page. The opulent world of Númenor is still a story flatline, hampered more severely this time by a half-baked political pincer movement that struggles to deal with the consequences of its own actions. There are some marvellous faces here; Lloyd Owen’s craggy but dashing Elendil retains his rugged charm as a good-hearted naval gentleman destined for greatness, and his sworn enemy Ar-Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) is a flamboyantly malicious antagonist, all bushy eyebrows and extrajudicial avarice. It just looks and feels like a different show whenever we land on their shores, and the loss our heroes on the damned isle fails to land as anything other than another step towards the picture far more thoroughly painted by Tolkien and Jackson as ages go by. Also out on a limb is the ferociously canon-unfriendly adventures of The Stranger and co., now located in the desolate land of Rhûn, lorded over by villain veteran Ciarán Hinds’ ‘Dark Wizard’, an extremely Saruman-coded conjurer with an unspoken history with the oppressed locals above and below ground. Not only are the Harfoots’ broad Oirish accents still an overdetermined distraction, but the endless wheel-spinning teasing The Stranger’s identity grows to irritating new heights as a foregone conclusion takes another full season to manifest. Weyman brings a fresh vulnerability to a wizard role that we haven’t yet seen, but he’s still ultimately slave to a coquettish narrative tease that operates on very little outside of its eventual nostalgic dopamine rush.

Much improved, however, are the immortal Elves who have always been the least empathetic of all species in the Lord of the Rings universe. Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel remains otherworldly and elegant, feeling like she’s stepped right out of Tolkien’s pages with her piercing gaze and R-rolling Welsh accent (hearing her say “Eregion”, “Sauron”, “Elrond”, “Celebrimbor”, “Mordor”, “Adar” and “Uruk” is always a pleasure, especially when many of those phrases are often woven into the same sentence), and her combative friendship with Aramayo’s Elrond sees his boyish optimism worn away into a battle-hardened grown-up (despite his already advanced age of one and a half thousand years). Seeing Benjamin Walker’s smarmy High-King muddied and bloodied by the harsh reality of war is also excellent, grounding a peripheral, imperious character into the main story with humbling dignity. Source material fans knowing their eventual place in the wider narrative can finally see the wise Elves that carve the destiny of Middle-earth written on the faces of the new actors, spelling a promising future for the show itself and not just the version fans have in their heads.

Back to the subject of money being well-spent, it’s heartening to see a significant step-up in the spectacle stakes. Season one’s crown jewel was its startling episode six, Udûn, a merciless assault from orc-kind on the poor folk of the Southlands that resulted in the terrible creation of Mordor, and cemented Rings of Power as a decidedly more adult take on Tolkien. Season two’s highlight follows suit, bringing to life another pitch-black chapter of Tolkien lore to life in the siege of Eregion, a battle that stretches nearly an episode and a half towards the season’s back end. Impressively mounted and admirably savage in its consequences for friend and foe alike, it’s the best any live-action Tolkien adaptation has been since the bonafide classic trilogy wrapped up in 2003, and a timely reminder that this world goes big like no other. The tactics are audacious, the escalation is palpable, and it’s topped off by Lord of the Rings’ first ever musical dabble in the metal genre (with vocals from Meshuggah’s Jens Kidman), proving that, even now, even when funded by a studio that is often keen to impress and minimise controversy, there is still room for this franchise to grow in fun and eccentric ways.

While the five season plan has yet to actually manifest with a third season still up in the air, there’s strong enough evidence now that Rings of Power understands the assignment. Despite an addiction to milking obvious mysteries for as long as humanly possible, there’s life in this property on streaming as well as in the cinemas. Which directions anime feature The War of the Rohirrim and Andy Serkis’ unexpected The Hunt for Gollum pull Middle-earth in next are up for debate, but the billion-dollar juggernaut is plowing ahead with confidence, marching to the beat of its own drum while paying reverence to the source material in unconventional ways. It might be time for Amazon to double-down on their investment now the board is set and the pieces are moving, as season two’s expensive punt towards glory pays off markedly better than their last attempt. This isn’t quite the one show to rule them all just yet, but it might just get there in the end.

Simon’s Archive – The Rings of Power: Series 2