The second season of Amazon Prime Video’s ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ arrives on the scene, but unfortunately, it seems to have made the cardinal mistake of assuming we care about its story without doing the necessary legwork to make us truly invested. Just as ‘House of the Dragon’ returned after its first season, ‘The Rings of Power’ is back with its second offering. While the wait for the next ‘House of the Dragon’ was agonizing for fans, the first season of ‘Rings of Power’ was unfortunately just as painful to watch. Over eight episodes, the show lumbered through the history of Middle Earth in the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of Tolkien’s beloved original trilogy. Despite the billions Jeff Bezos poured into the project to secure the ‘Lord of the Rings’ intellectual property for Amazon, little effort was made to craft an engaging dramatic story that viewers could truly care about.
From the opening episode of season 2, the same issues that plagued the first season persist. Clear dramatic arcs, empathetic characters, and sharp dialogue are once again placed second to glitzy visuals and deep dives into lore. We are immediately thrown into a flashback about how Sauron ended up on that raft in the ocean at the beginning of the first season. This is the kind of detail only a die-hard fan would be truly interested in. The first season’s obsession with Sauron’s origin – a topic that was largely uninteresting to fans of the films and inconsistent with the books – didn’t need these tiny details. Neither did it need a confusing cameo by Jack Lowden as Sauron, leaving viewers questioning if season one actor Charlie Vickers had been replaced.
We quickly return to the present tense (thousands of years before Frodo) and find Galadriel arguing with Elrond about whether the rings they forged with Sauron – before knowing he was evil – should still be used for their intended purpose of restoring magic in Middle Earth. It is in these exchanges that my problem with the first episode becomes clear. The elves speak with certainty about the importance of saving Middle Earth. To them, debating whether these rings are their saviors or their doom is of great importance. But this presupposes that we, the viewers of ‘Rings of Power,’ care about these stakes. It’s been two years since the overly complex, barely interweaving strands of the first season’s plots solidified into the supposedly serious stakes: Orcs are rising, Mordor has been created, and Sauron is back. The average viewer can barely remember the details of the plodding first season, burdened by characters constantly asserting the importance of things without actually proving it through their actions or personalities. As these glossy elves debate the virtues of these rings, they assume we care about the fate of Middle Earth.
Peter Jackson’s original trilogy built a massive fanbase for Middle Earth on top of the legion of fantasy lovers familiar with Tolkien’s books. Most viewers will care about a Middle Earth, just not this one. Every character in this show speaks with ceremonial importance, but there is no levity, no grand heroics, and no personality for us to connect with as we did with Jackson’s films. The mistake ‘Rings of Power’ consistently makes is assuming that because viewers spent nine-plus hours in Jackson’s world, we should be just as invested in Amazon’s.
Beyond the elves, the first episode also reacquaints us with the Harefoots and Gandalf – except he’s not Gandalf, but he clearly is – on their journey… somewhere. Even with the extended reminder at the beginning of the episode, the sheer number of season one’s plotlines, all without a clear narrative trajectory, makes this hard to keep up with. On the bright side, now Gandalf-not-Gandalf is fully talking, and Daniel Weyman is doing his best Ian McKellen impression while the Harefoots continue to be cutesy, if superfluous, Hobbit stand-ins.
It does all look excellent, at least. The roughly $150 million (€135 million) that each season of this show costs doesn’t go to waste. Location shooting and top-notch CGI make this look as much the high-budget take on Middle Earth Bezos hoped for. From the idyllic wanderings of Gandalf (sorry, the Stranger) in the countryside to the Orc scenes providing a level of grime and grit, this is a fully realized vision of the fantasy world’s Second Age. Additionally, from the preview of the rest of season two, it looks like the show might finally gain some momentum. Big battles are coming for the fate of Middle Earth as Sauron grows in strength, giving rings out to any willing passer-by. We’ll also get to catch up with whatever is happening in Númenor and with the lovable dwarf couple ostracized from their kingdom. The first season also improved as it went on, as the interminable world-building was replaced by bombastic set pieces. If the show can manage to make us care by the time the same shift occurs over the next seven episodes, we might just get the exciting ‘Lord of the Rings’ show Bezos always dreamed of.
