The Rings of Power: Looking Back on Season One
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Preface
I want to begin by prefacing that I’m not a film or media critic and these are all my own personal thoughts. I know more about Tolkien lore than I do the mechanics of filmmaking or behind-the-scenes of television production. If you disagree with me, that’s fine! I might even be wrong at times and I welcome respectful criticism.
There’s not a lot that I have to say that hasn’t already been said about the series since the finale wrapped six months ago, but I still wanted to share my own experience and thoughts if nothing more than for posterity. And it’s fun to reflect on things like this anyways.
The Fall of Númenor
I also wanted to begin by mentioning that I’ve just finished leading a book club on The Fall of Númenor with the Tea with Tolkien community so a lot of the events and themes of the Second Age are fresh in my mind, and that’s really enriched my experience of the show. Over a thousand people participated in this book club so that was really exciting and I’m grateful for all of the support! We’ll be reading The Lord of the Rings together as a group beginning in June, so if you’re interested in joining our free book club you can learn more at: www.teawithtolkien.com/book-club.
A Contemplative Story
I’m glad I waited to pull this review together because the more time that passes, the more I feel like I get where they were or are going with certain things.I had a lot of big opinions when the show was airing but the more I dwell on it the more I’m just like, I want to see where this goes. There are still elements that annoy me or things I personally would’ve done differently but overall I’m curious to kind of just be along for the ride in terms of The Rings of Power.
This is a show that’s meant to be mulled over, not really your typical binge series. Unfortunately I do think this led to them losing a lot of people along the way, but, just like with Tolkien, I think it’s meant to be a kind of contemplative story that almost blooms along the way and you kind of grow along with it.
My Personal Experience
My experience with this series has been quite different than with any other sort of Tolkien-derived or related media because of my involvement in the marketing of the show. Last year, I was invited to a special sneak peek of the series in London and I also attended a luncheon with the cast in San Diego, as well as a special screening of the first two episodes in New York City.
So it’s difficult to separate my physical experience of these events related to the series from the actual episodes I’m watching at home, but that’s not necessarily something I want to do because I feel like it has emphasized, for me, the human element of this production. Having connected with the people who are both behind the scenes crafting this new version of Middle-earth as well as the actors we’re seeing on screen has done nothing but enrich my experience while watching the actual footage.
I won’t be able to know how I might have felt about the series if I hadn’t had these opportunities and experiences, so there’s not a lot of sense in trying to imagine that. But I’ve never been asked to hold back from sharing my honest opinion and I haven’t done so.
It’s important to me, when speaking about my thoughts on the series, to be very straightforward about my involvement and the fact that I do feel it colored my reception of season one. In my opinion, everyone’s personal experiences are going to color their reception of anything. That’s just life. As an example, my interpretation of Maxim Baldry’s Isildur is going to be colored by a conversation I had with him at the Comic-Con cast luncheon where he seemed very genuinely interested in listening to my (and all of our) concerns and fears about the show. I have a deep respect for a lot of the cast members because it’s so clear that they also really love Tolkien and want the show to be done well. These experiences I’ve had have added a more human element to how I’m experiencing it all so I can see past the screen and feel more immersed in the story as a production. That being said, I do want to try to talk about the actual episodes more than anything.
Season One Highlights
The easiest way to begin any “review” is with the highlights, and all of these elements have already received so much praise that I don’t feel like I need to dwell on them for too long.
Dedication: It seems extremely plain that everyone involved in this show put so much of their heart into it and that’s something that I’m so grateful for and I want to say thank you to everyone who worked on this season. From the stunt workers to the makeup artists, effects, writing, directing, acting… to have created something so immersive and large-scale in the midst of the earliest days of the pandemic is really an accomplishment that you all should be proud of.
The Visuals: from prosthetics and makeup, set design, costuming, visual effects, this entire show is breathtaking. It truly felt like being back in Middle-earth, both in the sense that it felt congruent with a lot of what Peter Jackson laid as a foundation with his trilogy and because it felt so much like the world that I fell in love with when reading Tolkien.
Valinor: to put it simply, seeing the Two Trees of Valinor on screen is an experience I never thought I’d have in my lifetime. From the very first promotional shot to the prologue in episode one, it still brings me to tears everytime I see it. I feel the same way about Númenor as well.
Music: Bear McCreary’s score is a work of genius and the way that he was able to create so many different distinct themes for the different characters and regions was incredibly impressive.
Characterisation: Every major cast member seems to have put so much thought and research into their character. I want to highlight Sauron, Elendil, Pharazon, Galadriel, and Elrond in particular. In the appendices to The Fall of Númenor, Sibley included two chapters from The Lost Road which depict conversations between Elendil and his son (given a different name in this version) and after having read these chapters I also feel very confident in Isildur’s characterization thus far. We didn’t get a ton of screentime with most of the major characters (outside of Galadriel and Halbrand) this season but I’m really looking forward to seeing more from each of them.
Original Characters: Original characters like Adar and Arondir were major highlights of the show for me.
Revival of the Tolkien Fandom: To me, this has been the best part of the show. “What if the real Rings of Power were the friends we made along the way?” It’s funny but it’s true. I’ve had so much fun discussing each episode, each character, the series as a whole… and I know these conversations are going to get better and better as the series continues. It’s also been a massive joy to see all of the artwork, music, memes, fan fiction, and general creative efforts that have been inspired by the series.
I’ve also received dozens of messages from people who have felt drawn into Tolkien from the series and are picking up his books for the first time, which I honestly believe is the main goal of an adaptation so I’m really pleased with that.
Watching with my Kids
One of my primary concerns when I learned about this show was that it would be too “adult” to watch it with my kids and I was really pleasantly surprised by it in the end. There were definitely moments where I had to send them out of the room or skip past because they were too scary, but otherwise pretty reasonable for kids around age 10+. I also really appreciated how chaste this show has been so far, and it’s very honoring to Tolkien’s legacy in this way. There’s romance, there’s kissing, there’s a lot of tension, but it’s done very tastefully.
A Catholic Perspective
As I myself am Catholic and we all know that Tolkien was Catholic as well, I wanted to highlight my experience from a Catholic perspective.
Now, I totally respect your opinion if you gave The Rings of Power a try and felt like it wasn’t for you. There were some narrative decisions that I feel deviated from my own expectations: characters who I simply didn’t connect with or found annoying, and a couple of themes that I felt really missed the mark in terms of bringing Tolkien’s philosophy to life (we’ll talk about those in a minute).
For me personally, the positive elements of the series so far dramatically outshine the issues I have and so I’m really looking forward to continuing to see where this show takes me. Maybe a lot of these issues will be course-corrected in time! Maybe they won’t, I don’t know.
But if you’re not interested in waiting around to find out, again, no one should feel ostracized or attacked for not enjoying a particular form of Tolkien-derived media. It’s okay to say if you didn’t like the show. Art is subjective! And I’d hope the showrunners have the humility to understand this.
But I also feel that if you are going to speak publicly on a large platform about something, you should be coming to the table having done your research. It’s embarrassing, to me, to see Catholics calling the show trash while in the same breath admitting they haven’t watched a second of it. Don’t you feel silly for this? There is so much to engage with from a Catholic perspective when it comes to The Rings of Power, there’s a lot of great conversations to be had one way or another, and I haven’t seen a lot of this from Catholic media. We don’t have to reduce ourselves to clickbait culture wars! I know it doesn’t earn ad revenue as easily, but we can do hard things. We can discuss with nuance! Considering how important his faith was to Tolkien and the great intellectual tradition of Catholics throughout the ages, I expected more. I’m not a professional debater or philosopher, so I may not be as good at putting my thoughts together as others but there’s merit in trying. I’ve been really grateful for the opportunities I have had to speak about the way my faith has impacted my enjoyment and understanding of this show so far and I’d love to see other Catholics sharing their perspective as well!
The Rings of Power: Morally Dangerous?
In the end, I want to emphasize that Tolkien’s legendarium is not Sacred Scripture, and I don’t see this series as any kind of attack on Tolkien himself or his Christian faith. In my opinion, it’s an opportunity to engage with these massively important themes such as mortality, redemption, vengeance, loss, machine, and the inherent value of all life (as it comes up in Galadriel’s conversation with Adar). These characters are flawed, they make mistakes, and they reap the consequences. There’s plot, character growth, catastrophe, and Eucatastrophe. If this series poses a danger to your soul because of these things, then so does The Silmarillion. Don’t you see how silly that sounds?
Especially when compared to other fantasy shows that are out there right now, this is by far the most compatible with your typical Catholic family values that I’ve seen in ages. If you’re considering giving the show a try, I’d recommend watching at least the first three episodes before making up your mind because there is a lot of set-up required in the first two episodes.
Two Major Issues
Now if you want to discuss the places where the show did deviate from the philosophy of Middle-earth, let’s do that. There are two that immediately came to mind as I was watching.
Mithril Origin Story
First is found within the Mithril origin story we’re told in episode five. Mithril apparently comes from a Silmaril which was hidden within a tree and struck by lightning to create a new ore as “as pure and light as good, as strong and unyielding as evil.”
This story sets up good and evil as two opposing forces when to Tolkien, evil is the corruption of or deprivation of good. Evil does not exist as its own thing. It also ascribes positive attributes to evil, which bristled me. In fact, this entire Mithril plotline is something that I still can’t get on board with and I generally dislike all together. Will they redeem it in the coming seasons? Will it turn out that this whole thing has been a lie orchestrated by Morgoth or Sauron? It’s been emphasized as apocryphal so I’m still holding onto hope for this.
Touch the Darkness
The second potential issue that we might take with the show is Finrod’s advice to Galadriel: “Sometimes to find the light we must first touch the darkness.” This follows his little explanation of why a stone cannot float while a ship can, which I found goofy honestly. The entire exchange seemed like something that was meant to come across as much more profound than it is, so I didn’t particularly enjoy it.
At first, when the line was initially being used for promotion, it made sense that one might have to enter into darkness in order to preserve the light. I immediately thought of Frodo having to enter into what are essentially the pits of Hell in order to destroy the Ring . And that’s a very Christian and Tolkienian concept: to succumb to death in order to bring about new life.
But as the show began to unfold, and especially when we arrived at Sauron’s manipulation of Galadriel as Finrod, they did lose me a bit. “Touch the darkness,” coming from Sauron, paired with his allegedly non-romantic marriage proposal seems to twist the meaning into something more like: ‘you need to partner with the Darkness in order to preserve the light’. This is, of course, Sauron’s entire mode of operations in the first half of the Second Age so it makes complete sense coming from him.
But then I’m left wondering, why would Finrod have said this all the way back in the Years of the Trees? Are we meant to discern two different meanings from this line? Maybe! It’s one of those things that makes less sense the more I think about things. And again, maybe this will be resolved further down the line. But for now I’m left scratching my head.
These are really my two biggest issues with the series as it’s been presented so far. And if it turns out that they’re both lies from Sauron, I’ll be happy. If they are meant to be true in-universe, I would recommend the writing team tread more carefully when it comes to Tolkien’s understanding of evil.
Season One Criticisms
While I have really enjoyed this show and the experiences that have stemmed from it, I do have some other small criticisms to offer in hopes that the show will continue to improve and grow into the masterpiece that it deserves to be.
Little Things
I still have a lot of “little” questions. Why is “Nori” named Elanor, when everyone else around her is named after run-of-the-mill plants and flowers? Why do we have two dwarves named Durin? Where is Celeborn? What’s in Halbrand’s little necklace pouch and how did he end up on the raft? These are all things I’d really like to see answered but they also don’t kill the show for me. There were many small changes made within Peter Jackson’s films, but I was still able to enjoy them quite a lot so for me a lot of these issues are similar.
This is also a small quibble but Durin’s joke about the Elves “taking a ___” completely pulled me out of Middle-earth and I dearly hope the writers don’t feel the need to make similar jokes in the future. Tolkien was good enough at writing humor and I’d much rather see the showrunners borrowing from his playbook than resorting to toilet humor.
Another small thing but Halbrand in the traditional “St. Michael pose” as he stood over Adar as a subversion of imagery felt, to me, a betrayal of the audience. I don’t know how to explain it but it felt like they did us dirty with that one.
Disjointed Writing
A lot of the dialogue felt disjointed, like it had been divided up into group projects and taken in varying directions without one overarching vision.
Much of this season’s storyline felt very contrived to me. It felt a bit painfully obvious that the showrunners felt they needed to get Galadriel to Númenor and so were working backwards to figure out how to do so, while also trying to arrange her meet-cute with Sauron. I’m willing to work with this, and to be along for the ride for the most part but having Galadriel jump from the boat to Valinor (which she shouldn’t have been on in the first place) felt silly to me. I also still don’t understand what the Harfoots are doing here and what they have to add to the story.
Sauron’s Redemption
One of the best parts about this show is its presentation of an allegedly repentant Sauron. We know from the texts that he did have a period of repentance before ultimately falling back into the methods of Morgoth, but that this transition was something that occurred over a long period of time. With the implementation of time compression, we’re seeing that happening over the course of a few weeks perhaps and it didn’t hit quite as hard as it should have.
Galadriel as an Unreliable Narrator?
This isn’t so much of a criticism but a thought. Galadriel’s narration in the prologue fails to mention any Noldorin crimes or criminal motivations yet she speaks with Halbrand of needing to redeem her bloodline. It feels like they’re drawing directly from the source material when it’s convenient for dialogue but choosing to simplify or shift things when they need it to fit their new story and it makes the show feel disjointed. I’m imagining that it’s been a very tricky balance to craft something for both Silmarillion fans to enjoy and Tolkien-newbies to understand.
Sacrificed Story for Mystery
I felt a lot of the story was sacrificed for the sake of the “big reveal” in episode eight. It was certainly an incredible scene but I don’t feel this sacrifice was necessary.
Why “Halbrand”?
As much as I have a particular fondness for Halbrand, I don’t understand why he was necessary as an “original character”. The showrunners said they were inspired by the idea of a preexisting relationship between Sauron and Galadriel and you know what, I like that. Let’s explore that. But they already have a pre-existing relationship in the second age and that’s when Sauron presents himself as Annatar in Eregion. You want to throw in a little flirting? A tense relationship? Friendship? Go for it. It’s right there, hidden between the lines. And I’d love that!
Why the need to create a “human” character for Galadriel to go on all of these adventures with and fight alongside? I don’t understand.
The story loses some of its charm by bending so far out of its way to create a new dynamic between the two when there was already a pretty cool one there to be explored.
Maybe it was an issue of rights, but the more I talk about this series the more tired I get of this excuse.
Haladriel? Saurondriel?
While I personally love the Haladriel dynamic, I don’t know how to reconcile the new guilt and consequences that are going to be attributed to Galadriel because of the new dynamic they created. Nowhere in the texts does Galadriel unwittingly physically or emotionally encourage Sauron to return to power. This is definitely a case where there is a lot of blank space to fill in, but this feels like a mistreatment of her character. Galadriel does not deserve this level of guilt. It also suggests that Sauron might have lived happily ever after in Númenor without her intervention, which cannot possibly be true.
It’s a bit weird that Galadriel believes her husband is likely dead but didn’t pursue him with the same amount of fervor that she’s pursuing Sauron, but I’m not a marriage counselor. I’m also still confused about where he is, what’s going on with their daughter (has she been born yet?) but I’m not losing sleep over it.
The fact that there was meant to be some kind of romantic situation alluded to between Halbrand and Galadriel has been pretty obvious from the get go: from the infamous “rom com” teaser, to Halbrand being referred to as Galadriel’s “love interest” in press, all the way down to the dialogue, music, and even subtitles. For this to all have been set up very carefully and deliberately, to then see it being denied or backtracked in various interviews after the finale was honestly very annoying and has, in my opinion, contributed to a hostility towards “Haladriels” within the fandom that I’ve found a bit toxic. At the end of the day, if you’re going to write a romance between Galadriel and Sauron you should own up to it! You owe as much to the fans of the dynamic you’ve created because you’re kind of throwing them under the bus by acting like you didn’t do all of this on purpose.
Takeaways
In the end, it’s hard to judge a story based off of the first chapter. I want to emphasize that over and over again, because I know how much has gone into this production so far and I know that I really only have one small piece of the whole puzzle. I’m trying to offer the kind of grace that I know I’d hope others would offer me, here.
I see this show as a new version of Tolkien’s myth, rather than an extension of what he wrote. It’s fun to see this new interpretation, even though it’s different in some ways.
I am deeply invested in this show and I hope it succeeds in telling the story it set out to, and I hope they do it well in a way that can honor the original work.
I don’t see their vision and don’t understand the full picture like they do! So it’s easy for the showrunners to feel confident in their own designs because they know the ending but they should remember to be charitable to those who are still skeptical of the show. All of my criticisms are made with love and genuine concern for the show, and it’s disheartening when I hear flippant responses to criticism in interviews. There are definitely a lot of people who are going to hate the show no matter what, but I hope that doesn’t lead to Amazon tuning out the people who do really, really love this show or want to love it.
