Review: Rings of Power Season 2, Episodes 5-8 (Spoilers)

Rings of Power Season 2 came to its end last week, finally releasing us from the horror that was seven weeks of non-stop bad script writing, mediocre acting, continuity errors, messed-up morality, and the destruction of Tolkien’s work until Season 3 comes out if the show doesn’t get cancelled first.

Thank God.

I’m not going to go too much into Episodes 5 and 6 because not much happened in those episodes in terms of things I can gripe about. All of it is the same stuff that I’ve talked about when reviewing the previous season and episodes, such as how the Harfoots and Stoors are still disgusting, the writers don’t really know how to write Sauron as an evil manipulator very well, the characters still seem super bland, the writers were shipping everyone with everyone like a bunch of crazed fangirls on AO3 or Wattpad, etc. Episodes 7 and 8 are where things actually start to get interesting because of how utterly stupid they are and how much they spit in Tolkien’s face.

Episodes 7 and 8 are essentially parts one and two of the siege of Eregion and from the start, it was obvious that the writers didn’t bother to hire any sort of consultant to help them with the fight choreography, the battle scenes themselves, or anything else. Everything is incredibly contrived if not straight up retarded such as being able to launch boulders at a mountainside with trebuchets to knock down the mountain and dam the river, the orcs somehow not being decimated as they run through mud with archers shooting at them from above, leading a calvary charge into the woods and then into a wet, muddy riverbed where both you and your horse would be dead pretty quickly, etc. I’m not going to talk about the entire battle scene since there’s so much wrong with it but will instead direct you to go to Shadiversity’s channel and watch his hour-long video breaking down episode 7. He does a very thorough job of breaking it all down and is more qualified to talk about it than I am.

With that said, I will cover some of the highlights of Episodes 7 and 8, which are Sauron is Sauron (*gasp*), Celebrimbor is a doddering old sot, and the plot twist that had me cheering wildly until it was sadly ruined.

In Episode 7, Sauron is at his most manipulative, gaslighting Celebrimbor to make him ignore the siege going on around him, literally conjuring up an idealistic version of Eregion to trick him so he can finish the nine rings, and turning the smiths against him by saying that Celebrimbor has lost it. This continues until Celebrimbor notices a strange pattern in the allusion and forces Sauron to break the spell, but at that point it’s too late and Sauron forces him to finish the rings, which have been made with his blood. Celebrimbor finishes the rings, hides them, and escapes his tower in Eregion in what may be the dumbest fashion imaginable, and gives the rings to Galadriel (because she can be trusted). In Episode 8, he’s found by Sauron, taken back into the tower, and tortured for the location of the Nine, a scene which was incredibly infuriating for me to watch.

In the books, Celebrimbor dies preventing Sauron from finding the three Elven rings. He’s taken captive after making a heroic last stand against Sauron during the siege, is tortured brutally, killed, and then his body is strapped to a pole, shot with arrows and carried as Sauron’s war banner. In Rings of Power, while this is alluded to in Sauron’s shooting him repeatedly before stabbing him in the gut with a large spear and propping him up on the wall, Celebrimbor dies pitifully, not as a hero, but as a cowering old man who fell for Sauron. Not only does it disrespect the original story, but it’s completely emasculating.

Later in Episode 8, Galadriel ends up finally confronting Sauron and though it was built up as this great, climactic moment of Galadriel finally facing and defeating her demons, it immediately falls flat. The fight choreography is terrible, looking as though someone stole it from The Acolyte with all constant telegraphing and random spins that no one takes advantage of. Numerous times, Sauron has a chance to kill Galadriel and vice versa, but none of them take it. In one scene, the reason she doesn’t is because he turned into Halbrand from Season 1, and I guess she still has a crush on him. The end soon comes, however, when he pins her against the wall and stabs her with Morgoth’s crown (something introduced in the first episode that shouldn’t even exist at this point in the lore). The spikes deal a considerable amount of damage, and from my best guess, would have punctured a lung and possibly one of her major arteries given where she’s stabbed. She then gets up, and as it looks like she’s about to give her ring to Sauron (which he could’ve just snatched out of her hand, but he doesn’t for some reason), she leaps off a 300 ft. cliff, lands and seems to die.

I rejoiced greatly at this scene, but unfortunately, the writers had to ruin that joy as Gil-Galad, Elrond, and Arondir, through the power of plot convenience and stolen dialogue, resurrect Galadriel and travel dozens if not hundreds of miles to where Rivendell is supposed to be, but isn’t for some reason.

Overall, Rings of Power Season 2 was both better and worse in many ways than Season 1. On one hand, it was better because Galadriel wasn’t in every episode, gets some of what she deserves in most scenes she’s in, Elrond isn’t as much of a pansy, and there was less disappointment while watching the show because the bar was already in hell after watching Season 1. On the other hand, the fight scenes were worse, Sauron’s performance was terrible, the writing was all over the place, entire scenes were copied from the movies to a T, etc. Ultimately, the biggest problem with Rings of Power, especially in this season, was the morality. I already said this in my review of Episode 2, but the message that spanned across Tolkien’s work was that absolute power corrupts absolutely, even when used in pursuit of good and there is an objective truth that defines good and evil. This is common sense, but Amazon runs off of the belief in relative morality, that anything good is good because I said so and thus, evil is anything that gets in the way of what I think is good. This is how they can do things like humanize Sauron or the orcs, or still paint Galadriel as being the good guy as she threatens to torture the orcs in front of Adar for information. This is the primary reason why none of this show feels Tolkienian and why it sucks so much.

Until next time,

M.J.