Review: I’m Mentally Preparing Myself for More Rings of Power

It’s that glorious time again for the next month or so, you’ll be reading a long series of rants in which I try to process the latest episode or two of Amazon’s billion-dollar atrocity titled The Rings of Power.

Aren’t you glad you follow this blog?

Thus, we must look over the trailer for this crap show and talk about what I will likely be crashing out about for the next month.

First of all are the 101 bits of actual Tolkien lore that went flying out the window. At this point, I question why I would bother to name them given my assessment of Season 2. After Season 1’s myriad of mind melting lore violations, the bar was in hell and watching Season 2 was actually somewhat tolerable as I had stopped considering it a Tolkien adaptation at all and just a really bad semi-Tolkien-inspired generic girlboss fantasy show. But with how many callbacks to the Peter Jackson movies that there will be in this season (the Nazgul, the forging of the One Ring, the Last Alliance, etc.) it feels worth it.

For the sake of brevity, the main issue here is the fact that within the three seasons the Rings of Power has been running, it compresses over three thousand years of Middle Earth’s history into – at most – four years.

Yes, I pulled that number out of thin air. I’m guessing that if seasons 1 and 2 took place over the course of a little less than a year, and Rivendell has just been built in Season 3, then I assume that between seasons 2 and 3, at least two or three years have passed. But then again, time is not a concept that the writers of this show understand, as we saw in Season 1.

This then creates a ton of problems for the story being a good adaptation of Tolkien’s work since nothing is happening in chronological order. The rings are being made starting with the elves instead of starting with men, the Istari are in Middle Earth way too soon, the Nazgul (or Naznagul, as they’re being called since they came from the magical land of Temu) have nothing to justify their existence since it took hundreds of years for the Nazgul to become a thing, etc. It also makes me wonder how much longer Amazon can possibly make this show if the battle we see in the trailer is supposed to be the battle that leads to Sauron losing the Ring. The only thing that could be worse than that possibility is if the battle in the trailer is actually supposed to be one in the War of the Elves and Sauron, in which case the whole Numenor plot line really shouldn’t be in this show since Ar-Pharazon wasn’t even alive at that point.

Then there’s the Wattpadification of Galadriel that will be even worse in this season than in the first two seasons. In Season 1, Galadriel was being shipped with Sauron. Then, in Season 2, she was being shipped with Elrond (never mind that he will eventually be her son in law, and it was acknowledged in Season 1 that she’s married), and her final battle with Sauron was meant to feel like a tragic end between lovers. Now in Season 3, from the trailer, it seems that she will be in a love triangle between Sauron and Celeborn.

Not only is she a classic Mary Sue like any you would find in the majority of fanfiction, but she now has as demented a love life as them, too! I’m surprised they haven’t made her goth yet.

Overall, this show looks like it suck just as badly as the previous two seasons, if not worse.

Until next time,

M.J.