Not Even A Battle Can Save This Dumpster Fire

Battles, cavalry charges, erupting volcanoes. The latest episode of The Rings Of Power is the most action-packed yet, but even “epic” action cannot save this show from itself. Despite the flashy fights and explosions, the writing remains some of the worst I’ve seen in big-budget television. It’s actually worse than I ever thought possible.

I wanted so badly for this show to be good, but this is neither a good adaptation of Tolkien’s work or good generic fantasy. It’s a disaster, plain and simple.

Episode 6 might just be the worst yet, in part because we get none of the Harfoots and the mysterious Stranger or the endearing Durin/Elrond friendship and focus instead on the show’s most grating storylines and characters. The Galadriel/Númenor plot and the Arondir/Bronwyn plot finally come galloping together this week—and my oh my is it a hot mess.

Before I get into all that, let me give credit where it’s due: Adar is a terrific character, and this week made me like him even more. He calls out Galadriel at one point, which earns him a few extra points, but mostly he’s just a really fascinating villain and Joseph Mawle’s performance is top-notch. Quite frankly, he makes everyone else in this episode look bad. I wish he had a better show to be such a compelling villain in because he’s wasted here.

Adar gives a really stirring speech to his “children” the orcs at the beginning of the episode that makes Bronwyn’s goofy “rally the peasants” speech sound silly by comparison. Indeed, everyone from Gil-Galad to Ar-Pharazôn to Galadriel could take some leadership lessons from the dark elf.

I’ll reiterate what I’ve said a few times before: I’m rooting for the orcs at this point. The closest thing I’ve come to cheering in this show is the end of this episode when all those smug Númenoreans and Queen Smug herself, Galadriel, got caught beneath an erupting volcano.

But we’ll get to that. First . . .

Everything Wrong With Episode 6

The Southlanders leave the semi-fortified tower and go . . . back to the village they originally left to find safety. They set a trap for the orcs, who walk into it blindly.

• In the village, the peasant army barricades all those too weak to fight inside the tavern . . . because I guess they want to make it easier for the orcs to burn them all to death? They refer to the building as their “keep” despite it not being a fortified location at all.
• Theo asks his mom to tell him what she used to tell him when he was a kid and it ends up being this long speech about “the shadow” and “finding the light” and I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry at the sheer pretentiousness of this show’s writers. This is not something a mother tells her wee babe and if it is it’s not something the child asks her to repeat. What about a lullaby or something normal? Why these ridiculous speeches? Maybe I won’t laugh or cry. This one actually kind of pisses me off.
• The orcs barely manage to defeat the villagers, and only by using a ruse in which they send human fighters in with the first wave and make it look like the good guys have won. Then they descend with their remaining forces to take the village.
• Remember, this is an army of orcs fighting a handful of peasants, but it’s still really touch and go. Adar may be inspirational but he really ought to have spent more time training his fighters if this is how difficult it is for them to take on peasants in an unfortified village.
• Bronwyn saves Arondir just in the nick of time, because yeah, it totally makes sense for healer ladies to save well-trained immortal elven warriors and not the other way around. Oh but then she’s wounded and Arondir gets to save her by healing her. The healer, you’ll note, does no actual healing.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away the three Númenorean ships (with 300 men and apparently 300 hundred horses) are sailing across the ocean from Númenor to Middle-earth. Miraculously, they’ll make the 2,000 mile trip in time to save the day. The 1,800 mile sea voyage and 200 mile ride will take . . . a couple nights? Then they’ll charge all the way from the sea to Mount Doom in full battle regalia!

I have another post all about the fast-travel this feat requires going up in the morning. It started out as part of this review but grew so long that it warranted its own post, so keep a look out for that here on this blog (which you should subscribe to!)

In any case, Galadriel and Miriel and Elendil and Isildur and the others in the meager fighting force know exactly where to go, I guess because Halbrand pointed at stuff on a map? Mind you, none of the people in this village know Halbrand so I’m not sure how he knew the orcs would be here. Presumably, wherever he was chased off from before he met Galadriel was not the same place, but okay. Don’t mind all the logical inconsistencies folks, just look at the pretty shiny things and pretend it’s all just fine.

There’s another battle when the Númenoreans show up and none of the good guys of any importance are killed or even badly wounded. By the end of it, Bronwyn—who was on death’s door just hours earlier—seems totally healed and fine. When Galadriel chases Adar on her horse—dodging arrows in full plate armor—Theo says: “Who is that?” with enough awe in his voice to make even the staunchest defender of this show’s eyes roll.

“By golly, Theo!” Arondir replies. “Why that there is the commander of the northern armies, Galadriel herself! Isn’t she swell?”

“Gee, she sure is!” Theo replies, snapping his finger in delight.

All this commander / captain / soldier stuff is really wearing thin, by the way. Galadriel asks Isildur his rank on the ship and he shuffles his feet and says “stable hand” and then later he’s a fully armored warrior fighting the orcs. To be fair, he’s kept in the reserves (for some reason Miriel and maybe two dozen riders hang back) but she sends him in when she sees he’s just itching for a fight—like a coach sending in a fresh player. He’s the only one of the reserves sent to help in the fight, which looks extremely silly.

(Not as silly as Galadriel looks in that ridiculous armor. Why is she even wearing such heavy armor if she just plans on dodging everything? Who thought this was a good idea?)

In any case, the whole rank thing is so out of character for Tolkien. This isn’t a WWII movie. We aren’t supposed to be concerned with captains and lieutenants as if everyone, including the elves, keeps a standing army at their back and call at all times. This feudal society would have knights and men-at-arms and there would be a hierarchy of some sort, but the elves didn’t go around saluting their commanders. Galadriel wouldn’t be a “commander of the northern armies” anymore than Elendil would be merely a ship captain. Both were powerful, influential nobles in their respective societies.

In any case, Galadriel chases Adar and then Halbrand sees them and he also chases Adar but manages to somehow get out in front of him (fast-travel for the win!) and trips his horse up, knocking the dark elf to the ground. “Do you remember me?” he asks, about to land a killing blow.

“No,” Adar replies, which was actually kind of funny. Just when Halbrand is about to kill Adar, Galadriel stops him. They need him alive, she tells him, and then says something about how you can’t slake your thirst on saltwater for some reason (the sea, it would seem, is not always right after all).

They take Adar prisoner and then he and Galadriel have a little talk back at the village where he’s chained. She asks if he’s one of the elves that Morgoth corrupted early on (which would make him very, very old) and that seems to be the case. He talks about his “children” and she cuts him off.

“They are not children, they’re slaves,” she says (though we quickly learn how much empathy that engenders in her).

“But each one has a name, a heart,” Adar replies, a part of creation just as much as Galadriel is and “as worthy as the breath of life, and just as worthy of a home.”

“No, your kind was a mistake,” Galadriel says angrily, vowing to “eradicate every last one of you” despite them apparently being slaves. She turns all her venom on Adar: “But you shall be kept alive so that one day I can whisper in yourear that all your offspring are dead, and the scourge of your kind ends with you.”

“It would seem I’m not the only elf alive that’s been transformed by darkness,” Adar replies. “Perhaps your search for Morgoth’s successor should have ended in your own mirror.”

This is such a sick burn that Galadriel forgets promising to kill him last literally ten second ago and says: “Perhaps I shall begin by killing you, you slivering—”

But Halbrand intervenes because, uh, I guess these two just keep trading places. He should have made a wisecrack about drinking saltwater. Missed opportunity there.

When Galadriel leaves, Adar asks Halbrand who he is but he mysteriously refuses to answer. They’re really toying with us on this one. Is he just the king of the Southlands (the one realm in Middle-earth that doesn’t get an actual name I guess?) or is he Sauron? Perhaps he is Sauron trying to reform, as some have suggested. After all, he tells Galadriel he never thought he could be good again until this battle. I don’t like the theory, but it’s possible.

Everything seems hunky dory at this point and Miriel exchanges some “you go girl” pleasantries with a miraculously recovered Bronwyn, introduces her to Halbrand who they all then hail as king (we get Helm’s Deep and the Return of the King all at once!) but soon we all learn the truth: Our heroes have been fooled!

When Galadriel, Halbrand and the rest stop Adar and his forces they take back the sword-key but nobody checks the cloth bundle that it’s supposedly wrapped up in. It’s not until Arondir gives it to Theo (why??) and the boy opens it that we learn of Adar’s diabolical scheme.

Waldreg has taken the blade-key up to the tower and inserts it into the lock which breaks a dam and lets a bunch of water out of a nearby reservoir into the system of tunnels and trenches that the orcs just dug and then this, in turn, all goes into Mount Doom which—hey look it’s right there, it’s been right over there this whole time!—erupts, blasting the village and its occupants with fiery balls of magma and stone boulders.

I hope it kills all of them, honestly, and wipes that smug, blank, annoying expression off of Galadriel’s face once and for all. I can’t remember the last time I rooted this hard against the good guys and for the bad guys, but I like Adar more than any of these characters. Go team orc! Down with the tyrannical elves! Down with Númenor! Long live Sauron! May Mordor reign supreme!

I’m honestly just bowled over by how bad this episode was. The key couldn’t just magically make Mount Doom erupt—it had to trigger a dam breaking (which could have been broken without it!) that required an elaborate system of tunnels that hadn’t been dug yet to be placed just so in order to flood the volcano.

What if they’d used the key before the tunnels were dug? It would just poor the water out for no reason? This is the brilliant scheme of some dark lord?

Are this show’s writers high? If not, should they maybe get high? Whatever they’re doing they need to start doing the exact opposite and fast.

Okay, what did you think of this episode folks? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

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