‘The Rings Of Power’ Episode 8 Review: A Dreadful Season Finale

The Rings Of Power has wrapped up its first season and all I can say is . . . shame on everyone who had a hand in this travesty.

I’ve never seen an adaptation of a major work so badly abused, so fundamentally altered or so disrespectfully handled as the creators of The Rings Of Power have treated The Lord Of The Rings. Tolkien’s creation barely shines through the dreck.

I gave this show a chance. I went in with low expectations and for a moment was charmed by what I saw, but quickly the cracks began to show in the story and its heroes. Of Mithril, this show is most certainly not crafted.

I’ll try to parse together everything that went wrong with the whole first season in a future piece, but for now, let’s look at the travesty that is the Season 1 finale. Nearly everything that could have gone wrong has done so. Even my worst fears about this show’s quality could not match what we were actually given.

On Strangers & Red Herrings

The episode opens to The Stranger wandering his way through a verdant forest when someone startles him and he drops his apple. He chases after the mysterious person and discovers that it’s Nori—only, it’s not Nori! The person he thought was Nori for all of two seconds immediately shape-shifts into the head witch, making us all wonder what the point of transforming into Nori was to begin with, since he didn’t even spot that it was her until that very moment. But okay!

The other witches approach and reveal to him that he’s . . . Sauron! This might fool some viewers, I suppose, but it’s very obvious that all of this is just a ruse to trick viewers into thinking that question has been answered (in the opening five minutes, no less!) so that they don’t pay too much attention to what the left hand is doing.

In any case, they promise to take him east to Rhûn where the veil clouding his thoughts can be removed and he can restore his powers. (Side-note: It looks like The Stranger and Nori will head to Rhûn in Season 2 which I think is a great idea—if only they hadn’t butchered Season 1 first!) This all seems to excite The Stranger who starts doing his weird wind power until the witches stop him and start tying him up (only they hear something and decide that what they should do instead is shape-shift because . . . reasons).

The Harfoots show up and see that there are only two witches so they distract them and go to release the bound Stranger—but it’s actually the head witch! You know, the witch who is so much more powerful than the Harfoots that she had literally no reason to disguise herself in the first place. Then the Stranger shows up and there’s a big old brawl the head witch lights everything on fire, and the Stranger thinks he’s bad now but Nori gives him a cheerful pep talk and then hands him the head witch’s staff.

Well, we knew he needed something to control his powers and the staff is that thing, it appears, because a moment later he’s put out all the flames and is standing tall and speaking clearly. He immediately steals a line from Gandalf telling the witches “From shadow you came and to shadow you will return!”

“Wait, you’re not Sauron!” they cry. “You’re…”

“I’m GOOD!” he says, making me question everything I know about professional writing in Hollywood, and then banishes them to, uh, the shadow with butterfly magic.

So yeah, not Sauron. Then who could Sauron be????

The Left Hand Of Darkness

A magician will distract you with his right hand so that you don’t notice what he’s doing with his left hand, but the creators of The Rings Of Power have proven to be less than gifted when it comes to magic. We all saw the Mordor twist coming a few parsecs away and anyone paying attention knew Halbrand would be Sauron. Well, no surprises here.

Galadriel and Halbrand teleport all the way from Mordor to Eregion despite Halbrand having a wound that requires, ahem, “Elvish healing.” They must have ridden awfully hard to get there in just six days. People who are seriously wounded can usually ride at a gallop for days or even weeks with no complications, so nothing really crazy about this.

They show up in Eregion where Elrond and Celebrimbor are hanging out discussing what they’ll do now that the dwarves have refused them mithril. Gil-Galad is expected in a day, so it’s awfully convenient timing for Galadriel and Halbrand to show up right at that exact moment also. Thankfully this show doesn’t rely on contrivances or crazy coincidences at all.

Gil-Galad tells them that they have run out of time and he’s ordering the abandoning of Eregion. Everyone is to head to Lindon immediately so that they can all leave Middle-earth and head back to Valinor. Elrond and Celebrimbor argue for more time and Gil-Galad hesitantly gives it to them. (It’s still hilarious to me that at the beginning of this season Gil-Galad sends Galadriel away and declares it a ‘time of peace’ and just a few episodes later they have only months before the entire elvish race is doomed).

Halbrand has been taken to get some “Elvish healing” from the healers that Arondir claims the elves don’t actually have and is miraculously better a short while later. He heads directly to Celebrimbor’s workshop and sounds very excited when he discovers that the elf he’s talking to is none other than the great Celebrimbor himself. He asks about the gems and the mithril and when Celebrimbor tells him they don’t have enough, he suggests using an alloy (hence the episode’s title, “Alloyed”). A master elven smith would never think of this, of course.

“Thanks for the intriguing suggestion,” Celebrimbor says, to which Halbrand replies “Call it a gift.”

That line is, to anyone who knows anything about the actual story of the Rings of Power, a dead giveaway. When Sauron comes to the elves as Annatar he is known as the Lord of Gifts, and tries to seduce them with his promises. Gil-Galad, Elrond and Galadriel aren’t fooled, but Celebrimbor—weakened by his ambition—is, and takes Annatar into his confidence in Eregion.

It’s at this point, when Celebrimbor starts talking about forging a “new power” that Galadriel’s heckles finally come up. When she learns that Halbrand has given Celebrimbor advice, she’s instantly suspicious, though why it’s taken her this long is beyond me. She’s basically dragged him kicking and screaming all this way (after coincidentally running into him in the middle of the ocean—which, I just…words fail me—) and now she’s suspicious of him?

In any case, she has an elven clerk go find her records of the lineage of the kings of the Southlands, which the elf says will take ages, he’ll need to go to the catacombs, but he’s back pretty quickly and she learns the horrible truth: There is no king of the Southlands! The line of kings died out a thousand years ago and somehow she didn’t know that and didn’t bother to do like ten more minutes of research at the Hall of Lore in Númenor.

She confronts Halbrand and he quickly fesses up. He was born before the breaking of the song. He’s had many names. The following scene might have actually been a decent one if the setup before this point had been better, but it’s all just so contrived. Everything leading here relied on either truly radical coincidence or Galadriel being stupid (or both). They could have set this up in a much more convincing, surprising manner but they rushed it and hacked the source material to pieces in the process.

Ultimately, Galadriel refuses Sauron’s advances to rule alongside her (Sorry Kylo Ren!) and he leaves Eregion. Instead of telling Elrond and Celebrimbor the truth, Galadriel tells them to make three rings instead of two, because of…uh…balance.

They make the rings in fifteen minutes or so and stare at them in awe.

The rings that took 90 years to craft. Of course, they don’t even make the first rings—the rings of men and dwarves. Galadriel even says they need to be for elves only. Sauron would have been there for the forging of all the rings of men and dwarves. It was part of his plan—to get the elves to make those rings so that he could make the One Ring in secret and control all the others. Then, once the elves learned of his deception, crafted the elven rings and kept them secret, all of which eventually leads to Sauron attacking and destroying Eregion.

But none of that is here! None of the most basic elements of the forging of the actual Rings of Power is here at all. Halbrand/Sauron spends a day in Eregion and leaves. How is this in any way true to the source? I understand that changes must be made to adaptations, but this isn’t a change. This is a complete rewrite of a pretty well-established story. And to what end?

Oh, and in order to forge the rings they need gold and silver from Valinor. Mind you, lots of the elvish stuff in Eregion is likely made out of gold and silver from Valinor but they end up using Galadriel’s dagger instead—even though it’s the only thing she has left of her brother.

Halbrand, meanwhile, hoofs it back to Mordor where we see him hiking over the mountains and staring evilly down across the volcanic plain at Mount Doom. Sorry Halbrand/Galadriel shippers, it doesn’t look like we’re getting a romance. (No mention of Celeborn this episode, either).

On Second Thought, Let’s Not Go To Númenor. It’s A Silly Place

We get many good looks at the Númenorean ship that brings Elendil, Miriel and that one dude who was friends with Isildur back home in this episode and I still cannot figure out where they fit everything. Where do the horses go? All the tents and food? All the people? It’s a really small ship!

Honestly, very little of any significance happens in this plotline. Elendil and Miriel talk on the boat. Elendil’s personality-deficient daughter hangs out with the dying king, who shows her the palantir before croaking. (Having just watched a far more powerful scene with a king dying over on House Of The Dragon this past Sunday, I couldn’t help but make comparisons in my head).

Ar-Pharazon has a bit of a menacing look on his face when the king dies. They raise black sails in the bay, so when Elendil and Miriel return, he sees them and knows what happened but she doesn’t and has to keep asking “What do you see? What do you see?”

That’s . . . kind of it. A little setup for Season 2, but not much else.

Many Long Farewells

Finally, the Harfoots say goodbye to Nori and the Stranger. The Stranger is going east and when Nori calls it an adventure he tells her that no, you need companions for that. When her father tells her she needs to go with him, she readily agrees. Then we are subjected to many long, drawn out, saccharine goodbyes. If you’re going to lift stuff Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, does it really have to be the overly long farewells?

Poppy is devastated that Nori is leaving. “Why does everyone I love have to go?” she asks, to which Nori says something like “We wouldn’t learn anything new if we didn’t.” Neither suggests the obvious: You can both go! It isn’t like Poppy has any family left in the caravan. She pulls her own cart by herself (walks alone, despite the chanting) and they’re BFFs. Go together female Frodo and female Sam!

At long last Nori finally sets off with the Stranger and now we have a couple years to wait for another season about . . . well, not about anything Tolkien wrote, that’s for sure. But it’s comforting to know that the Rings Of Power and Mordor were all created within about a ten-day span! Nothing says epic fantasy like condensing thousands of years into a week and a half.

That’s quality writing, folks.

We could have had an entire season devoted to the actual forging of the rings. To Annatar/Halbrand’s deception. To the elves and their vanity. We could have waited to tell the story of Numenor until later—a story of the quest to cheat death, and the pride that cometh before the fall. So many ways this show could have taken what Tolkien actually wrote and fleshed it out into a TV series worthy of the source material. Ironically, it seems pride has been the downfall of Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings as well.

They added too much and cut too much when they had a perfectly good story to flesh out that Amazon spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase. Why not tell that expensive tale? Why make this other one up? I don’t understand.

What an absolute disaster.

Here’s my video review:

Scattered Thoughts:

• Why did the witches think Proto-Gandalf was Sauron? This isn’t explained. They just assume it’s him, just like Galadriel just assumes Halbrand is a king (despite him telling her otherwise over and over again).
• I am still reeling from the fact that they just made a show about the Rings of Power where they just tossed the Nine and the Seven out with the bathwater. How do you make Nazgul without the Nine??? What is Sauron’s motivation to even craft the One Ring now? Or invade Eragion?
• I wonder if everyone could see the word Mordor in that powerpoint last week. When will they start referring to the Southlands as Mordor? Will word just spread? How does this work?
• That exchange between Galadriel and Elrond is classic: “Why are you here?” “Why are you here?” They should have had Elrond say “I asked you first!” Or maybe “Well I live in Middle-earth still, you’re supposed to be in Valinor!” Oy vey.
• My show was suddenly interrupted partway through by a trailer for Peripheral. I hope this isn’t a new thing Amazon is doing because that was not cool.
• There was no Dwarven plotline this week, so no Durin vs Durin arguing or Durin IV blubbering, and sadly Disa is not Sauron. She’d make a good Sauron, though.
• Also no Bronwyn, Arondir or Theo. I’m giving this episode one thumb up for this alone! But honestly, did any of these characters even really matter to this story in the first place? Yet we got more of Bronwyn making speeches and Theo whining than we actually got of Sauron deceiving Celebrimbor or the forging of the rings this season!
• Oh, and the other Gandalf line that was stolen: “Always follow your nose.” Look, there are easter eggs and nods, and then there is just . . . goofy unoriginality. Is Gandalf just saying this to random Hobbits for thousands of years?

It’s over now, children. It’s all over. You can rest now.