Three episodes into its second season, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power feels more comfortable just being fucking weird than in all of its first go around.
[Ed. note: This piece will contain spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power through season 2 episode 3.]
Sauron has a resurrection via goo-worm form. A community of elves get together just to watch a leaf fall. Instead of giving a speech, their leader sings a song. Elrond leaps off a several-story waterfall and we don’t spend any time wondering how he survived. He’s an elf, that’s how elves do, and it’s taken as read that he’s fine.
Season 1 kicked off strong with Galadriel’s understated, spur-of-the-moment decision to turn away from the unexplained divinity of Valinor and just swim across an entire ocean solo with no prep, but that moment sticks out most strongly for how singular it was. Season 2 already feels far more comfortable sitting in inexplicableness. And it has to, because while The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien writing in a novelistic tone, the story that Rings of Power wants to tell is Tolkien writing in mythological tone. And maybe the best example of that shift in these first three episodes is a big moment with the elven smith Celebrimbor.
As Polygon’s Tolkien expert, I’ve struggled with how best to frame this change in expectations even with my own coworkers. “Wait, what do the Rings of Power actually do?” they wonder, and I try to explain that that’s kind of like asking what the Golden Fleece does. How could Sauron fool so many wise and powerful people so successfully and repeatedly for so long? You might as well ask why the Norse gods depended on Loki to fix so many things if he was so untrustworthy. These are the Loki Being Untrustworthy stories.
And when Celebrimbor, an elven smith who wants to become known as more than a “Scion of Fëanor,” is visited by a messenger who claims to be from the gods, and calls himself Annatar, the Lord of Gifts? Well, even though he knows that Sauron is around somewhere, and he hasn’t heard how it went with his other rings, and he’s cut off from the wise counsel of the High King… yeah, he’s going to take that at face value. Because this is a Messenger From the Gods kind of story.
But here’s another way to look at the tone of a novel vs. the tone of a myth: swearing oaths. If Rings of Power was a novelistic kind of narrative, it would seem pretty naive of Adar to trust this random human called Halbrand not to betray him, simply because he had solemnly sworn not to. People lie. Especially when it means their life! It would also seem petty and trivial that Sauron (nee Halbrand) cleverly arranged the words of his oath to swear his allegiance to “the lord of Mordor,” and not Adar specifically.
But there’s lots of careful talk about oaths in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Elrond makes it very clear that none of Frodo’s companions are sworn to go further with him than they feel moved to, and then argues strenuously with Gimli when the dwarf suggests that they should be bound to their word. Frodo demands that Gollum swear on the One Ring to secure his loyalty. The spirits of the Army of the Dead linger because they swore an oath that is yet unfulfilled and they cannot find rest. No matter how mundane the speaker, the words of a sworn promise bend the forces of destiny in The Lord of the Rings in subtle and definite ways.
But in The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s legendarium, from which the events of Rings of Power are drawn, there is no subtlety to it at all. If you break The Silmarillion down to the single central narrative from which the rest of it springs, it’s just a story about how bad it gets (and it gets very bad) when a rashly sworn oath and immortal oath-swearers come together. And the Silmarillion’s central oath-swearing sin comes from the line of Celebrimbor, the master smith of Eregion — from his grandfather and all of his grandfather’s sons. Rings of Power can’t talk about it, because Fëanor’s deal is only really unpacked in The Silmarillion, and not in any of the material the show’s producers have the rights to adapt, but Celebrimbor’s ambition isn’t just about exceeding his famous ancestor in smithcraft.
In pursuit of the craft of his hands, Fëanor led his kin through atrocities so great they were cursed by the gods. Celebrimbor was there when his father, uncles, and grandfather swore an oath of vengeance so irrevocable and ill-advised that it rates its own wiki page. The Oath of Fëanor instigated a war on Middle-earth that extended centuries beyond his own death and eventually claimed the life of each elf who had sworn it, until finally the gods themselves stepped in to imprison Morgoth and close out the First Age.
So an angel showing up to help Celebrimbor achieve his ambition for crafts, implying that his work is blessed by the gods is, putting it mildly, a really big fucking turnaround for our guy. Of course he’s predisposed to believe that it’s true.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power can’t go into detail about any of this, because it’s trying to tell a Silmarillion story using only what’s noted in passing mention during the text of The Lord of the Rings, or in brief summary in the appendices of The Return of the King. So it heartens me to see the show having the confidence to just… not talk about it. This isn’t a novel, it’s mythology, and mythology rides on vibes alone. Zeus appearing as an amorous swan to father Helen of Troy, who hatched from an egg? Sure. Sauron revealing a fiery, divine form in a smith’s forge, thus sealing the deal on the creation of more Rings of Power? Absolutely.
Come on, Middle-earth. Let’s get weird and vibe.
The first three episodes of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 are now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes drop every Thursday.
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