{"id":967071,"date":"2026-01-04T01:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=450958"},"modified":"2026-01-04T01:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:44:18","slug":"rings-of-power-is-changing-palantir-powers-for-no-good-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/rings-of-power-is-changing-palantir-powers-for-no-good-reason\/","title":{"rendered":"Rings of Power is changing palant\u00edr powers for no good reason"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lore changes to Tolkien\u2019s world are nothing new for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power<\/a><\/em>. But its changes to the palant\u00edri, the spherical seeing devices that have appeared most notably in N\u00famenor so far in the show, are starting to get a little confusing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While fans of the Peter Jackson movies<\/a> will certainly recognize the specific threat that the palant\u00edri poses in the show, that\u2019s not how the books say the devices should work at this time in the story. Sure, by the time of the Fellowship\u2019s quest to destroy the One Ring, the devices were mostly tools of deception employed by Sauron. But during the time of The Rings of Power<\/em><\/a>, they shouldn\u2019t be evil at all. In fact, they\u2019re basically just walkie-talkies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The palant\u00edri, like all the best and worst things in Middle-earth, were originally created by the elves and later given to the N\u00famen\u00f3reans<\/a>, with seven of them surviving the island\u2019s destruction and facilitating communication between the realms of Gondor (where Boromir\u2019s from) and its sister country Arnor. They are essentially something along the lines of Facetime walkie-talkies. They could be used to communicate over long distances, usually only two directly with each other, and they could provide visions of their surroundings during these communication sessions. This is why when we see them in the show and movies, characters would touch the palant\u00edri and see visions of various places with little to no context about what they were. In other words, there\u2019s nothing inherently evil about them or the images they show at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problems with the spherical creations didn\u2019t arise until the Third Age (when the main trilogy is set) when, one by one, the seven palant\u00edri were misplaced, falling into rivers or disappearing when cities were sacked. The remaining palant\u00edri were locked away (one in Orthanc, the stronghold of the great and noble Saruman, leader of the wise wizards) for the same reason that you wouldn\u2019t spill sensitive information in a Zoom meeting where the guests were hidden. There was no way to prove that somebody who shouldn\u2019t be listening in (specifically Sauron) was listening in \u2014 and in The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, we saw exactly that happen. While Gandalf says that Sauron couldn\u2019t use his palant\u00edr to completely fabricate the images that Denethor and Saruman saw in their own, he could manipulate the visions to fragment them and make sure they only saw the ones he wanted them to. It\u2019s these Sauron-influenced visions that drive Denethor nearly to his state of desperation and denial in the main trilogy<\/a>, and that frighten Pippin (and reveal his location).<\/p>\n

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