**this post contains spoilers for pretty much all of TROP**
A small group of travelers traverse a series of starkly beautiful landscapes, blissfully empty of other peoples. One of them sings a sweetly meditative plainsong tune that reflects on the demands of the road and the hope of what may come next. And in one of the final images, one of the persons is seen staring at a night sky full of stars, his eyes filled with questions, questions without answers, regarding who and what he is.
This sequence, the opening of Episode 5 of The Rings of Power, is easily the most magical and memorable moment in the entire show to date. It was the one part (other than perhaps the opening prologue) that convinced me I was seeing people lose themselves in the majesty and granduer of Middle Earth. If only we'd gotten more.
Let's maybe get one thing straight at the beginning; this post is not be a beat-down of TROP. At the end of the day, Season 1 of Rings is...fine! It's fine, and in many spots, genuinely excellent. Much of the cast brings their A game (though not all....we'll get there), and the decision to play up Sauron's role in the fall of Numenor as a reactionary demagogue is very much A Choice. The production design, music, and attention to detail is far too good for the show to not be at least moderately entertaining. And by the end, we did get a first round of Rings, though they were inexplicably shot in such a way that made them look like an ad on daytime TV. It's just.....so very weighed down by its own ambitions, and while it's a perfectly serviceable fanfic for Tolkein die-hards, I can't see too many not already well within the fold buying in.
This is due to a lot of factors, but I think the biggest bigbear is how the story is split up. Specifically, that it's split up into way too many pieces. We have one storyline with Galadriel and her obvious PTSD issues, Elrond seeking out Durin and the dwarves, a Woodland elf on human-guard-duty (which involves his lady love interest and her son), plus another with the Harfoots, who are obviously proto-hobbits, because of course. There is some meshing of the characters and storylines by the end, but not completely, and with only a few exceptions there are really no significant character moments that cross the narrative streams, so to speak.
And really, it's all a touch too much. Especially since these are nearly all characters either from the more obscure lore (Gil-galad, Celebrimbor, Durin IV) or wholly original inventions, meaning not even diehard Tolkienites have any prior knowledge of or attachment to them. These broad narrative decisions- which feels like putting four seperate carts in front of a single horse, then asking the horse to move all four at once- is especially frustrating because of just how blank the canvas is they had to paint on. While LOTR and The Hobbit tell the stories that matter most to the Third Age, and The Silmarillion and its adjacent stories cover the First Age very, very thoroughly, the Second Age is left almost entirely open. It has the most room to play around in while still being true enough to canon to satisfy purists, so there was no reason to bite off so much right from the start.
Really, its the exact inverse of how LOTR is structured. There, we first meet the hobbits plus Gandalf, then expand to the whole fellowship, and then have an entire movie/book just devoted to them as a group and their dynamics. That, in turn, creates the interest and investment in each one that carries the story onwards after the fellowship is broken and we have two books/movies covering multiple, separated narratives. This is, for my money, the master key that makes LOTR such an enduring and compelling story, even for those who aren't otherwise fantasy fans; the emotional core between the central characters is masterfully established and explored before they split up and things get more complicated, making the ultimate return and resolution of it all even more worth the experience.
Here, we have a whole lot of stuff going on in different parts of Middle Earth right from the start and only hints as to how it may tie together in the end. Being the nerd I am who has read everything published under the Tolkien name, I had enough in my memory to fill in certain gaps, catch and appreciate some references, and make some educated guesses as to where things were going. And yet even I found myself struggling at times to....well, to care. Which is kind of fatal for a show like this!
I think the solution here would have been pretty simple, really- instead of 4+ narratives, just focus in on two- Galadriel and Elrond. They are the only two major figures in the show who are a) canon and b) are already in popular consciousness thanks to LOTR, so having them as the focus, at least at first, allows casual viewers to get accustomed to the different actors, different settings, different place names, etc. And then, once a few new characters are better established, you have more leeway to expand the story's focus going forward. Though I must admit, if there is a serious weakness in the Elvish part of the story....I'm sorry, but whether its him or the direction he got, Benjamin Walker ain't it for Gil-galad. I mean, this is GIL-FUCKITY-GALAD. The legendary last King of the Elves who personally led the final assasult on Mount Doom, who could only be killed by Sauron himself. And for the entire season his, tone, look, mannerisms, everything, suggest less „Immortal Lord of Light who will Fuck You Up“ and more „Moderately Bored Middle Manager at Wal-Mart.“
But let's be merciful and leave that be. Returning to Elrond and Galadriel, I actually think that, given the legacy of Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving, Morfydd Clark and Robert Aramayo really do hold their own, managing to find younger, less hardened and more adventurous sides of the characters that I think we absolutely needed. Clark has one of the best moments in the entire show when, confronted by Halbrand, she admits how scarred and traumatized she is by saying that she „literally cannot stop“ hunting orcs, seeking prey, looking for war and battle. It allows a more nuanced take on a person who otherwise is just sort of background decoration in the Middle Eart universe. It also lends tremendous thematic weight to her decided to finally forego her blade- in a way, giving up fighting itself- to aid in the created of the Three. I hope this signals a turn from Galadriel, Warrier-Queen to a Galadriel who will now seek to become the Lady of the Wood who fights by protecting life, helping things grow, and providing shelter from the world rather than rushing off to spend more blood.
Plus, and this is a big personal argument for me, Elrond's storyline (so far) is very dwarf-centered and is the best chance we've yet had to really have more dwarf cultures, nations, and peoples front and center in a Middle Earth story. The dwarves are easily still the most underseen and underserved of all Middle Earth races. This is a long-running, structural problem with Middle Earth storytelling that goes all the way back to the source. Even The Silmarillion, as exhaustive as it is, has long stretches where the children of Durin are not mentioned beyond „Something something Daaark Looord, something something Elves! Oh and the dwarves are kicking around doing.....things....now back to the Elves!“ The first chance to break this mold was obviously with the Hobbit trilogy (since even in the original book, the dwarves are basically just rope-a-dozen stock characters), and that....didn't end well. So we still have lots of ground to make up here.
What makes this an especially easy call for me is that the show has already offered us a GREAT foundation for more fantasy drama in the vaults of Khazad-dum. The personality strife between Durin and his father is some great, family-politics stuff. Plus, Owain Arthur and Sophia Nomvete have INSANE chemistry together and I would sit down to watch an 80's style sitcom of their home life right now please and thank you. I mean, okay, I don't know if we needed a detailed, pseudo-scientific explanation for how mithril was created. And the effect of the dwarf scenes was marred somewhat by its concluding reveal that a...falling leaf? Was what awakened the Balrog that Gandalf fights?
Actually, that bit dovetails nicely into my biggest gripe with the show; its insistence on stuffing easter eggs and trapdoor origin stories for the people, places, and things from LOTR into every nook and cranny. This is the same trap the Hobbit fell into, and we complained then, but here we are; Tolkein adaptations are still unable to fully free themselves from the shadow that Jackson still casts over the entire franchise. From the leaf, to that fucking surprise origin story for Mount Doom (because The People demanded it, I guess), to the Harfoot storyline being way too cute by half in really making sure we know it's Gandalf that fell into their midst, every one of those they shoved in just kept reminding me that, oh yeah, the LOTR movies still exist, I should go rewatch them!
Additionally, speaking of the Harfoots- and this is a purely personal gripe on my part- we've had enough hobbits/hobbit-adjacents. I know, I know, the Harfoot cast is all great, Markella Kavanagh is an absolute treasure and I love her, so believe me, it hurts me more to write this than it hurts you to read it. But we're good for hobbits. Really. They've had SIX movies to shine, we've done right by them. So maybe let's do something else? Like...more dwarves?
This has gone off quite a bit in so many directions....really, very much like the show. I am not sorry I took the time to watch it and I will most definitely give a second season a shot. But I think we may have already missed a chance to really bring something genuinely new to Tolkein adaptations. Which I think is a bit of a shame, really.
-Noah
