Blessed are the legend-makers? The Rings of Power, season 2, reviewed

In the opening episodes of the second season of Amazon’s lavishly-budgeted Tolkien prequel The Rings of Power, Galadriel and Elrond debate using the three magic elven rings. Can the rings be used for good, or are they too dangerous to use, since they were created under the suggestion of villain Sauron?

I couldn’t help but see an echo of the question that I’ve been wrestling with in relation to The Rings of Power, having watched the first six episodes of series two. This is a show created to sate the desire of the great empire of Amazon for a franchise success, for its own Game of Thrones or Harry Potter in terms of cultural and above all financial impact. It might seem from the beginning a cynical exercise, the zombification of Tolkien’s literary legacy into a vehicle for ‘brand extension’ and corporate exploitation of ‘intellectual property’.

And yet Amazon, whether by design or by ‘luck’ (as we call it here in Middle-earth) seem to have assembled a writing team surprisingly well-versed in Tolkien and the appendices to The Lord of the Rings on which this prequel series is based. The quality of the writing in season one inevitably fell far short of the literary vision of a linguist and mythologist steeped both in the myths of medieval Europe and in a deeply Christian worldview. But its failures were mainly functional, issues of effective storytelling craft, rather than more fundamental misunderstandings of Tolkien’s writings as it could so easily have been.

A story of artistic merit?

So does season two show signs that The Rings of Power can transcend the Sauron-like influence of Amazon’s commercial imperatives to deliver a story of genuine artistic merit?

Maybe, if you go in with your expectations in check. If you accept this isn’t real Tolkien, then there is a lot to enjoy – but still quite a lot to be frustrated about. To me, season one of The Rings of Power often felt clumsy and lumbering, fan-fiction level scriptwriting on Hollywood-level budget. Series two is much improved, helped especially by having Sauron’s identity revealed and his sinister plans driving the story forward, but it is still uneven.

One of the more effective plotlines is Sauron’s manipulation of the elven master-smith Celebrimbor. Sauron disguises himself as Annatar, an angel of light, playing on Celebrimbor’s good intentions and pride, to manipulate him into creating the Rings of Power. Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor offers a warm performance, descending into desperation, that dramatizes Tolkien’s themes of power and temptation vividly.

Where the show is weaker though is in assuming that viewers will automatically be interested in its remixing of Tolkien’s ‘lore’, bringing in elements like Barrow-wights, Entwives and Tom Bombadil. Like the show’s frequent ‘borrowing’ of lines and shot compositions from Peter Jackson’s movies, it betrays a certain lack of confidence in telling its own story, as if viewers will lose interest if the show goes an episode without recognising another few familiar elements. Unfortunately, there are times when Tolkien’s characters and ideas become just flavouring on generic storytelling tropes, such as when Tom Bombadil plays Jedi mentor to ‘the Stranger’ (probably Gandalf), teaching him the ways of ‘the Secret Fire’ as if it were the Force. It risks being frustrating to Tolkien nerds like myself at bending Tolkien’s characters out-of-shape and baffling to non-fans who don’t have any automatic interest in mining Tolkien’s footnotes.

The real power lies in storytelling

I’d suggest that the real power of Tolkien lies less with his lore than his storytelling, and less with his worldbuilding as with his worldview. A more confident version of this show would focus less on playing Tolkien bingo and more on developing its own core characters and situations to their full effect. As it is, key plot and character developments often feel rushed amidst the need to stuff in as much Tolkieniana as possible.

The show is at its best when the focus is on expanding Tolkien’s themes rather than just playing with the figurines in his toybox. The Rings of Power does at times elaborate on and complicate Tolkien’s themes, such as by exploring more of the nature of Orcs as an ‘evil’ race, as victims of evil as well as its perpetrators – but this is exactly the kind of question Tolkien worried over in his notes and letters, and is fruitful to develop. There are also themes of faithfulness, integrity and sacrifice explored in Elendil’s storyline as a ‘Faithful’ under an usurping Numenorean king, which are among the stronger elements. As Christians, I think we can be thankful that something with broadly Christian themes can enjoy such a lavish treatment, even though it’s far from perfect – and hopeful that it will continue to improve.

For all its flaws, I’m glad that The Rings of Power exists. Here we get a TV series accessible to families (at least to teenagers and up) that still treats good and evil, virtue and temptation, courage and cowardice, as realities full of dramatic potential. G. K. Chesterton said that 'Anything worth doing is worth doing badly', to which I’d add the caveat, '…worth doing badly at first'. The Rings of Power is on an upwards trajectory storytelling-wise, and I hope that it will show in the end it has more to say and prove it has reason to exist artistically beyond padding Jeff Bezos’s bottom line.

Before C. S. Lewis came to Christ, he considered pagan myths as ‘lies breathed through silver’. In response to his friend, Tolkien wrote the poem Mythopoeia, which includes the lines, ‘The heart of Man is not compound of lies, / but draws some wisdom from the only Wise, / and still recalls him’. He goes on to talk about how God’s light is refracted through human beings as ‘Sub-creators’, ‘to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind’. This reflects Tolkien’s understanding of what we might as Protestants term ‘common grace’, and how human artistry can contain some refraction of God’s goodness, beauty and truth.

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a shining example of how refractions of God’s grace can ride incognito in a story without explicit Christianity. The Rings of Power strikes me as corporate franchise-building ‘breathed with silver’, with truth shining through despite its origins and shortcomings. The glass might be darker, but in its tales of good and evil, integrity and sacrifice, there are still far-off gleams of the gospel for those with eyes to see them, and for that I’m grateful.

Caleb is a long-time fan of Tolkien’s Middle-earth Legendarium, and wrote his English Literature MA thesis on King Arthur and Tolkien.