Barrow wights! Tom Bombadil! Entwives! Stoors! If there’s one thing The Rings of Power is gonna do, it’s take the opportunity to show you all the things in Middle Earth Peter Jackson couldn’t or wouldn’t. Can’t say we mind that at all. In fact, we think there was a major leap forward in the quality of the storytelling this episode. Once the show gets going, it can be quite entertaining. The problem is that it takes a while for it to get going and it’s not always great about sustaining momentum. There are still far too many storylines running at the same time, but this episode benefited by leaning in hard on the fantastical nature of Tolkien’s world and letting the characters do what Tolkien characters do best: go on adventures. In other words, this episode had something the series has been lacking far too much: fun.
We begin with an astonishingly bad opening shot in the Grey Havens that needed another pass on the digital finishing as not one of the dozens of figures depicted in it looked like they existed in the same space. A sullen Elrond is consulting a resentful Galadriel about putting together a party to ride to Eregion. She questions him and he pulls rank on her. Their friendship is in tatters over the ring she wears, underlining a subtle point of which Tolkien might have approved: that power in itself is problematic, even when the one who wields it is good at heart. The party sets out and before long, comes across a destroyed bridge preventing them from crossing a wide chasm. “Lightning,” Elrond offers weakly as an explanation. Come on, dude. We know you’re mad at her, but YOU know that Sauron is out and about. Why bother trying to come up with earthly explanations at a time like this? She rightly concludes that this is… say it with her now “the work of Sauron” (honestly, it’s to Morfydd Clark’s credit that she can still make that phrase land hard even after being forced to say it about five hundred times by now). As an aside, we love the… we guess we’ll call them Special Forces uniforms for the elves and the crown of braids Galadriel wears when she’s in battle (a subtle detail lifted directly from Tolkien).
They debate whether they should turn north to go around the chasm or south, which would get them to Eregion quicker. Galadriel has a short vision about evil waiting for them in the southern route, but Elrond defies her (to be fair, she was barking orders like she was in charge), simply because he knows the ring is guiding her. As they head toward the southern route he acidly requires why she’s still even in the party since she can’t agree on anything he’s doing. She responds that she’d love to leave, but that she doesn’t want to see any of them die. “Including you.” Given the millennia-long closeness between these two characters, we actually don’t mind the show taking a little detour away from their friendship. Like Galadriel’s sometimes off-putting characterization and the Stranger’s wide-eyed idiocy, it’s clear that a lot of these characters are on personal journeys where they will presumably wind up a little more recognizable by the end of the story. That’s the hope, anyway.
Speaking of the Stranger, he’s on a real hero’s journey now. After losing control of his powers and literally losing Nori and Poppy, he follows his nose right up to the doorstep of the person who is, in our opinion, just about the most irritating of Tolkien’s majestic creations, Tom Bombadil. Which isn’t to say we don’t like him. We’ve always thought old Tom was written to deliberately frustrate the reader. Is there any combination of character traits more irritating than obtuse and happy? Rory Kinnear plays him perfectly, which is to say, annoyingly, although certain aspects fell flat, in our opinion. First, while it was cute in the beginning, the show’s need to slip in character quotes or snippets of phrases from The Lord of the Rings (books and film) is starting to feel like a problem to us. Tom was repeating nearly verbatim certain snippets of conversation he would have with Frodo several thousand years after this scene. It feels lazy on the part of the writers to not try and craft new dialogue saying roughly the same things. After all, Tom’s original Tolkien dialogue was written in response to a bunch of hobbits. We’d think he would tailor his approach a little for an Istar landing on his front lawn. Second complaint: Tom muttering songs under his breath. That feels wrong. He booms his songs. He doesn’t whisper them. Having said that, Rufus Wainwright’s version of “Old Tom Bombadil,” which played over the end credits, was lovely.
Anyway, while in pursuit of a staff, the Stranger goes and gets himself eaten by a tree called Old Man Ironwood and Tom has to recite the same lines he’ll utter to Old Man Willow many years and miles away in order to get it to give up the bumbling wizard. Later, he hears Tom singing with his wife Goldberry, although she doesn’t make an appearance and Tom is typically vague and elusive when the Stranger asks about her. He tells the Stranger that he’s not just old, but “eldest.” Stranger asks Tom if he’ll teach him how to wield a staff. “A wizard’s staff is like a name,” he tells him, annoyingly. The Stranger realizes that he’s been guided to this exact place, to meet this exact being. “You’re not the first Istar who’s eaten honey by my fire,” Tom says. He tells him that it is his destiny to fight this dark wizard and Sauron both. Taken at face value, this tends to support the theory that he is Gandalf, who would wind up fighting Sauron thousands of years later. The Dark Wizard is clearly one of the Blue Wizards of Rhun, but there’s not a lot to support the idea that the Stranger is the other one. To be honest, this dragging out of the reveal as to who either of these wizards are is one of the more annoying things about the show.
Somewhere else in the deserts of Rhun, Nori and Poppy wake up from their latest adventure, which prompted a moment where we had to adjust our suspension of disbelief settings. We realize Harfoots are probably fairly stout and hardy people, but it’s a bit hard to believe they could get flung high in the air, land miles away, and just shake it off. After running away from those trackers with the cool gold face masks and the apparently disfiguring skin condition, the girls are shocked to meet another halfling out here, who introduces himself first as nobody and then as Merrymac. He and Poppy make little hearts at each other. The Harfoots are shocked to discover that these halflings not only don’t call themselves Harfoots, but that they live in permanent housing, in a village of their making. They meet the Stoor clan leader, Gundabale, played beautifully by Tanya Moodie. They come to find out that Sadoc, their own clan leader, came from the line of a famous Stoor explorer who set out to find their promised land, a place of “endless streams with cold water, and rolling hills so soft, a family could dig an ‘ole and live it in less than a month.” Obviously, she’s describing The Shire. She refers to it as “the Sûzat,” which is a Westron word for The Shire.
It turns out that Poppy’s walking song had a deeper purpose: to get the halfling clans to find each other. Nori tells her that their people never found their promised land. “We don’t have a home,” she says sadly. We know that a lot of the show’s viewers take issue with the focus on halflings when Tolkien was clear that they played no roles in the major events of this period, but this storyline is starting to shape up and we find it kind of appealing. Nori may have a much larger purpose: to introduce the halfling clans to each other. We wonder if the Fallohides will be showing up at some point. Yes, all of this is vastly compressed and fan service-y. No argument. These things either work for you or they don’t. Using the setting of the Second Age to explore the history of the halfling tribes is not a bad thing, as far as we’re concerned. We wouldn’t like to see the story end with all of them settling in The Shire – not unless there’s a major time jump – but this all feels of a piece with the Galadriel and Stranger storylines, among others. It’s a way to take unrecognizable versions of people at a much earlier point in their stories and show how they became the versions we know.
On the path to Eregion, Elrond’s party walks straight into the Barrow Downs, where they meet the Barrow wights. This sequence was spectacular. We noted in an earlier recap that the show is at its best when it really leans into the supernatural horror that permeates Middle Earth. Sure, anyone can complain that it’s fan service or mere Easter Eggs, but come on. Wouldn’t any Tolkien fan want to see a bunch of elves take out the Barrow wights? Galadriel notes that Sauron is awakening evil all over Middle Earth.
Near Pelargir, Arondir and Isildur are combing the woods looking for Theo, who got taken when a party of Wild Men were attacked by something large and creaky. After Arondir finds a camp of eviscerated bodies, they head back to the village, where the people want to attack the Wild Men, although Arondir doesn’t think a human did what he saw. Estrid advises them where to find their enemies, causing Arondir’s elf sense to start tingling. To be fair, anyone not hot for her could see how suspicious she is. Isildur learns a powerful lesson (hopefully) when her deception is revealed. They put her in chains and head back out to find Theo, although we’re not entirely sure why they took her, since Arondir doesn’t think the Wild Men abducted him. Isildur pouts like the soft little Numenorean he is, but she makes it clear how little she has in the way of choices. They don’t have time to argue further because Isildur rather stupidly gets himself and Arondir eaten by a giant mud worm of some sort. They didn’t name it, but it was clearly one of those foul creatures being awoken by Sauron. It conveniently gave Estrid a chance to show her quality (to borrow a phrase), although she rather quickly squandered her good will when she pulled a sword on Isildur (who was quite the airheaded himbo this episode).
Theo is being kept inside a tree cage with a bunch of abducted Wild Men. Obviously, it was the work of Ents (they wrote nerdishly), but it wasn’t until Arondir noticed the blossom petals (a perhaps stereotypically way of signaling femininity in a tree creature) that we clapped with glee and realized that we were going to see one of the fabled Ent Wives. And boy, was she pissed. This isn’t the elderly and (eventually) benevolent Treebeard of The Lord of the Rings. Snaggleroot and Winterbloom, voiced beautifully by Jim Broadbent and Olivia Williams, are younger, more inclined to violence, and deeply angry about the treatment the trees in their care receive. We loved the design of their faces, which were distinctly less human than the Treebeard design of the film trilogy. Those chameleon eyes were brilliant. After promising the Ents that their forest will always be protected, they release their captives. Just when it looks like Isildur and Estrid will finally complete their enemies-to-lovers arc, her betrothed shows up. Arondir announces to a grateful Theo that he must track down the orcs and their leader who killed Bronwyn. They part as friends, which is nice.
The orcs are on the march to Eregion and Elrond’s party runs smack into them. When one of them is mortally wounded by an errant orc arrow, Galadriel uses Nenya to heal him, to Elrond’s astonishment (and ours, because the Elf rings aren’t supposed to be that powerful). She gives him the ring, which is a point in favor to the argument that she’s not in thrall to it completely, and tells him to go back to Lindon with this news. She takes on the orc party herself and gets some sweet action moments, including one where she throws a lantern in the air and fires an arrow at it from horseback. Unfortunately, even she can’t take on an army and she finds herself face to face with the second-to-the-last person she wants to see right now, Adar. We reiterate: there’s entirely too much going on here, but a lot of it is turning out to be quite fun. Look at it this way: for the first time this season, an episode didn’t drag.
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