The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Review: Season 2

For much of Prime Video's second season The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powercharacters accuse each other of having fallen into the hands of the dark lord Sauron (Charlie Vickers). And while they are often right that Sauron is behind this or that sinister scheme, after a certain point, he has to admit that he can't stand All merit. “You think too much of me,” an enemy taunts. “The road goes on, always winding, and I cannot see all the paths.”

Still, it’s hard not to blame the characters for feeling like pawns in someone else’s game. It’s just not exactly Sauron. In its second outing, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay’s fantasy prequel falls prey to one of the genre’s most common afflictions. It begins to feel like a story shaped backwards by events we already know will happen, rather than propelled forward by its characters’ motivations and choices.

The problem is largely one of imbalance. While The Rings of Power It's always felt huge, as befits both its continent-spanning plot and its mind-boggling budget, but its real secret weapon has been its emphasis on smaller, more personal situations. The Lord of the Rings lore tends to slip off my brain like a fried egg off Teflon. But I found it easy enough in the first season to fall in love with the friendship between the wily elven politician Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and the stubborn dwarf prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur), or the star-crossed romance between the valiant elven soldier Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the righteous human healer Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi). I cared about the fate of Middle-earth because I cared about them, not the other way around.

However, with Sauron and three of the 20 Rings of Power revealed in the final finale, this volume shifts the focus of the narrative to the big picture. More iconic artifacts are introduced. More bloody battles are fought. More fan-favorite names are announced, in one case accompanied by an entire theme song performed by Rufus Wainwright. There's so much going on that it takes the first three hours of this eight-part installment just to get to the bottom of all the major characters, and there's so much at stake that every conversation feels charged with the potential to either save the world or destroy it. In such a mind-blowing cascade of events, the little moments tend to get lost. And because it was those little moments that created this universe to begin with, The Rings of Power he feels apathetic despite all the drama.

Take Sauron. His human form, Halbrand, spent the first chapter traversing the continent with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), establishing a flirtatious, flinty dynamic that made his final betrayal all the more devastating. By contrast, his elven form, Annatar, spends most of this jaunt in a single building, manipulating Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) so effortlessly that he almost seems bored; for an entity whose sinister goals set the entire plot in motion, this Sauron is strangely static. Or take the Stranger (Daniel Weyman). When he's simply hanging out with his friends Harfoot Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy (Megan Richards), he's as charming as ever—perhaps more so, now that he has the language to express a wry sense of humor. But he spends too much of the season inching toward the reveal of a name that rivals Alonefor superfluity and for too many other things that try to elude a sinister figure (Ciarán Hinds) even more mysterious than himself.

I could go on. The political maneuverings that are supposed to add complexity to the realm instead divide it neatly into heroes and villains. The interpersonal dynamics are written so vaguely that I kept wondering if I’d missed a scene or ten. Some characters seem to be here only because they’ll be important to the mythology later, rather than because they have something to do now. Others are summoned only to be killed, a way to inflate the body count to serious adult drama proportions without leaving out anyone we actually care about.

When The Rings of Power remembers returning with more human (or elven, or dwarven, or whatever) emotions, glimmers of its original charm return. Galadriel may spend too much of this outing obsessing over her shiny new jewels, but she’s still blessed with Clark’s rare ability to generate chemistry with anyone. Durin IV and Disa (Sophia Nomvete) remain the cutest couple JRR Tolkien never invented, and their warmth keeps the existential threats to the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-Dûm grounded in real, relatable sentiment. Surprisingly, the orcs emerge as one of the series’ most compelling factions, thanks in large part to the bittersweet sense of tragedy that underpins their ferocious leader, Adar (Sam Hazeldine, replacing Joseph Mawle).

And as much as I complained The Rings of Power Forget the trees for the vast forests of the Ents, its immensity continues to impress. Its real-world vistas stretch for miles, while its CG environments are awash with otherworldly beauty. Its action scenes, particularly those involving Arondir, can be as graceful as they are brutal. Its horrors seem almost tactile, whether they take the form of undead warriors, Aliensspider nests like those of an insane black slime carefully extricating itself from the depths of the underground. Here and there, it is possible to lose oneself in the pure thrill of being able to admire such incredible spectacles, created with such painstaking care, at such exorbitant costs. All of this? For me? Because, you shouldn't have.

Then those moments go on, because this show has an epic finale to reach, and it can only linger so long before it has to put the chess pieces back in place. Too bad. At its best, television can whisk us right into the action, until its characters' joys or devastations seem indistinguishable from our own. Instead, by prioritizing grand tradition over intimacy and heart, The Rings of Power puts its story behind glass. You’ll see the series’ ambition and its beauty; you’ll come to understand how things happened and why; maybe you’ll even form some ideas about what it all means. But very little of it will feel like something that could reach out and touch you.