The Rings of Power Spoiler Recap: Season 2 Episode 1

I am so thrilled to have The Rings of Power back for Season 2! The first season was fantastic and I’ve been anxious to see how they progress the story. Now as I’m here, researching the lore as I watch the new season, I’m primarily struck by how much the show is speeding up the timeline in comparison to what we know from canon. In general, I don’t think it’s an issue to do so since it would be impossible to coherently cover thousands of years of history in a streaming series, no matter how many seasons we end up getting. The Elves and Wizards certainly wouldn’t age much, but everyone else would and that would be hard to manage on screen. (Though to be fair, Men commonly live several hundred years themselves.) This show is concentrated in the Second Age, which lasted 3,441 years- so that’s quite a lot of time! The first season basically covers years 1000-1200 but they pull a lot of content and characters from later years into this period; for example, Elendil isn’t born until 3119 and Isildur is born in 3209. The One Ring is forged in 1600 and isn’t taken from Sauron by Isildur (as mentioned/seen in The Fellowship of the Ring) until 3441. But enough of the timeline for now- on with the show!

The Elves get the most screen time in the first episode. Season 1 ended with the three Elven rings being forged, so naturally we begin with those rings in this new season. Elrond takes the rings from Celebrimbor and Galadriel to ask King Gil-galad to destroy them, as Elrond fears that the Ring-bearers will be under Sauron’s power. In this scene, I’m very glad to see Galadriel naming Halbrand as Sauron to the two men as well as their commitment to get word to Celebrimbor before any more rings could be made (though that will obviously go wrong later since we know from canon and from the Season 2 trailer that Sauron will disguise himself in order to work with Celebrimbor). Rather than submit the rings to Gil-galad, Elrond jumps into the fast-flowing river (likely the Lhûn) and makes his way to the Grey Havens to ask Círdan for help in destroying the rings. Círdan is an interesting character, as he was one of the first Elves in existence and one of the very last to leave Middle-Earth in the Fourth Age, and it’s likely that he constructed every Elven ship to sail to Valinor. Círdan presents an interesting contrast to Galadriel. When he finally looks upon the rings himself, he understands their power and believes they can be used for good. Thus when he presents the rings to Gil-galad, he gets to be a ring-bearer himself in addition to Gil-galad and Galadriel. But it seems to me that Círdan is the only one of the three most likely to be pure of heart in their desire for the rings. Galadriel openly fights Sauron and any other evil forces, but she herself admits that she has likely slightly turned to darkness in her quest to end it. And Gil-galad is also well-intentioned, but he’s a powerful king with a lot of influence already, and thus likely to be seduced into holding even more power.

For now, the rings have an immediate good effect for the Elves as the mithril in them heals the Great Tree of Lindon, but it will be interesting to see how the show depicts their power. From canon, we know that these three Elves continue to wear the rings until Sauron forges the One Ring; they can feel his influence at this point, and so they do not wear the rings again until Isildur takes the One Ring from Sauron. I’m assuming that the final episode of however many seasons this show has will end with Sauron forging the One Ring, in which case the Elves should continue using the rings throughout the remainder of the show. But if by chance the show continues beyond the point of the forging of the One Ring, perhaps even to Sauron’s downfall at Isildur’s hands, then we could get some compelling drama showing Sauron’s influence on the Elven rings- even if that influence is brief. But with the nature of streaming series these days, I doubt Prime will greenlight enough seasons to get us all the way to Sauron’s downfall. For the immediate future, I’m guessing that the Elven rings will help increase their strength and vigor for any upcoming battles. One last interesting tidbit about the rings: all twenty of the Rings of Power were only visible to Ring-Bearers, i.e. anyone in current possession of one of these rings. In The Lord of the Rings, it’s mentioned that Frodo can see Galadriel’s ring but Sam can only see a light upon her finger. I think the show will have to forego this bit of lore since it may confuse viewers to never see the rings on their fingers, unless perhaps we’re considering that the audience is granted the sight of the Ring-Bearers for viewing purposes.

Sauron is primarily doing some reconnaissance in this episode. We saw at the end of Season 1 that he had traveled to Mordor for a little peek around, and so we opened his scenes this season with him surrendering himself to Adar. Still acting as Halbrand, the long-lost King of the Southlands, he tells Adar that he has important information about Sauron in order to see what kind of resources Adar has and any of his potential plans. He clearly doesn’t want Adar to know his true identity yet, so I’m hoping for an epic reveal later on; despite Sauron being the primary villain, I would love to see the look of defeat on Adar’s face. Although to be fair, Adar isn’t completely evil; he certainly takes no issue with killing Men, but he shows true compassion for the Uruk. Sauron defeating Adar is inevitable, but I imagine that it will elicit complex feelings in viewers. As for the flashback about how Adar defeated Sauron after Morgoth’s death, which was certainly compelling, I will only note that it took Sauron 500 years to regain his power and form according to lore (which doesn’t mention Adar since he’s an original character for the show).

Somewhat predictably perhaps, I’m particularly delighted with the story progression for The Stranger and Nori, as they are essentially our comic relief. The Stranger has still not been officially named, but I think it’s safe to assume that he’s Gandalf. It will be interesting when they do reveal his name though, as Gandalf is not his first or only name. His original name is Olórin, the Elves call him Mithrandir, he is Tharkûn to the Dwarves, and it is the Men of Arnor who call him Gandalf (Arnor doesn’t exist yet in the show). Another huge timeline departure for the show is that Gandalf and the other Wizards aren’t sent to Middle-Earth until after the One Ring is forged. But for now, we can simply delight in his wanderings with Nori, and they are joined at the end of the episode by Poppy. I was worried that she was another magic-user in disguise, which we saw was possible in the first season and because we had already seen someone mysterious following the pair, so I was relieved when she turned out to be herself after all.

The Dwarves, Southlanders, and Númenóreans don’t appear in this first episode but there simply wasn’t time for them! Despite the first three episodes releasing at once this week, I’m keeping myself spoiler-free as I go from one episode to the next, so I can’t wait to directly dive into the next episode!