RECAP: “The Rings of Power” Season 2, Episode 7
First, apologies for the lack of an Episode 6 recap; I was traveling and didn’t seem worthwhile to post one days after the episode dropped.
But second, I also consider the past two episodes one mega-episode. Episode 6, “Where Is He?,” was the preamble to the siege of Eregion, and Episode 7, “Doomed to Die,” saw the battle (largely) take place. Almost all the action was centered on Eregion, or on nearby Khazad-Dum, which is now being pulled into the conflict.
There were moments in both of these episodes that I thought were terrific. Just as the birth of Mordor in Season 1 had me feeling like I could be watching a movie, there were moments in this episode in particular that were also incredibly cinematic. Unfortunately there was also some less-than-convincing battle choreography, some sloppy/cheap narrative choices, and some lazy camera work that pulled me out of the fantasy more than once.
Read on for my take on “Rings of Power” Season 2, Episodes 7, “Doomed to Die.” There’s a whole bunch of spoilers here, so don’t read if you don’t want to know what happens!
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I’ll break this down by character arc, from least essential to most.
ARONDIR
The Sisyphus of “The Rings of Power,” elven warrior Arondir has caught up to the Orc army just in time to help free Galadriel (more on that in a minute). He has what appears to be a clean shot at taking out Adar at the Orc encampment, but Galadriel stops him, because taking his shot then would mean his certain death. …How? Exactly? Adar was unaware of Adar presence like 30 feet away, and he could have put an arrow right through that guy’s skull. Is the argument that, If he misses, he’s dead, or Even if he kills Adar, he’ll be swarmed by Orcs? Because that was going to happen on the field of battle regardless. So strange.
Arondir heeds Galadriel’s words and joins the embattled elves defending the walls of Eregion, loosing many an arrow. When the mountain troll (I think? The troll we saw show up to Adar’s camp much earlier this season) is finally brought in to finish the wall, he and Elrond team up to take it down. (I thought the horse death in that scene was unnecessary, as was the horse getting its throat slashed earlier in the episode — we understand the stakes, elves and orcs are dying everywhere — did we need the violence against animals, show?)
And then on the field of battle Arondir finds himself face to scarred face with Adar, his longtime enemy, and ONCE AGAIN gets punked by Adar. Arondir gets in a few licks but Adar really beats the shit out of him, including inflicting what seems to be a pretty nasty wound to Arondir’s gut. This is at least the second time that Arondir has confronted his personal Big Bad, and both times that bad guy has won decisively. Baby, you don’t got it. You don’t GOT it. I’m not sure what the narrative thought process is behind throwing this guy at his enemy over and over again and getting humiliated, but it’s not a particularly compelling story arc.
I know that the actor playing Arondir, Israel Cruz Cordova, has experienced a tremendous amount of online harassment over his character. I wonder if perhaps this will ultimately be the end of this character. I wouldn’t blame him.
GALADRIEL
As we move into the final episodes of Season 2, I think we have to acknowledge that this has been a terrible season for Galadriel. In Season 1 she was a badass who was relentless in her pursuit of Sauron, arguably our point character for the whole series (acknowledging that it is without question an ensemble cast). This season she is a mess, and has spent a good portion of it either helpless or captured.
I get that Galadriel’s spirit has been cratered after being used by Sauron/Halbrand in Season 1. I get that she is in the doghouse with most of the elves, especially Elrond. But she just seems so…pathetic for most of this season, that it’s sometimes difficult to believe it’s the same character.
Galadriel is rescued — once again — by Elrond, who slips her lockpick while also slipping her the tongue. (It’s a little bonkers that Adar would allow Elrond a “private moment” with Galadriel, especially given that she pulled a hidden weapon on him when they first met, but I guess we’ll just go with it.) After doing a truly terrible job of camoflauging herself in the Orc camp, Galadriel escaped to Eregion with Arondir. There she had a key conversation with Celebrimbor — again, more on him below — and was set on her next path, spiriting the 9 human power rings away from Sauron. Something tells me that’s not going to work out great for her.
DURIN IV
This storyline is both super interesting, and a mess.
Durin and Disa are guarding the deep mines from King Durin’s miners, convinced that there is a serious threat below that has been awakened by the Dwarves’ digging (they’re right). The King orders even more Dwarves to remove Durin and Disa…but they turn heel and instead join forces with them, deeply concerned that the power ring has turned King Durin into a monster.
Just as this is going down, Elrond shows up on the doorstep of Khazad-Dum to ask his old friend Prince Durin to marshal a Dwarf army to assist the Elves in defending Eregion, specifically mentioning that Sauron is absolutely involved with the rings and everything is going pear shaped. Even though Prince Durin is on the precipice of overthrowing his own father, he is moved by Elrond’d pleas and promises to rally his troops and meet the Elves on the field of battle the following morning.
The next thing we see, Prince Durin is delivering an impassioned speech to the people of Khazad-Dum, explaining why they MUST assist the elves in this battle. And the people all cheer in response. What exactly was King Durin doing during this? One of the secondary dwarves later mentions that King Durin attacked his men and fled into the mines. Was King Durin being held hostage? Why was all of this taking place off screen? It’s kind of a major plot point to be communicated via third party.
The last we see of Prince Durin, he is ready to march out to war with his army, when he is informed that his father is loose, crazy, and heading deep into the mines with his ax. He is given a clear choice: Help Elrond and the elves against Sauron, or potentially lose Khazad-Dum forever to his insane father’s greed. Boomers, am I right?
ELROND
This was really Elrond’s episode, as he was all over the place — quite literally, he was popping up all over the map — leading the Elven forces in defense of Eregion. Maybe I’m remembering things wrong, but I don’t recall Elrond being regarded as some incredible warrior. I feel like he was characterized in the first season as an elf who focused more on wisdom and diplomacy than on his sword. And yet, he’s out there hacking and whacking at Orcs on the battlefield like he’s Jaime Lannister. I don’t know.
After leading a charge of the Elven troops on horseback, and then calling it off on a dime when Adar revealed that Galadriel was his captive, Elrond parlayed with Adar in the Orc encampment. Adar wanted Galadriel’s ring, Elrond said he didn’t bring it with him.
Even though both parties are trying to stop Sauron, there seemed to be no chance of them working together. And the parlay ended with Elrond making an oddly worded threat to Adar, and Elrond slipping Galadriel a lockpick tool to free herself. He then whisked off to Khazad-Dum to meet with Prince Durin. And then finally he ended up back at the field of battle, leading a troop of Elves against the Orcs.
I’m sure these battle sequences are very challenging to film, but there were some comically bad swordfighting shots — like, community-theater-level sword jabs — which climaxed in a female elf we have never met before, suddenly getting called by name by Elrond, who assured her that her bow could turn the tide of the battle. Annnnnnnd then she got turned into a pin cushion by archers from…every direction? What? And then of course this newly named elf did loose one fire arrow to blow up the Orc siege machine, but it was all…so clumsy. So obviously handled. As soon as Elrond called this character by name, I knew she was going to die. I don’t know who they thought they were fooling.
The episode ended with a horde of screaming Orcs descending upon the remaining dozen or so Elven troops outside the shattered wall of Eregion, as daylight was breaking. (Sidebar: Orcs are now fine in the daylight? Wasn’t that the whole point of creating Mt. Doom, to create a permanent cloud over Mordor so they could exist without daylight?) Elrond yelled excitedly to look to the North, as the Dwarves were coming! Except, they weren’t. One lone rider came down the hill, shot full of arrows, bearing the grim tidings: “The Dwarves aren’t coming. Durin has recalled the army. They’re not coming.” Elrond descended into almost a catatonic state, knowing that his failed gambit very likely could doom every elf he brought with him — including High-King Gil-Galad, who popped up at the end all, Hey guys, ‘sup? And then Adar himself descended up on Elrond, fucked him up some more, and grabbed Galadriels ring of power from the chain around Elrond’s neck. You guys are pretty terrible at this.
ADAR
For all my complaints about the battle sequences this episode, there were some terrific elements, most of them on Adar’s side. When Adar was initially introduced in Season 1, I didn’t find him particularly compelling. He was giving off-brand Sauron to me, which was actually completely wrong. I was impressed with the Mt. Doom gambit that he executed toward the end of S1 (although I’m not clear on who was the initial architect of that — was it Adar, or some other force?). Over the course of Season 2 I’ve come to respect him even more. Adar is kind of a badass, and I find his relationship with the Orc army fascinating.
He’s also a brilliant tactician. After flinging stones at Eregion as a first strike, he changed strategies to deal with the rivers protecting the city — he armed his trebuchets at the cliffs surrounding the waters and broke off huge chunks of rocks to dam the river, allowing his troops easy passage to Eregion. That’s…awesome. And a cool sequence that I wish we could have seen more of — I don’t think we really saw the rivers draining, just the giant boulders crashing into the river.
I’ve seen some complaints that this season is working too hard to humanize the Orcs, especially via the Adar “father” relationship. I have zero problem with that. Antagonists are ALWAYS more compelling if you see where they’re coming from. Think of Magneto and the X-Men. Think of Thanos trying to bring balance to the universe. Orcs are social outcasts who mostly want to live in peace in the dark and the squalor. Sure, they need to kill things (and people) to live, but on the whole they have no interest in engaging with other creatures. Adar’s goal was to give his people a homeland and protect them, and he knows that Sauron — should he rise to power again — would almost certainly enslave the Orcs as his personal army, as he tried to do in the flashback in S2E1.
Of course, the issue here is that in order to STOP Sauron, he is losing huge swaths of his Orc army against the Elves. HIs second-in-command has begged several times for his crusade to stop, and even Galadriel warned that Sauron wants Adar and the Orcs at that place at that time so that he can steal the army for himself. Adar has become both a serious threat, and a dramatically tragic figure — he is unknowingly giving his enemy exactly what he wants. His arc is one of my favorites on the show.
CELEBRIMBOR & ANNATAR/SAURON
The main crux of the issue is the total unraveling of the Celebrimbor/Annatar relationship, as the Elven smith realizes that he has been held in some kind of psychic thrall, and calls out his captor for being exactly who he is.
I think a lot of viewers find the Celebrimbor arc this season to be unbelievable. He was warned to not trust Halbrand from the very start of the season, and there’s no question that he was increasingly finding “Annatar” and his requests questionable. Why would he go along with any of this? Is he truly so stupid?
As I’ve said in previous blogs, they established early on that one of Sauron’s greatest powers is that once he has access to your mind, he holds sway over you in perpetuity. He is also known as The Great Deceiver for a reason — his Deception modifier is off the scale, and manipulation is his actual superpower.
I think they’ve done a fairly good job this season building layer after layer of lie and manipulation over not only Celebrimbor, but the forge staff. Is it still illogical that Celebrimbor would make the 9 human rings after being presented with the possibility that the 7 Dwarven rings were corrupted? Yes, illogical — but not inexplicable. At that point, Celebrimbor’s mind was fully in Sauron’s thrall, and Sauron had convinced him that it was Celebrimbor’s deception to Gil-Galad that actually tainted the Dwarf rings. He felt tremendous responsibility, and tried to set things right.
This episode, Celebrimbor — through some solid Perception checks — realizes that what he is seeing is not reality. And after he realizes that his city is under siege, and his beloved forge has been destroyed, calls out Sauron in front of the guards and Mirdania, his second-in-command whose point I was still trying to figure out until this episode. Sauron had already gotten the rest of the Eregion citizens under his sway, and in a brutal moment of “fridge-ing” we found out the purpose for Mirdania — another “known character” death to serve as a plot device. Because Sauron makes it seem that Celebrimbor pushes her off the city walls, where the awaiting Orcs kill her brutally. That’s…not great.
So Celebrimbor, now shackled to his workbench, is forced to finish the 9 human rings for Sauron, who will use them to bring “a lasting peace.” Which, in a way, is true. It’s just, you know, evil winning. Celebrimbor also makes a horrifying discovery: the “mythril” bits he had been blending into the human rings was in fact Sauron’s dark blood. Basically, Sauron HIMSELF is in these rings, which explains why they have a connection to the unseeing world, and are even more potent in their power over the wearers.
There are a few stalemate moments in which Celebrimbor attempts to escape, including nearly getting blown up by flaming rocks not once but TWICE, and even cutting off his own thumb to escape his shackles. Ultimately he takes the 9 — after trying and failing to destroy them in the fire, which I’ve seen people complain makes no sense given the “fire it was forged” in line, but that was specifically for the One Ring forged by Sauron; these were made by Celebrimbor and the rules may be totally different — and gives them to Galadriel, who promises to take them far away from Sauron. Good luck, lady!
Are you enjoying Season 2 more than Season 1? Leave your takes in the comments!