“What a great shot!” “Brilliant!” “Hahahahahaha!” “What a line!!!” “Looking cool, actually!” “Incredible banger line!” “Fuck yeah!” “Holy shit!” “Fuck yeah!” “Unreal, dawg!” These are all actual notes I took on this week’s episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I think my overall feelings about it are pretty clear.
Before we do anything else, though, we need to address it: the kiss.
Elrond and Galadriel kiss! Granted, it’s a ruse so he can get close enough to slip her a pin by which she can unlock her cuffs and escape, but for crying out loud, it’s the Lord of Imladris kissing the Lady of the Golden Wood. For these two characters, who for millions of people function as secular saints, this might as well be an X-rated sex scene from Industry. Turns out Elrond and Galadriel, and Robert Aramayo and Morfydd Clark, have some real chemistry — why not set off a reaction, if only just once?
Wit that out of the way, what you’ve got here is a good old-fashioned battle episode, of the sort pioneered by David Benioff, Dan Weiss, George R.R. Martin, and Neil Marshall with Game of Thrones’ Season 2 climax, “Blackwater.” In this case, we’re looking at the Sack of Eregion, as legions of orcs led by Adar attack the huge Elf city in hopes of catching and killing its most unpleasant current resident, Sauron. It’s pretty clear by now that this is all part of Sauron’s plan.
While fireballs rain down from above, siege weapons tear away at the foundations, and a battle with Elrond in command rages all around, the action inside the city is just as tense. Celebrimbor remains trapped in a world of placid illusion created by his trusted pal Annatar, until he notices a flaw or two in its perfection. Coupled with his increasing misgivings about Annatar’s attitude, it’s enough to have him finally ask the big question: Who is this guy, really? Sauron’s reply is biblical in its ominousness: “I have many names.”
As Annatar assumes command of the city, he enslaves Celebrimbor, forcing him to complete the Nine Rings for men under the pretext of creating a lasting peace. He even has a sob story about being tortured by his late overlord, the dark god Morgoth. But Celebrimbor defies the entity and steals the completed Nine after realizing they were made not with mithril, but with Sauron’s illusion-disguised black blood. He entrusts these to Galadriel, who has escaped the clutches of Adar and joined the fray.
There’s a similar power struggle at the top going on in the Dwarf kingdom of Khazad-dûm. Even as Elrond defies his banishment during Season 1 and comes pleading with Prince Durin for aid, the prince is busy planning to overthrow his mad father — with the help of Narvi and his miners, who are as worried about accidentally unleashing the thing clearly lurking deep in the bowels of the mountain as Durin and Disa are.
But when the prince learns his ring-powered father is digging the mine himself after laying waste to Narvi’s men, he has a choice: Send the army to Elrond’s aid as he promised, or keep them in Khazad-dûm to defend his own people against…whatever the hell is going on down there.
And that’s it! Everything ties back to the siege of Eregion. The tight focus makes the material sharper and more vivid.
You want sharper? I transcribed multiple lines in full as I was taking notes, just because I was so impressed with the almost prose-poetry quality of J.D. Payne, Patrick McCay, and Justin Doble’s script. Sauron purring “I have many names,” ooh-whee. Adar growling at Elrond that “My children have endured cruelties your bravest couldn’t bear to hear spoken aloud.” That’s a slapper, friends. Or even Elrond’s steely riposte to Adar’s quip that he’d be more at home with a quill in his hand than a sword: “You’ve never seen me wield either,” he replies, utterly without humor.
Speaking of Elrond, how about actor Robert Aramayo, action hero? Put this guy in cool armor, give him a sword and some aces combat choreography, and voila, he’s an entirely convincing young commander and killing machine. I didn’t see that side of this casting or this performance, as much as I’ve come to like both, until now.
And the battle is bleak. Arondir’s professed desire to commit suicide by orc. Elrond watching in horror as his friend is feathered with arrows just prior to a key mission she successfully pulls of anyway, before being summarily shot down. Sauron using telekinesis to force Celebrimbor to push his chief assistant Mirdania off a battlement, after which he watches in horror as her broken body is split open by an orc’s axe. That massive troll from earlier in the season using orcs as “human” shields, literally, much to the chagrin of Adar’s increasingly restive right-hand orc, Zhor (Kai Martin). It’s an ugly business.
But there’s so much richness to this material, even to the bad guys, who — contrary to complaints you may have read — can remain bad guys while still having human(oid) feelings. We know there’s truth in Adar’s resentment of Sauron and Morgoth for enslaving the orcs; isn’t there also likely some truth in it when Sauron tells Celebrimbor that his relationship with Morgoth was essentially a contest of wills, to see if Sauron could survive all the things Morgoth did to try and break him?
And Celebrimbor, man, what a symphony Charles Edwards is playing. The thing about falling for a destructive scheme is that often some part of you knows you’re being duped, but it’s a risk you’re willing to take, a price you’re willing to pay, because you’re so fixated on the payoff at the end. Sauron used Celebrimbor’s own heart, soul, and skill against him; his psyche was his prison as much as Sauron’s illusions. To see the humbled Elf-lord make such a clean break with this part of himself that he literally slices the thumb off one of his precious, masterful hands to slip free of his chains and stop the madness — well, it’s the boldest thing this show has ever done, and it’s entirely rooted in character and tragedy.
By the way, Celebrimbor absolutely has Sauron’s number, and essentially prophesies the way he’ll be defeated thousands of years hence, when he tells him “You truly are the Great Deceiver: You can deceive even yourself.” Sauron falls, of course, because he believes two false things: First, that his enemies will use the One Ring rather than seek to destroy it, because using it is what he would do; second, that because of this, his position is unassailable and his armies (ultimately) unbeatable. Whoops!
But that’s all in the future. For now, I want to offer a sincere apology to director Charlotte Brändström, whose work handling action I’ve called out as lackluster on both Rings and Shōgun. She sure shut me the hell up, man. This is, I think easily, the most impressive fantasy battle ever staged for television on a show not set in Westeros, and it can hang with some of those bad boys for sure. These kinds of episodes are not easy to put together, and harder still to make look this good, feel this tense. That’s on Brändstöm. So is its sense of scale — the enormity of the city and the forces assailing it, the ceaseless rain of fire, the Elf cavalry shimmering in the sun, vast vistas of destruction, and the sheer number of combatants on both sides, animated as they are by exceptional and visceral combat and fight sequences — makes it look, really and truly, like the most expensive television show ever made, which as far as I know it is.
And now that very expensive television show is also very good. As Elrond lies wounded in the muck, awaiting death and repeating “Durin will come” like a man in deep denial, I’m as anxious as he is (well, in a way) to see what happens in this marvelous season’s final hour.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.