Eagles and Lovecraft and Rings, Oh My!
Reflections on the Teaser Trailer and Behind-the-Scenes video for Rings of Power Season 2
This is NOT what I had in mind releasing for this week.
To be fair, I did have some inkling that we would be getting some new information about Rings of Power’s second season in May, which is why I was trying to release my S1 retrospective before the Investor’s Call on May 14. But that essay is only half done when news broke like a thunderclap that, a year after first announcing that new Tolkien movies were in the works, WB officially announced The Hunt For Gollum, with Andy Serkis starring and directing, Peter Jackson producing, and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens writing. That was quite the talk of the town, with a lot of opinions. I had…thoughts (spoiler alert, a mix of a little sadness and great confusion towards PJ and company, rising anger towards David Zaslov and the dark underbelly of Tolkien fandom both using this to attack RoP, and cautious hope and optimism), and decided to shelve the RoP retrospective for a bit; after all, it heavily references the Overland Campaign between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee during the Civil War, and that campaign didn't technically end until Grant crossed the James with his army on June 13. So I still had time.
But then THIS happened on Monday:
With that, I knew what I was going to write about. Rings of Power has been so important to my development as a Tolkien enthusiast, it is so good as a show and as an adaptation despite its flaws, it’s been attacked so viciously and so excessively, and there has been so much silence ever since Season 1 received its several Emmy nominations back in July...The silence did not help. Between numerous rumors of all kinds swirling around, some more outrageous than others; Amazon’s utter silence about the show, even while The Boys, Invincible and other properties were getting daily social media posts and Youtube videos; and the dormant hatred for the show that did not require much to awaken (even in some of the discourse surrounding Warner Bros. new bid for power, with a movie about the hunt for Gollum that is basically currently just a twinkle in Andy Serkis and Philippa Boyens’ eyes, a lot of comments compared the producer Peter Jackson to some sort of Tolkien Lisan al Gaib, hailing him as the savior of Middle-earth from the woke vandalism of Rings of Power and wondering why he didn’t tell his own Second Age story…yeah, Rings of Power fans who love the show and believe that it’s a valid subcreation of Tolkien’s work have been wandering in the desert. But no more. Here was hope of an oasis on the horizon.
And I can safely say, this did not disappoint. Ok that’s actually an understatement, my jaw fell all the way to the floor for a couple of minutes.
Eventually I picked it up and started trying to put together my thoughts, but then Amazon went and doubled down:
So…much…to digest. In both these releases. Let’s take a shot at it.
First, one of my patented historical tangents that is part of what makes my particular Tolkien space unique. In addition to everything teased and shown in these two videos, another video has also been rattling around in my head these past two days:
A somewhat odd choice my mind had made, I thought, when I first noticed this trailer’s recurrence in my headspace. But on reflection, it makes some sense. While Napoleon has A LOT more problems as a retelling of Napoleon’s life than does, say, Rings of Power as a dramatization of the Second Age, there is one aspect of the film that I appreciate: namely, its somewhat deconstructive and not entirely flattering depiction of Napoleon himself. Ulysses S. Grant, that other “horse girl” and Commander of the Northern Armies (the other one is of course Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel, Nerwen “of Amazon disposition”), had this to say about the emperor: “I never admired the character of the first Napoleon, but I recognize his great genius.” Short, pithy, and accurate. Even setting aside my own personal biases in favor of the Royal Navy, the Habsburg Monarchy, the fact remains that Napoleon, as Emperor of the French, “fought many wars and slew many men” as he sought to bend Europe, and indeed the world, to his will; estimates of the death toll of the Napoleonic Wars, the period of conflict between 1803-1815, range from 3 to 8 million soldiers and civilians, And these bloody wars were mostly the result of Napoleon’s ambition, his desire to be a new Alexander, Caesar, or Frederick the Great, his hunger for power for himself and for his family, and just a sheer love of battle. But, for all this death, there were depths to which even this son of the French Revolution would not sink. He has a lot of red on his ledger, but at least he need not answer for anything like the September Massacres, the judicial murder of kings, the Reign of Terror, the Cult of Reason, or the near-genocidal war to punish the Royalist and Catholic freedom fighters of the Vendee. Indeed, when comparing the career of Napoleon to the French Revolution, one could almost say that the Emperor “never reached the same stage of nihilistic madness” that typified the Revolution at least from the Assault on the Tuileries of August 10, 1792; Napoleon “did not object to the existence of the world so long as he could do what he liked with it.”
Even if, at the end of the day, Napoleon was still the enemy. Just as Sauron (Charlie Vickers), even if while not as nihilistic and destructive as Morgoth, is still the enemy. He may not want to destroy the world just because he didn’t create it, but dominating the world? That’s something he is more than capable of attempting to do, all in the name of “saving” it. And that is something he is very clearly going to be doing this season.
Yep, it’s true. We knew this already, after the finale of Season 1. But there’s no doubt now. Sauron has indeed returned. And, as Saruman said in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, “He is gathering all evil to him.” Orcs innumerable, complete with siege engines and trolls; no longer are they out to merely raid and harrass and dig tunnels, now we are talking about conquest and domination. Somehow, Adar (Sam Hazeldine, replacing Joseph Mawle), despite having tried to kill Sauron, has reconciled himself to being his lieutenant. The forests are sick with oozy and diseased and creepy Lovecraftian horrors well in keeping with the more horrific elements of Tolkien’s legendarium, like the Barrow-wights and the horror of Shelob. Sauron may not have his One Ring or his dark tower of Barad-Dur (more on that later), but he has truly come back to Middle-earth and is going to try to realize his hope to “save” the world.
But thankfully, he will not be able to do so without a fight; Galadriel is still very much in the field. But a little differently this time. As Morfydd herself puts in in the BTS, “Galadriel’s being driven by a bigger purpose…she’s once again become more connected with Middle-earth and the people in it.” While there always was a strong element of the bigger picture and of the greater good in her singleminded crusade against Sauron last season, it had to coexist with her trauma, her sorrow, and her righteous anger against the Enemy and his minions who had taken her husband and brother from her and were still trying to corrupt Middle-earth. No longer; finally, the more altruistic and genuinely holy element’s of Galadriel’s crusade are asserting their rightful place in her motivations. And Galadriel’s sense of duty still calls her to play a leading role; be it as an Amazon wearing her hair in a golden crown, as Tolkien described her to Catharine Findlay, or as a courtier receiving unwelcome news that Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) has had an “unexpected…visitor”; or as one of the bearers of the first three Rings of Power, alongside High King Gil-galad (Ben Walker) and Cirdan the Shipwright (one of the mightiest of the Sindar, a master shipbuilder, Gil-galad’s foster-father, and absent from Season 1 but promised us in this season), Galadriel is going to be busy this season.
And another key difference is that this time, Galadriel is not alone. Not only has she somehow managed to reconcile with Gil-galad (who had actively tried to send her off to Valinor in a kind of exile in the last season); she’s also managed to secure her friendship with Elrond (Robert Aramayo). In the finale of Season 1, there was clearly some tension between the two of them as Galadriel, still in a state of shock and sorrow over Sauron finally revealing himself and trying to win her to his side, was not entirely forthcoming with Elrond concerning his identity; she didn’t lie, but just as she did to Melian back in the First Age concerning the Flight of the Noldor and the Kinslaying, she didn’t tell him everything. And Elrond figured out much quicker than Melian did that Galadriel was holding some things close to the chest. Clearly at some point in this season, Galadriel has come clean, and Elrond has chosen to keep faith with her. To the point that, as we can see here, he’s even willing to fight at her side, both in the halls of power in Lindon (we have one shot in the BTS video where he and Galadriel, in formal court dress, are winding their way through the golden trees and past the royal guards) and in the dark forests against some of those eldritch horrors that Sauron has called forth.
And not just in an informal, ranging sort of war. We are teased here the Elrond who called himself the “Herald of Gil-galad” at the Council, and who was given command of the army that the High King sent out to relieve Eregion. Here we can see two things, one that I’m not so crazy about, and one that I love. One the one hand, I'm not that crazy about is the design for the armor of the Lindon Elves. It looks a little…cheap, and derivative of PJ designs, when I actually favored the more "real world" designs we were teased in the Wars of Beleriand and Galadriel's Gothic armor. Especially when that armor looked as though it could have been featured in a Graham Turner painting of the Wars of the Roses (which can’t really be said for a lot of the armor that we see in purportedly “historical” retellings of this period of time. But, on the other hand, look closely at that banner flying behind him in the shot below. Doesn’t that look like a derivative of Gil-galad's sigil, you know, something drawn by Tolkien but that doesn’t appear in either the Appendices or the main text of the Trilogy and therefore needed some extra research to visualize?
Conversely, we also see a visual motif inspired by the Jackson films that I actually like. It concerns Celebrimbor, who definitely seems to get several opportunities to regret his life choices. This scene right here evokes one of the more inspired choices from shudder the Hobbit movies. See, one of the areas where PJ backed himself into a corner in the original trilogy is how he chose to depict Sauron perched atop Barad-dur as half flaming red eye, half searchlight; even though Sauron in the books, although it took him centuries after the Last Alliance, did have an actual physical body (less one finger, according to Gollum). Luckily, in The Hobbit movies, in particular a climactic scene against Gandalf in The Desolation of Smaug and then another against the White Council in The Battle of Five Armies, PJ found a way to reconcile these two depictions of Sauron. He does have a physical body, evoking his armored, monstrous form in the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring, but it is surrounded by fire. Look closely, and it is clear that Sauron is an actual body albeit wreathed in flame; but from a distance, it definitely does look like a flaming eye. And, in one shot of the trailer, Celebrimor is clearly looking upon the latter. What he will see a few seconds later, we do not yet know.
In general, Celebrimbor doesn’t seem to be having a good time. One of the last shots of the trailer is him and his household guards confronting Sauron at sword-point, and it looks as though he may be missing a hand. And earlier on, we have this scene of him looking distressed as he casts multiple rings into a fire. Whether these represent early essays into ringmaking that did not meet expectations, or an act of remorse and an attempt to deny these rings to Sauron, we don’t yet know.
One ring that is not being destroyed is this one, which has come into the hands of Durin III of Khazad-Dum (Peter Mullan). Now whether this Ring will end up causing problems for the Dwarvish kingdom (at one point in the trailer, a massive stone falls from the ceiling and badly damages a major causeway), or whether claiming this ring is King Durin trying to rectify problems already afflicting his realm, we don’t yet know.
One thing is for sure…Durin III will, at least initially, not be asking for help from his estranged son, also named Durin (Owain Arthur), who, as per the BTS video, has not only suffered the loss of his position, but also has had his pride and self-esteem take a massive hit. Let us remember, in the penultimate episode of season 1 his collar, an outward sign of his station, had been physically ripped off his neck by his father; the last best hope for the Elves was sealed off; and his wife Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) was frustrated enough that she was starting to sound suspiciously like Lady MacBeth. But it does appear that Durin IV recovers his moxie at some point in the season. Indeed, the first spoken words in the teaser are him giving a speech telling of “an evil, ancient and powerful” having returned, and the BTS video includes a scene of him exhorting his people to fight. This, then, is the payoff for his beautiful friendship with Elrond last season. We know from Unfinished Tales that when he rode out at the head of an army to relieve Eregion, Elrond was caught out by Sauron’s far larger horde and would have been destroyed, had not a host of Dwarves from Khazad-Dum struck Sauron in the flank. In that tale, Galadriel had a big part to play in assembling that relief force, which contained not only Dwarves but Nandorin Elves from Lorinand; in the show’s timeline, it is probable that Durin’s fraternal relationship with Elrond is what inspires the Dwarves to march out with their axes, their scale shirts, and their fearsome masks.
There are other kingdoms in turmoil and trouble too. By far the mightiest and most powerful is the island realm of Numenor, where it seems that everyone is in some state or another of confusion and disquiet. There’s Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) who has at least for now lost her sight in the aftermath of the catastrophic eruption of Mount Doom in Episode 6; in the finale, she’s also lost her father, King Tar-Palantir, and is now herself Queen Regnant of Numenor. Now more than ever, she’s going to have to rely on her cousin, the chancellor Pharazon (Trystan Gravelle); but that may not be as sound a course as it used to be. This season almost certainly will see Pharazon accelerating his transformation into “the mightiest tyrant the world had ever seen.” For one thing, he’s changed his clothes; no longer does he wear blue and green, the pacific colors of trade, exploration and peace, now he’s wearing a martial and imperialistic red. And would a man as grey as S1 Pharazon draw a sword in the presence not only of his court, but before a Messenger from Manwe himself? Which brings up two questions: if this Great Eagle is in fact a messenger from Manwe, what message is he bringing? And what impact is his presence at Armenelos going to have on the psyche of the proud, xenophobic and agnostic Numenoreans?
One person who is proud, but not xenophobic or agnostic, is Elendil (Lloyd Owen). In what is becoming a recurring theme of this essay, he does not seem to be having a very good day either. And why would he? His son Isildur (Maxim Baldry) presumably died in the same cataclysm that caused Miriel to go blind; he is estranged from his other son Anarion, mentioned by name last season but never seen and implied to be in self-imposed exile in the western part of Numenor; he’s found his ancient faith again, but the way is still dark and uncertain; and that will almost certainly deepen his devisions with his daughter Earien (Ema Horvath), who was never particularly warm to either the cause of the Faithful or to Numenor going off on a grand little military adventure. And the fact that Isildur did not come back from said fiasco
Of course, we know that Isildur is not dead. For one thing, he still has to save a fruit of the White Tree, cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand, and die as a tragic hero at the Disaster of the Gladden Fields. For another…here he is.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but he’s not having a good day either. And it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Because in addition to hordes of orcs that have to be evaded, there’s a good chance that he’ll be running into the eldritch horror of the giant spider Shelob. When Fellowship of Fans first proposed this rumor last spring, the collective reaction was bewilderment, shock, confusion, and some flashbacks to how those Shadow of Mordor games depicted her as a sexy woman of the night. From what we can see in the BTS video, it would seem that the show is going to stick with a more…traditional interpretation of Shelob. Not only do we see Isildur wandering around in tunnels with weird things hanging from the ceiling, we also see him coming face to face with an orc who’s wrapped neck to toe in what looks like webbing. And as if we didn’t have enough proof:
Luckily, it looks like Isildur won’t be playing the role of a little fly. In the trailer we see him out in the woods, not in the caverns of the Mountains of Shadow. And he has made, or is just about to make, a most valuable friend:
Not that Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) is having, wait for it, a particularly good time either. In the BTS video we see him standing before a funeral pyre, holding the torch which he probably used to light it. And Ismael says something very ominous: “The darkness did reach him; he’s received the biggest blow to his spirit thus far.” What, exactly is he talking about? Did something terrible happen to the love of his life Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi)? That would seem to be the most logical explanation for why, in this scene in the trailer, Theo (Tyroe Mufahidin) is looking so devastated in this scene in the trailer. That’s a possibility that has haunted us ever since we first heard the hauntingly beautiful strains of Bronwyn and Arondir’s theme in the S1 soundtrack, with its undercurrent of tragedy. Who’s to say at this point?
And speaking of show-original characters…where are the Harfoots, that unexpected race of proto-hobbits? Fairly absent. With one exception: Markella Kavenagh’s Nori Brandyfoot. Who, despite what Markella herself might say about being excited to be part of Middle-earth, is probably wishing right now that she had stayed “on trail.”
How did her decision to be The Stranger’s (Daniel Weyman) traveling companion and guide to Middle-earth result in her trying out for a role in 2024’s Twisters? And what will we learn about the Stranger himself? Will we finally figure out whether he’s actually Gandalf in his Valinorean name of Olorin, one of the Blue Wizards, or perhaps even an original Istar? And what sorts of dangers will they encounter in the far east of Rhun? There are shots of more Lovecraftian horrors that, by their color-palate, look like they are set in the East; will there be encounters with other servants of Sauron, or will the three Mystics who vanished in a cloud of moths once the Stranger revealed his full power in the last season’s finale be back in some form? And will this whole subplot involve the wider story at all, or will it be another merry adventure disconnected from the wider world?
So…
So much to think about. So many things to look forward too. We actually have a sense of the story this season is going to tell. In contrast to how the first teaser released at Super Bowl LVI basically showed us…maybe not nothing, but precious little, we know from these two videos a bit of what will happening. Sauron is back; the Noldor will be assembling their waning might to try and fight him off; both Numenor and Khazad-Dum have issues that they have to work through inwardly before they can project their power outwardly; Isildur will be threading through numerous terrors and making new friends before he can finally arrive home; Nori and the Stranger will be doing things. Charlie Vickers is clearly having the time of his life actually being evil rather than trying to hide behind the Halbrand disguise; Sam Hazeldine seems to be a worthy successor to Joseph Mawle; although Galadriel’s role has changed this season, Morfydd Clark was still made to play Nerwen “of Amazon disposition”; Peter Mullan’s Durin III seems be having a much bigger role this season. Of course we have questions still. Where is Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband who supposedly died in the Wars of Beleriand but whom she still loves and is almost certainly not dead? On a similar fashion, where is the rest of the House of Elendil, specifically Anarion and Elendil’s father Amandil? How does Sauron manage to “worm his way” back into Eregion; is Galadriel absent when he returns, or did Celebrimbor simply ignore her in his greed and ambition? Will the Balrog teased last season show up, and if so will he destroy the entire kingdom of Dwarves or just the current king? What happened to Berek, Isildur’s beloved horse who opted to stay behind in Middle-earth and seek out his lost master? Will Isildur be able to come home this season? What exactly is the deal with Big Birb? And for that matter, what is going on with all those eldritch horrors which I barely even touched upon? So many questions, and so many of us are eagerly looking forward to the answers.
Yes, we are, Isildur. Not that, we ever left, so long as we have access to the books. But seeing those printed pages being brought to life is always something special. And this season premieres this August. We don’t need to wait until Christmas for War of the Rohirrim, or until 2026 for the Gollum movie (assuming David Zaslov doesn’t cancel the movie for a tax break). Middle-earth will be coming back to our screens this summer. And this teaser trailer, and the BTS video, have given us a lot of hope and excitement and optimism. Let us hope that Amazon continues to build the hype and get a lot more people excited to experience Tolkien’s legendarium in this fashion.