Fire and Blood
Reflections on the final trailer for Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
There was a promise in the final scene of Season 1 of House of the Dragon, as Rhaenyra Targaryen’s son was killed by his uncle’s dragon during a diplomatic mission. As the show’s source material, the Silmarillion-esque Fire and Blood, told us, “And with his death the war of ravens and envoys and marriage pacts came to an end, and the war of fire and blood began in earnest.” But, for various reasons, that promise was not fulfilled by the time Season 2 concluded; the best we got in a season of slow-burn and setup, after an entire first season of setup, was a single battle and a single dragon fight, and a promise that in Season 3, honest to goodness, we would finally get the Dance of Dragons. But thankfully, there’s another TV show that has made some promises. After a solid first season of reintroduction and setup, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has promised us open war, as Sauron (Charlie Vickers) makes his bid for dominance over all Middle-earth; we’ve also been promised more insight into Sauron himself, how the scruffy and charming rogue of Season 1 who turned into a terrifying bully and threat in the finale came to that pass, how his embrace of his dark side would continue, and the consequences for the world that he was trying to bring into “perfect order.” There is every indication, as the press for the second season has continued, that it will deliver upon those promises. But perhaps nothing has done this so starkly as the final trailer for Season 2, released this past Wednesday:
Coming so soon before the official release of the season on August 29, there was a genuine concern that a new trailer would accidentally spoil something major. Especially given how much Amazon has already shared about the show’s story beats (if not specific details) and themOn that score, this final trailer is a masterpiece in advertising. As I summarized in my essay about the teaser and first BTS video back in May: “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.” All that remains true; we know kind of what will happen in Season 2, and ever since then we’ve learned more about the how and why. And there are a few homages to what we know already; we see again Isildur (Maxim Baldry) fighting off monstrous Shelob and her brood of facehuggers, and Arondir (Ismael Cruz-Cordova) and Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) encountering Ents. But never enough to really spoil the show itself; we still don’t know exactly the course of events, the character moments, the decisions they will take, and their immediate consequences. What this trailer has done is to focus our attention squarely upon what will be the central conflict of this season. And in this case, the focus is all upon the central struggle, instigated by the central antagonist of the Second Age: Sauron.
In truth, Sauron has been present in the marketing for Season 2 from the beginning; the very first shot of the teaser was the final scene of Season 1, depicting him descending into Mordor. But this trailer gives us a sense for just how powerful and dangerous he really is. We can still see flashes here and there of our beloved Halbrand, and of the fair Annatar who came until the Elves as an angelic “sharer of gifts.” But these are both shadows of the main “attraction” himself. And he is terrifying. His face is fell and grim; his eyes utterly devoid of pity or mercy; his costume for most of the trailer is black and gold, channeling the black fur and golden collar of his literary forebear Tevildo just as much as his catlike and precise movements do; and he is everywhere. Not only has he embedded himself in Eregion, he’s also gotten into Celebrimbor’s (Charles Edwards) mind; in his black robes, he is seen making a visit to the Dwarvish kingdom of Khazad-Dum, even as he creates in his fireplace in Eregion a vision of the same Balrog awakening in the deep places of the mountains; even in the far east of Rhun, a solitary rider bears a banner with the sigil of the Eye. Sauron is not a god, for all his pretensions, but one can easily see why in later years, Orcs and Men of the East and South would revere and fear him as such.
And for all his talk of order and promises of peace, he brings war and chaos, death and terror, wherever he touches. His presence in Eregion puts the entire realm under a ban, for in contrast to what I had initially thought, Adar (Sam Hazeldine, replacing Joseph Mawle) still harbors a grudge and is willing to settle it with truly overwhelming force. As the barbarians batter at his gates and their siege engines rain down fire upon his people, poor Celebrimbor can only weep as Sauron breaks him down from within. The terrifying Barrow-wights whom Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Arramayo) and their friends encounter in the wilds of Eriador are almost certainly called forth by Sauron, as in the Third Age they were called forth by his lieutenant the Witch-King of Angmar. He may well have some sort of psychic link with that Balrog, and as that demon gnaws at the foundations of Khazad-Dum from below, King Durin III’s (Peter Mullan) sanity ebbs away from above, as the magnificent ring that Sauron gives him eats at his mind and amplifies his greed and paranoia. In the east, his acolytes aren’t just solitary horsemen with flags, but a whole cabal of witches and sorcerers led by Ciaran Hinds’ dark wizard (whom we finally get a good look at in this trailer); it’s a good thing numbers don’t count for everything, because then Nori (Markella Kavenagh), the Stranger (Daniel Weyman), and Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) would be outmatched. It’s as if that line from Revelation has come to life in Sauron this season: “And I saw a pale horse, and its rider was Death, and Hell came with him.”
With such a great enemy, it really feels that resistance is futile. But Galadriel survived him the first time, saving her own soul even if she could not save his, and is determined to try. But she has her hands full. Sauron could not corrupt her heart and soul, but a truly nightmarish shot, teasing Celebrimbor’s eventual fate in the books, shows that he can still get inside her head and show her visions of hell that would unravel a weaker character. Not that she’s safe outside of her mind either, what with her still choosing to be in the thick of the fray. A probable attempt to get Adar to turn aside from ravaging Eregion and refocus his energies on his actual enemy does not go well, as this proud and fearless Amazon ends up in chains and in the same cage that Eowyn was so terrified of; even the haughty and racist Numenoreans didn’t treat Galadriel so. Trammeled from without, haunted from within: it’s harrowing to see even a taste of this, and this is only the trailer. It’s like how I was recently talking with a friend about how, despite having a more conventional and heroic worldview than a property like Watchmen or The Boys, Invincible still feels somewhat cynical, nihilistic and twisted, and not just because of the similarities in its use of vulgar language and gore. Like Galadriel, Mark Grayson/Invincible is unquestionably heroic, unquestionably trying to help others and do the right thing; but he spends an unhealthy amount of time getting absolutely bodied by villains and enemies that are stronger than him, and he is no slouch himself. With Invincible constantly ending up in the hospital, and with the promise of yet more trials and losses for Galadriel, it makes one wonder…what point is there to keeping up the fight if it only results in you getting hurt and the people you’re trying to protect suffering when you fall?
Thankfully she is not alone in her war this time, since despite their misgivings Elrond, High King Gil-galad (Ben Walker), and Cirdan the Shipwright (Ben Daniels, whom we can probably hear warning against the danger of the Three falling into Sauron’s hands) are still committed to the struggle against Sauron; but all three of them seem to have some issues with whether she has been compromised or not. And for all the glory of having singlehandedly reforged the alliance between the Elves and Numenor, that seems so much dross now to us the viewer, as we can see more of how the aftermath of Miriel’s (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) expedition alongside Galadriel is having negative effects. Not only is her cousin Pharazon (Trystan Gravelle) clearly amassing power in his own hands, there’s civil strife, people being rounded up in the streets and brawls in the very throne room during official ceremonies. And this affects the high and the low alike, as we can see Earien (Ema Horvath), Valandil (Alex Tarrant), and Kemen (Leon Waldham) in the thick of things. So, to an extent, Galadriel is still somewhat alone. Somewhat fittingly, since from the beginning Sauron saw that she would be his “chief obstacle and adversary.” And I have faith that she will come out the other side still heroic and inspirational. But it will be a harrowing journey. And not everyone who fights by her side is going to make it to the end of the season alive.
That was all…very bleak, I have to say. It was in keeping with the spirit of this trailer, which is by far the bleakest of all the three trailers that we have so far. And there’s not going to be another trailer to tip the scales back, unless Amazon does what it did last time and releases a trailer for the finale. War is hell; it’s not just bright armor and beautiful banners, flashy swordplay and thundering horses, it’s also death, destruction, “fire and blood” to borrow the motto of the Targaryens. It has to happen from time to time, but we should never kid ourselves about the cost, even for the victors; the Duke of Wellington, the man who finally put down Napoleon once and for all at Waterloo (and whom Elrond actually resembles just a bit) famously said “Next to a battle lost, the saddest thing is a battle won.” This is something that Tolkien understood very well, and Rings of Power has already showed a similar understanding of it with Galadriel dealing with essentially PTSD and, viscerally, the aftermath of the eruption in Episode 7. And this season is going to ram that point home in visceral and heartbreaking detail, especially for those of us who have read the books and know how this phase of the war ends. But in a sense, it is encouraging that war happens. What did Edmund Burke say? “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And it is encouraging that good Elves like Galadriel, Elrond, Gil-galad, Cirdan and Arondir being willing to fight for what is right “against a devouring enemy who will destroy us all.”
Well, we have come full circle, my friends; a circle, almost like a ring, if you will. My very first proper essay about Rings of Power Season 2 was an unexpected one, as I had been wanting to write about something else but the first teaser hit like a thunderclap. And thus is this essay; I was initially going to write about how Sauron’s characterization in Season 1 works, with numerous references to his past as Tevildo the monstrous black cat for International Black Cat Day, but this is more important. Because Season 2 is coming out in just under two weeks. Just under two weeks before we can return to Middle-earth in a beautiful, fully-realized adaptation of Tolkien’s Second Age (meanwhile, we have like four promotional images for War of the Rohirrim, including one that suspiciously channels one of Empire’s images of Galadriel this season, and nothing else; and that movie comes out in December). Getting ready for this season has been almost as much of an adventure as the season itself is promising to be. Are there things about it that I would change? Maybe a few. Would I forgo the adventure itself? Absolutely not. And am I happy and grateful that you, my dear reader, are willing to take this adventure with us? With all my heart. I look forward to this coming season and to experiencing it with you all. For although the promise of this trailer is bleak and deadly, “the Sun yet shines” as one of the songs of the soundtrack promises. And that promise, like the others that the show has made so far and unlike those made by House of the Dragon, has every indication of being fulfilled.
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