Whirlwind
Reflections of The Rings of Power Season 2: Episode 7
“It is well that war is so terrible, or else we would grow too fond of it.”—Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee may have spent the entire American Civil War seeing to replicate Napoleon’s feats at Austerlitz, Jena or Friedland, but he could not have had a more different idea of what war truly was than the French Emperor. Napoleon would have watched Ambrose Burnside throwing line after line of Union troops at Marye’s Heights outside Fredericksburg in 14 brave but bloody assaults, and made his pithy comment about not interrupting your enemy when he’s making a mistake; Lee saw the same beauty, the same banners and glistening bayonets, and the same bloodshed, and sorrowfully said the quote above.1 In this understanding of war, its beauty and necessity mingled with its grief and horror, Lee and Tolkien would have understood each other, even if they probably agreed on almost nothing else. And we get a powerful, if somewhat unorthodox, depiction of this reality in Episode 7 of The Rings of Power Season 2. Adar’s (Sam Hazeldine) “Great Heathen Army”, after a destructive bombardment of Ost-in-Edhil, has just begun its assault, and despite hails of arrows from the defenders they’ve dammed the river that formed the city’s moat and have reached the base of the walls. Suddenly horns sound in the distance, clear Elvish horns; High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) has come with a relief force. The honor of leading the first charge falls to Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and it is a glorious sight: at least two thousand Elvish knights in silver steel, with white horses, couched lances and blue banners, in a flying wedge straight out of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But Adar may well have been at the catastrophic Battle of Unnumbered Tears of the First Age, for his next trick is worthy of that disaster; the curtain falls, so to speak, and reveals Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) in a cage, chained up like an animal, with an orc’s spear drawing blood from her throat. And the charge grinds to a screeching halt. In a way, it’s worse than if they’d ended up in a ditch, or broken by arrows like the French at Crécy; this is more subtle, more personal, more cruel. War can be like that, no matter how many people get killed or maimed.
But thankfully, Adar was only using Galadriel as a glorified flag of truce, so she is safe for now. Unfortunately this is the only good thing that’s happened so far. Even Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) finally snapping out his living nightmare (thanks in no small measure to the little mouse who in Episode 6 was a mark of things going to shambles, but here is his lifeline to sanity) is negated by the fact that it happens too late; the city is already burning, his workshop is already full of rubble, and literally nobody believes him that Annatar (Charlie Vickers) is Sauron. And while Sauron is still doing his best to keep up the facade for everyone else, with Celebrimbor the mask is finally off. At last his face is harder and devoid of pity; at last he allows himself to roar like a demon when under stress or trying to prove a point; at last he pays back Mirdania (Amelia Kenworthy) for daring to touch his arm once too often by telekinetically throwing her off the walls to her death and pinning it on Celebrimbor.2 And yet even now, the gaslighting continues. Because as we learn later, none of this is really Sauron’s fault: it’s all Morgoth, whose reward for his mightiest servant was apparently a crushing serving of emotional and mental abuse just for the fun of it. Which does make perfect sense. Remember how terrified Sauron was in the First Age when Luthien threatened to send him back to Morgoth as a disembodied spirit if he didn’t surrender Tol-in-Gaurhoth to her and Huan? That speaks to the relationship between them as having a lot of emotional and mental damage. And yet, Sauron chose not to break the cycle but to perpetuate it. He’s done this with Adar, breaking him and remaking him into a singleminded brute consumed by a desire for Sauron even if he believes he is the only one who can destroy him. Although Galadriel resisted Sauron and saved her soul in the finale of Season 1, the experience, how close she came to losing everything, clearly haunts her, has traumatized her, and has led her to stumble. And now his victim is Celebrimbor, who becomes in this telling the architect of his own misfortune and joins the long list of people whom Sauron blames for being the sort of person he is. A list that, of course, conspicuously excludes Sauron himself.
Of course, in the grand scheme of Sauron’s plan, not everyone is as useful a participant as others. Elrond, for instance. His forces might be dying, which contributes to Sauron’s hope of bleeding white any Elvish army strong enough to challenge his prospective host (once he takes care of its current leader somehow); but they’re selling themselves dearly. The orc camp is momentarily breached, five siege engines are destroyed, and although the riverbed resembles the Mule Shoe or the Somme, any progress towards storming the walls of Ost-in-Edhil has been checked. At the brink of the wall’s collapse under the pressure of a “Ravager,”3 Rian (Selina Lo), at the cost of her own life, destroys it with a single well-placed fire arrow. Even Adar’s weapon of last-resort, the monstrous hill-troll Damrod, is eventually taken down by Elrond and others working together. And Elrond knows something Adar doesn’t; before the Elves arrived on the field, he had made a visit to Khazad-Dum to beg his old friend Prince Durin (Owain Arthur) for help. Durin does not disappoint; leaving behind Disa (Sophia Nomvete) and Narvi (Kevin Eldon) to hold the mine against King Durin III’s (Peter Mullan) madness, he gives the rest of the kingdom a rousing speech that proves he is indeed a mighty Dwarven king, “terrible as an army with banners”, and virtually as a nation the Dwarves rally to his cause. All Elrond has to do is hold out one more night. On the other end of the spectrum is Adar, so broken even in his might that he willingly sends his orcs to their deaths rather than see them become Sauron’s slaves. So expensive is this battle proving that Glug (Robert Strange), who’s clearly taken to heart Galadriel and Elrond’s warnings about how Adar is playing right into Sauron’s hands, begs his father to sound the retreat. But by now, it’s too late; Adar can only see red, can only imagine how if he tries hard enough, he can break Sauron’s plan even as he willfully persists in carrying it out. “I love you with all that is left of my heart,” he tells Glug, and we can believe him as he weeps for the dead orcs being burned on funeral pyres; but what happened to the rest of his heart? It is Sauron’s now, alas.
Adar may be too far gone to the darkness, but there are yet people who have broken the cycle of abuse, who prove Sauron accidentally right when he told Celebrimbor all the way back in Episode 5: “When the darkness falls, there are always some who rise forth and shine.” One of these is Celebrimbor himself. He had showed a spark of real gumption4 back in Episode 6, when at the first ringing of the tocsin he was quite willing to physically shove “Annatar” aside so he could see to the city’s defenses. That was then. But the spark had not been extinguished. Even as he labors in chains and under the eye of Sauron, Celebrimbor can see things clearly probably for the first time in weeks, even to the point of calling out Sauron himself for his gaslighting and excuses. And all it takes is Sauron stepping away for just one moment for Celebrimbor to finally show his quality. The nearly-complete Nine are cast into the fire; whether that did anything is unclear, but they’re looking much less shiny and bleed silver dust when Celebrimbor draws them from the forge. How to keep them out of Sauron’s hands so he won’t repair them? Celebrimbor has to get out of his chains, but his thumb is getting in the way, so he takes a page from his uncle Maedhros’s book and cuts it off5; one can only imagine how huge a deal this is for a smith whose hands have wrought such beauty in the past. He’s not out of the woods yet; getting out of the workshop is one thing, but the bombardment is still ongoing, and one near-miss knocks him all the way to the ground level; his first sight when he recovers are his guards lead by Malendol (Simon Haines), still under Sauron’s influence and getting ready to take him back to the workshop. But just when all hope seems lost, another light blazes forth, as a clear voice rings out: “Release him! That is Celebrimbor, greatest of Elven-smiths…the true Lord of Eregion!”
In truth, this light has been shining for some time now. After that horrifying reveal, Galadriel starts out as something of a background extra as Adar threatens to put her head on a pike unless Elrond gives up Nenya, but she moves into the foreground as the latter comes to bid her farewell. As he asks forgiveness, with the old kindness of summer coming back to a face that has missed it, she gives it; there’s only a single word, “Win”, but her eyes tell a whole story. Thankfully, Adar’s sense of the theatrical and the speed of the Elves’ renewed assault means that after Elrond leaves her with a kiss6 and a brooch with a pin, she has plenty of time to pick the lock on her chains and make her escape. Things get a little dicey as on the outskirts of the orc camp she is accosted by three orcs, but Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) has been lurking ever since the battle began and saves her. She returns the favor as Arondir is almost ready to throw his life away in an attempt to get revenge on Adar7, by turning him aside from the path of vengeance and, with softness and real gentleness, persuades him to go instead to where he can help others, preserve Elven honor, and continue the legacy of Bronwyn of putting others before self; and later in the battle, Elrond and Gil-galad benefit from her words when Arondir is around to help them take down Damrod8. Which finally brings us to the end of the preceding paragraph, where her voice and her presence are enough to finally break the spell that Sauron has had upon Celebrimbor’s guards. Once again, her gentleness comes into play as she comforts the battered and bruised Celebrimbor; so does her new humility as she blames herself for everything that has gone wrong this season. And this calls forth some humility and real wisdom from Celebrimbor himself, as he takes some of the blame off her shoulders and gives a beautifully Tolkienian monologue about how strength cannot defeat darkness, but only the light. “Armies may rise, hearts may fail, yet still light endures, and is mightier than strength. For in its presence all darkness must flee.” It is Celebrimbor’s finest moment in the season; at last, he truly has bested Feanor, not so much by crafting wonders to rival the Silmarils but by showing humility and a sort of moral courage and strength that his grandfather never could have dreamed of. And it comes thanks to Galadriel, who in her finest episode has redeemed herself for the mistake she made in the previous one that bothered me so much, and has not even swung a sword or loosed an arrow.
But the night is darkest just before the dawn, and so is this episode, even as it ends with dawn breaking. Adar, in probably his soundest military decision so far, has held back a good chunk of his army until just this moment; now he finally leads it forward, with the blast of orc horns that make a mockery of the Elves’ from earlier. For some reason, Glug hangs back, but it almost doesn’t matter; the reserve is more than enough to sweep aside what’s left of Gil-galad’s relief force after 24 hours of combat. Hope springs in Elrond’s eyes as the sun crests the eastern ridge…and dies just as surely as does Vorohil (Charlie Rix), who had been detached to guide the Dwarves to the field but comes back with two arrows sticking out of him and the dire news that Durin’s army will not actually be coming. We know that this is because just as Prince Durin was about to lead them forth, Narvi came running up covered in blood with the dire news that the King is going to force the mine open himself; he’s already cut down Narvi’s work team, and Disa is unaccounted for. The Prince has no choice to hold the army in place and deal with the crisis before whatever is lurking in the basement is unleashed by the Mad King’s greed. But Elrond doesn’t know any of this, and is so distraught that he cannot even join the last charge. “Durin will come…Durin will come…” has to be one of the saddest phrases uttered on this entire show.
As the orc reserves pin down the few troops Gil-galad has left, others finally breach the walls of Ost-in-Edhil and pour in. Arondir finally has his chance against Adar, but the latter’s sword (or at least its flat) is quicker than the former’s arrow. Soon Adar and Elrond are face to face. And we learn a second horrible truth. Galadriel had probably been engaging in chess when she told Adar that Elrond was bearing her ring; yet for some reason, Elrond proved her right by wearing it on a chain around his neck. As Galadriel never truly did, and with even less reason than Theo (Tyroe Mufahidin) did last season, Elrond gave power to the enemy and gave him exactly what he wanted; it feels like a betrayal not only of his own anti-ring principles, but of Galadriel herself who had given him Nenya in E4 specifically to get it as far from the enemy as possible9. And even as this is all going on, Celebrimbor’s earlier plan of creating a diversion while Galadriel evacuates the city and gets the Nine as far away as possible ends unfortunately quickly, as with the same telekinesis with which he slew Mirdania, Sauron turns most of his guards’ swords on each other; his catlike reflexes are enough to finish off poor long-suffering Captain Malendol. Now, even as Adar has Nenya in his iron fist, Galadriel and the Nine’s safety will depend upon how long Celebrimbor will be able to withstand Sauron’s very worst. As we approach the season finale (hard to believe it’s almost over) our heroes will need all the strength they can find; not to take on the darkness directly, but to choose the light.
All images ©2024, Amazon Studios, unless otherwise indicated.
For Further Reference
Felicia Day, “Inside the Rings of Power: Season 2, Episode 7”
Aaron Earls, “Darkness Reigns in ‘The Rings of Power’…for Now.”
Jolkien with Tolkien, “Things Fall Apart in ‘Doomed to Die.’”
Nerd of the Rings, “Rings of Power Season 2, Episode 7 Breakdown”
Aidan Pocock, “Rings of Power Season 2 Discussion: Episode 7, ‘Doomed to Die’”
Michael Walsh, “Celebrimbor’s Farewell to Galadriel Captures the Best of Tolkien” (with the caveat that while it’s beautiful for Celebrimbor, it does a very common thing of being much too hard on Galadriel)
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In this, Lee would have had more in common with Napoleon’s eventual conqueror, the Duke of Wellington, who famously said “Next to a battle lost, there is nothing so sad as a battle won.” And with his own, Ulysses S. Grant, who wept when he received the casualty figures from the Wilderness, left the Hall of Battles at Versailles after only a few minutes, and refused Bismarck’s offer of overseeing a review of German troops.
I suppose it’s redundant to point out that this means that not only Mirdania died, but so have any hopes of her being Celebrian in disguise.
Initially I thought this was a battering ram, which makes sense; rams historically have been used against walls as well as gates. But in this case, the Ravager doesn’t batter down a wall so much as it tears it open stone by stone, which is inexorable but honestly doesn’t look very efficient. For that matter, neither does the Elves’ tactic of throwing sacks of “Greek fire” over the walls by hand and then lighting them with fire arrows so they explode in mid-air.
After I used this word in my Episode 6 essay, Charles Edwards himself used it in an interview with IGN, so I’m gonna stick with it.
Of course technically in that case it was a whole hand.
This definitely weirded me out a bit at first. But that’s coming with the benefit of hindsight. After all, Elrond isn’t Galadriel’s son-in-law yet (and with Mirdania’s tragic death, no chance of Celebrian this season); the kiss was clearly meant as a distraction for him to pass her the brooch, and given how the internet is reacting, one can only imagine how the orcs reacted; in a subsequent interview, Robert explained it as Elrond saying goodbye to somebody he may never see alive again. Galadriel’s facial expression when it is over clearly shows that she was taken as much by surprise as the rest of us. I would have preferred a kiss on the forehead or cheek, but as it stands now, it’s not lorebreaking; and given how many people are getting bent out of shape over it, I’m almost starting to like the kiss as we got it out of sheer spite.
Remember, Bronwyn died off-screen, from a secondary infection of an arrow-wound incurred in the fight for Tir-Harad in S1E6. That arrow would never have been loosed had Adar not attacked the village; and if he’d not triggered the eruption of Mount Doom, forcing the Southlanders to evacuate to Pelargir, Bronwyn would probably have had time to actually rest and heal, instead of probably overworking herself caring for others. Adar has clear “command responsibility” for her death.
Since Damrod is actually voiced by Benjamin Walker, who plays Gil-galad, I was kind of hoping the two of them would trash-talk each other before fighting.
And since nobody seems to be really talking about this, Elrond’s kiss worked as a distraction on multiple levels.