Amazon’s Rings of Power is more mythological than Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings — exemplified in a moment between Sauron and Celebrimbor in season 2.
Three episodes into its second season, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power feels more comfortable just being fucking weird than in all of its first go around.
[Ed. note: This piece will contain spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power through season 2 episode 3.]
Sauron has a resurrection via goo-worm form. A community of elves get together just to watch a leaf fall. Instead of giving a speech, their leader sings a song. Elrond leaps off a several-story waterfall and we don’t spend any time wondering how he survived. He’s an elf, that’s how elves do, and it’s taken as read that he’s fine.
Season 1 kicked off strong with Galadriel’s understated, spur-of-the-moment decision to turn away from the unexplained divinity of Valinor and just swim across an entire ocean solo with no prep, but that moment sticks out most strongly for how singular it was. Season 2 already feels far more comfortable sitting in inexplicableness. And it has to, because while The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien writing in a novelistic tone, the story that Rings of Power wants to tell is Tolkien writing in mythological tone. And maybe the best example of that shift in these first three episodes is a big moment with the elven smith Celebrimbor.
As Polygon’s Tolkien expert, I’ve struggled with how best to frame this change in expectations even with my own coworkers. “Wait, what do the Rings of Power actually do?” they wonder, and I try to explain that that’s kind of like asking what the Golden Fleece does. How could Sauron fool so many wise and powerful people so successfully and repeatedly for so long? You might as well ask why the Norse gods depended on Loki to fix so many things if he was so untrustworthy. These are the Loki Being Untrustworthy stories.
And when Celebrimbor, an elven smith who wants to become known as more than a “Scion of Fëanor,” is visited by a messenger who claims to be from the gods, and calls himself Annatar, the Lord of Gifts? Well, even though he knows that Sauron is around somewhere, and he hasn’t heard how it went with his other rings, and he’s cut off from the wise counsel of the High King… yeah, he’s going to take that at face value.
