The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has ended its first season, and with it lifted the lid on mysteries that have hounded viewers for the past seven episodes before it. But it also revealed another secret, binding them all in darkness: that what we’ve watched was less of an actual season of television and more like a really long pilot.
That’s not to say there haven’t been highlights in Rings of Power’s debut. It and its characters have often stalled on repeating the Tolkienesque themes of hope in the face of despair over and over, with what has essentially just been increasing amounts of despair — but as simple that it is, there’s still something charming about it. And, of course, it has continued to be a ridiculously pretty show, gleaming with the millions upon millions of dollars at its disposal. “Alloyed” carries this on much the same, but in a madcap 70 minutes that both feels like too much and not enough is going on. It does, however, actually take a step forward in the long narrative of the Second Age it reveals to us, for all that aesthetic glimmer, what we’ve experienced every week for the past few months was both incredibly obvious and, at the heart of it, quite empty.
That, paradoxically, makes it quite difficult to actually explain what happens in “Alloyed.” Essentially, those 70 often very-long-feeling minutes boil down to four things: The Númenoreans have returned to Númenor, to find Miriel’s father and the former king dead. Want some ramifications and fallout for that? Wait till next season, please. The Stranger, confronted by the white-robed agents of Sauron, awakens to his true self and realises he is one of the Istari, the future Wizards. Want some ramifications and fallout for that? Wait till next season, please. At Celebrimbor’s forge, Galadriel discovers too little, too late, that her travelling companion Halbrand is not the heir to the throne of the Southlands by blood, but heir to their new form, because he is indeed Sauron reborn. Want some ramifications and fallout for that? Wait till next season, please.
And last, but by no means least, Team Eldar gets around to forging at least a few of those Rings of Power, thanks to a few cheeky suggestions from Sauron incognito that maybe that crown Celebrimbor was going to forge the mithril into might be a little better in ring form, for no particular reason at all other than that you are watching a show where “Rings” is literally in the name twice. Oh, and of course… want some ramifications and fallout for that? Wait till next season, please.
Notice that there’s no mention of Bronwyn, Arondir, and the rest of the surviving Southlanders here, nor Durin and Disa, because they’re not in “Alloyed” at all; their stories are seemingly just left on pause until, you guessed it, next season. And while all this might sound brusque and dismissive — we got a wizard, and probably Gandalf at that, given his penchant for saving halflings and following his nose! We got Sauron, and he’s pretty hot and pretty gaslight gatekeep lordboss! We got the Elven rings, Narya, Nenya, and Vilya, the ultimate realisation that things actually have to start happening on this show for real!
But that’s the thing. In the moment, each of these reveals might be satisfying and enjoyable to see unfold. The Rings of Power, even at its most sluggish, remains a sight to behold, and we get lovingly intimate scenes of things like the awakening of the Stranger’s power, or the forging of the Elf-rings, made possible by Galadriel choosing to let go of the dagger that remained all she had of her brother. The moment Halbrand/Sauron realises that Galadriel knows who he really is, and changes in an instant from charming to sinister, trapping her in visions of her past to coax her to his side, is a clever display of Sauron’s power to deceive, even if it clumsily leans on dialogue ripped from Galadriel’s temptation in Fellowship of the Ring to evoke emotion, rather than the moment evoking that itself. Evoking Gandalf’s connection to the small folk of Middle-earth in having Nori join the Stranger-who-is-definitely-probably-Gandalf on his quest to uncover more about his true self in the eastern lands of Rhun is likewise cute, even if it is once again nudging the audience and going “look, just like the movies!”
They’re also things that have been so obviously telegraphed in the show for so much of this first season that it doesn’t feel revelatory; it’s less like you have solved a puzzle box, and more like you’ve just been waiting for the puzzle box to open exactly as you thought it would for a while now. People have assumed who Halbrand was practically since he first appeared, and similarly they’ve assumed that the Stranger was a wizard — they just weren’t sure which one. And given its nature as a prequel, we’ve always known at some point Celebrimbor would get down to making some rings. Even when “Alloyed” attempted to obfuscate with half-hearted gotchas — like that Sauron’s agents thought the Stranger was their master, or the hot moment Galadriel contemplates that it’s Celebrimbor who is under Sauron’s influence — these feel less like attempts to throw you off the mystery and more like stalling before the shoe drops.
If The Rings of Power had supplemented these obvious mysteries with some introspective character work, then perhaps it wouldn’t matter so much, but this first season has leaned on these mysteries so much — papered over with the repeated reminders that hope will never be beaten by despair — that their final unveiling, with close examination of them left until the future, just… err, rings hollow. Eight-ish hours later across these past few months we are, essentially, exactly where we were when we started: The Rings of Power is still pretty, still slow, still about hope, and aside from the forging of Mordor and Mount Doom — arguably still the highlight of the season — everything is largely the same, it’s just that a few characters have had their mystery names filed off and replaced with familiar ones.
At least now, the show has signalled a progression that cannot linger at this point: Sauron walks among Middle-earth once more, the Istari rise to oppose him, the Rings of Power are being forged. The Rings of Power as a show has had its time to establish itself, its world, and its heroes, more than enough: now it has to prove that it has a journey that’s really worth going on, and hope that its revealed frustration doesn’t push people off the path. “There may be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!’ In season two, we’re giving it to them,” co-showrunner Patrick McKay said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter today. And now that we have this season to reflect on, I cannot help but wonder: if you knew what your audience expected, couldn’t you have just trusted them enough to give them what they wanted in the first place?
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