TL;DR – While frustrations remain, you can feel the momentum of the series shift as we start getting to the pointy end.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this episode.

The Rings of Power Review –

We are getting to the pointy end of the season, which means things need to start rolling towards the conclusion. Orcs are on the move, evil beings are manipulating, and calamities abound. But as we rush to the end, manipulations get stronger, allies become odder, and fractures become profound.

So, to set the scene, Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) is hot on the heels of the orc band that cut their way through the forest, angering the Ents in Eldest, but when he catches up to some deserters, he is shocked to see that they march on the Elven city of forges. Meanwhile, in that very city, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) is showing more signs of instability as he cannot get the rings for man to work, and he has started forgetting things. This alarms his smiths, but what they don’t know is much of his current disposition has been influenced by Annatar/Sauron (Charlie Vickers), who has slowly twisted the grand forger’s mind. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

If there is one theme that blasts its way through this episode, it is that of crossroads. As Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) points out, sometimes you have two paths ahead of you, and you don’t get to retrace your steps or do a checky quicksave to see if you made the right choice. Because of that one throughline, we actually get to hit just about every major plotline happening in the story so far, all in one episode. It did mean that the episode was a bit fragmented in places. For example, Arondir pops up right at the start to be a badass and is not seen again. But it more or less hit its mark.

Once again, much like last week’s Halls of Stone, Númenór is the weak link in the narrative that seems to be stubbornly refusing to do much of anything interesting. Last week, Elendil (Lloyd Owen) was outmanoeuvred by the moustache-twisting villain Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle). But this week, shock, someone read all of the old laws and not just the one they liked and was able to shift the tides again. While the imagery of Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) facing off against the Kraken was at least interesting. Watching Eärien’s (Ema Horvath) eye-rolling woe-is-thou routine was obnoxious at best. Oh no, what I did had consequences? Who could have seen that coming?    

The bulk of the episode takes up the coming calamity of Eregion. Celebrimbor is so deep into Sauron’s control that he does not see his city falling apart around him. Look, we will hand wave away the fact that the Elves did not see an army of that size coming, if not for the amount of duct that many people would kick up into the air because at least the episode tries to hang a lampshade on that. But after all the posturing, I am glad that the rocks started flying at the end of the episode.

In the east, The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) is still spinning in place, but at least in the episode, he is faced with a choice. So far, this whole plot line has started to feel a bit superfluous, disconnected from everything, and I hope that is not the case by the end of the episode. However, the strongest part of the series continues to be the dwarves, and this week, we dive into what the rings are doing to people. While the Dwarven rings have been presented as an addiction in the sub-text. This week, the sub-text becomes text as we see Duria IV (Owain Arthur) come to face with a father (Peter Mullan) he can barely recognise anymore. But the problem is that he is not a stranger, no matter how far he has fallen. This was a hard scene to watch because if you have had a relative with an addiction or a degenerative disease like Dementia, that feeling is going to hit home.

In the end, do we recommend The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Where Is He? Yes, we do. While frustrations remain, we are hurtling toward the end of the season, and you can feel the momentum start to shift, but whether the show has enough time to see to all of its plotlines is yet to be seen.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Rings of Power
Directed by –Sanaa Hamri
Written by – Justin Doble
Created by – J. D. Payne & Patrick McKay
Based On – The Lord of the Rings and appendices by J. R. R. Tolkien
Production/Distribution Companies – Amazon Studios, Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Trust, HarperCollins, New Line Cinema & Amazon Prime
Starring – Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards,Charlie Vickers, Morfydd Clark, Trystan Gravelle, Lloyd Owen, Markella Kavenagh, Megan Richards, Ciarán Hinds, Daniel Weyman, Owain Arthur, Sophia Nomvete, Cynthia Addia-Robinson & Peter Mullan with Sam Hazeldine, Rory Kinnear, Ameilia Kenworthy, Will Keen, Ema Horvath, Leon Wadham, Tanya Moodie, Gavi Singh Chera & Kevin Eldon and Simon Haines, Arkie Reece, Peter Landi, Robert Strange & Kai Martin