Since the polarising finale of Game of Thrones in spring 2019, there’s been a huge void in the global TV and streaming space. No show has quite been able to rival its popularity, gradually built across eight seasons. But streaming platforms have been aggressively trying to reverse-engineer another universal hit. Enter big budgets, ambitious world-building, and grand narratives: Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, HBO’s House of the Dragon, and Amazon Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is Amazon’s second attempt to match that magic, to create a fantasy show that reins in both loyal franchise fans and outsider sceptics (like me) who aren’t previously bought into the universe.
Set during the Second Age of Middle-earth’s history, The Rings of Power takes place many millennia before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s famed trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. These books––and their corresponding movie adaptations––are now canonical.
In other words, Rings of Power is brimming with potential, and Amazon has placed high bets on it, having announced a five-season plan from the outset. The first season came in all guns blazing; reportedly the most expensive season of TV to date, its sprawling budget was visible in practically every frame. Yet despite its unparalleled spectacles and intricate, imaginative world-building, much of the season felt inert and overstuffed with exposition. That was until the series finally revealed who the infamous Dark Lord Sauron was and brought it all together into a rewarding end that showed Mordor being formed.
Created by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, Rings of Power season 2 doubles down on the production value and earnestly tries to move faster than its predecessor. It opens with a gripping prologue, showing the origin story of Sauron (Charlie Vickers). This immediately creates a sense of impending danger and makes an already formidable villain even more threatening.
The plot then moves back to Middle-earth, with a guilty Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) struggling to process the revelation that Halbrand was secretly Sauron. She and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) hold three of the titular Elven Rings of Power, while Sauron deceives his way into the naive Celebrimbor’s (Charles Edwards) circle, operating as Annatar to fashion more Rings.
This is the central narrative of Rings of Power season 2, and it’s extremely compelling. It gives the season a sharper focus, making it leaner than the first. It helps even more that the show is no longer burdened with the task of introducing characters, allowing the plot to progress in a more streamlined manner.
Like season 1, this season also culminates in a fulfilling finale featuring a ferocious climactic face-off. It’s epic, event TV at its finest in several places, especially the few notable battles and action sequences involving spiders, orcs, and all kinds of creepy monsters.
However, Rings of Power season 2 remains weighed down by its dizzying breadth. There are still simply too many subplots and too big an ensemble. Between The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), his Harfoot compatriots Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy (Megan Richards); Disa (Sophia Nomvete), Durin (Peter Mullan), and the king (Peter Mullan); and humans like Queen Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), and Elendil (Lloyd Owen), the series keeps meandering across so many different tracks that it’s hard to remain invested in all of them.
More importantly, though, as a prequel, Rings of Power season 2 suffers from hindsight syndrome. It’s even harder to remain engrossed in the dense drama when you essentially know how it plays out in the long-term, particularly when the characters start to behave like they do as well.
In parts, it feels like the season is playing out one plot point after the other, each of which have been preordained, both by the previous books and movies as well as within the expansive, five-season blueprint set out for the entire series. A defining characteristic of the most meaty, bingeable series are plot twists that completely throw viewers off-kilter –– something this season lacks, although it still packs a fair bit of punch along the way.
Rings of Power season 2 continues to be immersive and inventive. It has its share of thrilling highs, but they’re constrained within a narrative that plays it too safe to measure up to its aspiration.
In seeking to please both long-time fans and new explorers, the series sometimes felt like it wasn’t fully delivering for either.
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