Here we are already halfway through this season 2 of Rings of Power on Prime Video. The fantasy series inspired by JRR Tolkien’s texts on the Second Age of Middle-earth continues to develop its story of the creation of the famous rings.
After the three rings of the elves, Our “friend” Sauron wants to corrupt the other peoples of the region: dwarves and men. These two successive projects are at the heart of the plot of the second half of this season 2 which will, we remind you, only have 8 episodes.
In Episode 4, we got to see some of the powers of the Elven Rings and witnessed the creation of the Seven Rings for the Dwarven Lords. This episode also spent a lot of time with the Stranger and the very ancient and mysterious Tom Bombadil.
For this episode, the Rings of Power focuses on the men of Numenor, the dwarves and the elves of Eregion. If you haven’t seen this episode streaming on Amazon’s platform yet, then be careful because the rest of this article will contain spoilers.
A new nod to Peter Jackson’s trilogy
After the creation of the Dwarven Rings by Celebrimbor and our evil friend Annatar/Sauron, comes the time to see the effects of this corruption. The Dwarven King, Durin, is the first of his people to wear one of these rings of power and test its abilities. Thanks to the magic he now wears around his finger, Durin Sr. manages to bring his kingdom out of darkness by finding, by instinct, the way to the light. Against the advice of his advisors who implore him not to dig in this or that place, the king digs on his own and finds the solution. Does this mean that the ring is benevolent? Of course not. Sauron first wants to convince the dwarves of the usefulness of these jewels before deceiving them. The ring must represent a benefit.
Disa, she, will discover during a chase with a stone that an ancient evil is hidden in the depths of the mountain. Within a cavern, she uses her voice to probe the abyss in front of her and she is frightened by the sound she hears in return. Fans will of course have understood that the Balrog of Moria is the creature in question. This beast of darkness and flames is the same one that faced Gandalf in the trilogy The Lord of the Rings.
Despite the help of the ring, its first perverse effect is quickly felt. King Durin is suddenly possessed by great avarice. He orders his subjects to dig ever deeper into the mountain and plans to entrust the other rings to the surrounding dwarven lords… against a ring tax. It is on this uncontrollable greed that Sauron’s evil will support. Durin-son will end up recovering his status as prince with his father but he will not succeed in making him remove his ring.
Rings for Men?
Since the series The Rings of Power particularly likes to make nods to Peter Jackson’s trilogy, this episode 5 once again offers us the opportunity to rejoice in nostalgia with the scene of the creation of the Gates of Durin, this magical entrance seen before the Moria sequence in The Fellowship of the Ring. Fans can only remember its glow in the moonlight and Gandalf desperately trying to remember the password to enter the dwarves’ territory.
Thanks to the series, we can discover that it was the elf Celebrimbor who was, with the dwarf Narvi, the architect of this famous gateway. After the success of the creation of the rings of the elves, the dwarves and this magic gate, Annatar suggests to the lord of Eregion to design rings for Men. Celebrimbor and Sauron oppose each other quite sharply on the question and Celebrimbor ends up winning by considering (rightly) that Men would be too impressionable to handle such objects. Annatar/Sauron counts on this porosity of the human spirit to dominate Middle-earth.
Pharazon cleans up
In this mid-season episode, the showrunners give us more time in Numenor. After usurping Miriel’s throne, Pharazon gives us a glimpse of his political agenda for his reign. Jealous of the immortality of the elves, suspicious of believers and those who respect the Valar, the new master of the island is proud and haughty. His dreams of grandeur and independence become more and more visible.
Elendil would like to fight against Pharazon but Miriel refuses to counterattack. She believes that this betrayal is a sign of destiny and that the reign of Pharazon could change the destiny of Numenor that she saw condemned in the palantir. Elendil and his men are degraded by Pharazon’s insufferable son… and his own daughter. As for the palantir that Miriel wanted to keep to rule… it is now in Pharazon’s hands. Is Sauron already influencing him through this seeing stone as Saruman was in The Lord of the Rings ? Hard to say. Still, Pharazon, by not destroying this elven crystal ball, demonstrates his great hypocrisy.
This challenge to the faith on Numenor will be particularly visible in the arrest/fight scene at the end of the episode. This offense to the Valar and the believers will have a role to play in the fall of Numenor that will occur in the next seasons of the series…
On the elven side, the fronts multiply. In Eregion, Sauron becomes a threat that grows in the shadows. Adar begins to want to attack and Mordor grows stronger. The High King Gil-galad is somewhat embarrassed to make the right decision but he decides to trust his instinct, guided by his own ring.
Sauron nearly gets unmasked
At Celebrimbor, Sauron nearly gets discovered by one of the elves who work for the master jeweler. During the creation of the first rings of power for men that Annatar tries to make alone in the workshop, one of the assistants becomes invisible. When the latter was in this parallel world thanks to the prototype, she was able to see Sauron’s true face. Disoriented and frankly frightened by this revelation, the elf almost sounds the alarm before Annatar/Sauron, understanding the danger of being discovered, reassures her with tender words.
Ce power of invisibility and vision very particular recalls the experience lived by Frodo in The Lord of the Rings as he tried on Sauron’s One Ring for the first time. He became invisible, but he could also see what others could not: Sauron’s presence in the distance, or the ancient faces of the Nazgûl, Sauron’s servants and former owners of the Rings of Men.
Faced with this catastrophic experience, Celebrimbor is tempted to want to help the workshop improve its recipe for designing the rings. But he resists. He will end up giving in when the news of an imperfection in the dwarves’ rings reaches his ears. Sauron will manage to sell to the elf that the creation of nine rings for men will be the only solution to rebalance the world and rectify its mistake. The trap is cleverly set and Celebrimbor jumps into it, driven by his desire to do well and show his talent.
The episode ends with a dialogue between two somewhat forgotten characters: Adar and Galadriel. The first proposes to the second to join forces to fight their common enemy Sauron. If Galadriel is tempted, she also knows that Sauron is always one step ahead and that Adar’s military reactions could well have been orchestrated by our favorite evil manipulator…
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