Welcome to the second episode of my Very Tolkien Nerd’s recap of The Rings of Power. I laid out numerous the groundwork for my strategy to this in the first half so hopefully this one received’t be as lengthy.
Episode 2, entitled “Adrift” finds our 3 1/2 storylines transferring ahead – and some highly effective mysteries being arrange. If Amazon was aiming to show that releasing episodes weekly is the strategy to construct up intense curiosity – take that Netflix! – they’ve succeeded with Rings of Power, maybe most acutely for many who are conversant in the legendarium. If you learn the Appendices to Return of the King upon which this eight episode sequence relies, you realize that the huge dangerous is Sauron, however in a really completely different type than the incorporeal (and unforgettable) Eye of Peter Jackson’s trilogy. Sauron can have a number of disguises in the Second Age, wreaking unbelievable havoc by getting folks to belief him in his fairer types.
But who’s Sauron right here? In what guise has he entered the chat? We’ll find yourself with a number of candidates as the storylines unfold.
Let’s begin with Elrond’s wonderful adventures with Celebrimbor and Durin. Elrond is a younger half-elf of 2000 or so, and fairly the diplomat – to the level he’s been appointed herald to the king! High King Gil-Galad has despatched him off to hang around with Celebrimbor the best Elven smith of the Age – and somebody who can have lots to do with the forging of these rings.
Celebrimbor can be the lord of Eregion, the land of the Elven smiths, and we get a short glimpse of the metropolis in its glory. All recapping apart, I dwell for these moments when locations lengthy vanished of Middle Earth out of the blue come to life.
When Elrond arrives at Celebrimbor’s crib, the smith can’t assist however showcase his prize possession: the hammer of Fëanor! C and E throw out some exposition about how Fëanor wrought the Silmarils, the nice gems of Valinor with this very hammer, and they have been so lovely that Morgoth stole them.
Because if the “Silmarillion Paradox” – the makers of RoP don’t have the rights to The Silmarillion which speaks more absolutely of all these issues – they’ll’t come proper out and say one thing followers will know: Celebrimbor is Fëanor’s grandson! Fëanor had seven sons and all of them had numerous components to play in the Great War of the First Age – a few of them fairly tragic, and not all of them have been good guys. Like their father, all of them swore an oath to regain the Silmarils after Morgoth stole them….and this led to all types of horrific bloodshed and betrayal. Celebrimbor’s dad was named Curufin the Crafty.
So, in the event you get the feeling Celebrimbor is a bit artful – and not simply in the “I like to make ashtrays out of bits of scrap metal” sense – maybe it’s this lineage.
For the objective of the episode, nonetheless, Celebrimbor has a reasonably enormous scheme: he’s going to make an enormous tower to accommodate an infinite forge with the energy to burn hotter than any that has even burned earlier than! Hot as dragons! How can he construct this immense tower when time is brief? Elrond has a plan! But it entails a visit to close by Khazad-Dum to borrow a cup of sugar elevate a squad of Dwarven builders.
Khazad-Dum is the Moria of The Lord of the Rings movies, and it’s nice to see it in its glory, full of gentle and laughter. Very loud laughter. These are Dwarves we’re speaking about and they like boisterous play, loud bellows, and rock smashing.
Elrond has to smash some rocks to impress Durin IV, son of Durin III – there have been ultimately seven kings named Durin, and all of them are reincarnations. This Durin has two youngsters, Gamli and Gerda, and an exquisite spouse identify Disa, however relaxation assured Durin V is on the market someplace.
Durin is mad at his former buddy Elrond as a result of he missed Durin’s marriage ceremony to Disa. This alternate hits a observe that offers all these relations some depth: “Only 20 years?” muses Elrond of the time he’s been absent from Moria – to the all however immortal Elves that’s a snap of the fingers. To Durin it was an essential a part of his life. Elrond and his sturdy communication abilities handle to win again Durin’s belief and it appears to be like like the Dwarf lord goes to bid on the Celebrimbor tower venture as this sequence ends!
MEANWHILE, Galadriel remains to be making an attempt to swim again to Middle Earth which is, frankly the dumbest factor ever. Fortunately for her, different folks have additionally stupidly ventured out into the Sundering Sea: a ramshackle raft of quickly to be vanished supporting character fodder and our first Hot Edain: Halbrand! Who is Halbrand? Well that’s going to be a giant query, isn’t it?
Also…why are there all these folks out in these waters? The solely place they might probably be going is Númenor. After an enormous sea serpent wreck the raft and kills off all the superfluous characters, Galadriel and Halbrand are left to get to know one another higher, and bond over their mutual hatred of Orcs.
Halbrand claims to return from the South, the place his folks have been pushed out by Orcs. This will get Galadriel in a lather as a result of she is finna kill these Orcs! Let’s recover from there and observe them proper now, she calls for. Alas they’re floating on a number of scraps of wooden with no technique of navigation. A storm practically kills them quickly they’re floating on even fewer scraps in the blasting solar, close to loss of life…appears to be like dangerous for our engaging leads however…a ship finds them. Who? That’s for the subsequent episode.
MEANWHILE, again in Rhovanion, Bronwyn and Arondir uncover that Orcs have infiltrated their area for certain. Arondir investigates a tunnel and issues don’t appear to be going properly for him. Bronwyn returns to her son, Theo, however they’re trapped of their cottage with a horrible Orc in what is definitely a really scary and properly performed sequence. In a match of sassiness, Bronwyn drops a decapitated orc head on the desk of the village elders and persuades them to take shelter at the deserted Elf guard tower. Meanwhile, Theo has discovered a Morgul knife underneath the ground and is entranced with it. This isn’t going to finish properly.
Finally, this episode’s best thriller: the Stranger, aka Meteor Man! Discovered in his blazing but cool to the contact crater, Nori’s finest savior advanced is awoken by this big Gandalf-esque man, whereas Poppy pleads for her to contemplate {that a} big man who arrived in a meteor might be not a standard factor and ought to finest be left alone.
Nori in fact is having no such factor, and is quickly merrily feeding Meteor Man uncooked snails, pushing him about in a cart and making an attempt to determine simply who and what he’s.
Although Meteor Man appears to grasp that Nori is a buddy, he has mysterious powers which might be fairly sinister! Is he Sauron? Well, listed here are the info.
- He arrived in a meteor that was fiery however the flames didn’t burn him or Nori. This harkens again to Episode 1 when Galadriel is investigating Sauron’s deserted lair and notes that it’s so evil the flames give off no heat.
- The Stranger begins drawing a map with a stick and when the stick snaps…so does the ankle of Nori’s dad, Largo Brandybuck! Sympathetic magic at its worst. The map appears to be like like a bunch of traces however some on the web have theorizes it was the gates of Valinor. Or perhaps a rune. Or…properly it’s some traces. Open to interpretation.
One of The Stranger’s carvings 👀 #TheRingsOfPower pic.twitter.com/ES9gnD4HL2
— Fellowship of Fans (@FellowshipFans) September 2, 2022
- The Stranger takes the fireflies out of Poppy’s lantern and makes use of them to make a wierd constellation in the sky! Stars they’ve by no means seen, notes Nori. Is this the place Meteor Man is from? Allusions to unusual stars are rife in Tolkien’s work.
- The Stranger’s powers contains loud shouting like Banshee from the X-men, energy… and killing fireflies – after he makes use of them for his present and inform…they drop useless.
- Although unable to speak, The Stranger does know a number of phrases and he retains repeating them! Turning on the subtitles on Amazon Prime helped right here: “Mana…üré! Mana…üré!” is what he retains saying.
Okay let’s add this all up. Who is Meteor Man? Let’s take a look at the choices.
Is he Sauron? We’re going to finish up with a number of candidates for The Lord of Gifts, however I believe The Stranger is a purple herring. A well-liked Reddit put up lays out a concept involving the gates of Valinor opening as cowl for Sauron’s arrival in Middle Earth, however I don’t assume it’s him as a result of Sauron was not a Gandalf-esque wizard-y sort and the half he has to play in the Second Age doesn’t contain a sleepover in Rhovannion so far as we all know.
Is he one among the Blue Wizards? This concept is by far my favourite, however we have to dig a bit into Tolkien lore right here. In one random passage in LoTR Gandalf mentions the Five Wizards – only one random passage. And he solely managed to call three in the books, Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast. Who have been the different two is a query that burned by means of Tolkien fandom for generations (it wasn’t answered till Unfinished Tales) and Tolkien was usually requested this in letters, as he was about many peripherals, and nothing gave him more bother than these different two wizards.
My guess is that “Five Wizards” was only a random factor he wrote, and then he needed to retcon it into the books, as a result of he simply didn’t wish to carry these different two wizards into the story – he simply stored writing them out of it! In a letter to a fan he wrote:
“I think that they went as emissaries to distant regions, east and south… Missionaries to enemy occupied lands as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and “magic” traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron.“
The Blue Wizards have been QAnon earlier than the web even! In Unfinished Tales he gave them the very very non Elvish names Alatar and Pallando (appears like the identify of a preferred Lower East Side Italian brunch spot) and mentioned “others of the Istari who went into the east of Middle-earth, and do not come into these tales.”
As determined as he was to not embody these two in the story, in a few of his last writings, he gave them a separate origin story totally, as famous in The People’s of Middle Earth:
The ‘other two’ got here a lot earlier, at the similar time most likely as Glorfindel, when issues grew to become very harmful in the Second Age. Glorfindel was despatched to assist Elrond and was (although not but mentioned) pre-eminent in the struggle in Eriador. But the different two Istari have been despatched for a special objective. Morinehtar and Romestamo. Darkness-slayer and East-helper. Their activity was to bypass Sauron: to carry assist to the few tribes of Men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to fire up revolt … and after his first fall to look out his hiding (wherein they failed) and to trigger [? dissension and disarray] amongst the darkish East … They will need to have had very nice affect on the historical past of the Second Age and Third Age in weakening and dis- arraying the forces of East … who would each in the Second Age and Third Age in any other case have … outnumbered the West.
Landing in the southeast of Eriador, Meteor Man is in the proper place to be a Blue Wizard. As far as proof that The Stranger is one among these Blue Wizards go, that is fairly persuasive however there may be one downside: The showrunners of Rings of Power don’t have the rights to something however Lord of the Rings which mentions none of this. The Stranger may nonetheless probably be a type of Istari despatched to assist the Hobbits, impressed by the passage, as with many different parts of the present. Not having Gandalf could be a loss, however the trope of the cranky outdated wizard might be stuffed by one other fellow this trip.
But there may be one more candidate…maybe the most persuasive of all.
Is he The Man in the Moon? A variety of Tolkienistas suspect The Stranger is Tilion, a Maiar who was mainly the Moon God. In The Silmarillion he’s mentioned to be entranced with Arien, the solar goddess, and pursue her throughout the sky leading to his erratic appearances. Tilion seems in LoTR as “The Man in The Moon” the hero of a number of bits of doggerel, together with this:
At plenilune in his argent moon
in his coronary heart he longed for Fire:
Not the limpid lights of wan selenites;
for purple was his want,
For crimson and rose and ember-glows,
for flame with burning tongue,
For the scarlet skies in a swift dawn
when a stormy day is younger.
In addition, this poem, “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” (from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil) additionally mentions Middle Earth places Dol Amroth and the Bay of Befalas – not that near Rhovanion however no less than on the similar continent.
As far as all these Stranger theories go, this one has the strongest proof, as a result of keep in mind The Stranger’s mutterings: “Mana…üre.” That interprets as “Where is the fire.” A transparent reference to Tillion’s pursuit of Arien…and the poem above!
BAM! Case closed…..perhaps. The showrunners appears to have made up a number of stuff for this present, and The Stranger may change into quite a lot of all of the above…or only a cranky outdated snail consuming wizard.
And what about different darkish lords and Galadriel’s destiny? More on that in Episode 3.
NOTES
- The uncooked snail consuming scene was actually disgusting.
- Celebrimbor love of constructing and know-how (which Tolkien hated) is paying homage to Saruman’s obsession with the similar.
- Tolkien hated tech however cherished timber. Hence the two white timber. That mentioned, The Dwarves having a sapling of Telperion, one among the Great Trees of Valinor is a break from canon that’s actually surprising! Don’t know why everybody on Twitter isn’t aghast at this.
- Galadriel and Halbrand have some severe chemistry, however actually, Morfydd Clark is killing this function, tying collectively a few of the more manic ways in which Galadriel is written and exhibiting the excessive charisma that the Queen of Lothlorian possesses. But what about poor outdated Celeborn, Galadriel’s future husband? Hopefully he’ll by no means hear about this boat journey.
- Fan theories about the canon identities of Halbrand and Theo amongst others are operating buck wild. But more about that in our half 3 recap.
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