Rings of Power had a Dune problem but not quite the Dune 2 solution. Heavily panned upon its release in 2022, the Prime Video show based on JRR Tolkien's works couldn't defend its $1 billion budget. The writing was lazy, the characters boring, the pace an absolute snail race. The thick lore, taken from the appendices written by Tolkien for his epic high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, took eight episodes to set up, quite like the first part of Denis Villeneuve's film franchise on Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi novel. Dune was also not too warmly received for its ‘nothing happens’ plot.

However, when Dune 2 came along in March 2024, the payoff was just so juicy. The pace picked up majorly, the action was thrilling and the stakes were high. The right recipe for $700 million box office haul. The first part was forgiven, or better yet, revisited for a refresher course.

The same cannot be said about Rings of Power. Well, not completely. The second season has improved incredibly in a few aspects: things move swiftly this time around, so much that most characters get no more than two mid-level important scenes each. Thankfully, these were the characters that not many were looking forward to anyway. The writing is slightly better too, with character intentions set, strengthened and revealed gradually, and effectively.

But issues such as sullen dialogue, boring sub-plots and bad acting persist. And sadly, the twists and reveals are often so obvious, they give you multiple instances to feel smarter than the show, something no good audience enjoys.

Plotlines of power

The second season--of which i have watched all eight episodes-- begins strong with Sauron's Midnight Sun spin-off of season 1's events. A lengthy prologue depicts Sauron's transition into the deceptive Halbrand after he was Julius Caesar-ed by Brutus Adar. A millennia goes by before he returns in Charlie Vickers' handsome hobo form and runs into Gullible Galadriel. He has now set eyes on ringmaker Celebrimbor to create the mighty Rings of Power. Apprehensive at first, Celebrimbor soon falls for Sauron's Jesus-Judas act, who is deceiving everyone with his Elvish Annatar form.

The binding thread of this season, Charlie Vickers' and Charles Edwards' portrayal of toxic marriage between Annatar and Celebrimbor is definitely the season's highlight. The dialogues are punchy with Charlie clearly having fun being bad. He lets a smile loose when things go as per plan, fumes behind backs when they don't. Charles has a tougher task, making Celebrimbor not appear like a thorough idiot who serves magical rings, and with them the all of Middle Earth, to Sauron on a platter, but an abused, tortured artist in the web of a master liar. While no one could warm up to Galadriel after her season one foolishness, Celebrimbor escapes a similar fate thanks to Edwards' performance and better writing by the writing department.

The second best storyline was still the Dwarves lords in their halls of stone. King Durin, the noblest of them all, pops a ring on takes no time to turn greedy and evil. Elsewhere, Elrond and Galadriel struggle with a soured friendship and few silly action scenes. One particular ‘cunning’ bit during a battle sequence is so lazily written, you'd wonder if they were trying to be smart with it at all. And less said about Nori and Stranger the better. The least dull bits from their storylines are when they serve callbacks to Lord of the Rings but even those got little out of me than a shrug.

None of these, however, were as pointless to sit through as the Numenor plotline. Queen Miriel is back, blind and beaten at battle to claim her throne. However, she faces a challenge from her unhappy kingdom and a usurper at home. Pharazon is plotting to take over and the plotting bears results a little too quickly… so much that even he doesn't get the time to tell us why he is doing any of it. Tryston Gravelle (who plays Pharazon) did a better job in this interview explaining Pharazon's motivations than the writers did on the actual show.

Spectacular visuals

The strength of Rings of Power is still how visually stunning it looks. The magical golden leaves of the trees of Valinor, the light flooding through the Dwarves' mountains and even Annatar blessing Celebrimbor with visuals of heaven, there is a lot to be mesmerised by. I caught the first two episodes on the big screen at their Singapore premiere. The rest of it was watched on the humble laptop. It surely takes away half the effect of that too.

A lot is better this time round with Rings of Power and yet, there is a lot that can be even better. Maybe don't let someone pat a ‘God’ on the back, one day after they were falling to their feet, maybe do let the Uruk be the greenest flag, maybe not waste precious time on wandering the desert and maybe do let the angsty teen take a backseat.

But then, we do have three more seasons to go. Surely we will perfect it by the last one.

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