The Rings of Power Episode 7 (“The Eye”): Mordor, She Wrote

My God, I’m so tired. Not so much physically tired, but mentally exhausted. Yesterday evening, of course, it being Friday, John took Kameron and me to the Babel house to view the latest installment of The Rings of Power. My exhaustion arises from my consideration of what to say about it.

First, a general observation. The amount of echoes, callbacks, references, and Easter eggs appears to be increasing. It seems every other line of dialogue, every other framing shot, calls to mind the Jackson films (even The Hobbit ones now) in a shameless ploy to borrow some amount of nostalgia, some bit of power or affection by association. It fails miserably because it is so ham-handed. It comes off as lazy or even as a parody. I’d say spoilers ahead, but the whole thing is pretty rotten, anyway.

It opens with Galadriel coming to in the wake of the eruption of Mt. Doom. How she, or indeed anyone, Orc or human, could have survived being engulfed in the wave of ash and gas that surrounded them without being roasted or suffocated is a mystery. Perhaps it’s the plot armor she’s wearing.

Plenty of unnamed characters don’t survive, of course, and in the aftermath one of Isildur’s expendable friends perishes as well, just to show the awful price of the disaster. (What was his name? Seanomir? Biffalad?) Which also begs a question. With all the citizens of Tirharad (which looks like a little town of about five houses) being pecked off (leaving to join Adar, killed in Orc attacks, caught in an eruption) just what is left for Halbrand to be king of? So far, it is just a remnant of survivors of one town who have proclaimed him. But maybe there are other villages – in a land now infested with darkness and Orcs.

Anyway, the surviving Numenoreans and Southlanders flee back to their camp. Galadriel and Theo are separated from the main group, so they can have some bonding time together. In talking about loss (Theo has not seen his mother Bronwyn in the aftermath), Galadriel reveals that Celeborn, her husband, is dead – or at least, probably dead. Though Elves can be ‘reborn’ (returned from the Halls of Mandos – which is why Elves only marry once – which should put a terminus on the implied Halbrand/Galadriel tension) this is a major deviation from what Tolkien wrote. What happened to the showrunners’ claim of “not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to”? Perhaps their fingers were crossed. Galadriel and Theo hide from Orcs in a scene that evokes Frodo and the other Hobbits hiding from the Nazgul. One of the Orcs asks, “What do you smell?” I muttered “Elf-farts”, but the answer is, “Nothing but ash.”

Meanwhile, in another story thread, Elrond and Durin the Fourth are disappointed when King Durin the Third decides to close the mithril mine and refuse the Elves (or even the Dwarves) access. Disa gets all Lady Macbeth on her husband, and they discover by accident that their bit of mithril ore restores the blighted leaf in which Gil-galad saw the fate of the Elves back in Scene Twenty-Four. That decides Durin Mark IV. He and Elrond dig for mithril on their own. Alone. In another blatant contradiction of Lore, Elrond says that Durin is one in a line of Durins, one after the other. Impossible, of course, because the kings named Durin were supposed to be the original Durin ‘come again’, and you can’t be reincarnated twice at the same time.

King Durin finds out, of course, and appears clutching the restored leaf (the clue by which he finds them?) just as they open huge veins of ore. He banishes Elrond and downgrades Durin (Disa has mentioned he has a brother that might become king now). He orders the newly opened shaft closed and tosses the leaf (which has by now had a storied career) down the hole behind it. It flutters down, down, down, until it lands at the bottom of the abyss. It is suddenly shriveled in a wave of fire, as it has disturbed the Balrog’s slumber (shades of Smaug and the thrush!). Certainly, it cannot be released just yet, as the Dwarves have yet to mine even enough mithril to make Bilbo’s famous chainmail.

Meanwhile the Harbits have reached the edges of Greenwood the Great (aka Mirkwood, in its days of innocence). Poppy sings a little bit too much traveling music about snails. They discover an apple grove that has been withered by the fires of Mt. Doom (which, if you look at the map, is quite a distance – and over a mountain range, too). Sadoc Burrows, the Harfoot leader, asks the Stranger to try his powers (amply demonstrated a couple of episodes ago) in an attempt to heal one of the trees. When his efforts are not immediately successful (and even seem to endanger the tribe) Sadoc decides to send him away to look for his stars (remember that bit?). Nori bids a sad farewell to her rescue puppy.

The next day she awakes to find that not only has the apple tree regenerated, but the whole grove is restored and full of ripe fruit. The Harbits happily and greedily refill their supplies. But the Three Weird Sisters are still on the trail of the Stranger and are led to the Harbit camp by a careless bucket dropped in a stream by the panicking Poppy. They seem to recognize the power that brought back the grove and are about to follow the Stranger’s trail when Nori pops up and tries to redirect them in the wrong direction. The three attack her, and when the others come out to defend her, the trio use their powers to burn both the trees and the Harfoot carts, then leave.

Things look bleak, but Nori’s dad Largo gives a rallying speech about how the Harfoot’s strength lies not in skills or carts, but in how they stay true to one another (this from folks who have apparently regularly abandoned the slow and weak). Inspired, Nori, Poppy/Sam, Sadoc, and his wife Malva head out into the uncharted wilderness to find the Stranger and … I don’t know, warn him? Even though the Ghostly Trio have a day’s march on them and some sort of infallible sense of what direction he's in. But hey, their hearts are bigger than their feet! Or their heads, apparently.

Meanwhile, back in the Numenorean camp, Galadriel and Theo have finally caught up with the rest of the refugees. The camp tents are filled with casualties and the wounded. Theo is afraid (for about five seconds) that he’ll find his mother dead, but Bronwyn has survived. What luck! Meanwhile, Elendil fears Isildur is dead and Miriel has been blinded trying to rescue people from a burning hut (so brave! so compassionate!). Now her blood is up for revenge, and she vows to return with an army and wipe the bad guys from the face of the earth. But hist! Where is Halbrand, who is definitely not Sauron? He has been found at last, wandering in wounded. Galadriel cries out that he needs ‘Elvish medicine’, a vile and clunky phrase invented for the Jackson movies. It must have worked, because the next time we see Halbrand he is up and riding a horse, going with Galadriel to seek aid from High King Gil-Galad, and definitely not just abandoning his ‘kingdom’.  Arondir, Bronwyn, and Theo watch them and the Numenoreans ride off into the sunset. At least Miriel has left them her camping gear.

The last section switches to Adar and his Orcs. They too have somehow survived and are whooping it up in their new homeland. The human traitor Waldreg is loudly praising Adar as the lord of the Southlands, trying to ensure he’s not going to wind up on the menu. Adar says they need a new name for their home. The location title (these have not been used for some time now, which makes it all the more corny) of ‘The Southlands’ pops up and burns away, and the new name ‘Mordor’ is blazed in red. So Adar has not only created Mt. Doom; he has named Mordor.

This description of the episode is not exhaustive, but it has been exhausting. I cannot recount every instance of the clunky writing as it strives to be ‘elevated’, or the moments of excruciatingly slow pacing (hey, it gives the story space to breathe, I hear), or all the offenses against ‘canon’. I may have got things a little jumbled, as it’s hard to recall details of chronology when the connective tissue between events is a little dodgy and you are appalled at every turn of the tale. There is only one more installment of this season. 

I hear that against all rules of common sense and in the face of fan disapproval (patently evil!), that they are doubling down and have already started filming Season Two.  What new terrors the last episode of Season One will bring, I dare not speculate. Will they finally disclose who or where is Sauron? They would be unwise to do so, because the teasing of that fact is one of the only impetuses of viewer interest, annoying as it may be. The things we can be almost sure of is that there will be one shocking reveal or incident, nothing will be resolved, and it will end on a cliffhanger. Even the writers and showrunners of The Rings of Power can’t subvert such serial conventions, no matter how much Tolkien they deface. Or … can they? It would be hard to overestimate their negative talent.

The Showrunners: