Nunc Dimittis: The Rings of Power Episode 8 (Season Finale): “Alloyed”

I didn’t know exactly what I expected when we started watching the season finale. I mean, I knew there would be at least one big reveal and a sort of cliffhanger (if only an ominous implication), but just how bad it would be I could not imagine. How could it possibly be worse than Episode 7?

Well, somehow these genius showrunners found a way.

There were some good features. As usual, it is a very pretty show to look at, especially landscapes, cities, and (occasionally) some design elements. But there seems to be a general rule that the closer in you get, the worse and less satisfactory things become, especially in costuming. The exception might be the three Elven Rings. But I get ahead of myself.

There are some sequences that actually attain moments of excitement, despite the long stretches of tedium in between. A good example would be the parts of the first section follow the story of “the Stranger”, the Weird Sisters, and the Harbits who are following them. The Ghostly Trio catch up with the Stranger and hail him as Sauron Returned, albeit with some amnesia issues. They restrain him with force until his full memory can be restored. Nori and her little band turn up and try to release him but are fooled by the Weird Sisters, who are poised to destroy them. This snaps the Stranger out of his funk and rouses his powers, which he then channels through the staff that Nori takes away from the evil leader.  The Trio changes under his onslaught, first into wraith-like beings, then, inexplicably, into a cloud of moths. They have been turned into something … unnatural.

The Stranger’s mind has been unblocked, apparently, and suddenly he can speak perfectly sensibly. The Harbit elder Sadoc has been killed in the fight, so the Harfoots can all go on to being a matriarchy. Gandalf (because let’s face it, that’s who the Stranger, to no-one’s surprise but merely in an anti-climactic confirmation, turns out to be) heads off to Rhun, joined (after a moment’s hesitation), by Nori, who is off on an adventure.

Meanwhile, Elendil and Miriel are on their way back to Numenor. Miriel is too proud to be helped around by Elendil (so brave! so independent! I would have laughed if she had then gone walking over the side of the ship). Back in Numenor, the old King is dying, and Pharazon commissions a memorial portrait of him. Elendil’s daughter Earien is one of the artists left alone with him. The King wakes up, starts babbling significantly, and wanders into the next room. Earien follows and finds the covered Palantir. She ominously pulls the cover off (but since all seven stones are still in Numenor, she can’t be in danger of Sauron – perhaps she’ll get something from Eldamar, where the Master-stone resides in the Undying Lands). Elendil and Miriel return to find the ships and city shrouded in black. The old King has died.

Meanwhile Galadriel and Halbrand have reached Eregion, and Halbrand gets his “Elvish medicine”, though he seems to barely need it. High King Gil-galad is also there and has ordered Celebrimbor to shut his forge down since the Dwarves have refused them mithril and the Elves must pass into the West. But the recovered Halbrand has some good advice on how to stretch the little bit of mithril they have, and with his surprising insights into smithcraft Celebrimbor begins a last-ditch effort to save the Elves on Middle-earth.

Galadriel, suddenly suspicious of this mere human’s skill that surpasses even the son of Feanor and the repetition of words she heard elsewhere, finally decides to do some research on the man she’s helped set up as King of the Southlands. She confronts Halbrand with the fact that the line of kings had been broken a thousand years ago without any heir. Halbrand reveals that he is Sauron (what a surprise!) and immediately begins an attack on her mind.

In a series of visions he reminds her that her brother Finrod told her about touching the darkness, how she has aided Sauron to return to Middle-earth, how his ambitions were for the restoration and healing of the world (just with him as ever-lasting tyrant), how he never really lied to her (just didn’t correct her assumption), and how he can make her a Queen if he joins her, or reveal that she helped him if she doesn’t. She defies him and wakes up struggling in the river, where Sauron has apparently pushed her. Elrond helps rescue her, but Halbrand/Sauron has disappeared. Ominously, Galadriel appears not to reveal Sauron’s return to anyone, feeling ashamed about her part in it.

However, she now seems to have some insight into ring-making, and says they need to make three rings for the Elves. Celebrimbor says they need the purest gold and silver to add to the mithril to make the stretching alloy. She sacrifices her beloved Valinorean-made dagger, last relic of her brother, and the rings are made of the new alloy. Galadriel herself has become ‘alloyed’ by her experiences, perhaps ready to give up mere military means for new spiritual powers. We finally get to see some rings of power in The Rings of Power.

The last scene is of the revealed Sauron, looking rather like Anakin Skywalker, on the brink of the newly created land of Mordor. You get the feeling that Adar the rebellious proto-Orc is in for some hard times. He gazes speculatively at Mt. Doom, the future forge of the One Ring. There is a terrible rendition of the Ring verse in song.

Which all sounds more exciting than it actually worked out to be. The episode suffered from the same boring stretches; the same lapses of narrative logic; the same poor writing; the same lapses of Lore and tone; and the even more frequent use of callbacks, Easter eggs, and references to evoke the member-berries of long-established LOTR fans. One little trick that they do that annoys the heck out of me is to have an almost word-for-word quote (usually from the Jackson films) but tweaked or minimally rephrased. Good visuals, yes, but piss-poor writing. They could have gotten away with much less CGI or special effects if only their characters and pacing were handled better. As it is, there is too much filler and too little meat in this sausage.

I was left at the end, not so much in anticipation of the next season, as in relief that this one was over, and that it would be about a year until any more would be available. Whether the showrunners will have learned better in Season Two (already filming) or not, at least there can no longer the fake tension of the Sauron reveal. The clumsy misdirection and obvious foreshadowing were done. I need never watch this season again.

Perhaps sometime in the future when The Rings of Power has passed into the dark backward abysm of time, I will run across a copy of the whole series remaindered in the $1.99 bin. Perhaps I will buy it, for completion’s sake or as an object lesson. But maybe I won’t. It would still be a little too expensive, especially in the waste of time and spirit.