The first episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, season 2, are out August 29 on Amazon Prime. Christianity Today asked three writers to screen the season in advance and identify a theme for fans to keep in mind as they watch.
Evil in disguise
“Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light,” warns the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 11:14). So too in J. R. R. Tolkien’s mythology does the dark lord Sauron sometimes appear in “fair form.” In the guise of nobility, beauty, and goodness, he deceives and manipulates what he cannot win by conquest.
We never saw Sauron’s “fair form” in Peter Jackson’s justly beloved Lord of the Rings film trilogy. And in season 1 of Amazon’s prequel series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (ROP), we saw a Sauron who was more conflicted and confused than lovely. That season’s gimmicky reveal—the hapless cockney Southlander Halbrand was, gasp, Sauron all along!—was a cheap payoff for eight hours of otherwise impressive world-building and plotting.
Season 2 of Rings of Power is far stronger than season 1. It ramps everything up—including the action, violence, and gore (parental caution advised), as Amazon goes after the Game of Thrones audience. Happily, the show has fixed some of its pacing issues; though it occasionally struggles to juggle five locations and subplots, it also successfully stitches together the mass of jumbled, at times inconsistent narrative threads that Tolkien left behind. If nothing else, ROP is a sumptuous show, with lavish sets, costumes, and effects.
But the strongest compliment I can pay to Rings of Power season 2 is that its portrayal of Sauron, excellently done by Charlie Vickers, is unnervingly persuasive—fully embracing and making use of Sauron as a deceitful angel of light. Sauron, disguised as an emissary of the gods, worms his way into the confidence of elven master smith Celebrimbor and dwarven king Durin III with a light touch. He suggests and questions, and rarely demands; he plants ideas and lets them germinate; he flatters and compliments; he relentlessly appeals to pride, vanity, and ambition.
At one point, Sauron pushes too hard, and Celebrimbor calls him out on his tricks. The ROP writers don’t condescend to their characters; they don’t rely on the cheap trick of making the characters too dumb to figure out what’s going on until it’s time for the climax.
Instead, Celebrimbor both gradually succumbs to Sauron and is increasingly self-aware of what is happening, yet is still unable to stop it. This is the most affecting plot thread of the season, given real weight with Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor. Tragically, it seems to resonate with the spiritual truths Tolkien likely had in mind—not only of Satan’s proclivity for disguise but for the powerlessness of our flesh to resist him without divine aid.
Paul D. Miller is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University and a research fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Present presence
Our normal relationship to time is full of unknowns. Despite our best efforts, we cannot predict the future.
But as a prequel, Rings of Power temporarily transforms us into seers, offering us the “before” of the story so we might better identify the “after.” For a few tantalizing hours, the viewer is omniscient. Even as we see something “new”—backstories we didn’t know before—we’re reveling in affectionate nostalgia for something old: The familiar books and films that ROP both precedes (in narrative time) and follows (in “real-world” time). Janus-faced, we look to both the future and the past.
J. R. R. Tolkien, meanwhile, seemed to endorse a different view of time than what’s offered by our frantic 21st-century schedules and hour-long episodes of television: a particular emphasis on the present, on what’s now rather than what’s next. The most important moments in the Lord of the Rings unfold gradually along arduous journeys, during joyous feasts, and in quiet conversations between friends. Tolkien’s wisest characters—Elrond, Tom Bombadil, and Gandalf—fully inhabit the present; they realize that struggle is essential, that renewal cannot be rushed.
“Time is the process of creation, and things of space are results of creation,” wrote rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Tolkien’s books are about that process—the slow work of character development and world-building and good triumphing over evil.
But in this second season of The Rings of Power, even the sagest elves (Galadriel and Elrond, for instance) are caught up in urgency and haste. The journey is rushed.
Perhaps this breathlessness can be instructive for the viewer. These days, most of us are challenged by “the present.” Like the prequel, we are always looking backward at what’s been and forward at what’s to come. How do we attend simply to what is?
Some moments of ROP allow for such contemplation: a defiant craftsman composed in the face of evil, the quiet love of a brave captain. Here, the frenzied storytelling finally finds its flow. In such moments, the viewer is reminded that presence is all we really ever have. Fearful foretelling is the realm of Saruman and Denethor. We, as Christians, are called to “be still, and know” that the Lord is God (Ps. 46:10). The present is the single moment in which we can both delight in the light and defy the darkness—in and through and by the grace of God.
Gracy Olmstead is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The American Conservative, The Week, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and is the author of Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind.
Genuine friendship
Unlikely friendships abound in season 2 of Rings of Power.
Nori the Harfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) journey together to the desert region of Middle-earth’s Rhûn, hoping to find answers about The Stranger’s identity.
Sauron establishes a bond with Celebrimbor, telling the elven smith, “There is no place for half-truths between those who have worked so close as you and I.”
But as Sauron’s dark power spreads, relationships fracture. Hearts grow corruptible. Convictions turn shaky.
In short: Friendship in ROP is wielded as a weapon. Words are used to cajole and manipulate; actions only serve to further selfish interests.
In modern-day parlance, we would call such friendships “toxic”—one person tries to exert control over another, exulting in their influence. Sauron engages in deceit and sows seeds of doubt to make Celebrimbor, and everyone else in Eregion, bend to his will.
Yet, however powerful Sauron appears to be, he’s also pitiful, someone who will never be able to enjoy the freedom that comes in relationship. Grasping for power and dominion over Middle-earth, he is the biggest loser when it comes to making friends.
Friendship, after all, is a gift. It is to be held lightly, woven in faith and trust that one is here for the other’s good, and vice versa. It does not fashion another in our own likeness, to yield to our wants and needs wherever and whenever we demand.
Nori and The Stranger’s friendship exemplifies this beautifully, and serves as a foil to Sauron and Celebrimbor. “We’re very different creatures, Nori, when all is said and done,” says The Stranger. “Not so different at all, if you ask me,” Nori replies.
It’s an impossible choice, perhaps, but The Stranger decides that friendship is worth more than self-discovery.
“We’re very different creatures, Nori, when all is said and done,” says The Stranger after he rescues Nori.
“Not so different at all, if you ask me,” Nori replies.
Scripture tells us that genuine Christian friendships are founded on mutuality. As the apostle Paul writes to his friends in Rome: “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith” (Rom. 1:11–12).
Nori and The Stranger seek each other’s flourishing. And their unlikely friendship also involves some measure of risk, forged out of a willingness to learn about another’s culture and way of life. It is not transactional or quid pro quo.
Rings of Power’s latest season challenges us to redraw the bounds of our circles, to build relationships with people who might look or sound quite different from us. As we cultivate friendships with gentle wisdom and fierce tenacity, we make room for the surprising and edifying work of the Spirit.
Isabelle Ong is associate Asia editor for Christianity Today.
