David Farnor | On 29, Aug 2024

This spoiler-free review of Season 2 is based on the opening three episodes. Warning: It contains spoilers for Season 1. Not caught up? Read our reviews of Season 1 here.

“You are alive because you have chosen good,” a stranger tells Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) at the start of Season 2. “But what of tomorrow?” comes the reply. “You have to choose it again,” the stranger insists. And so the stage is set for the return of The Rings of Power, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel, which has found rich drama in seeing how different characters choose between good and evil. The fact that Halbrand is actually Sauron only adds to the fun complexity of it all.

An inspired prologue gives us part of Season 1 from Sauron’s perspective, as flashes of creepy body horror tell us how he came to plot his return to power – shedding more light on his relationship with Adar (now played with added grit by Sam Hazeldine) and tying up loose threads involving the Southlands prophecy that allowed him to trick Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) into helping him forge his first rings: three of them for the elves. Season 1 finished with them being forged, melding mithril with gold and silver to make rings that have the ability to undo the wilting of the Lindon tree and restore the strength and immortality of the elves. After Galadriel’s unmasking of Sauron’s identity, she was too late to stop the rings being forged, but also didn’t divulge her mistake – instead proposing for three rings to forged, rather than one or two, to ensure balance that might prevent corruption.

Of course, we know from The Lord of the Rings that there it was always part of Sauron’s plan to forge three for the elves – along with seven for the dwarves, nine for men and the One Ring to rule them all. And that is enough to lead us to doubt Galadriel’s ability to make the right decisions – and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) is in the same position, desperately attempting to stop the elves embracing their new rings, for fear that there is unseen magic at work that could betray them.

Charlie Vickers stepped up from being generic, rugged and suspicious to enjoyably conniving at the end of Season 1, and he relishes the chance to play more outwardly sinister this time round. If he previously played on Galadriel’s guilt and narrow-minded obsession with revenge to manipulate her, here he plays on the pride of Celebrimbor (the brilliantly smug, snakelike Charles Edwards).

By leaning into the idea that someone who has already been taken in by Sauron is able to be deceived again, the show manages to escalate the tension – rather than lose it in the wake of Sauron’s identity being discovered. It leaves Elrond, Galadriel and High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) navigating their distrust of each other and their own doubts over whether they’re compromising their own values in trying to make the right choice. Robert Aramayo remains wonderfully poised between thinker and doer, while Morfydd Clark remains magnetic as the young Galadriel who, after being so confident, finds her headstrong strength undermined by regret and fear.

That kind of smart storytelling is evident everywhere in this ever-expanding take on JRR Tolkien’s appendices, as showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay continue to craft something that feels at once new and familiar. They wisely streamline the role of the Harfoots to just Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy (Megan Richards), as they accompany The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) to the mysterious lands of Rhûn. There, a Dark Wizard (a suitably deep-voiced Ciaran Hinds) promises to stir up trouble, while Weyman (who brought heart and hope to an almost-wordless figure in Season 1) benefits from having some dialogue to toy with, giving his grey wizard a playful, friendly side.

The show’s juxtaposition of big and small continues to reap rewards in Khazad-dûm as well, where Prince Durin (the impeccable, earnest Owain Arthur) and King Durin (the beautifully stubborn Peter Mullan) are refusing to speak, which only opens up the kingdom to the possibility of Sauron wooing them with rings to end their troubles – it’s all too easy, now, to see how he might wind his way into the ears of all the races of Middle-earth, promising peace and solutions with a hollow but convincing smile. Political turmoil is also rife in Númenor, where the return of Queen Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) stirs unrest and unhappiness in the population – with no thanks to chancellor Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) or Earien (Ema Horvath), who lest we forget got to glimpse the palantir and its prophecies last season.

Over the first three episodes, the series patiently hops between each group to get us back up to speed – and while that sounds like another chapter of ponderous positioning of pieces on an epic board, Season 2 blends the exposition, lore, world-building and character-deepening with a thrilling dose of action, so that things don’t start to drag. That largely comes courtesy of Ismael Cruz Córdova’s charismatic elf, Arondir, who is struggling to battle through the grey violence of a post-Mordor world along with Isildur (the charmingly upbeat Maxim Baldry) and other survivors. And so we get encounters with not only orcs, but trolls, spiders and ents, not to mention eagles and some nifty sword-swinging and bowplay.

Stitched together by Bear McCreary’s marvellous score – still riffing and expanding on Howard Shore’s gorgeous theme tune, over newly ominous opening titles – the result is a return to Middle-earth that lives up to all the promise and potential of a Lord of the Rings TV series, right down to the gorgeous and massive production. Season 2 promises more gripping moral wrangling to come, as the darkness continues to grow. There’s no doubt that The Rings of Power is still making good choices – and, with Rory Kinnear’s Tom Bombadil still on the cards to make an appearance, little reason to fear it won’t continue to do so.

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