If we can just all survive and hold on until November, it will all be worth it, because finally the third season of the Rings of Power will arrive on Prime. Let joy be unconfined!
Myself, I can't see the fourth and fifth seasons being produced, but who knows? Anyway, to let you all have a teasing tempting taste of the wonders on offer, here's the official trailer.
I have to admit, I'm looking forward to this. Not because I love it as an adaptation of Tolkien, but because it's such a disaster on stilts that I've gone all the way through anger, denial, and grief and come out the other side into a state of Zen serenity. It will be absurd and hilariously over-blown and it will be exquisite.
On the one hand, the showrunners seem to have been dragged, kicking and screaming, within spitting distance of canon. No more Harfoots! Elendil's second son makes an appearance! Celeborn shows up in time to remind Galadriel that she's a married woman and not a freewheeling member of a polycule! (though more on that later).
Elros, Elrond's twin brother, will make an appearance (no idea if it's just a couple of scenes, but hey, at least this is more than a tapestry on a wall in a neglected tower, right?)
Cirdan regrew his beard (and a good thing too, this midlife crisis nonsense shaving with sea shells was too much. You're millennia old and were around for the Great Journey westwards, time to act like it and not like some Second Age youngling who never even saw Cuiviénen).
Sauron finally gets around to forging the One Ring (and about time too, sez we all).
In case you were not sure about "are volcanoes hot?" (given that Glads walked off a pyroclastic flow to the face end of season one/beginning of season two), we can now reveal: "yes, yes they are, this is the official word of the showrunners".
But to offset all that, we get:
Another family person Orc. Even better, an Orc what writes poetry! Yes, my friends, finally we will get a glimpse of Orcish culture freed from the shadows of Elven supremacist propaganda!
The showrunners describe Marnûkh, played by Adam Young, as an “orc with an arc” who essentially defects to the Elves.
Speaking in the latest issue of Empire magazine (via Fellowship of Fans), co-showrunner J.D. Payne said: “We love the idea of exploring what orcs were before they became soulless, mindless slaves to Sauron’s will. So out of that was born this idea of an orc who would risk everything to defect, go to the Elves and say: ‘We have a common enemy.’”
While Marnûkh has turned traitor, he is “not a nice game,” is “morally challenged,” but “he has free will.”
Marnûkh also delivers a short rhyming-verse at one point during Season 3. “We wanted to make room to get to know that character,” co-showrunner Patrick McKay added. “What does he talk about? What food does he like to eat? What is it like to be an orc? We think it’s really important to find room amid all the epicness for stuff that’s really small and human (as it were). Maybe he’s making up a little rhyme! We found that to be one of the things that draws you in — but maybe he’s fooling you. Part of the tension there is: can they trust the orc?”
Nerdist also spoke with the showrunners about Marnûkh. Payne said viewers will think “he’s sort of sweet and funny, and there’s something sensitive to him.’ And even dare I say, poetic and soulful about him. But then, also, he’s constantly sort of undercutting things, and there’s part of him that’s gross and frightening. And so he constantly keeps everyone guessing.”
The Balrog will speak! Voiced by Simon Pegg!
Before they were Nazgul, they were... Nazgnagôl!
Oh, and you thought that Sauron just corrupted, deceived, and manipulated these kings and heroes of Men into becoming his servitors by means of subtle, seductive, magic via the Nine Rings? Ha, as if! Nah, it was totes gladiator style "last man standing becomes a dark wraith" fights to the death, doncha know?
Three weeks after Empire’s first visit, we return to Barad-dûr, to find Sauron now doling out rings. These are the “Nine for mortal men doomed to die”, as Tolkien’s rhyme had it. “The rings of power are a precious gift,” he snarls to a line-up of armoured men, gesturing to the shiny bands smartly displayed in a velvet display box. “Mordor can share but one.” He throws a sword onto the floor. So this is how it will be decided: a fight to the death. Later, we watch a scene where he crowns the winner. It’s time to meet the Nazgûl. The Ringwraiths.
Did you, like Galadriel, want to know what Celeborn was doing for all those years/centuries he was mysteriously missing? The answer would seem to be "Sauron. I was doing Sauron" (told you there'd be a polycule popping up)!
Okay, on that last, I don't think even the showrunners are that dumb, they just answered a question about a Sauron/Galadriel/Celeborn love triangle in the affirmative, because they are so out of the loop on Modern Audiences that they think it's the old meaning of "love triangle" (i.e. Glads is torn between having to choose one of the two hot hunky dudes fighting for her attention). They plainly have not seen what I have seen, as the interviewer took that and ran with "Celeborn and Sauron def. a thing, you read it here first":
At San Diego Comic-Con, actor Benjamin Walker, who plays Gil-galad in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, offered the following popular assertion to Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays Celeborn in the series. Walker said, “You’ve been in the Middle-earth equivalent of sadistic Alcatraz for a thousand years. You’ve come out and realized Sauron has slid into your wife’s DMs…” And the crowd goes wild. Speaking to the cast and showrunner after the panel, I take these thoughts to the showrunners of The Rings of Power. Was Walker correct to frame the relationship between Celeborn, Galadriel, and Sauron as a complicated relationship tangle, indeed, I say, as “a little bit of a love triangle?” And to that, The Rings of Power‘s showrunners, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, offer me. “Yes.” And then take a beat and confirm again, “The answer to your question is yes, absolutely.” And yes, folks, I did literally say, “Love Triangle.”
I'm just waiting for the ship name (Sauborn? Celeron*?), we already have the actor photos 😂
I can't wait. I literally can't wait. This disaster just gets even more baroquely grotesque with each new iteration. The snarky review videos on Youtube will be amazing and I'll be there for each and every one. I hope Charlie Hopkinson has his calendar cleared for roasting Season Three.
Yes, I may be further enriching the Dark Lord Bezos with my Prime subscription, but this time it will be worth it!
*Okay, yes that was a range of low-budget computer chips back in the Dark Ages, but nobody who is into shipping Celeborn and Sauron is old enough to remember that.
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Notes -
I mean, that makes sense? They weren’t ringwraiths before they became wraiths, and it's not like they turned into wraiths the instant the put on the rings.
Yes, but they didn't have their own special pre-Wraith title. That's a cute little invention of their own. You have to love Payne and McKay and their impoverished imaginations - yes, clearly Sauron selected his Ringwraiths by gladiatorial combat. Can't get more faithful to canon then that! 🤣
Yes, they look like the movie Nazgul and they act like the movie Nazgul, but they're not Nazgul. Same way the Harfoots weren't Hobbits.
Oh, the slagging off will be epic and beautiful once this airs.
I don't like the gladiatorial combat -- that's pretty dumb -- but I've certainly no issues with giving them a pre-Nazgul name that better reflects their circumstance. It means "ring servants" or something, right, which seems fitting (if a bit too on the nose, perhaps)? We can't all be Charlemagne and call our most loyal followers Paladins, after all.
I am giving you those pretty rings, totally gift, because you are so awesome, no strings attached whatsoever, no negative consequences, and henceforth I am going to call you "my servants by the power of the Rings" but don't pay any attention to it, it's just a technical term, there's really nothing to it, does not concern you in any way.
Given that in Anglo-Saxon culture, bēagġiefa, ring-giver, was a term used for a leader to whom men owed loyalty (after the practice of literally giving rings to his loyal subjects, and otherwise distributing wealth), said as a good thing... ring-giver and ring-servant as a (non-ominous) pairing seems reasonable enough to me.
Good point, that Sauron as "Annatar = Giver of Gifts" is riffing on the Anglo-Saxon ring-giver trope. But that would engender a reciprocal relationship, and it's also a good point as to "did the receivers of the Rings feel that now they were the vassals of Annatar, owing him the loyalty that they would owe an overlord?" and I don't think that is so. Sauron's work was by flattery and deception, and the kings of Men who were most easily seduced away from loyalty to the Valar (if ever they had any) would not replace that with accepting Sauron as Master in their place.
Inventing a term "Ring-Servant" is too on the nose. Now I gotta go look up the Selected Letters for more information on this, if any.
Aha! The term "Ring-Servants" does appear in a letter (very long letter) of 1951 to Milton Waldman (of Collins publishers, whom Tolkien hoped would publish both LoTR and the Silmarillion after Allen & Unwin had passed on publishing both books):
Hmmm. Does "to those who would accept them" then mean that those recipients were the ones willing to at least pretend they accepted Sauron as their overlord? Maybe? He did establish a theocracy of his own eventually where he was worshipped as not alone the king but the god of his slaves, so certainly the Nine Rings might have been accepted by Men who took Sauron as their god (or again, pretended to do so, and eventually through the influence of the Rings did so in fact).
But this is referring to the Nazgûl as-is, not about them before they became the Famous Nine Ringwraiths (from other letters):
Sauron seems to have taken back and held their Rings, which is how he controlled them (Tolkien speculates on 'would they have obeyed Frodo if he put on the One Ring?' and answered 'not really'):
IIRC Tolkien initially intended for the Nazgul to keep the rings and wear them, but later changed it to Sauron taking the rings from them, once the subjugating their wills was complete, and keeping them for himself. I think the final structure was that it was Sauron's will that controls them, and the rings are only an accessory to that.
I am not very good at finding quotes, so if you find something to the contrary then that's what it is - but from what I have read so far everywhere, it doesn't seem to be at least explicit. And not how Sauron worked in general, at least on that stage. He'd pretend he's just a friendly gift giver. So why not accept? Later, of course, he was the Dark Lord, but that was much later I think, and those guys probably wouldn't join somebody like that willingly, they initially weren't evil, just ambitious. That's kind of the broader point I feel - you don't need to be evil and consciously join the Dark Side to get in trouble, the temptation will lead you there subtly and imperceptibly, and you will never sign the Evil Contract in blood, everything will be justifiable and reasonable, until it's too late. It's a very Christian message.
That's my impression too; Sauron starts off as Annatar and pretends (at least, though he did have some lingering notions of 'making things work right') that he is (a) from the Valar, which is a lie and (b) that he wants to help the Elves (and later Men and Dwarves) out of sheer goodness of heart.
So he captures and sacks Eregion, seizes the Rings that the Elves have made (and they made a lot, not just the Three) and starts doling those out to favoured mortals to get their loyalty and support. It's not until much later that the trap snaps shut and the recipients of the Nine Rings find that they are now enslaved to their rings and so to Sauron. The initial promise is "these will make you strong and immortal" and they work, after a fashion, but by 'butter scraped over too much bread' style, by extending out lifespan but slowly burning up mortal form until what is left is mostly a shadowy form:
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