“It’s not who we are,” Nori tells her friend Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards), when the latter suggests that they abandoned a naked star in the crater he created. . It’s a sentiment that can easily become sly, too moral to maintain its authenticity, but Markella Kavenaugh’s delivery makes Nori’s words true. That’s always the power of Lord of the Rings—And, according to the extension, the power of Rings of Power, its ambition has been realized. JRR Tolkien’s world is dark, but it is never cynical. It is the small but great act of good that will always win, even if its battles go on for millennia. You can dismiss this cliche characterization, if you want – you’re not the first – but doing so would be to bypass the foundation of this entire beloved franchise.
And so, at the beginning of volume 2 of Rings of Power, Nori surveyed the naked man in the crater. When he touched her hand, the whole world seemed to shake, and fragments of the explosion floated around them. But his power is failing; he can only sustain this trick for a few heart-pounding moments. Nori is determined to take him to a safe place, away from where the wolves might attack him. “Whoever finds out that we helped a stranger, and that anything bad happens over the next three seasons will be our fault,” Poppy argued. But Nori is used to breaking some rules in pursuit of a good story. She and Poppy hid The Stranger in one of their makeover Harfoot pits, covered with moss and twigs, where they prayed that he would be safe while they slept.
The next morning, Nori discovers The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), awake, scratching unidentified tracks into a rock. He couldn’t remember his own name, and he didn’t seem to be able to communicate much other than grunts and gasps. It’s wrong for him to eat snails. When asked where he comes from, if there are others like him, he carved deeper into the mud, only whispering the words “Mana” and “Urë”. Poppy interrupted before Nori and The Stranger could go any further in their conversation: Nori’s father had fallen and his feet looked bad. It was certainly broken, but the spot around the crack looked brackish, almost as if it were infected with the same black worms as Arondir and Bronwyn found in the stomach of a cow in the Southlands.
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Speaking of Arondir and Bronwyn, they are exploring the smoldering ruins of Hordern, where buildings have been razed but no bodies have been found. They discover a tunnel beneath one of the houses, and Arondir decides to plot it while Bronwyn returns to Tirharad to warn her people. Unfortunately, her relatives don’t seem to be entirely concerned with “bodies that are devoured like flies”, especially since this word comes from Bronwyn, who has a rumored relationship with an Elf. brought reproach from her own people.
That reproach causes her son, Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), who is an angry boy, to discover that the rats huddled under his floorboards are not rats at all. They are Orcs. Arondir also discovered them in the tunnels below Hordern, where he was passed among a tangle of tree roots. But in Tirharad, Theo and Bronwyn are fighting an orc alone with only a few garden shears, herbal powder, and a rope. After a scuffle, where Theo lets out a few overly dramatic cries of pain, Bronwyn brings the orc’s head to the local tavern as proof of her warning, and everyone moves out of the house. their children — including Theo, who was holding a broken Sauron sword. , slowly regenerated as it bled from the wound on his hand. Not a good sign!
Meanwhile, in Eregion, the realm of Elven blacksmiths, we finally learn the ambitions of Lord Celebrimbor: He aspires to “grow beyond small jewels and create come up with something with real power.” (I wonder what that could be!!) To do that, he needs to build a smithy, and to do that he needs to build a tower, and must do. that he needs a lot of fast and skilled workers. Elrond recommends joining the Dwarves, and so he and Celebrimbor set up a route for the remarkable halls of Khazad-dûm, which fans of Peter Jackson’s movies will recognize as the last ruined mine of Moria under the Misty Mountains.
(Allow me to make a small complaint here: How could Elrond and Celebrimbor magically manifest outside Khazad-dûm, dressed as they are in Eregion — miles away on the surface — without any horse or eagle in sight? They teleport? -traveling never stops infuriating me.)
Either way, in Khazad-dûm, Elrond expects to be greeted warmly by his old friend, Prince Durin (Owain Arthur), but he commits the ultimate crime against a Dwarf: Brother I missed a party. It has been 20 years since Elrond visited his friend – for Elves it was a blip, but for Dwarves it was much longer – and in that time, Durin was married and had two children, Lovely troublemakers Gerda and Gamli. To get into Durin’s house, Elrond is forced to summon the Rite of Sigin-tarâg, which leads to a nasty duel between the Dwarves and the Elves as they battle to see who can smash the most stones with a hammer. . (Obviously a unique point of Dwarf pride.) Elrond was forced to give up, but he was smart enough to ask Durin to personally escort him to the exit, and he gave him some extra time. together as an opportunity to learn about the rift between them.
Durin tries to play cool, but the Dwarves have never been particularly known for their smooth serve. He finally explodes: What kind of friend misses their best friend’s wedding? The birth of their children? “A life you’ve missed!” he yelled, and Elrond showed real grief and shame, an insignificant development for an Elf. However, he is nothing if not strategic. He asked for the opportunity not only to apologize to Durin, but also to the prince’s wife and children. He means it, but he’s also giving himself more time to deliver on Celebrimbor’s proposal.
Thankfully, Princess Disa (the absolutely gorgeous Sophia Nomvete), Durin’s wife, will have no grudge against her husband. She hugs Elrond in an enveloping hug and asks him to stay for dinner, where she tells him about how she and Durin met. (A thoroughly interesting story about how she “resonated” with a silver deposit when the prince came to check on her crew—and then returned, again and again.) Elrond noticed that Durin had planted a sapling of Lindon’s Great Elvish Tree at his home, and he appeased the prince’s anger with a compliment: “How is that possible? Not grow, in a house like yours? ” And so Durin took Elrond’s request to his father, King Durin III, who accused his son of having soft props for the Elves. Together they surveyed a box, whose contents we did not have yet. seeing privileges.
Elsewhere, in the Sundering Seas, Galadriel is starting to train. By my estimation, she swam for a million hours, but she just seemed a bit exhausted from maintaining a good freestyle. A tangled mess approaches the far side, carrying a handful of survivors, so she hides her pointy ears behind a lock of hair before climbing aboard. It didn’t take long for this shipwrecked misguided gang to a) discover her nasty ears and b) encounter a giant sea worm, killing most of them before a man A man named Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) rescues Galadriel from the abyss. He assumed she was a runaway, whether running “towards or from something I have yet to decide,” he said. But he has a bigger bomb to reveal: He is a runway himself, having escaped the Southlands not with the Elves biting his ankle, but the Orcs. Now, Galadriel the Orc Slayer is listening.
Despite her concerns not being her duty, Halbrand was warm enough to her to rescue her (again) when a storm blew through their little piece of driftwood. They’ve bonded together now, and I’d be surprised if they leave each other together as often as possible in the coming episodes — especially now that a mysterious person on a large ship has discovered an almost dead body. and their lives adrift in the Sea.
Back in Rhovanion, Nori and Poppy tell The Stranger that it’s time for their band of Harfoots to emigrate, meaning there’s nothing more they can do to help him. Because he’s not exactly a man of words, The Stranger uses a swarm of fireflies to convey his feelings about their impending departure: He whispers to these bugs, in a whisper scene reminiscent of Gandalf’s scene. incantation for a moth in The fellowship of the ring. One by one, they align themselves into a constellation, and Nori realizes her work is not done; The stranger wants her to help him find these stars. But there’s something very wrong with his magic – when he falls, so do the fireflies, flying around and dying in a circle around him.
These omens do not bode well for our cast, which spreads out across the middle of Earth, and I have little doubt that they will soon discover and enjoy each other’s company. But don’t expect any of them to shy away from the rapidly encroaching danger; it’s just not who they are.
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Lauren Puckett-Pope is an editorial associate at ELLE, where she covers news and culture.
