Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Halls of Stone’
After last week’s delightful panoply of ents, barrow-wights and stoors (and Tom Bombadil!), this week’s episode of “Rings of Power” shifted away from fantastical action and got back to the slow, hard grind of politics. Because this is a prequel series, it has a fixed endpoint to reach, involving a lot of dangerous jewelry getting distributed to folks who will not end up seeing eye-to-eye on how use it. But before we get there, all of these humans, dwarves and elves still have a lot of talking to do — whether we enjoy hearing it or not.
Episodes like this week’s are necessary in a story like this, even if they aren’t as much fun as the ones with angry trees and killer skeletons. The whole point of “Rings of Power” is to flesh out the sketchier summaries of events in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books — all of the deep “this king was succeeded by this other king after this battle” lore — and, in doing so, to give us a fuller sense of all the ancestors to “The Lord of the Rings” heroes and villains. Rather than hearing that long ago there was social unrest in Numenor or Khazad-dum, we get to see firsthand how the conflicts played out, and why.
Myself, I like these characters and this world enough to find the predicaments interesting. That said, I do recognize that all of the high-volume speechifying that holds this kind of storytelling together can be a drag sit through. This week, I did find myself occasionally entreating the Valar to tell everyone involved to get on with it already.
With that in mind, here are four takeaways and observations from Episode 5:
Holy wars in Numenor
The most volatile and complex political drama happening in “Rings of Power” right now is taking place in Numenor, which — as I mentioned in a recap of Episode 3 — hasn’t really gotten enough screen time in this series to make the stakes as clear and urgent as they should be. This episode offers a corrective of sorts, showing just how deep and dangerous the divisions on this island have become.
We last left Numenor at a tense moment, when the queen regent Miriel’s coronation was disrupted repeatedly: first by hecklers, then by Earien, who revealed the royal family’s overreliance on a future-telling elfin orb called a palantir. Then it was disrupted again by the portentous arrival of a giant eagle, which the shady opportunist Pharazon co-opted into a divine endorsement for his claim to the throne. The aftermath of all this proves predictably messy.
Miriel, who seems to have lost whatever lust for power she may have had before her traumatic adventures in Middle-earth, seems willing to let Pharazon win this one, despite the objections of her trusted adviser (and potential romantic partner) Elendil. She urges him to remain “the calm at the storm’s eye” and asks him to carry on the fight from the inside, saying that “not every battle must be fought to be won.” She says that the palantir has shown them a path for once that doesn’t end in Numenor’s downfall. He is meant to be a leader on that path, inspiring the faithful with his nobility.
But Pharazon (who, despite his public protestations, is eager to use the palantir himself) and his terrible son Kemen (Leon Wadham) know better than to allow Elendil to build any kind of power base. Kemen and his kingsmen — with the help of Elendil’s daughter — strip the queen’s loyal naval guard of their rank.
Later, the goons break up a religious observance at a shrine, where Kemen seizes the property to make room for a new aqueduct, mocks Elendil for having a child who is “ashamed” of him and petulantly destroys a relic. The disturbance leads to a violent skirmish, during which Valandil (Alex Tarrant) comes to Elendil’s defense and actually has Kemen pinned to the ground with his sword before relenting and letting him up — only to be stabbed in the back by the cowardly creep, who then blames the whole “uprising” on Elendil. Despite Miriel’s intentions, this transfer of power will not be bloodless.
The dwarfs dig too deep
The Numenorians don’t have any rings of power yet, but they are already at each other’s throats. For a preview of how much worse things can get, we turn our attention to Khazad-dum, where King Durin III uses his new ring first for a good purpose — to “find the light” and bring his underground realm some much-needed sunshine — but then starts envisioning the ways the ring can enrich him. He removes his own restrictions against digging deep into the mountain for treasure; and in a meeting with the other dwarf rulers for whom Celebrimbor and Annatar forged rings, Durin refuses to hand them over without their pledges of fealty and coin.
Prince Durin IV, who has been skeptical about the rings from the moment he met the smarmy Annatar, is worried; and even his wife, Disa, who pushed her husband to meet with Celebrimbor, understands now how a shortcut to power like a magic ring can corrupt a good dwarf. The couple can already feel the impact of the king’s creeping madness in everyday life in Khazad-dum, where the merchants are charging double for goods to cover Durin III’s “ring tribute.”
But Disa stumbles across a bigger problem when she follows her expensive new tuning crystal way down into the mines, where she gets startled by the sound of some unseen growling beast. The symbolism here is strong: unchecked greed taking the literal form of a lurking monster.
Sauron pulls the strings
The trouble in Khazad-dum sends Durin IV to Eregion, where he warns Celebrimbor about the malign influence of the ring. But it’s too late for the dwarf prince to stop what is already in motion. Sauron — in his Annatar form — is way inside Celebrimbor’s head, making sinister suggestions and trying to convince the master forger that these bad ideas are the elf’s own.
The scenes between Annatar and Celebrimbor are hard to watch, as a master-manipulator breaks down the will of a good elf through relentless — and, frankly, exhausting — arguments and lies. But these conversations are essential to the arc of this season and series. A key piece of “The Lord of the Rings” back story is the ancient legend of Sauron in disguise, convincing one of the most respected of the elves to forge the tainted rings of power: three for elves, seven for dwarfs, nine for men. Here we see in painful detail how it all went down.
Having already planted the bug in Celebrimbor’s ear that the high king Gil-galad doesn’t properly appreciate his work, Annatar keeps sticking in the needle throughout this episode — first by suggesting that Celebrimbor is afraid to craft rings for men because he is insufficiently moved by the suffering in Mordor, and then by saying that King Durin III’s ring problem could be due to Celebrimbor’s dishonesty — namely, a lie he told Gil-galad under Annatar’s influence. (Annatar would be a great on Twitter. He’s a master at concern trolling.)
The end result of all this manipulation is that Sauron gets his way. An increasingly sweaty and paranoid Celebrimbor begins drawing up designs for the nine rings for men — to “redeem” the failure of the seven dwarf rings. Perhaps, for once in the history of Middle-earth, two wrongs will make a right.
An elfin alliance?
Meanwhile, here come the orcs.
As Adar’s army continues to march toward Eregion, Gil-galad begins having ring-inspired visions of the trouble ahead for Middle-earth. Under Elrond’s council, he begins making plans to lead the elf forces to Celebrimbor’s rescue. But the king harbors some doubt that the elves alone can stand against an alliance of Adar and Sauron … unless, as Galadriel learns to her surprise, Adar would rather beat Sauron than join him.
Is Adar being sincere when he tells Galadriel that they have a common enemy, or is this some kind of orc ruse? This is where “Rings of Power” still holds some intrigue. The broad strokes of what is about to happen in Eregion is known to Tolkien fans. But the road to that fate may still have some unmapped turns.
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