The Fantasy Review’s review of Rings of Power, season 2, episode 3, The Eagle and the Sceptre.
A very quick spoiler-free review of Rings of Power, season 2, episode 3 would be… confusion. No answers get answered. More mysteries are revealed. At this point you have to wonder if the writers even know what suspense is.
Whatever happened to having one or two amazing twists towards the end of a story? Instead, we have these endless mysteries, all of which, when answered, are hollow.
Onto the spoilers.
Spoiler-Filled Review of Rings of Power, Season 2, Episode 3
Magic Fucking Horse
Rings of Power, season 2, episode 3 begins with Elendil talking to the horse, Berek, like Aragorn did with horses in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies. It’s a nice nod to Aragorn’s lineage and makes us like the character more.
The horse goes free because it can’t be tamed and searches for Isildur. It turns out that Berek is a magic horse who can kill orcs, and then he finds Isildur wrapped in a spider’s web, ready for dinner.
Later, Isildur finds the battlefield still littered with the dead. He meets a girl called Estrid who stabs him, mistaking him for an orc. She has a map and Isildur and her head off to Pelargir in the hopes of finding people. Skips time and they don’t see any ships in the harbour from a distance.
Does this sound boring? Slow?
It is.
They find a supposedly wounded man on the side of the road. Obvious trap, but Isildur falls for it and they are attacked. A depressed Arondir comes and saves them both, but Berek is captured. Of course, now we have to come back for the horse later.
Arondir grieves for Bronwyn, as does Theo, and they burn her funeral pyre. If Theo turns bad because his mum dies, they’ll need to make that character development more interesting over the course of the seasons or no one is going to care.
Later, Theo patches Isildur up from Estrid’s stab to his leg. In the same scene, Arondir laments his failure “to stop Adar…to protect her”. We then move to a scene with just Arondir and Theo where Arondir warns Theo against constantly being angry. Mentions that his birthplace, Belgeriand, fell and he was angry too, but could not let himself succumb to the anger.
Then Theo has a “you’re not my dad!” moment with Arondir. Later, Isildur talks with Theo and they arrange to meet later to rescue Berek. Nothing bad will happen now, right?
Isildur talks with Estrid by a fire. He tells the story of how when he was younger, he swam out too far to sea and got caught in a riptide. His mum swam out and saved him but she drowned. He has hidden his involvement in his mother’s drowning from everyone back home. Now that’s a dark twist. Oh, and another twist we saw a mile off because she’s weird and obviously hiding something, Estrid burns her brand off (the Adar loyalty brand).
Then we get a shot of a bad guy cutting down a tree – here come the Ents.
Isildur finds Berek fast. Theo is distracting the enemy and is about to get killed by said bad guys when a mysterious enemy attacks – here come the Ents. Theo is taken by one of the trees.
The Eagle Has Landed
In Númenor, Elendil talks to his made-up daughter (Eärien) who is a secret member of the King’s Men. He says the King (now dead) “always protected the Faithful” and she’s pissed. The daughter blames the Queen-regent for Isildur’s “death” and is angry Elendil does not also blame the Tar-Míriel but instead blames himself.
Tar-Míriel comes into the funeral and is slapped by a woman who lost her son. The Queen-regent then hugs the woman rather than punishing her. The show is trying to make it out like Tar-Míriel is going to be fine because she’s kind, but we all know what happened to Ned Stark.
In her private quarters, the Queen-regent is joined by Ar-Pharazôn who asks her what colours she wants to wear for her coronation. I will get onto this later because it’s an interesting concept for the story, but not done well by the writers.
So, in the next scene, a bunch of the King’s Men sit around a table with Ar-Pharazôn and very loudly talk about treason. In a tavern! They are talking very loudly about how the Queen-regent is “no longer fit to rule” and they don’t get their heads cut off. Ar-Pharazôn advises that it “would be wise to lower one’s voice” and he is the mastermind of what’s to come, afterall.
Valandil, a friend of Isildur’s, overhears them, because they were talking of treachery in very loud voices. He comes over to warn them away from such talk and to warn Isildur’s made-up sister from siding with Ar-Pharazôn and the King’s Men.
Once Valandil leaves, it is then revealed that Eärien stole the seeing-stone, Palantíri, from the Queen-regent. Maybe this is how they get Sauron to influence the King’s Men rather than have him captured, because right now he is Annatar and busy making the rings. This would not be a bad way to condense this bit of the timeline and have the two things happen simultaneously.
We then come to the climax of Rings of Power, season 2, episode 3: The Queen-regent’s coronation. Now, I mentioned the conversation about colours before and now it is relevant. So, in art there is something called colour symbolism, which is exactly as it sounds: certain colours mean specific things.
So, Tar-Míriel chose to come wearing white, which the show rightly said was humbler. White tends to represent purity or virtue, so that makes sense for one of the Faithful to the Valar.
We cut straight from her to see Ar-Pharazôn in the crowd wearing red. Now, the show seems to think that red means new beginnings, and white means stability or something; so in this respect they are opposites. However, red tends to symbolise passion, love or anger.
Now, in the lore, red makes sense, as the King’s Men are driven by their fear of death and anger at being forbidden from immortality and the Undying Lands. However, in the show, we have heard nothing of their motivations other than a fear and hatred of outsiders and the Elves’ “dark magic”.
If you wanted to represent “new beginnings”, as Ar-Pharazôn said in his earlier conversation with Tar-Míriel, you would wear green.
So, the colour symbolism could have been a cool aspect of the episode, but instead it went probably unnoticed by most and confused anyone who knew about it. I had a vague idea and had to look it up, so they clearly didn’t do enough to explain it if they thought it was important, and should have left it out if they didn’t see it as essential.
Anyway, Elendil’s made-up daughter comes in with the Palantir and everyone goes crazy at the Queen’regent’s use of an Elvish artefact, some calling it “dark magic”.
Oh look, an Eagle!
To be fair, that was a cool twist, linking back to Miriel’s conversation with Ar-Pharazôn, when she says “and an eagle” in addition to the white cloth. I assumed, like many, she meant an image; turns out we got an Eagle, with a capital ‘E’.
Then the insanity continues: Ar-Pharazôn goes towards the Eagle and the moment is twisted by his name being chanted by the crowd, “The Eagle favours Pharazôn!”
What??
Okay, so why didn’t the Eagle just bite his head off when he stood with his back to it? Eagles would never allow themselves to be used like this, especially by enemies of the Valar. If you are going to introduce Eagles for some reason, despite their being no case for them being anywhere near Númenor, at least make it make sense. This went from being a cool twist to falling flat fast.
Eater of Dragon Bones
We get one scene with Adar and meet a nice little orc family who just want to live in peace and harmony. Then a massive troll busts in: meet Damrod, “Hill-troll of the Ered Mithrin, Killer of stone giants, Eater of Dragon bones”.
Damrod wants to know where Sauron is. I want to know who Damrod is!
Celebrimbor is a Rebel Rebel: Hot Tramp, I Love You So!
The most interesting part of this episode took place in Eregion.
Durin and Disa meet with Annatar and Celebrimbor. Despite the cringey introduction of Annatar and the terrible wig, Charlie Vickers is a brilliant actor and has transformed himself through facial expressions and the tone of his voice. If he still looked like Halbrand he would still give off the aura of Annatar and that’s impressive.
Durin being hesitant about trusting Annatar makes sense for his character and I’m glad they didn’t just have him falling over himself in awe like they did with Celebrimbor in episode 2.
However, the interesting part was seeing Celebrimbor interrupt Annatar during their conversation with Durin. He tells the Dwarf there was time to think, rather than allow Annatar to rush them. Maybe we will actually see Celebrimbor become suspicious of Annatar afterall.
Celebrimbor talks with Annatar afterwards, telling him of a saying in Khazad-dûm, “The slow drip splits the boulder” – advising patience. But then Celebrimbor shows us another side to him – his pride.
He is at the “height of his craft” and Gil-galad will not “take it away”, so he writes a letter saying he is closing the forge when he instead intends on crafting more Rings of Power. This is the kind of fascinating character exploration I want to see from this show!
We finish with the 7 Dwarven Rings being made by Annatar, Celebrimbor, and the Elven-smiths of Eregion. This time it is made clear that Sauron had influence in the creation of the rings, adding the Mithril himself, with an ominous soundtrack in the background, unlike when the Three Elven Rings were made by Celebrimbor.
Conclusion to this Review of Rings of Power, Season 2, Episode 3
Episode 3 of Rings of Power is a prime example of why this show just isn’t as good as it could be. There is so much to work with, and some absolutely incredible characters, but they waste everything. Even when they try to do something cool or clever, it falls flat because they don’t think about it enough.
At this point, watching Rings of Power is a waste of time.
