The Fantasy Review’s review of Rings of Power, season 2, episode 5, Halls of Stone.
There is very little that happens in episode 5 of Rings of Power other than the show wasting our time. Much of it could have been cut. To be honest, that goes for all the previous episodes in Rings of Power.
Onto the spoilers.
Spoiler-Filled Review of Rings of Power, Season 2, Episode 5
Celebrimbor Cracks
The opening scene with the 7 Dwarven Rings looked amazing. The design is perfect. You know immediately they are for the Dwarves just from the mountain-like aesthetics of them.
The brooding Annatar walks away, openly unhappy. Celebrimbor follows him and they have a romantic chat on a balcony. This is the start of the most drawn-out “will-they?, won’t-they?”, and I don’t mean whether Annatar gets in on with Celebrimbor!
Rings of Power, season 2, episode 5 is a painful 1-hour wait for them to actually start making the Nine Rings for Men. Sure, there are some interesting plot points, such as Celebrimbor finally seeing a little through Annatar’s manipulations:
“It is a game you play, is it not? Sowing seeds in others’ minds and then convincing them that the fruit is of their own thought.”
Annatar brings up the need for Men to have Rings, and Celebrimbor rightly fears the risk of corruption in Men if he were to make them rings, worrying that giving them rings would only make things worse. He refuses to make the Nine Rings for Men that Annatar wishes to have.
Annatar says he will make the rings himself then, without Celebrimbor.
Later, we see Celebrimbor at his desk and of course he has an anvil paperweight! I absolutely love that kind of tiny detail on a set. He is distracted from his cute paperweight by something going wrong in the forge.
It’s clear to the viewer that Sauron/Annatar has set something up going wrong so that Cemebrimbor will feel like he has to help him make the Nine Rings for Men, because Sauron cannot make them alone.
Prince Durin arrives just in time to stop Celebrimbor from offering a word of advice to Annatar. Durin tells Celebrimbor that his father is colder, quicker to anger, all after using the Ring. Annatar/Sauron, now sensing that Celebrimbor is slowly turning against him, starting to lose trust in him, starts sowing the seeds of doubt about Celebrimbor to the Elven-smiths of Eregion.
Celebrimbor’s trust of Annatar is paper-thin now, asking outright if Annatar had altered the Dwarven Rings. Sauron then blames Celebrimbor’s deceit on what’s happened to the Dwarven Rings, which is a very smart, manipulative move.
Later, after a lengthy hour of this back and forth, Celebrimbor openly blames the Elven-smiths of Eregion for the failure of the 7 Dwarven Rings and his solution is to work together to make the Nine Rings for Men. The show explains this change of heart as a means of creating balance, but this entire episode was just the show dragging out the inevitable and instead of being exciting it was excruciating, waiting for him to finally help with the Nine Rings.
Kazad-Precious
In Khazad-dûm, King Durin uses his newly acquired ring to find the best place for the Dwarves to dig a new access shaft for sunlight. He then proceeds to dig the hole himself and finds sunlight.
Later, Prince Durin and Disa are at the market and learn of a new tax that King Durin has signed into law, which seems to be a tax on the people of Khazad-dûm in return for the power of King Durin’s new ring.
Disa drops a round rock which rolls away, conveniently, taking us and her to a dark, open cave. My only thought at this point is if the creature bellowing is the Balrog, we are going to have yet another mystery box end in disappointment.
We then start to see the corruption of King Durin’s new power seep into everything he does, the main thing being lifting restrictions on how deep they can dig, looking for gold, He says “Khazad-dûm shall never want again”.
Prince Durin returns from Eregion and tries to convince King Durin to stop using the ring. The King refuses.
The main bit of the Khazad-dûm plot that I didn’t like was how quickly King Durin succumbed to greed because of his Ring. Yes, that is its effect on dwarves, but not overnight! Perhaps there is a lot more time between scenes than we are shown, but if that is the case it isn’t very obvious. I mean, the dwarves travel to and from Eregion several times in the episode, but maybe the rings let them teleport now…
O Captain! My Captain!
In Númenor, Ar-Pharazôn stands looking across the island and into the horizon, talking of the Undying Lands with his son. It is about time we started to see this motivation from Ar-Pharazôn and the King’s Men!
In the lore, the Númenóreans begin to fear death and despise the Valar. They are forbidden from gaining immortality and travelling to the Undying Lands, so grow hateful and jealous of the Elves. This is the first time in Rings of Power that we have seen this motivation shown on screen. It would have been good to see earlier, but we have it now.
We then cut to Elendil and Tar-Míriel who constantly look like they are on the verge of ripping each other’s clothes off. Tar-Míriel believes that because Elendil did not see the same vision of the future that she had when touching the Palantir, that Ar-Pharazôn’s rule was the best thing for Númenor right now. She tells Elendil to “go back to your ship” as her final command to him.
Elendil goes for a stroll and we discover that those deemed loyal to the overthrown Queen-regent are stripped of rank. Elendil has a quiet argument with his made-up daughter. She still blames Tar-Míriel for Isildur’s “death” and thinks that this all happened because she dared to use an “elf-stone”.
Elendil then has an “O Captain! My Captain!” moment with members of the Faithful refusing to denounce the Valar. Strange that the show is only explaining the divisions between the King’s Men and the Faithful after the coup, but at least those deep motivations are starting to peek through now.
We then get a shot of Ar-Pharazôn standing before the Palantir in a secret location. This makes me think I was right in my review of episode 3, when I said that Sauron might use the Palantir to control Ar-Pharazôn rather than having to be captured by the Númenóreans first, as the timeline doesn’t quite work.
Later, there is a meeting of the Faithful remembering all those lost in the recent battle in Middle-earth. The King’s Men barge in, claiming the shrine is now condemned, by order of the King.
There is a fight and Valandil is killed by Ar-Pharazôn’s son. Elendil is arrested. And so here starts the subjugation of the Faithful by the King’s Men. I wonder how far this brutality will go on the TV show, as it is pretty horrific in the lore.
Final Thoughts on This Review of Rings of Power, Season 2, Episode 5
The final minute of Rings of Power, season 5, episode 1 cuts from scene to scene very quickly.
- The orcs arrive at Eregion.
- Elrond warns Gil-galad but the High King refuses to send aid.
- We then see Galadriel in Adar’s camp, and Adar offers an alliance against Sauron.
- And the final clip is of the Rings for Men being made.
All these scenes are the ones the viewers have been waiting for this entire hour, and the show just spits them out in under a minute? What a waste of some actually exciting storytelling. Like I said in the spoiler-free section, this episode was just a waste of everyone’s time.
The only waste of time was reading this stupid review. This was the best episode so long… The deep understanding of the filmakers how Celebrimbor was corrupted by Sauron is worth Tolkien.
I’m glad you enjoyed the episode!