Continuing Episode Four of The Rings of Power . . .
SWITCH
From a window Elrond views a construction site.
FIVE
He is in Celebrimbor’s apartment. Over refreshments, Celebrimbor mentions Elrond’s father, and then gently complains about Durin.
Elrond visits Durin’s wife, Disa. He suspects her of deception; Durin has been avoiding him.
Dissolve to Disa and Durin walking together. She indeed lied to Elrond. He whispers that they’re making good progress in the “old mine”. Pull out across the chasm to show Elrond with elf eyes reading their lips.
Cut to Elrond in the mine’s entrance. At a stone blockage he recites the rhyme Disa’s children were chanting when he visited her. It works; the stone opens. Pulling aside a cloth, Elrond sees a vein of silvery metal. Durin catches him spying and accuses him of wanting this all along. However, Elrond doesn’t know what Durin means and only wants to preserve their friendship. Demanding an oath of secrecy, Durin shows Elrond the mysterious contents of the chest: mithril (although, because it’s a “new ore” it isn’t named yet). It’s dangerous to mine, so the King has kept the discovery quiet.
(Here all of us whisper to ourselves, “The dwarves delved too deep.”)
Durin wants Elrond to take the piece of ore, but the tension between them could be cut with a knife until a cave-in sends them on a rescue mission.
Nighttime in Númenor, and Eärion sketches a building. Rising, she accidentally runs into Kemen, who flirts with her.
Galadriel paces in her jail cell. Halbrand, in the adjoining cell, tries to coax her into using diplomacy rather than a head-on charge at the court. He helps her realize that her demand to speak to the King is what the Queen Regent fears most.
And then the Chancellor makes an appearance. (Rut-roh. Too early for a Six.) He brings guards to escort Galadriel from the island tonight. When Galadriel attacks the guards and locks them in her cell, Halbrand whispers in the Chancellor’s ear.
Eärion joins Isildur as he eats dinner in the plaza. She learns that he and his friends are dismissed from the cadets. They are disrupted by guards chasing after the “escaped elf”.
An exterior of the high tower, and then Galadriel smashes through the door. The Queen stands at the end of the bed where her father lies, waiting for her. Coughing and moaning, the King’s distress interrupts them. No one knows how ill he is. Galadriel will keep the secret, if the Queen will tell her the truth about the King.
The people rebelled against him, she explains. They didn’t want the elvish ways. The Queen was chosen to rule in his stead. On his first night in the tower, he showed his daughter a plinth. Pulling back the cloth covering, the Queen reveals the object to Galadriel. It’s a palantir. The six other seeing stones are either lost or hidden. The Queen tells Galadriel to place her hand on it.
The Great Wave rushes over Galadriel. She breaks free of the palantir and turns away.
The Queen believes Galadriel’s arrival initiated the vision. She must leave or Númenor will fall. Galadriel speculates that the unchecked advance of evil in Middle-Earth will cause Númenor’s destruction. She speaks with sympathy and compassion for the decision in front of the Queen, but her request is denied.
Cut to a dead animal tossed on a table in front of Bronwyn. People are starving. A commotion at the gate is Rowan returning with his cart of food scraps. Bronwyn asks after Theo, who hasn’t come back.
He’s in the well while orcs prowl above. Climbing out, he hides and sidles. Just as he seems to escape detection, an orc grabs him. He’s saved by Arondir. In slowmo they’re chased through the woods. Bronwyn runs to meet them. They make it into a clearing at dawn, safe. Frustrated by the light, the orcs can’t follow.
Dawn shifts to tall peaks, the dwarven realm. Disa sings as part of some kind of ceremony. In the back of the crowd, Elrond watches. She pleads with the rocks to release the bodies of the lost miners who still live. It works, Durin tells us. He’s furious that his father will close down digging on the vein. Elrond, emotional, tells of his own father, gone from him, and the ways he’s failed him. He counsels Durin to speak with his father while he can.
Durin goes to his father’s chamber and apologizes. After a bit of suspense, the King makes clear there’s nothing to forgive. Durin asks permission to travel with Elrond to Lindon. Both dwarves are suspicious that the invitation has hidden meanings. He will go.
Arondir and Bronwyn meet on the walls of the watchtower. They lean close, as if they’ll kiss, but instead Arondir delivers Adar’s message: swear fealty to the orc leader. He’s coming.
SIX
In the shadow of the walls, Theo lifts the icon from his tunic. Waldreg tosses him a flask. He knows Theo took the hilt from his barn. Waldreg displays his damaged forearm and Theo compares it to his. It is no sword, but a gift from he who was lost but shall return. Sauron. The Starfall means his time is near. He and Theo are compatriots now.
SEVEN
A warg chews on a bone while Adar watches in the shadows. An orc reports to him, “We found it. It’s in the tower.”
EIGHT
Galadriel, attended by a guard and the Queen, prepares to depart. She boards a rowboat and gives a last long stare at the Queen. On shore, the Chancellor congratulates the Queen on her decision. As she walks away, white leaves/petals begin to drift around her. This is no dream; the tree’s leaves fall. She stops and goes back to the waterfront, sharing an intense look with Elendil. Her line about the petals being the tears of the Valar plays, over, while the Chancellor watches her visibly change her mind.
NINE
Transition to the Queen in her throne room speaking to her people. A montage follows of the Chancellor standing in the shadows, of her father waking and opening his eyes, of the beautiful city as Halbrand looks out from the wall, and of Galadriel’s return. The Queen will personally escort her back to Middle-Earth. Isildur and his two friends volunteer to serve on the voyage, as do a surge of the Queen’s people. They will help their “mortal brethren” who are besieged in the Southlands.
Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
Waldreg’s comment suggests that Nori’s Stranger is Sauron. (We’ve been wondering if he could be Gandalf, too. So far, we’ve seen no sign of wizards.) This tease of a reveal, though, is our Six. We don’t know what the Stranger is, but we know — Starfall — he’s critical to the total story.
And with that, we know what the Three should have been. (The Chancellor is not it.) None of this episode has the Harfoot plotline. A peek at them, a reminder and placeholder of the Stranger, was the proper Three. Instead, we have no Three. This is the first structural misstep by the show.
Kudos to the Two and Eight, however, and to Addai-Robinson for the moment she gives the Queen when the petals blow around her. It’s a beautiful connection to her dream and her fear, all shown on her face. She delivers goosebumps. On paper it’s a bland, unimpressive Eight. On film she smashes it.