Episode Seven of The Rings of Power begins . . .
ONE
An ash-coated eye opens. It’s Galadriel, pulling herself up in slowmo from the village ground. Through the orange air and embers, she calls out for Halbrand and Elendil. Theo finds her.
TWO
Isildur and the Queen strain to lift a beam off of Valandil. Ontamo, next to him, is dead. Hearing cries, the Queen directs the soldiers to help her rescue people trapped in a burning building.
THREE
They escape, but the roof falls on Isildur.
FOUR
From the orange haze, we cut to greenery and a sparkling creek. Poppy sings, pulling her wagon, and the Brandyfoots follow. Anticipating campfires with woodsmoke, they top a rise to find instead the remains of an orchard and garden plot that have been ruined by the volcanic eruption. The Harfoots stand around, stunned by the destruction. They pick ash-covered fruit. Sadoc asks Nori to get The Stranger to help. (Help them how?) Uncomfortable, Nori refuses. Sadoc will go himself, then.
They all watch as The Stranger caresses one of the trees and murmurs to it in an unknown language. He becomes more intense, and the tree shakes. Instead of renewing, though, the tree breaks apart. All the Harfoots glare at The Stranger, who seems surprised and saddened by the failure.
A mountain landscape. Elrond is down with the dwarves, negotiating for mithril. In exchange for access to the mines, the elves will provide grain, game, and timber for 500 years. Elrond kneels before the King and begs them to save his people. The King clears the room so that he and Durin may speak.
In a nutshell, the King says he refuses to delve too deep, especially not to save the elves. Durin is devastated. (The scene is rich with foreknowledge. The King worries that the Dwarven Kingdom will fall if they help the elves against the will of their forefathers. Well, we know he’s right. We know they will mine the mithril, awaken a great evil, and lose their magnificent city. And we can guess that Durin subverts his father’s decision.)
Cut to Disa ranting to Durin about the King’s edict. She wants to go around him, but Durin argues they should obey the ruler. Elrond comes to say goodbye and returns the wedge of mithril. Durin weeps. He tosses the piece of mithril across the table where it lands next to a corrupted Lindon leaf. The leaf heals. As the music swells, Durin yells for Elrond.
Back to the orange air, with Mt. Doom erupting in the distance. Galadriel and Theo crouch. She says the orcs intend to make this their Shadow Land. Theo wants to fight, but Galadriel holds him back. It is over, she says. This land is now dead. And she blames herself for it.
(So the Southlands, the beautiful area of medieval villages, clear streams, and green mountain land, is to become Mordor. It’s a striking transition, and I wish the map had been made clearer. The Harfoots traverse the Grey Marshes and are nowhere near The Shire. Where is Gondor? Where is Rohan? Perhaps these kingdoms don’t yet exist, but the poignancy of losing the Southlands would be more impactful if we had locations in this show that reference the story we know so well.
And another plotline whose poignancy is lost: Every time we saw the Southlands, we should’ve seen the volcano, dormant and peaceful. All that orc digging had no reference point. The orcs have machinated for a while to make this very destruction happen. Their goals are critical to the future of Middle-Earth, yet all we saw was their sun-fear and their brutality. We were cheated of a delicious sense of anticipation and horror. Every ancient Greek who watched Oedipus Rex knew the protagonist would marry his mother and murder his father. The clear foreknowledge is what makes the play a brilliant tragedy. Did anything structurally help us recognize that we were watching a tragedy?)
Elendil escorts the villagers from their ashen valley. He thinks he sees Isildur among the marchers, but he’s wrong. The Queen, however, emerges alive from the haze. She holds to Valandil’s shoulder.
Theo and Galadriel march through a different section of orange forest. She lectures him against a bloodthirsty attitude and gives him a sword.
Elendil leads the Queen on his horse near a branch and she doesn’t duck. Then she asks when the smoke will clear. He stops to look at her, and they all realize she’s blind.
With the Harfoots we return to a land of green. Sadoc gives The Stranger directions to find the Big Folk. Harfoot haven’t seen the stars he seeks in over a thousand years. Maybe someone else can help him. As they part, The Stranger’s broken tree sprouts, unnoticed, a little yellow flower. The Stranger sadly nods goodbye to Nori and her family. She sadly offers him an apple.
With her mother, Nori shames herself for helping The Stranger, saying she’s only a Harfoot. Clouds cover the moon.
(It’s possible that this discordant, self-pitying scene is our Switch. It goes against everything we know about Nori’s spunk and bravery, and it feels like a cheap ploy so that she can change later. We’re supposed to feel a hopelessness about Nori’s storyline, even though none of us believe that her defeatist attitude is true to her character.
We’re near the halfway point, so let’s assume we’re at the Switch and see how it plays out in the second part. I’m not particularly happy with the opening Enneagram beats. I think they’ll be hard to bring home at the Six and Eight, but we’ll see.
To be continued . . . )