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January 30, 2022

5 Scenes From The Silmarillion We Need To See In Amazon’s “The Rings Of Power”

**SPOILERS FOR THE SILMARILLION AND POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER AHEAD!**

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power has long been believed to be the most expensive series ever made for either streaming or television. One season alone cost Amazon Studios an estimated $465 million dollars, and with two seasons already greenlit and a total of five planned (not to mention a potential spinoff), this is indeed shaping up to be a billion-dollar investment for Amazon; as initially reported when they obtained the rights to The Lord Of The Rings and its appendices in 2017 for a whopping $250 million.

But what I and many other fans have wondered for a long time is whether there was more to the deal than Amazon or the Tolkien Estate told us at the time, because in the four years since that deal transpired, we’ve never once heard that Amazon planned to adapt The Lord Of The Rings itself. No, their interest lies solely in the book’s slim collection of appendices, specifically the first five pages of Appendix A, which offers an extremely abridged account of the Second Age of Middle-earth – the period of time in which Amazon’s The Rings Of Power takes place.

You heard that correctly: five pages of source material for a series that is supposed to run for five seasons. I suppose you could throw in the first three pages of Appendix B, and then you could round up all the various references to events in the Second Age found elsewhere throughout the appendices and the book, but ultimately you’re looking at something like…ten to fifteen pages, tops. Hardly worth $250 million dollars, if you ask me.

Unless there was more to the deal.

Look, I don’t want to downplay the significance of the appendices, because most of what we know about the early Third Age comes from Appendix A. But if you’re looking for a detailed account of anything that happens in the Second Age or earlier, there’s really only two places to look: The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. Although published several years after J.R.R. Tolkien’s death by his son Christopher, both of these books were stitched together from his notes and various rough drafts to compile the full story of Middle-earth from its creation to the end of the Third Age, focusing primarily on the First and Second Ages.

As a side-note, I highly recommend both books to anyone interested in the Tolkien legendarium, but be aware that neither is a novel. The Silmarillion is a dense historical text written in an archaic style reminiscent of the Old Testament – once you get the hang of it, it can be paradigm-altering, but I won’t fault anyone for page-skimming on their first read. Unfinished Tales actually contains a number of stories with rich characterization and a substantial amount of dialogue, but as the title suggests, very few of these stories are finished – which can make for a jarring reading experience.

Anyway, both of these books would be immensely helpful to the showrunners and writers on The Rings Of Power for the details they provide regarding the Second Age that are nowhere to be found in Tolkien’s other works, including the fullest account of the fall of Númenor and several slightly different versions of the tale of Galadriel, who had a front-row seat to the forging of the Rings of Power in Eregion and the War of the Elves and Sauron. And with every new piece of information we learn about The Rings Of Power, it looks more and more likely that Amazon has the rights to both these books.

This has not been confirmed by Amazon themselves, and by gifting editions of The Return Of The King (complete with its appendices) to members of the Tolkien community over the Christmas holidays, they’ve subtly maintained that they have the rights to those appendices and nothing more. But the math isn’t adding up. Because long before we ever got our first look at The Rings Of Power, place-names found only in Unfinished Tales were already popping up on the official map for the series and cast-members were pictured reading The Silmarillion. And when we did get our first official image from the series, it depicted a scene straight out of The Silmarillion.

According to TheOneRing.net and their occasionally reliable sources, Amazon possesses the rights to certain “elements and passages” from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, and their theory is that this would include anything pertaining to the stories already summarized in the appendices to The Lord Of The Rings. But where does one draw the limit? The stories of Middle-earth are intertwined to such an extensive degree that, even in-universe, characters (usually Sam Gamgee, to be honest) are constantly remarking on how they’ve unexpectedly ended up in someone else’s story, or are affected by something someone did thousands of years prior. The great tales never end.

So today we’re looking at iconic characters and memorable events from The Silmarillion (and in a separate post, Unfinished Tales) that don’t feature in the appendices to The Lord Of The Rings, but which could still make an appearance in The Rings Of Power anyway. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I wanted to choose characters and events that would be relevant to the narrative and themes of Amazon’s series – based on the limited information available to us.

1: The Ainur And The Ainulindalë

The Rings Of Power — The Discord Of Melkor by Anna Kulisz | deviantart.com

Most fantasy authors aspire to write a halfway decent book, publish it, and hopefully sell enough copies to write a sequel or two. J.R.R. Tolkien, in his early twenties, already had much higher ambitions. He wanted to create a national mythology for England, and he had Ideas for which of “the great tales” he would actually write, and which he would leave “only placed in the scheme, and sketched….[leaving] scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama”. The Silmarillion was originally intended to be the backbone of this mythology; a quasi-religious text from which Tolkien hoped other artists and authors could draw inspiration for their own Middle-earth stories.

And like most religious texts, The Silmarillion begins with a good old-fashioned creation myth – The Ainulindalë – that takes its sweet time describing in painstaking detail the hierarchy and individual powers and attributes of the Ainur, Middle-earth’s pantheon of gods and deities. Tolkien wanted The Silmarillion to be ready for publication simultaneously with The Lord Of The Rings, so that readers intrigued by the scattered references to the Ainur in the latter novel could follow the trail back to where it all began – a bit like a glossary.

Unfortunately, he struggled to edit The Silmarillion into a book – and it wasn’t until after his death, when his son Christopher took on the daunting task, that the work was finally finished. As Christopher himself noted, the wait had been so long by that point that many readers had come to associate Tolkien’s style of worldbuilding with a sense of mystery that left endless possibilities for imaginative headcanons. Some fans, not won over by Christopher Tolkien’s dry, passable writing style, were disappointed to see their favorite gaps in the lore filled in so concretely – especially with regards to the Ainur.

And because The Silmarillion is typically not a book that even hardcore Tolkien fans read until after they’ve read The Lord Of The Rings once or twice, what was an issue in 1977 is still an issue now for many readers, who are almost invariably surprised to discover that Middle-earth has gods, if not weirded out by the lengthy descriptions of the gods and their casual interactions with humans. Be glad, then, that Christopher Tolkien actually cut out the pages and pages of exposition about the gods’ homes and interior décor (all of which I’m embarrassed to say I find fascinating).

But the Ainur are thematically significant to the overarching narrative of Middle-earth, and inextricable from the plot. Sauron is one of several characters sprinkled throughout Tolkien’s works who is actually a member of the Ainur, although by the time of The Lord Of The Rings, that detail had been forgotten by most and was not relevant to the story Tolkien was telling. In the Second Age, it’s vital information – I’ve written more extensively about Sauron’s backstory and the nuances of his character elsewhere, but I’ll just say this: if Amazon wants him to be the great villain that he surely can be, they need to tell audiences who he really is behind his various disguises.

OK, I’ll say a bit more, because I can’t help myself. Sauron’s character arc in the Second Age is intertwined with that of another Ainu, the fallen angel Melkor. In the beginning, Melkor had disrupted the harmonious music of the Ainur with his violent melodies, leading to a cosmic conflict that spanned the entirety of the First Age and ended with Melkor being cast into the void. But before he was forcibly removed from Middle-earth, Melkor influenced a number of lesser Ainur with his teachings, including Sauron. They were all given a chance to repent their sins after Melkor’s downfall, but Sauron refused out of humiliation for his defeat and bitter envy of the gods, and the rest is history.

Sauron’s goal was never to destroy the world but to create paradise on earth. When he proves unable to do so (because nothing perfect or beautiful can be created by evil), he decides to adopt Melkor’s nihilistic tactics and simply raze paradise instead, mustering a Númenórean army to invade the realm of the gods near the end of the Second Age with the empty promise that they can liberate Melkor from the void. The other Ainur are legitimately scared for their lives, and cry out to the one god above all others, Eru Ilúvatar, for help. He intervenes on their behalf, changing the shape of the world so that paradise is no longer accessible to humans.

Whether The Rings Of Power adapts The Ainulindalë specifically, I believe there is no better time for the Ainur to finally appear – explicitly, not merely in disguise – and for audiences to get a glimpse of the overarching cosmic narrative, the “majestic whole” linking all the stories of Middle-earth from The Silmarillion to The Lord Of The Rings. I also feel that Melkor and Eru at the very least should both be established as characters (or perhaps as mere entities, to preserve some of the mystery surrounding them and avoid potentially ridiculous character designs) long in advance of the cataclysmic events in which they take part.

2: Fëanor

The first words in Appendix A of The Lord Of The Rings speak of Fëanor, the “greatest of the Eldar in arts and lore, but also the proudest and most selfwilled”. But the story of his life is only provided in summary as necessary context for the account of Númenor that follows, and readers interested in the character will find little information about him in the main text of The Lord Of The Rings, where Fëanor is mentioned a mere three times – his name uttered with reverence even by Gandalf himself. Only The Silmarillion tells the full tale; and what a tale it is.

Fëanor’s actions during the Years of the Trees and at the very beginning of the First Age of Middle-earth set in motion two conflicts that continued long into the Third Age; one a physical conflict between his family and…well, everybody, which claimed the lives of countless Elves including Fëanor and all but one of his seven famous sons; the other a metaphysical conflict, which was even more damaging to the Elves and lead to the eventual diminishment of their civilization and the dwindling of their people. Without him, the Rings of Power would never have existed, nor would the Elves have been tempted to make them in the first place.

After the beginning, but before time was being counted in years, the Elves lived in paradise alongside the gods and benefited greatly from their guidance and friendship. These were the Years of the Trees, when the sun and moon did not yet exist and the only natural light-source were the stars and the Two Trees of Valinor. The Two Trees were visible in the first official image from The Rings Of Power, released last year, which depicted an unnamed elf (now rumored to be Finrod) looking out over the Elven city of Tirion.

The most notable resident of Tirion was Fëanor, patriarch of a powerful (and exceptionally talented) family of blacksmiths, jewelsmiths, craftspeople, and inventors. Together, they designed intricate machines and incredible works of art – some of which, like the palantíri or Seeing Stones, survived into the Third Age and were weaponized during the War of the Ring. Fëanor was even able to capture some of the light of the Two Trees of Valinor and encase it within a set of jewels which he named the Silmarils. As Tolkien said, “Greatest of the Eldar in arts and lore”. In arts and lore. In all other regards…not the brightest bulbs in the box.

What Fëanor forgot, in his vanity, was that the Silmarils derived their radiance from the divine light within them – over which Fëanor had no rightful claim. So of course, when the Silmarils were inevitably stolen by Melkor, Fëanor took that as a personal insult and he and his family disobeyed the gods and pursued Melkor into Middle-earth. As a symbolic gesture, they also swore an unbreakable oath to never rest until they regained all three Silmarils. See what I’m saying? Rational thinking was not one of Fëanor’s strengths.

To be fair, no one could have known that he would spontaneously combust roughly five minutes later or that one by one, each of his sons would be dragged into the grave alongside him by the oath that chained them to his fate. But that didn’t stop regret and bitterness from setting in very quickly, particularly amongst the other Elves who had rebelled against the gods by following Fëanor and now found themselves stuck in a war-torn Middle-earth, forbidden to re-enter paradise. Even when the gods lifted the ban at the end of the First Age, many Elves refused to return – out of some mixture of shame, anger, and a fierce love for Middle-earth.

This is the volatile situation that Sauron took advantage of, by promising the Elves – including Fëanor’s gullible grandson, Celebrimbor – that they could repair the damage of the war they had brought with them, remake Middle-earth into a paradise more beautiful than that of the gods, and prove that Fëanor’s reckless quest for vengeance had been worth it in the end. This is something that resonates with many of the Elves, even those not fooled by Sauron’s lies. But the creation of the Rings of Power, bestowing upon their wearers the ability to slow the passage of time and prevent against decay, perfectly represents how their love was always misplaced.

Repeating the mistakes made by Fëanor, the Elves of the Second Age became possessive of Middle-earth, forgetting that it was never meant for them in the first place and that they had no power to control its fate. By refusing to leave, they placed themselves directly in the path of humans; the intended residents of Middle-earth. This coming-to-terms with the concept of mortality is an overarching theme of the Second Age, for Elves (who are immortal but must diminish and leave the lands they love) and for humans (who are literally mortal, “doomed to die”).

The final scene of The Lord Of The Rings finds Galadriel, Elrond, and many of the greatest Elves in Middle-earth boarding a ship bound for paradise – bringing to an end the time of the Elves, and clearing the way for humans. It is a sad moment, but a hopeful one as well, in which the Elves realize at long last that to love something, sometimes you have to let it go. But many fans, particularly of Peter Jackson’s films, describe this scene as confusing – because much of the essential context is only found in The Silmarillion. The Rings Of Power has an opportunity to change that by depicting Fëanor’s fall from grace, and I hope the showrunners take it.

3: The First Alliance Of Elves And Men

The prologue to The Lord Of The Rings, depicting the War of the Last Alliance between Elves and Men and the moment in which Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand, thereby ending the Second Age and bringing about the Third, has become a staple of film adaptations of the story (granted there have only been two, but The Rings Of Power will likely show this moment a third time), but neither Jackson nor Bakshi had the time to try and explain why that Alliance was the last. It simply was, and that worked for the films because the story of The Lord Of The Rings doesn’t rely on an understanding of Elven interactions with Men during the First and Second Age.

But the first two episodes of The Rings Of Power are rumored to form one three-hour long prologue to the main events of the series, and something I sincerely hope that’s included in that prologue is some mention or reenactment of the first meeting between Elves and Men, because frankly I don’t know how you can tell the story of the Second Age without establishing that Elves and Men used to be the closest of allies. It’d be like launching into the story of A Christmas Carol without first clarifying, beyond a shadow of doubt, that “the Marleys were dead to begin with”.

Men were born with the first rising of the sun, at the beginning of the First Age – very soon after the death of Fëanor, in fact. Following the sun, they traveled westward across Middle-earth for some three-hundred years, to the lands of Beleriand where the Elves were then living. And it was there that a group of Men under the leadership of Balan were discovered one evening by Finrod Felagund, the lord of Nargothrond, who crept warily into their camp and, moved by sudden love for these strange people, took up a harp and sang to them of the blessed land.

Finrod, as I’ve mentioned, is believed to be the character seen in the first image from The Rings Of Power. He was the elder brother of Galadriel, but one of the youngest lords in the host that left paradise – and he had not gone out of love or loyalty to Fëanor, but rather out of fear that Fëanor would lead the Elves astray. In Middle-earth, however, he found a new purpose helping the first Men, welcoming them into his kingdom and teaching them the skills they would need to build their own civilizations. While his fellow Elves were busy clinging to what they had, Finrod was already preparing to relinquish dominion of Middle-earth to Men.

Assuming Finrod is onscreen for more than five seconds (and assuming that’s even Finrod in that screenshot), his meeting with Balan is a scene that we could expect to see in the first episode – hopefully followed by some kind of montage depicting their life together, because there are very few characters in Tolkien’s legendarium who come quite as close to being canonically queer as Balan, the man who abandoned his people to go live with Finrod after spending a couple of days with the guy, and made the intriguing decision to change his name to Bëor (literally, ‘Vassal’ or ‘subordinate’).

Platonic or not, their relationship was so close that Bëor’s entire extended family also swore loyalty to Finrod, and he honored them all with the title of “Elf-friend”. Throughout the First Age, Elves and Men working together beat back the forces of Melkor just long enough for a mariner named Eärendil (himself a half-Elf, born to a human father and Elven mother) to journey across the sea to the realm of the gods with a plea for help. He was successful in his mission, and the gods defeated Melkor, but as Tolkien was no doubt well aware, winning the war is sometimes less difficult than picking up the pieces afterward.

The gods came between Elves and Men, but from the night they first met in Beleriand it was probably inevitable that they would clash over the subject of mortality. In The Silmarillion, we see the first death of a man from the perspective of the Elves, who are startled and saddened when Bëor suddenly dies at the age of ninety-three – still extremely young by Elf years. We don’t see the reaction from Men to the revelation that Elves don’t die, but that’s something I hope The Rings Of Power remedies; thus planting the seeds for the conflict that will define the Second Age.

4: The Death Of Finrod Felagund

Elves don’t die, but they can be killed, and the wars with Melkor claimed thousands of lives. It was an especially unhappy time for people whose names began with F, as Fëanor, Fingolfin, Fingon, Finduilas, and Finrod Felagund at various points all fell victim to Melkor and his minions. I could be here all day recounting the events that led up to each of their deaths, but we don’t have time for that and I highly doubt The Rings Of Power has time for that, even in a three-hour long prologue. Gotta save some stuff for the inevitable First Age spin-off series, am I right?

But out of all the characters listed above, there’s just one whose gruesome death would (a) clearly convey the unforgettable horror and personal tragedy of the wars with Melkor, specifically for the rumored main character of The Rings Of Power, Galadriel, (b) firmly establish the genuine threat posed by Sauron while revealing to the general audience that he was once the servant of an even more terrible Dark Lord, and (c) cap off what could otherwise be a slow-moving, exposition-heavy prologue with a cool and distinctly unique action sequence.

That character is Finrod Felagund. Ah, sweet, kind, selfless Finrod; always ready and willing to put his own life in danger to protect people he barely even knew. Fittingly, it was a Man – Beren of the House of Bëor – whom he died defending, while the two were being held prisoner by Sauron in the werewolf-infested ruins of Finrod’s old fortress on the island of Tol Sirion. For reasons that I feel have never been adequately explained, Sauron spent most of the First Age breeding werewolves on Tol Sirion. At some point he must have stopped, because werewolves seem to have died out by the time of The Lord Of The Rings, but he was obsessed with them for a long time.

Finrod and Beren fell into Sauron’s hands while trying to sneak past Tol Sirion with a company of Elves disguised as orcs. Sauron, a literal shapeshifter and master of illusions, wasn’t fooled for an instant, and “chanted a song of wizardry” to reveal the truth. What followed was a magical contest unlike anything else found in Tolkien’s works, with Finrod singing a song of paradise to defy Sauron and strengthen the spell that hid them. In response, Sauron sang of the shame of the Elves and of Fëanor’s rebellion that had destroyed the peace of paradise, and ultimately defeated Finrod, leaving him and Beren “naked and afraid”.

Then Sauron chained Finrod, and he tossed the Elf and his companions into a deep pit beneath Tol Sirion – and from time to time he would send a werewolf down into the pit to devour one of the companions, until only Finrod and Beren were left. The werewolf came one last time, and this time it came for Beren; but Finrod (who mind you, was completely naked and probably already dying of starvation and thirst) broke his chains using only his raw strength, grabbed the werewolf, and killed it “with his hands and teeth”, which to my mind implies that he…disemboweled the creature? Strangled it? Either way, it was gory and epic.

He died, of course, but saved Beren’s life, and in that same hour Lúthien came to Tol Sirion looking for Beren, and she battled Sauron, using her own magic to defeat the lord of werewolves and bring down the fortress. Sauron was forced to go into hiding, lurking in bat-form in the woods of Dorthonion where neither the Elves nor the wrath of Melkor could reach him. It wasn’t until Lúthien was dead and Melkor was defeated that Sauron finally reappeared at the dawn of the Second Age. Still, he had brought about the death of Finrod, and that was a terrible blow to the Elves.

In Nargothrond, Finrod’s death led to a conflict over succession between his regent Orodreth and the powerful sons of Fëanor who had hoped to usurp the throne. Galadriel’s reaction to her brother’s death is not recorded, and Tolkien wrote so many different versions of her story that it’s difficult to even pin down where she was at the time, but it could have been roughly around this point that Galadriel ventured further into Middle-earth, leaving Beleriand and the War with Melkor to others.

Galadriel will be a major character in The Rings Of Power, and for her not to mention Finrod at any point throughout the series would be very surprising to me – especially seeing as she crosses paths with Sauron during the Second Age and has a rare opportunity to interact with him face-to-face, while he is still cleverly disguised as an Elf and she is trying to figure out who he really is behind his façade. The situation is different, and the roles are reversed, but there’s an intriguing parallel there to Finrod’s unsuccessful deception of Sauron, and it would be poetic if Sauron’s undisguisable disdain for Finrod was what ultimately broke the illusion.

5: The War Of Wrath

The First Age of Middle-earth ended in a brief, tumultuous conflict called the War of Wrath by the Elves – and according to Tolkien, they wrote few tales about it because they did not take part in it, and only witnessed from afar the clash of Melkor’s horde with the mighty host of the Ainur summoned out of the west by Eärendil. I have a suspicion that this was partly an excuse to get out of writing about the war itself, as Tolkien later made a habit out of knocking his characters unconscious right before battles, but the truth is that the gods had no military strategies, no battle plans, nothing from which an author could form a detailed account of this war.

The War is largely described in broad terms: “The evil realm was brought to naught….the northern regions of the world were rent asunder….there was confusion and great noise.” The fury of the gods was so terrible that they broke the land of Beleriand beneath their feet, and all its inhabitants fled further into Middle-earth (where they reunited with Galadriel, who had been chilling out in Lindon for the last century or so). But the only moment from this War of Wrath that Tolkien describes in much depth is the duel between Eärendil and the great dragon Ancalagon, who crushed Melkor’s mountain fortress beneath him when he fell from the sky.

Melkor was tossed into the Void, the Silmarils were placed forever beyond the reach of the Elves, the last son of Fëanor disappeared into self-imposed exile, and the Second Age began. It was a time for rebuilding, a time of hope and joy and celebration. Too bad the gods’ misguided attempts to strongarm Elves and Men into throwing away the last several hundred years of collective growth and development in favor of a ‘return to normalcy’ would ultimately result in another conflict that would span the next three-thousand years.

The gods were at first unconcerned with Men. They gave them an island all to themselves as compensation for their sacrifices, because they trusted that Eru Ilúvatar had a plan for the human race, and they knew that humans needed to proliferate to achieve that plan, but their primary goal was getting the Elves out of Middle-earth before that happened and bringing them back across the sea to paradise. Many Elves refused to go back, but with the ban finally lifted, the fates of Elves and Men began to diverge.

This caused a lot of problems for Men, who understandably wanted to check in with their Elven friends who had departed across the sea, only to be informed that they weren’t even allowed to sail “so far westward that the coasts of Númenor could no longer be seen”. At first, they respected this ban and were content with receiving occasional Elven visitors from paradise in Númenor’s western port cities, but gradually the uneasy feeling that they were being excluded from something gave rise to rumors that the secret to immortality could be found in paradise, but that the gods would not share it with Men.

As they watched more and more of the Elves return across the sea to paradise, forsaking the land over which they had fought and spilled their blood together, it’s easy to imagine how the Númenóreans must have felt – but their growing envy of the Elves and fear of their own fate led to indefensible and increasingly irrational acts of violence as they tried to ward off death with dark magic and necromancy, or desensitize themselves to it by slaughtering the inhabitants of Middle-earth. By time Sauron came among them, they were already on the brink of breaking ties with Elves and gods entirely.

Sauron exploited the situation, just as he did with the Elves, and convinced the Númenóreans that they could obtain immortality by force from the gods. At this point, you’d think that the gods would maybe want to step in and quietly remove Sauron from the picture, but nah, they let him openly butcher Elf-friends and prisoners of war on an altar dedicated to Melkor for years while only occasionally communicating their displeasure via eagle. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Sauron was able to persuade the Númenóreans into attacking paradise, at which point the gods finally responded by…opening a chasm under the island to swallow it whole.

Much of this could have been avoided, perhaps, if the gods had not been so obsessed with trying to divide Elves and Men across two separate continents that they accidentally caused them to fear and hate each other, or if they had devoted literally any of their infinite time and energy to locating Sauron and Melkor’s other lieutenants instead of giving them freedom to roam across Middle-earth. Or perhaps not. Tolkien’s works allow for multiple, equally valid readings, and it’s important to remember that The Silmarillion is told from an Elven perspective, and Elven biases are intentionally engrained into it.

Whichever angle The Rings Of Power takes, blaming gods, Elves, Men, or all of the above, the events of the War of Wrath (and its immediate aftermath) are a vital prelude to the fall of Númenor. Besides that, there’s an opportunity to show off the largest dragon ever (and director J.A. Bayona has plenty of experience with giant reptiles), and for some truly groundbreaking action sequences. The fact that Amazon’s official map for The Rings Of Power also draws attention to the scattering of islands left over from Beleriand after the War of Wrath suggests that this is something we will see early in the series, and I couldn’t be more excited.

So what do you think of the points on my list? Stay tuned for part two of what may or may not be an ongoing series (is The Akallabêth long enough to warrant a whole separate post?), and as always, share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

January 19, 2022

“The Rings Of Power” Unveils New Title In Epic 1st Teaser

I still find it hard to believe that all of this is actually happening. Just over four years ago, when Amazon Prime Studios bought the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings and announced their intention to tell never-before-seen stories in the world of Middle-earth, I had no way of imagining what the streaming service had in store. At the time, I had no real interest in the entertainment industry and Amazon Prime was therefore still just a shipping company in my mind.

The Rings Of Power | empireonline.com

It was largely because of my growing excitement for what, three years ago, I and many others in the Tolkien community still believed to be the story of a young Aragorn’s adventures, that writing about film and TV became a passion of mine. The revelation in early 2019 that Amazon actually planned to tackle the sprawling Second Age of Middle-earth in their massive series was the tipping-point, finally convincing me to start a blog where I could talk about The Lord Of The Rings – and all my favorite films, TV shows, and franchises, but first and foremost, it’s always been about The Lord Of The Rings for me.

Over the past two years, I’ve followed this series’ long and tumultuous production every step of the way, going over each new casting announcement and filming delay with all of you. Together, we’ve rejoiced over Howard Shore’s return to Middle-earth, discussed Amazon’s controversial decision to move production to the United Kingdom, and had great fun exploring all the nooks and crannies of the Second Age in preparation for a series that is somehow too far away and yet scarily too close. Today, it feels closer than ever, and…I’m not prepared. Not physically, not mentally, certainly not emotionally. I’m a wreck, that’s all there is to it.

As you might have heard, or guessed, or realized from the video embedded at the top of this post, the cause of my emotional distress is the first brief teaser for Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings – or should I say, The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power. It shows not a single frame of footage from the series, which premieres on September 2nd. Trailers and such are still many months away (and please, Amazon, I beg of you, warn us all beforehand when the first trailer is about to drop, because I can’t just randomly wake up to that one day).

So what is this teaser, then? Well, simply put, it’s a title reveal. But it’s also quite literally a work of art. What at first appears to be a compilation of wholly CGI shots of molten metal flowing through spidery grooves in a wooden background, bubbling and cooling into the forms of thin silver letters (forming the title) is in fact actual footage of the actual forging of this piece at an actual blacksmith foundry by an actual blacksmith, named Landon Ryan. Members of TheOneRing.net’s staff were invited to witness the forging of the title, and shared details of their behind-the-scenes experience on their website.

The teaser is enhanced by what may be our first taste of Howard Shore and Bear McCreary’s score for The Rings Of Power, and by voice-over narration from Morfydd Clark, who recites the iconic verse of poetry inscribed on the One Ring, greatest of all the Rings of Power. I doubt I need to remind you of what it says, but I can’t help myself because I get chills even typing out the words; “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky; seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone; nine for Mortal Men doomed to die; one for the Dark Lord on his dark throne; in the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie”.

Clark is all but officially confirmed to be playing Galadriel, so her narration here establishes a clear link with Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, which also began in the Second Age with voice-over from Cate Blanchett’s version of Galadriel. As one of the oldest Elves in Middle-earth, and certainly among the most active in all three Ages of the world, she’s simply the ideal choice for a narrator. Elrond and Gil-galad are too young, nobody knows Círdan (to be fair to Círdan, that was by choice; dude’s most notable accomplishment was giving his own Ring of Power to Gandalf the first chance he got), and Glorfindel is still dead…for now.

Of course, the flashbacks to the Second Age in Peter Jackson’s films were necessarily brief, condensing thousands of years worth of lore from J.R.R. Tolkien’s appendices to The Lord Of The Rings into a short and succinct prologue sequence. But The Rings Of Power, according to showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, “unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age”, including “the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men”.

Their words would seem to indicate that, despite mounting evidence that Isildur and his family are major characters in season one of The Rings Of Power, events long before their time – such as the actual forging of the Rings in Eregion and the war of the Elves and Sauron – will also be adapted in great detail and depth. Unless The Rings Of Power jumps across timelines in the style of The Witcher‘s first season, what we might be seeing is a case of a compressed timeline; all the major events of the Second Age happening roughly simultaneously, instead of spaced out across 3,441 years.

I know that would be divisive with some fans, but unless the rumors of Isildur are all baseless (which at this point seems highly unlikely), it’s the only scenario I can see where the forging of the Rings isn’t squeezed into the first two episodes, which apparently form a roughly three-hour long prologue to the main events of the series (at least according to TheOneRing.net). And given that the Rings of Power now feature in the title, it’s difficult to believe that their creation will again be abbreviated for a prologue – even a supersized one – when the series could easily dedicate multiple episodes to their forging.

There are very few other clues in this teaser as to what stories will be adapted in season one, although the wave of water that floods the screen just as Galadriel reaches the line in the Ring Verse that talks about “Mortal Men doomed to die” is a nice bit of foreshadowing for one of the cataclysmic events that brought the Second Age to its end. If you know, you know.

Honestly, none of us really know what to expect from The Rings Of Power. We have this one teaser, one screenshot from the first episode that is more confusing than illuminating, and a vague synopsis. But the marketing campaign has officially begun, and a full-length trailer, first look photos, interviews with the cast and crew, and plenty of other goodies are coming. The months between now and September 2nd will fly by as swiftly as the four years we’ve spent waiting for this exhilarating moment, and I can only hope that when that day arrives, I will be ready.

Because right now, as I finish off this review and think about how I’m going to dissect and examine this minute of footage for the next month, how it is literally going to consume my life until I get another crumb of content and make that my new obsession, one thing is for sure; I’m not ready yet.

January 9, 2022January 29, 2025

“The Wheel Of Time” Episode 8 Is Messy So Season 2 Doesn’t Have To Be

**SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME EPISODE EIGHT AND THE EYE OF THE WORLD AHEAD!**

As if Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time didn’t have enough problems going into its very first season finale, between budget and time constraints, COVID-19 restrictions, and a lead actor leaving during filming, the harsh reality was that this season finale was probably always going to be difficult to get right (and therefore divisive with fans) no matter what…because there’s a precedent in the source material itself.

The convoluted and convenient ending of Robert Jordan’s first Wheel Of Time novel, The Eye Of The World, is widely cited as one of the main reasons that fans regard the book as weak in comparison to its sequels; well that, and the fact that tonally and stylistically, it reads more like Tolkien than Jordan, or that it’s heavy on exposition yet the complex magic-system remains vaguely-defined by the end of the book and main characters are just barely fleshed-out. But seriously, a lot happens in the last few chapters that is still confusing even by the end of the series.

Leaving aside the extremely random nature deity who literally appears out of nowhere, Jordan’s version of events involves two of the series’ most inconsequential Forsaken popping up out of the ground to challenge Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) to a magical battle at the Eye of the World. Things get really weird and trippy from there, Rand instantaneously teleports to Fal Dara and singlehandedly defeats an army of Shadowspawn because he can just…do that now, kills “The Dark One”, possibly talks to The Creator (a.k.a. God), then returns to the Eye to find the long-lost Horn of Valere and the banner of the Dragon Reborn.

Some of the questions that first-time readers have upon finishing The Eye Of The World are answered in later books. Some aren’t. The general consensus among fans is that while Robert Jordan had a lot of his story already figured out when he wrote that first book, the rules of his magic-system weren’t locked down at that point. On top of that, he wanted The Eye Of The World to work as a self-contained story in case he never got to publish the sequels, which explains the deceptive triumphant tone of the ending.

It’s unsurprising and understandable that Amazon’s Wheel Of Time adaptation didn’t aim for loyalty to the books in this instance, because frankly it wouldn’t have made much sense if they had. Jordan’s fourteen-volume series came to an end in 2012 with the help of Brandon Sanderson, so the magic-system is now fully-realized and the inconsistencies in The Eye Of The World are outliers anyway. And because Amazon greenlit The Wheel Of Time for a second season months ago, there’s no need for the writers to tack on a misleading happy ending as Jordan did.

But for every problem solved in the adaptation process, a new one arises that is exclusive to this medium – and hopefully to this first season, specifically. Amazon dictates have apparently been a thorn in showrunner Rafe Judkins’ side since early days of production, when the studio shot down his idea for a 2-hour pilot episode. Then COVID-19 happened, and when The Wheel Of Time was allowed to resume filming after a months-long hiatus with new restrictions in place, one of the show’s lead actors, Barney Harris, didn’t return to set, requiring Judkins and his team to rewrite the last two episodes to account for his absence.

Behind the façade of this otherwise mostly enjoyable episode hide patches of frantically-rewritten story and dialogue loosely holding the whole structure together – like puzzle-pieces that when assembled, form a picture of chaos behind-the-scenes. Most egregiously, the writers don’t seem to have finished removing Mat Cauthon (Barney Harris) from this episode, so the silhouette of what was clearly intended to be his subplot remains visible, awkwardly filled by the character of Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford).

Thematically, it makes no sense whatsoever for Perrin to confront the Darkfriend Padan Fain (Johann Meyers), or for their conversation to unfold the way it does, with Padan taunting Perrin about succumbing to the darkness. This entire sequence, which concludes with Padan Fain stealing the Horn of Valere from its secret vault under the throne of Fal Dara (in the books, it’s discovered at the Eye of the World), was very obviously intended to feature Mat – the only character with whom Padan ever interacted, whose potential for darkness was so strong that Padan guided him to the cursed dagger in Shadar Logoth.

Presumably, in the version of the finale we’ll never get to see, Padan would have encouraged Mat to take the next step towards joining the Dark One, before stabbing him with the cursed dagger and leaving with the Horn of Valere after Mat inevitably fought back. In the version we did get, Padan randomly stabs Loial (Hammed Animashaun) and leaves him for dead, although Rafe Judkins has confirmed that Loial is alive. Either way, it would have set up the events of The Great Hunt and the connection that Mat has to the Horn more effectively than a split-second shot of Mat in Tar Valon while Padan is talking to Perrin.

Perrin actually spends most of the episode talking and running around aimlessly, while a battle rages outside the walls of Fal Dara that we barely get to see because apparently Perrin adopted the pacifistic Way of the Leaf at some point (never shown onscreen) and now refuses to fight. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be fully onboard with that character development if Perrin did anything cool or compelling instead, but the weak action scenes scattered throughout this episode really could have benefited from a character with the instincts, reflexes, and unique abilities of a wolf.

There’s a lot of buildup to the Battle of Tarwin’s Gap, and the characters even delude themselves into thinking that the Last Battle, Tarmon Gai’don, is upon them, but all the time spent developing Fal Dara’s warlords Agelmar (Thomas Chaanhing) and Amalisa (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) goes to waste on a “battle” that consists of one embarrassingly puny cavalry charge and a single barrage of arrows. Agelmar, who survives The Eye Of The World, is impaled within the first five minutes by a Trolloc, at which point the fortress at Tarwin’s Gap falls (they call it a fortress, I call it a glorified palisade).

Throughout this…skirmish, the camera refuses to linger very long on the close-quarters action, for good reason. COVID-19 restrictions prevented The Wheel Of Time from filling out the armies on either side with human extras, and even the actors who portrayed the Trollocs and Myrddraal in the first few episodes using extraordinary practical effects and prosthetics have been replaced by a patchy CGI swarm that pours into the flat wasteland before the walls of Fal Dara and is conveniently obliterated by Amalisa, Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins), and Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden) before they come into focus.

To the surprise of no one (including the VFX department, I’m certain), this unfinished army of Shadowspawn doesn’t look all that great even from a distance, in total darkness. But it still required money to build from scratch, and that’s money that’s clearly been siphoned away from the special effects in other areas, including the incoherent thunderstorm of saidar summoned by Amalisa (using Nynaeve and Egwene’s power) that eventually reduces the Shadowspawn to cinders in what is already one of the finale’s most confusing – and controversial – original scenes.

Let me try to break it down for you. During the final battle, as the Shadowspawn approach, Amalisa orders Nynaeve, Egwene, and a handful of weaker channelers to “link” with her, something we saw the Aes Sedai do in episode four to collectively gentle Logain. But as we learned from Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) in episode seven, Amalisa herself is weak, and clearly lacks the necessary Aes Sedai training to pull off this difficult maneuver. Instead of equally distributing the One Power amongst her teammates, Amalisa absorbs it all into herself and goes nuclear, quickly burning out.

The same fate befalls everyone tied to her by the link, as one by one the weaker channelers are ripped apart from within by the One Power, which leaves blackened craters where their facial features used to be (a delightfully grisly visual). But eventually Nynaeve wrests control of the One Power from the disintegrating Amalisa to protect Egwene, and burns out. For a moment it’s even implied that she’s dead…but then Egwene heals her anyway. And that, to me, is the only part of this sequence that warrants criticism, because honestly everything else is appropriately terrifying and exhilarating.

But seriously, another fake-out death? Really? This is a trope that is extremely difficult to write well even once in a story, and The Wheel Of Time has now “killed” Nynaeve twice. The first time around, when Nynaeve was abducted by a Trolloc, the manner in which she cheated death actually told us a great deal about her character – and as we learned from Padan Fain, she was never really in danger of being killed because the Trollocs planned to bring her to the Dark One. We don’t learn anything new about Nynaeve when she “sacrifices” herself to save Egwene; only that she’s apparently invulnerable.

Across all fourteen volumes in Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time saga, no burned out channeler ever has their ability to channel restored – and the fact that in this instance it’s Egwene (canonically one of the weakest healers) who miraculously saves Nynaeve makes this scene all the more amusingly inaccurate to the books. That’s not necessarily a problem for the time being, because The Wheel Of Time hasn’t established many of the laws of channeling yet, but down the line one would hope that we get an explanation for what Egwene did in this moment.

My fear is that the explanation, if we ever get one at all, will be in the form of some dismissive offhand comment to the effect of “she’s ta’veren; deal with it”. My hope is that The Wheel Of Time plans to actually explore the intricate mechanics of channeling in its second season, partially through Nynaeve and Egwene as they try to piece together what went wrong with their linking-circle and how they can learn from their mistakes (by training with the Aes Sedai in Tar Valon), and partially through Moiraine, who was unexpectedly humbled by “The Dark One” (Fares Fares) at the Eye of the World, losing her own ability to channel.

Fans are divided over what exactly happened to Moiraine. She can’t channel, but can still feel the One Power at her fingertips, indicating that “The Dark One” either “shielded” her or “stilled” her. The former is more likely, because the magic net that “The Dark One” cast over Moiraine was very similar to the shield that the Aes Sedai used to bind Logain in episode four, and nothing like the probes they used to rip the One Power out of his chest when they “gentled” him. Gentling and stilling both refer to the act of removing a person’s ability to channel entirely, and the consequences are believed to be permanent.

Shields, thankfully, can be undone – although the process requires patience, persistence, and in many cases assistance from another channeler, especially if the “weaves” used to create the shield were extremely complex or archaic (and “The Dark One” is many thousands of years old, so we can safely assume he learned his weaves sometime during the fabled Age of Legends). That’s good news for Moiraine, but keep in mind that women in Jordan’s world can’t see when men channel (and vice versa), so Moiraine doesn’t know what “The Dark One” did to her, or how deep the damage goes.

It’s reasonable to assume that Moiraine will have to search for help from other Aes Sedai in season two, seeing as Nynaeve’s mental block is now firmly in place, preventing her from channeling, even to heal, except when she’s angry, and Egwene, well…actually, this would be a lot simpler if Egwene were still really bad at healing, but…yeah, I don’t know how they’re going to explain why Egwene can’t just undo Moiraine’s shield the same way she undid Nynaeve’s burning out. This is why we need that explanation for what she even did to Nynaeve in the first place, and fast!

On top of all that, the Seanchan colonists make their first live-action appearance at the very end of the episode, leaving audiences with a frightening mental image of all the sadistic, creative ways in which the One Power can be abused. Women with the ability to channel, including captured and enslaved Aes Sedai, make up the lowest class in Seanchan society, where their movements can be controlled by non-channelers through the use of special collars (which in the show are coupled with golden gags). The Seanchan are seen using them to conjure a tidal wave in advance of their arrival on the western shores near Falme.

There’s not much I can actually say about the Seanchan without skirting around Wheel Of Time spoilers. I mean, I could just rant for hours about the production design and costume design failures that continue to plague this show, including the tacky skull helmets that I naively want to hope were stolen from the set of a 1990’s B-movie because the thought of any professional costume designer approving those in 2021 is frankly embarrassing, and the fact that every flat surface on the Seanchan ships is inexplicably covered in giant spikes, but nobody wants to hear me rant (unless you do, in which case I will happily oblige).

Besides, I actually have nice things to say about the production design, too. Not as many nice things as I would like to be able to say, but enough to fill out this paragraph at least, because for one brief flashback to the Age of Legends (hopefully the first of many), the eclectic sets, props, costumes, and production values are in perfect harmony with each other, united by a sleek and streamlined science-fantasy aesthetic. The actors even speak in the Old Tongue invented by Robert Jordan to immersive effect.

The scene gives us insight into the events that preceded the Breaking of the World three-thousand years before Rand’s time, when Lews Therin Telamon (Alexander Karim), in his arrogance, impatience, and desire to protect his loved ones, foolishly chose to try seal the Dark One away forever, ignoring warnings from the Tamyrlin Seat that he would expose the male half of the One Power to the Dark One’s corrosive influence in so doing. Rand al’Thor, Lews Therin’s reincarnation in the Third Age, similarly fails to see the bigger picture, which is why his victory at the Eye of the World is…incomplete.

And yet, Rand’s confrontation with “The Dark One” at the Eye is an unequivocal improvement on the world-hopping swordfight that concluded the first book in Jordan’s series. Usually, adaptations look for opportunities to expand on action and visual spectacle – but this is the rare instance where the opposite is true, and Rand finds himself battling not a physical opponent, but his own worst impulses. “The Dark One” tempts him with a tantalizing vision of the simple life he wanted with Egwene back in the Two Rivers, telling him that with his newfound power he can force the Wheel of Time to weave this fiction into a reality.

And he still wants it, desperately. The scene wouldn’t be effective if he didn’t. But his epiphany, which ultimately gives him the strength to turn on “The Dark One” and blast him out of existence with a blinding sunbeam of power, is that he wanted this future with Egwene because he loves her deeply, deeply enough to know that she doesn’t want it. She has her own hopes and dreams of becoming the village Wisdom someday, or even an Aes Sedai, dreams he may never understand but which he will always respect and accept because he loves her. And I just think that’s beautiful.

Of course, by giving up his one chance at the life he always wanted, Rand simultaneously shoulders the responsibilities and burdens of the lonely life he’s got. And Rand being Rand, instead of seeking guidance, he chooses to go into self-imposed exile after defeating “The Dark One”, instructing Moiraine not to come looking for him or even to tell his friends that he’s alive – because the way he sees it, he won’t be for much longer. All that’s left for him now is the slow descent into insanity that awaits all male channelers.

At least, that’s what he thinks. Without getting into spoilers for the books, all I’ll say is what’s already implied by Moiraine in the episode itself; that the events at the Eye of the World warrant close examination, because what Rand thought happened and what actually happened are not necessarily the same thing. This may not have been immediately obvious to readers back in 1990, but Robert Jordan’s series now has fourteen books, a prequel novel, and several spin-off stories, so there’s not much point in hiding that this is just the beginning of Rand’s story.

Well, let me rephrase that; it is not the beginning, for there are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it is a beginning – perhaps even a new beginning for Amazon’s series, which will enter its second season free of the heavy baggage that season one struggled to carry. A recast Mat’s return will obviously restore some cohesion to the story, but on top of that the budget has been increased, and The Wheel Of Time is now a proven success on streaming, which will appease the skeptical Amazon executives. The writing choices made throughout season one allow season two to hit the ground running and almost immediately branch out in exciting new directions.

If this season finale was messy (and don’t get me wrong, it absolutely was), it’s only so that season two doesn’t have to be.

Episode Rating: 6/10

December 31, 2021January 29, 2025

“The Wheel Of Time” Episode 7, Down A Lead Actor, Forges Ahead

**SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME EPISODE SEVEN AND BOOKS AHEAD!**

Tug a thread carelessly from any piece of fabric, and it will begin to unravel. The same is perhaps doubly true of story-threads, especially in a narrative as carefully and deliberately woven as The Wheel Of Time. Many of the major events and character moments in the fourteen-volume book series, written and published over a span of roughly twenty-nine years, were plotted out by author Robert Jordan from near the beginning of the series, allowing him to layer foreshadowing into the early books for story beats that wouldn’t transpire until after his death in 2007, when Brandon Sanderson completed The Wheel Of Time.

This hasn’t prevented Amazon Prime’s adaptation from rearranging the order of events and character introductions, excising or swapping out characters and locations, or otherwise streamlining Jordan’s sprawling series, but until episode seven these changes haven’t dramatically altered the predetermined course of the story and individual character arcs. Most of the material in the Baerlon and Caemlyn chapters of The Eye Of The World, for instance, has simply been redistributed across the width of the first season – including the character of Min Farshaw (Kae Alexander) who’s been transported halfway across the map from Baerlon to Fal Dara.

But those changes were part of showrunner Rafe Judkins’ plan for The Wheel Of Time, and he and his team of writers had already comfortably integrated them into the story by the time filming began. By contrast, it does not appear that anyone foresaw Barney Harris’ abrupt departure midway through filming, and if I had to hazard a guess based solely on the quality of the scripts for the last two episodes, I’d wager that the writers were not provided anywhere near enough time by Amazon to try and work around Harris’ absence in such a way that it felt planned.

To be fair, it’s a miracle that the loss of a series lead – coupled with COVID-19 and budget constraints – didn’t halt The Wheel Of Time dead in its tracks, and that they were able to move forward at all with revised scripts and a new direction for Harris’ character, Mat Cauthon. Judkins wisely chose to put off the recasting process until he had time to fully devote himself to finding the right actor for the role, but the consequence of that decision is that Mat doesn’t appear again between episode six and a few moments worth of presumably repurposed footage in episode eight.

Now, anyone who’s read The Wheel Of Time knows that major characters often disappear for entire books to go do their own thing, and Mat is one of those characters. But that’s roughly halfway through a fourteen-book series, after readers have gotten to know, and to care for, and to love Mat Cauthon. The effect is quite different when you’ve only got to know a character throughout six episodes of a crowded debut season, the last four of which said character spent being driven mad under the influence of a cursed dagger. If I didn’t know why I should care about Mat by virtue of having read the books, I’m not sure I would.

And all of that is exacerbated by the shoddy justification for Mat’s decision not to enter the Waygate at the end of episode six; that he has an “inherent darkness” within him that’s apparently pushing him towards the Dark One. It only further alienates the character from the audience at a point where he’s not here to defend himself, and clashes with what we thought we knew about Mat given that his only firmly-established character trait was a selfless desire to help his family that was driving him away from his destiny, but certainly not to the Dark One’s side.

It’s a flimsy excuse and a hurtful one, not only to Mat but to the characters forced to halfheartedly state it as if it’s an irrefutable fact that Mat’s already succumbed to the darkness. I could perhaps get onboard with the idea that Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike), ever the wariest of the Aes Sedai, would be reluctant to bring Mat near the Dark One because of his exposure to darkness through the cursed dagger, but I can’t easily accept that she never actually intended to bring Mat to the Eye of the World, as she claims in hushed tones to Lan (Daniel Henney), until I understand why she brought Mat to the Waygate at all in that case.

If he hadn’t decided to stay put of his own accord, was she planning to kill him in the Ways or after reaching their destination? Did she have a reason for telling him where she was going if she genuinely feared that he would join the Dark One? And if she always planned to send the Red Ajah after him, why not do so back in Tar Valon, when she could have used the opportunity to appease Liandrin Guirale? If, on the other hand, she’s doing all of this for Mat’s protection, why not leave him in safe hands instead of stranding him in the middle of nowhere near a Waygate he can’t open even if he wanted to?

The one person you can usually rely on to see through Moiraine’s smokescreens is Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoë Robins) – so naturally in this situation, instead of demanding truth from the Aes Sedai or fighting to reopen the Waygate, she’s quickly convinced that that would be impossible and decides to follow Moiraine into the darkness of the Ways, remarking that they’ll find Mat once they’re out (a promise she doesn’t even attempt to keep once they reach the city of Fal Dara). Soon, the only character consistently standing up for Mat is Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski).

If the intent behind all of this was to endear Rand to viewers just in time for the big twist that he’s also the Dragon Reborn, it comes at the cost of exposing the lack of character development amongst all the Emond’s Field Five (well, four now), and is undermined by Rand himself. I get that Rand makes himself unlikable in the books to try and distance his friends from the fallout of his actions, but that plot-device is so poorly utilized here that it alienates us from Rand without providing any reason to keep sympathizing with him.

Gone is the quiet yet affable sheepherder whose presence we tolerated through the first six episodes; in his place is the sullen, irritable woolhead I fear we’ll be burdened with from this point hence. Not content with privately pushing his friends away one-by-one, Rand stirs up drama between them and stokes rivalries and divisions in the group under the pretense that he’s trying to unite them against Moiraine. He leaps at the opportunity to berate Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden), calling her out for doubting Mat and not having his back when Rand did.

But this argument – this entire subplot – hinges on the viewer knowing these three characters more intimately than The Wheel Of Time has actually allowed us to, even seven episodes deep. Egwene and Mat only shared a handful of scenes in the first two episodes before separating at Shadar Logoth, and never had any interactions in which Rand could plausibly have interpreted some sort of animosity on Egwene’s part, so everything they’re arguing over in episode seven is largely meaningless to us, based on stuff that I guess must have happened before we entered the story.

And, well, don’t even get me started on the other big revelation that comes out of this argument. At some point while everyone is fighting, Nynaeve blurts out that Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford) had an unrequited crush on Egwene while married to Laila, something that comes as a shock to Egwene, to Rand, and to us, the viewers. Technically, this is not a new development. Perrin was implied to have a slight crush on Egwene in The Eye Of The World, but Jordan never referenced it again afterwards. It was unbelievable even by his standards, and that’s saying something.

So obviously there was a great deal of shock and disappointment from fans (including myself) who felt that Perrin’s crush on Egwene maybe wasn’t the most vital part of the books to bring over into live-action. Don’t get me wrong, I like relationship drama in my fiction as much as anybody; when it’s just the right amount of juicy and spicy, that’s good stuff. But this is neither. It’s the bare bones of a love-triangle, which is already a generic trope, but on top of that Perrin never indicated any romantic interest in Egwene ever, and now I’m supposed to believe that his marriage was on the ropes because he couldn’t get over her?

Perrin’s wife, Laila, has lingered in the back of my mind as I’ve waited for The Wheel Of Time to reveal why she existed in the first place except to die horribly and motivate her grieving husband. Supposedly, part of the thought process behind her inclusion was that aging the main characters up from teenagers to twenty-something adults in the show required them to act more mature, and to come across as more comfortable in their love-lives than the helplessly awkward, angsty protagonists of Jordan’s books. A married Perrin exemplified that. The ham-fisted reveal that he was secretly crushing on his best friend…eh, not so much.

It’s obviously insulting to Laila. As if the poor woman didn’t go through enough, trapped in an apparently listless marriage and fridged by her own husband with an axe to the stomach (against Brandon Sanderson’s wishes), now the secrets she confided in Nynaeve to keep are shared with a roomful of her friends and enemies. Not to mention the fandom is still convinced she was a Darkfriend, no matter what Rafe Judkins might say. But perhaps The Wheel Of Time is even crueler to Perrin, who’s spent most of season one cycling through pointless subplots, patiently waiting for the show to remember that he’s a major character.

Hopefully he can hang in there a little while longer, because as Judkins himself revealed, Perrin was intentionally sidelined throughout this season to preserve the mystery around the identity of the Dragon Reborn, which Judkins worried non-readers might have solved on their own if The Wheel Of Time had explored how far Perrin’s connection to the wolves goes.

Personally, I feel like the guy who can literally talk to animals would have shot to the top of my list of potential Dragons if I didn’t already know it was Rand going in, but be that as it may, the mystery resolves itself at the end of episode seven and…Perrin still gets nothing to do with wolves in the finale, because he’s burdened with the role that was clearly meant to be Mat’s before these episodes were heavily rewritten.

That said, the mystery was effective in at least one regard. It got non-readers talking and speculating and having fun watching The Wheel Of Time, trying to guess the identity of the Dragon Reborn based on the limited clues that the writers were willing to spare. And at the same time, book readers got a good chuckle out of watching those reactions, or, alternatively, felt their hearts sink to their stomach when they saw how non-readers reacted with joy to the misdirect that Nynaeve was the Dragon.

I admit to being partially biased in this matter because I never liked Rand, and about five books into the series I basically had to reconcile with the fact that I was only tolerating him because the supporting cast was worth the blood, sweat, and tears required to make it through every one of his POV chapters. I proceeded to tolerate Rand for the next seven books. The experience left me tired – and in need of more likable and offbeat protagonists. Learning that some fans really adore Rand is something that invariably shakes me to my core, although I suppose after a couple rereads one grows numb to the pain.

But on a serious note, I really love hearing the various reasons why people like Rand because I can see the potential in his arc. For Rand, the responsibility of being the “chosen one” is claustrophobia-inducing, because he can never be free of it. Wherever he goes, his very existence alters the Pattern and causes irrevocable damage to the people he loves. He’s haunted day and night by the deranged musings of the last Dragon, Lews Therin Telamon. He’s hounded by the Dark One and the Aes Sedai. The corrupted male half of the One Power offers no escape, only a constant reminder of his duty to “cleanse the taint”.

Fittingly, Judkins stages the Dragon reveal in episode seven as a revelation for the audience, but not for Rand. A montage of flashbacks to recontextualized moments throughout the season tell us that Rand has actually suspected that he is the Dragon Reborn for a long time; since he channeled in the Ways to kill a Trolloc and let Egwene take the blame; since he used weaves of saidin to escape from Dana (Izuka Hoyle) in episode three; since the Battle of Bel Tine, when his delirious father Tam al’Thor (Michael McElhatton) revealed that Rand was actually born far from the Two Rivers, on the blood-soaked slopes of Dragonmount during the Aiel War.

The cold-open for episode seven takes us back twenty years to that battle on Dragonmount (known simply as the “Blood Snow”), giving non-readers an indelible mental image of the ferocity and determination they should come to expect from the Aiel – and therefore from Rand. Vikings director Ciaran Donnelly brings an expertise in shooting raw and gritty action to the table, coupled with an almost painterly understanding of how to elegantly compose and choreograph scenes of brutal violence so that they remain one step removed from the hyper-realism of Game Of Thrones‘ early seasons.

The Wheel Of Time is the kind of fantasy show where a pregnant woman in labor can climb up a mountain in the middle of winter, leap through the air with a heavily-armored man in tow before killing him and several others in intense hand-to-hand combat, sustain a stab-wound to the stomach, and only finally die after giving birth to a healthy baby. It’s fantastical, which is refreshing in this case because the fantasy genre is usually known for mercilessly slaughtering mothers and their babies in numbers that rival Disney’s kill-count. Tigraine Mantear (stuntwoman Magdalena Sittova) reclaims agency over the last moments of her life and goes out like a warrior.

A private audience with the seer Min Farshaw confirms Rand’s suspicions that he was adopted by Tam in the aftermath of the Blood Snow, while tentatively establishing the groundwork for a romantic relationship between their characters. If they’re not quite as flirty off the bat as some fans had hoped, it’s only because Rand has just been informed that there’s a strong likelihood he’ll die the very next day, and it kind of throws a damper over any flying sparks. But Amazon’s Wheel Of Time is taking a slow-burn approach to the canonical romances, so I wouldn’t have expected Rand and Min to fall in love yet anyway.

Jordan had many strengths as a writer, but romance was not one of them. His canonical couplings often play out like some of the weirdest and most random “crackships”, with characters falling in love on their first meeting, or on a whim after several books. Even Nynaeve and Lan, whom most fans (including myself) agree are perfect together, are revealed to be deeply in love with each other almost as a side-note nearly fifty chapters into The Eye Of The World. Amazon ‘s Wheel Of Time follows that relationship more closely throughout the season, cluing us in to what both characters are feeling.

The mystery regarding the Dragon Reborn adds a sense of urgency to their relationship in episode seven, as Lan and Nynaeve are both aware that if Nynaeve is the Dragon, there’s a good chance the Dark One will kill her at the Eye, and if she’s not, she’ll almost certainly be obliterated in the clash between the Dark One and the actual Dragon. Either way, the outcome doesn’t look good, and Nynaeve resolves to die having loved Lan as fully as she can. Not content with longing from afar, she joins Lan at his home in Fal Dara, where she meets his foster-family, before returning to his bedroom with him.

Or rather, Lan returns to his bedroom without even kissing Nynaeve goodnight, and Nynaeve enters a minute or two later as he’s getting undressed for bed. Lan can’t bring himself to tantalize her with what they both know is beyond their reach, but Nynaeve is living in the moment, accepting that she’ll probably never have the chance to settle down with Lan or start a family – hell, she’ll be lucky if she survives one more day, but at least right now they can have this together. Before we cut away and leave them to their lovemaking, the unshakable, headstrong Nynaeve we adored is back.

Even in Jordan’s world, the Pattern comes undone sometimes, but it always finds a way to correct itself. That process usually involves ta’veren in the books, but seeing as Amazon Prime Studios doesn’t just have one of those hanging about the place to help out (that we know of, at least), the combined talents of Rafe Judkins and his creative team will make up for the lack of cosmic intervention.

And of course they’ll make mistakes sometimes, but keep in mind that this and the next episode had to be rewritten in the middle of a pandemic to accommodate the absence of a lead actor, so the ending we got is not the ending that Judkins wanted to give us, and the slightly lower quality of these last two episodes is not indicative of where The Wheel Of Time is headed, only of how many obstacles had to be surmounted in order for this first season to see the light of day.

Episode Rating: 6.9/10