The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend, but JordanCon continues and the cast and crew of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time remains admirably committed to always showing up for the annual Atlanta-based convention celebrating the late author Robert Jordan and his monumental fourteen-book fantasy series. It’s a small event, hardly worth Amazon’s time in the grand scheme of things, but if nothing else, showrunner Rafe Judkins always has a video message for the fans containing a few tidbits of new information about the series, currently filming its third season in Prague. This year, while he was not at liberty to share the season two release date we’ve been craving for quite some time now, he did introduce four actors joining season two who will be playing important new characters.
Moiraine | amazonadviser.com
All four were previously rumored to be among the series’ cast, so the names of Jay Duffy, Rima Te Wiata, Ragga Ragnars and Maja Simonsen may already be familiar to those who have been following production closely. Nor did it come as a surprise that Te Wiata would be playing Sheriam Bayanar of the Blue Ajah, something that was first reported several weeks ago by WoTSeries, a highly reputable investigative fan-site. But I was stunned and delighted to discover that Duffy will be playing Dain Bornhald and not Gawyn Trakand as everyone seemed to think, and that Ragnars and Simonsen will be portraying the dynamic duo of Bain & Chiad, two fairly minor but endearing characters I feared would be missing entirely from this adaptation.
A little about each of the characters, starting with Dain Bornhald because his is the casting I’m most excited about. Dain is a character we meet in the books earlier than in the show, in the town of Baerlon to be precise, although it’s not at all obvious from his introductory scene what a prominent role he’ll have in the story going forward, especially as a foil to Perrin, so I can easily understand why they saved him for season two. This way, he can have a proper introduction and audiences will hopefully get to know him first and foremost as a sympathetic character; a young man brought up from childhood in a cult and indoctrinated by everyone around him, including his father Geofram, to believe that the Aes Sedai and all those who can use the One Power are Darkfriends. Dain is a distinctly queer-coded character from my point of view (so is Perrin, making their antagonistic relationship even more compelling), and I have a feeling that might not just be subtext in the show.
Eamon Valda interrogates an Aes Sedai | imdb.com
Sheriam Bayanar, an Aes Sedai and member of the Blue Ajah, is the White Tower’s Mistress of Novices when the story opens, instructing Nynaeve al’Meara, Egwene al’Vere, and Elayne Trakand upon their arrival at the Tower. She is particularly skilled at helping channelers overcome their self-imposed Blocks, and for this reason I suspect that most of her scenes in season two will be shared with Nynaeve, whose peculiar Block is an integral part of her character arc. In future seasons, however, Sheriam will get an unexpected promotion and take on a much larger and more pivotal role…and that’s all I’ll say on that subject.
As for Bain & Chiad, these inseparable Maidens of the Spear refer to themselves as “first-sisters”, which in their case means they have been Bonded by their Wise Ones in a ritual that – at least in the books – allows them to simulate the experience of being reborn from a single womb as close as two women can be. I do not believe for a moment that Robert Jordan was at all oblivious to the homoeroticism in his own writing, because the man was basically advertising his fetishes to the world every time a female character in his books found herself naked in Tel’aran’rhiod being chased around and spanked or flogged by other naked women, but I’ve said in the past and I’ll say it again that I don’t think he as a straight man ever seriously considered queer women as anything other than erotic. It’s very telling that most of the implied bisexual women in The Wheel Of Time, including Bain & Chiad by the way, are in polyamorous relationships centered around a single man, while the implied lesbians are mostly sexual predators. Queer men simply didn’t exist in the world of The Wheel Of Time until Brandon Sanderson generously added two to the books he completed after Jordan’s passing.
(left to right) Bain, Aviendha, and Chiad | reddit.com
I could go on about this particular subject for hours, but this really isn’t the time or place to be doing so, and I think I’ve rambled long enough anyway. In short, I’m very excited to see these four characters officially join The Wheel Of Time‘s ensemble cast when season two premieres (hopefully later this year), optimistic that we’ll learn who’s playing Lanfear, Elaida, Verin, Suroth, Egeanin, Gaul, Morgase, Galad, and Gawyn long before then, and curious to know whose introduction you’re most eagerly anticipating. Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
Netflix’s Shadow And Bone has never been a straightforward adaptation of the book series by the same name, which has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow And Bone trilogy by itself is not particularly compelling source material and fans are generally in agreement that the author’s later books are significantly stronger due in large part to their more complex, multi-faceted characters, and a curse, because removing these characters from the context of Bardugo’s later books and creating a space for them amidst the events of her original trilogy, showrunner Eric Heisserer’s galaxy-brained solution to the problem he created for himself by refusing to adapt both stories separately, ultimately did a disservice to everybody in the first season. I am happy to report the second season has a “fix” for that too; less so to admit that – while it worked for me – it has only further enraged book purists, and without their support the show may not get another chance at this.
Mal and Alina | polygon.com
Let me be more clear (and if the message in bold lettering at the top of the page wasn’t enough, let this be your final warning that spoilers will follow). There are a total of seven novels set in author Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse – comprising the Shadow And Bone trilogy, Six Of Crows duology, and King Of Scars duology, published and intended to be read in that order, though many fans will tell you they started with Six Of Crows, a great entry-point to the Grishaverse, and gradually worked their way backwards and forwards from there. Netflix’s Shadow And Bone only properly adapted the trilogy’s first book in season one, with the Six Of Crows duology’s characters having relatively inconsequential original storylines written for them – set prior to the events of the book in which they first appeared – so they could be present without upstaging Shadow And Bone‘s actual protagonists.
Understandably, fans were left wanting a little more from the Crows, and I think the writers took this to mean that adapting more of their story was essential in season two. One thing about Shadow And Bone‘s writers, they clearly take every criticism into consideration, which is admirable, but they have a tendency to…over-correct, in response to criticisms both great and small. One fairly innocuous example of this that stood out to me, just because I remember how viewers complained of being unable to keep track of characters’ movements throughout the first season, is that every other scene transition is now accompanied by a map. But entire subplots have, for better or worse, been discarded because they were poorly-received.
Don’t get me wrong, the first season’s surface-level depiction of anti-Asian racism as a relentless barrage of microaggressions was not something that needed to make a comeback, but Ravkan discrimination against the Shu played an unexpectedly significant role in shaping the show’s half-Ravkan, half-Shu, biracial heroine, Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), and her barely-explored complex feelings towards her home-country made her a more interesting protagonist in my opinion. But with racism in the Grishaverse suddenly ended (along with homophobia!), Alina is no longer tormented by these feelings, which once stood in the way of her becoming Ravka’s Sun-Summoner while simultaneously giving her crucial insight into the plight of the oppressed Grisha – magic-users – and the Darkling (Ben Barnes).
The Darkling | netflix.com
Other characters in Bardugo’s Grishaverse are murderers and manipulators and former members of the fantasy Hitler Youth, but none are as divisive as the Darkling, the immortal Grisha tyrant responsible for creating the Shadow-Fold, a towering wall of darkness severing Ravka from its coastline and trapping it between hostile neighbors to the north and south. In both the books and the show, Alina falls in love with the Darkling because he’s the first person to see her as something more than a mapmaker, but only in the books do they continue to have genuine feelings for each other after it’s revealed that the Darkling planned to use Alina’s unique abilities to move the Shadow-Fold for his apparently nefarious purposes. Any hint of a real emotional connection between the two was scrubbed from the second season’s scripts, probably in response to accusations that Shadow And Bone romanticizes abusive relationships, but to the obvious detriment of the entire series. Alina’s refusal to even treat with the Darkling for eight whole episodes makes her satisfied expression after becoming a Shadow-Summoner in the final scene…confusing at best, while the Darkling comes across as a downright pitiable villain, practically groveling at Alina’s feet for attention he will never again receive and resorting to empty threats when she ignores him. Where once there was a mutual understanding that came with drawbacks and advantages for the both of them, now there is nothingness – nichevo’ya in Ravkan.
And yet, Shadow And Bone still places great emphasis on the singular nature of Alina’s very literal connection to the Darkling, a bonding in their bones (or rather, the bones of Morozova’s Stag now grafted onto their own) which allows the one to invade the other’s dreams, then their mind, the space behind their eyes, and at last even their physical location. The mechanics behind it are fairly simple, but the show takes its time explaining how the bond is supposed to work and how it can be weaponized, leading to some gripping sequences where the two characters train to do just that. Still, it’s weird that Shadow And Bone has time in its busy schedule to play around with the bond when nearly every other plot-beat in Alina’s story fails to register as she and her supporting characters speed-run through the events of Siege And Storm and Ruin And Rising.
Not for the first time, a big-budget fantasy show has cheated me out of a sea-monster battle I feel I was rightfully owed by reducing the epic confrontation with the fabled Sea-Whip to a mere five minutes of characters thrashing around in knee-high water, losing a fight to a monster the size of an iguana, and my disappointment is immeasurable, but I will begrudgingly acknowledge that the CGI budget was probably better spent elsewhere (not on Alina’s powers, though, that’s for sure). I can also, to a certain extent, understand why Siege And Storm was not adapted separately from its sequel, because the book badly wants to be a suspenseful political thriller when in actuality it’s just…slow-moving and bloated. But to try and adapt the chapters of intricate political intrigue, divorced from the context of the book, is a writing choice I can’t rationalize or forgive. Alina’s fake engagement to Prince Nikolai Lantsov (Patrick Gibson, miscast in a role that called for slightly more charisma than he could offer), the cause for Prince Vasily Lantsov (Edward Davis)’s consternation, is one particularly complex storyline the show has no need for, and is forced to heavily abridge anyway, yet insists on adapting as if it’s vital.
Alina Starkov | discussingfilm.net
But it’s had to be crammed into the first half of the season, along with what was Siege And Storm‘s climactic battle (which took place at the Little Palace in the book, rather than the Spinning Wheel – perhaps Netflix couldn’t afford to shoot at the Festetics Palace in Hungary again, or it was unavailable, but the Budapest Stock Exchange Palace, a reused location from season one, instead stands in for the Spinning Wheel, which was actually where Nikolai escaped in the book after the Little Palace fell to the Darkling). Ruin And Rising, the trilogy’s final book, is briefly summarized in the last few episodes; Alina, instead of fleeing into the network of tunnels under Ravka and spending months in hiding, escapes with Baghra (Zoë Wanamaker), the Darkling’s mother, immediately after the attack on the Spinning-Wheel and chases after the third of Morozova’s Amplifiers until Baghra quite casually reveals that the Amplifier is Alina’s boyfriend, Malyen Oretsev (Archie Renaux), and that to harness his powers Alina will have to kill him, before she – Baghra, that is, not Alina – sacrifices herself to break the bond between Alina and the Darkling (the last remaining interesting aspect of their relationship). None of these developments are dragged out for the sake of angst, which I suppose I should be grateful for, but fast-forwarding through the story isn’t a great alternative.
Not ten minutes into the finale, the Shadow-Fold is no more, and both Mal and the Darkling are dead – for now, at least; a bumblebee landing on Zoya (Sujaya Dasgupta)’s shoulder while she stands by the Darkling’s body foreshadows the arrival of Sankta Lizabeta, a character from the King Of Scars duology who helps resurrect the Darkling – and everyone is standing around awkwardly in what used to be the Shadow-Fold, saying their goodbyes. Alina refuses to part with Mal forever, though, and forces his soul back into his body using hastily explained dark magic, with one tragic side-effect: he no longer feels anything for her. In the books, this doesn’t happen, and Alina and Mal get the happily-ever-after ending that Mal always dreamed of, where Alina loses her Grisha powers and they retire to a farm and raise lots of children.
Needless to say, many readers felt cheated by that conclusion to Alina’s character arc, so the show has done away with it completely (another correction, but one that I think almost everyone can get behind). Mal decides to become a privateer like Nikolai, traveling the high seas, while Alina becomes Queen of the Grisha, all while still “engaged” to Nikolai. I love that this is the route we’re going with, because I’ve always been a proponent of platonic “Malina”, but again, this is something the show needed to establish earlier, and it just never carved out the time to do so (and on a side-note, everyone’s “ships” are breaking down the middle as a result of this change: Alina is with Nikolai but now reminiscing about the Darkling; Nikolai seems genuinely infatuated with her, and still hasn’t even glanced in Zoya’s direction; Mal is single and apparently ready to mingle).
It’s abundantly clear that the writers’ interest lies with the Crows, on the other side of the Shadow-Fold. No surprise there. The morally ambiguous, eccentrically-dressed (and for the time being at least, predominantly queer) Crows have a certain panache that Shadow And Bone‘s archetypal protagonists lack. Even outside of Ketterdam (the Crows’ home-turf, a precarious stack of casinos, nightclubs, and brothels clamoring over each other for tourists’ money), or separated from their veritable rainbow of a rogues gallery, the Crows are not only the more eye-catching characters but by far the more three-dimensional and real. Some of that can be attributed to the actors and their obvious delight in the roles they were practically born to play – Freddy Carter and Amita Suman, standouts among the ensemble cast, deliver equally phenomenal performances as the criminal mastermind Kaz Brekker and assassin Inej Ghafa, doing Bardugo proud in every scene; those where they act the part of Crows, indecipherable and unfeeling, and those where surprisingly eloquent confessions slip from their lips unbidden in each other’s presence, before they shamefully begin bricking up the gaps in their armor. Even though Inej boldly pushes Kaz to open up in the final episode and he rather hesitantly admits that he wants her to stay in Ketterdam with him, Inej realizes then and there that they still have a long way to go before they’ll ever be comfortable expressing how they feel through physical gestures of affection, and that she doesn’t have all the time in the world – so she chooses to leave the Crows and search for her family, giving Kaz time to consider whether he’s willing to begin healing and become the person she needs him to be.
(left to right) Wylan Van Eck, Nina Zenik, Kaz Brekker and Jesper Fahey | elle.com
A less complicated love blossoms between Jesper Fahey (Kit Young) and Wylan Van Eck (Jack Wolfe), the Crows’ demolition man. In a change from the books that came as a shock to some, Jesper and Wylan are already…intimately acquainted in Shadow And Bone, which means they obviously don’t spend several episodes silently questioning whether the other is interested in them, and Jesper doesn’t ever deliver what is arguably his most iconic line, “Not just girls”, nor will there ever be a chance again. Instead, the conflict in their relationship comes from their inability to get on the same page about what they really want – they’re both looking for passion, but they have completely different definitions of the word. And this change actually worked for me, as did most of the changes to the Crows, because I can tell these changes were made by writers who really love the Crows and understand them, even if they don’t always have the time and means in what is still technically an adaptation of Shadow And Bone to prove it to cynical book purists.
The most controversial change, of course, is the decision to adapt large chunks of Crooked Kingdom – the second book in the Six Of Crows duology – prior to the events of Six Of Crows, and with Kaz’s arch-nemesis Pekka Rollins (Dean Lennox Kelly) taking the place of Jan Van Eck, a character we still haven’t seen in the show (which is fine by me, because that means it’s not too late to cast Richard E. Grant in that role). The raid on Van Eck’s lawyer’s office; the Crows dressing up as Komedie Brute characters to pull off one of their plans; the iconic scene in which Kaz usurps Per Haskell (Tim Plester) as head of the Dregs, and where he pretends to have buried Pekka’s son alive; Inej becoming a pirate…it’s all here. To do any of that again would be redundant. But Inej being kidnapped by Van Eck and fighting Dunyasha, Jesper’s father coming to Ketterdam, the smuggling of Grisha refugees onto the boats with help from Nikolai, the auction for Kuwei Yul-Bo and Kaz’s confrontation with the Council of Tides are all major sequences that have not yet been adapted, so it’s not like there’s nothing left. These scenes will just be very different when they happen onscreen.
I won’t say it’s not occasionally frustrating, because of course it is. I would have just as gladly accepted more original storylines for the Crows in place of a loose adaptation of Crooked Kingdom (and I enjoyed the one written to keep them occupied through the back-half of the season, during which they travel to Shu Han in search of a blade that can cut shadows to help Alina). But as a fan of the Crows, I look at what was done with their characters this season – and how they were set up for the future – and I can’t help but feel excited that the story could potentially veer off in so many different directions now. Because Pekka Rollins is already in Hellgate Prison by season’s end, he’s had the opportunity to befriend the sixth future member of the Crows, Matthias Helvar (Calahan Skogman), while the Fjerdan still hasn’t even had the chance to meet Kaz. Because Inej is off traveling the world with Mal now, she can join the Crows at a different point during the Ice-Court heist and Mal can fill the small but significant role that Nikolai plays in Crooked Kingdom. Because Wylan is already with Jesper, the truth about his identity, when it inevitably comes out, could drive a wedge between them. And of course, Alina still being involved in the story introduces even more variables.
Inej Ghafa | looper.com
Of course, it all depends on whether Shadow And Bone gets renewed for a third season, and at Netflix that is never a guarantee (another reason I think the writers snuck in so many great scenes from later books this season, because they knew better than to assume that Netflix would let the show run long enough to get to those scenes organically). I remain cautiously optimistic that it will be picked up, or rather that the story will continue under the title Six Of Crows. Whether Bardugo book purists will give the writers another chance after so many controversial changes to the source material is a different matter. For the answer to that question, we shall have to wait and see.
I had to dig through my site’s archives to find the first post I wrote about Gollum, but even so I was shocked to discover that it’s been over two years since the first footage from the game was revealed to the public. I can just barely remember feeling disappointed with the titular character’s unexpressive face and janky movements at the time, but it seems I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, because Daedalic Entertainment has spent the last two years reworking the game. I would have probably forgotten about it entirely, were it not for a new full-length trailer for the game released on Thursday that tentatively hints at a 2023 release date and urges gamers to add it to their wish-list now.
Gollum | nintendoeverything.com
Gollum follows the character’s circuitous journey across Middle-earth in pursuit of Bilbo Baggins during the sixty-year interlude between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, a journey that takes him from the Misty Mountains to Mordor, where he is detained in the dungeons of Sauron and tortured until he reveals who took his precious Ring, and then to Mirkwood, where he is detained in the dungeons of Thranduil and tortured until he reveals what he revealed to Sauron, and then back to the Misty Mountains to continue his long-delayed original mission, only to unexpectedly run into the Fellowship of the Ring led by Bilbo’s nephew Frodo Baggins and begin hunting them. The game promises to flesh out these events with new material and original characters to keep Tolkienites and casual gamers alike on their toes, but Gollum’s goal, the player’s goal, is the same – survive, and find the Ring.
Even though many of the game’s characters are recognizable by name to even the most casual Tolkienite, including Shelob, Gandalf, Thranduil, and the Mouth of Sauron, their designs are remarkably…original, borrowing far more heavily from the bizarre, whimsical Rankin/Bass 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit and Ralph Bakshi’s borderline-psychedelic 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings than from either of Peter Jackson’s hyper-realistic film trilogies or Amazon’s The Rings Of Power. Gollum‘s Elves, for instance, are sinuous, reed-thin creatures with hooded eyes, drowning in layers upon layers of voluminous fabric and enormous, ornate headdresses. It’s the kind of game where a Tom Bombadil cameo wouldn’t seem entirely out of place, and that’s saying something.
Gandalf and Thranduil | rockpapershotgun.com
Whether the gameplay matches the quality of the visuals remains to be seen, but I’ll leave that to professional gamers to determine: for me, as a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works who simply enjoys analyzing new adaptations and debating the thematic consequences, great and small, of making changes to the source material, the main appeal of Gollum is the agency it gives to the player to make choices that will decide Gollum’s ultimate fate. I don’t know yet if the game allows you to go running off in any direction, with alternate endings depending on how you choose to play, or if it eventually forces you back on the path that leads Gollum to his canonical confrontation with the Fellowship of the Ring, but I’m excited to see how the developers at Daedalic have integrated the character’s internal struggles into every aspect of their game from the narrative to the actual gameplay.
POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR THE RINGS OF POWER SEASON TWO AHEAD!
New year, same niche interests.
Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power has been lingering in the back of my mind ever since its epic season finale, which saw the human Southlander Halbrand revealed to be the Dark Lord Sauron in one of his many fair-seeming forms. With his plan to conquer Middle-earth unknowingly set in motion by the characters of Adar, Celebrimbor, and Pharazôn, the stakes are higher than ever – and the only thing standing between Sauron and his ultimate goal is Galadriel, to whom Sauron’s ambitions were made terrifyingly clear when he offered her a place at his side in the new world he intends to build from the old one’s ashes. Heading into season two, the Three Rings forged by Celebrimbor will come into play, giving the Elves an apparent advantage over Sauron that the Dark Lord will seek to circumvent by approaching Celebrimbor in a new disguise and persuading him to create more Rings with his help; Rings through which he can control the other Free Peoples, Men and Dwarves.
The Three Rings of the Elves | nerdist.com
With a grand total of nineteen Rings of Power floating around in season two (minus the One Ring forged by and for Sauron alone), audiences can look forward to appearances from the future owners of the Seven Rings made for the Dwarves and the Nine Rings destined to enslave Men. On top of that, the first season came to an abrupt end before the Elves gathered to witness the forging of the Three Rings could decide who among them should wield these precious artifacts, leaving open the possibility that multiple high-ranking Elven-lords and ladies will vie for a Ring of their own before they inevitably come to rest on the hands of Galadriel, High King Gil-galad, and CÃrdan the Shipwright. The books and posthumously published writings of J.R.R. Tolkien are largely unhelpful for theorists, offering only a vague account of how the Rings of Power were distributed – which means there’s no predicting how Amazon’s adaptation of this story will play out.
At one point, Tolkien toyed with the idea that the Rings of Power had originally all been made for Elven wearers, and that it was Sauron who later went amongst Dwarves and Men, handing out the sixteen Rings he had stolen from Celebrimbor’s forge when he sacked the city of Eregion. I can easily believe that Men, with their short lifespans and shorter memories, would fall for that trick, but it’s never made much sense to me that the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm, who promptly closed their doors in Sauron’s face after Eregion was sacked, would reopen them for any mysterious stranger bearing Rings that could only have been made in Eregion. I’ve always preferred the account passed down by the Dwarves themselves; that Celebrimbor himself presented a Ring of Power to King Durin III, making at least one out of the Seven a true token of friendship between Elves and Dwarves.
The identities of the other Ringbearers also eluded Tolkien, or else he never gave the matter much thought. It is generally assumed, for good reason, that the rest of the Seven Rings were given to the heads of the seven Dwarven clans (Longbeards, Firebeards, Broadbeams, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks and Stonefoots), but I do not believe that this is actually confirmed anywhere. It’s theoretically possible that two or more Dwarf-lords of a single clan each received a Ring, and that some clan leaders steadfastly refused to accept Rings at all. Seeing as the Dwarves were generally far more resistant to the corrosive powers of the Rings than Men or even Elves, it would not surprise me if that were the case. The names of the nine Men who became Sauron’s Ringwraiths were either lost to time or suppressed, all save one; Khamûl, the Shadow of the East, who was second-in-command to the Witch-king of Angmar.
That’s the story we’ve been told, anyway. Amazon intends to tell their own, and it seems to me that there are already a few original characters (i.e. characters invented for The Rings Of Power, who didn’t exist or weren’t named in Tolkien’s works) that have been set up in season one to become Ringbearers in season two, amongst them Durin IV and Disa of Khazad-dûm, Bronwyn and Theo of the Southlands, and Kemen of Númenor. The concept alone may offend some Tolkien purists, but allow me to lay out the argument for each of these non-canonical candidates.
(from left to right) Elrond, Durin IV, and Disa | fantasytopics.com
Representing the prestigious Longbeard clan as the main Dwarven viewpoint character in the series, Prince Durin IV is the most obvious choice to receive the Ring of Power given to his father by Celebrimbor in the semi-canonical version of the story only sketched out by Tolkien. He is, at any rate, far more likely to accept the gift without questioning its origins than his father Durin III, who in Amazon’s retelling is deeply distrustful of the Elves and all their handiwork. The Ring, with its tendency to “inflame [the bearer’s] heart with a greed of gold and precious things”, would bring out the worst qualities in Durin IV, who unsuccessfully sought for six episodes to convince his father that the value of mithril (a precious metal coveted by the Elves, but only found in narrow crevices deep below the foundations of Khazad-dûm) far outweighed the dangers of mining it. With a Ring on his finger to assure him of his own infallibility, he would become insistent upon digging ever deeper in search of mithril, inevitably awakening the monster nestled in wait at the mountain’s roots.
I see these tragic events unfolding in Durin IV’s future as clearly as if they were already filmed, but whether his wife Disa make it out alive or not will depend entirely on whether she learns too late what Gandalf told Saruman in The Fellowship Of The Ring; that “only one hand at a time can wield [a Ring of Power]”, meaning that its bearer will soon become possessive of it and irrationally suspicious of anyone who offers to share it, even if only to ease the mental and physical toll it exacts. I fear that this once inseparable power-couple will break under pressure, and that while Durin is dragged down by the weight of his Ring to a dark and terrible place, Disa will be put in an extremely difficult position where she can choose to stick by his side, either for true love’s sake or in the naïve hope that she can make the Ring work for her too, or she can get out before she’s buried with him beneath falling monuments to their selfishness and greed, the only thing they ever truly shared.
We have yet to see any Dwarf-lords from the other six clans scattered across Middle-earth from the Ered Luin to the Iron Hills, and I doubt that The Rings Of Power will ever find the time or space to flesh out their stories anyway, but I imagine we’ll see the other Dwarven Ringbearers gathered in at least one scene, solely so that Amazon can replicate that iconic moment in the opening sequence of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship Of The Ring, where the seven nameless Dwarf-lords hold up their Rings as one. Personally, I’m hoping for a little more diversity in Amazon’s version, because if Galadriel can get grouped in with the “Elven-kings” in the famous Ring-verse despite being a woman (and explicitly not even equivalent to a king amongst her own people), then there can be some Dwarven-women among the “Dwarf-lords” mentioned in the next line.
That brings me to the next character I believe might be tempted to get her hands on a Ring – Bronwyn of the Southlands, a humble human apothecary who became unexpectedly crucial in deciding the fate of Middle-earth after leading her people to a victory against the Orcs that was only overturned when Orodruin suddenly erupted, forcing her to flee to Pelargir with her family and other refugees at the end of season one. Not only is she now acquainted with the Dark Lord Sauron (albeit in the fair form of Halbrand, long-lost king of the Southlands), giving her the means to obtain a Ring of Power, she also has the motive to want one: she’s in love with an immortal Elven warrior named Arondir who has been around since the First Age and will still be around long after Bronwyn’s great-grandchildren are dead, which is sure to pose a problem in their relationship as they start to wonder what’s next for them now that they’re comfortably settled down in Pelargir.
Bronwyn and Arondir | express.co.uk
By a complete coincidence, the nine Rings of Power given to Mortal Men have the side-effect of extending their bearer’s lifespan long beyond its natural endpoint, something that sounds really appealing until you realize that the Rings can’t do anything to preserve your physical body or your mind, but will continue to puppeteer your undead husk for centuries until even that has crumbled away and finally all that remains is an overworked and exhausted soul tied to the world by the Ring on its nonexistent finger. If that fate awaits Bronwyn, it will be far worse than dying of old age, for death would come as a sweet release after an eternity of numbness.
Frankly, I’ve always felt that Middle-earth needs more women who are morally ambiguous in all the ways that men have always been allowed to be, so I wouldn’t necessarily object to Bronwyn becoming a Ringwraith, but I do have concerns that if her story goes down this route, it might gradually become the story of Arondir’s attempts to save Bronwyn from herself, rather than remaining focused on her – very relatable, and extremely Tolkienesque – struggle with the fear of death, so I’d like to hear opinions from women about how (or whether) it can be depicted without that happening.
Bronwyn’s son Theo has a rather more straightforward motive for desiring a Ring of Power. Ever since Waldreg stole the mysterious sword-shaped key that Theo had been using to stab himself so he could get high on blood loss and used it to activate Orodruin (why was the key shaped like a sword, anyway? I still have far too many questions regarding the key, the keyhole, and Sauron’s bizarre plan to anti-terraform the Southlands for there to ever be good enough answers), Theo has spoken about feeling powerless without it and wanting revenge on the Orcs to fill the gaping void in his life. While Sauron might not allow him to go that far, he can offer Theo something else – an even stronger drug that will silently kill off the parts of him that are good and innocent, reducing him to a vacant vessel ready to be filled with Sauron’s malice. The alternative, in my opinion, is that Theo becomes the King of the Dead, and either way he’s going to be trapped between life and death for a long time before getting peace.
Kemen, the weakly rebellious son of Pharazôn, is by far the least interesting and least sympathetic character who could potentially end up wearing one of the Nine Rings, but I have to believe there was a reason for writing him into the series, and this is the only one that makes any sense to me. Throughout the first season, in the few and far-between glimpses we caught of Kemen and his father interacting, we watched with second-hand embarrassment as the young man almost reluctantly matured – though only after his puppy-like attempts to please his father (“I was only trying to be clever”) were met with contempt. Kemen’s guilty anger emboldened him, and he thwarted his father’s imperialist agenda by blowing up a ship intended to set sail for Middle-earth, although he barely made it out of the conflagration alive. In season two, I expect Kemen to go to even greater lengths to sabotage (and at the same time, subconsciously impress) his father, and it would be most ironic if he only succeeded in enslaving his will to the Dark Lord.
Besides Kemen, it’s possible – though very unlikely, in my opinion – that another Númenórean, Eärien, will become a Ringwraith. I personally believe she will be lured to the dark side not by promises of power or eternal life, but by the opportunity to build the Temple of Morgoth in Armenelos where Sauron and Pharazôn will sacrifice prisoners-of-war and members of the Faithful arrested on false charges of treason, including Eärien’s own family. I will support her every step of the way, mind you, no matter what unspeakable crimes she commits to become the greatest architect in Middle-earth for one brief shining moment before it all comes crashing down around her, but for that climax to be truly satisfying I believe Eärien must surely die in the building she designed to last for centuries, like Thomas Andrews going down with the Titanic.
Eärien | bt.com
With the cast of The Rings Of Power expanding in season two, there’s a very strong chance we’ll soon meet other future Ringwraiths from Númenor, Middle-earth’s Southlands, and the currently uncharted regions of Rhûn and Harad. But I don’t know anything about these characters, and Tolkien left nothing for me to work with, so this is where I must sadly end. Of course, there is one more Ring, one of which I have not yet spoken, but that One was made for the Dark Lord’s hand alone, and it was only by chance (which some might call the divine intervention of Eru) that it was cut from his finger and later lost in the murky waters of the Anduin, only to be picked up by a hobbit or something akin to one, anyway. For the record, however, I do believe the One Ring will be forged in the season two finale, concluding Sauron’s irreversible descent into darkness.
So…which of the characters I’ve mentioned will actually get their hands on a Ring of Power when all is said and done, and which will become corrupted, transforming into horrible Ringwraiths? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!
