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"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" is about to hit its midway point when Season 3 of its five-season story drops on November 11th. The show has had a hot and cold reception from audiences, partly due to the number of creative decisions that showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay (who have signed on for Season 3 and more) have had to make along the way.
Many of these decisions fill gaps in the source material. Tolkien didn't write heavily on the Second Age, and there isn't a character-driven, dialogue-filled trilogy like "The Lord of the Rings" to pull from. Characters in "The Rings of Power" often don't even have spoken lines in the text. Events and places are often sketched by their creator with minimum detail, too.
But that doesn't mean Amazon Studios' adaptation is only filling in blanks. There are many moments when it deliberately deviates from what Tolkien wrote. Sometimes these changes are more subtle, like the strange "will they, won't they" tension between Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Halbrand/Sauron (Charlie Vickers). At other times, it's a head-scratcher that causes an uproar in the moment but doesn't really matter long-term, like Elrond and Galadriel locking lips in a possibly romantic kiss at the end of Season 2, even though the former ends up marrying the daughter of the latter. And then there are the changes that are so stark, they dramatically influence the story.
We've gathered up five of those bigger shifts to see just how much Payne, McKay, and company have wandered from the script in the first two seasons of their five-part Second Age story.
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1. Timeline compression is wreaking havoc on Tolkien's writing
"The Rings of Power" takes place during the entirety of the Second Age of Middle-earth history. This immediately creates problems for the show, in the sense that you're dealing with a lot of mortal characters who live for short bursts during a 3,441-year stretch of time. To rectify this, the showrunners have opted to compress the lengthy age into a single, undefined span of years that exist within a single human lifetime.
This dramatic change to the Tolkien timeline helps the writers rein in the narrative and avoid having to turn over the human cast every season (or sometimes every episode). It also means we can bond with characters like Isildur (Maxim Baldry), Elendil (Lloyd Owen), and even long-lived but still mortal Dwarves like Durin IV (Owain Arthur).
But it has also created a headache of non-canon changes that are already amplified in just the two seasons we have so far. Forcing so many different major events across centuries into a single narrative has thrown off countless elements of Tolkien's original story. Galadriel's history is muddled. The Rings of Power are not being forged in the correct sequence. (More on both of those in a bit.) Events on the island nation of Númenor are playing out in a few years that take an entire line of kings to tell in the books. Everywhere you look, things are sped up and out of order. They're making it work in the show, but make no mistake: This isn't the order, nor is it the pacing, in which Tolkien told the story.
2. The overblown importance of mithril is affecting everything
Anyone who's watched Peter Jackson's two Middle-earth trilogies knows about mithril. Thorin (Richard Armitage) gives a suit of the magical metal to Bilbo (Martin Freeman) in "The Hobbit" films, and then Bilbo (Ian Holm) gives the suit to Frodo (Elijah Wood) in "The Lord of the Rings" movies. The metal protects both Bilbo and Frodo from harm on their adventures. It's light to wear, nearly impervious, and extremely valuable. But that's about it. It's still just fancy armor.
Not in "The Rings of Power." The show takes mithril and puts it on the same level as the Rings of Power themselves. It gives the metal a special ability to amplify unseen magical properties and is a central part of the forging of the Three Elven Rings. It connects mithril with the power of the Silmarils (three ancient, hallowed Elven jewels), turning it into a life-giving, world-saving Macguffin that drives the Elven storylines for the entire first season of the show.
There's no doubt that Tolkien loved his mithril a lot. He has mithril popping up all over Middle-earth lore. It's even used in some of the Rings of Power themselves, including Galadriel's ring, Nenya. But even its presence in that ring in the books isn't overblown. It gives the Elven Lady's ring a sense of grandeur, but it doesn't enhance its powers. No matter how you slice it, mithril just isn't as important in Tolkien's books as what JD Payne and Patrick McKay have turned it into in their adaptation.
3. The Rings of Power are forged out of order
In the show, Halbrand (aka Sauron in disguise) helps Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) forge the Three Elven Rings in Season 1. Then Halbrand returns as Annatar, Lord of Gifts, in Season 2 and forges the Seven Dwarven Rings with Celebrimbor before capturing and forcing the Elven smith to also create the Nine Rings for Mortal Men. All that's left (which we can definitely expect to see in Season 3) is the forging of the One Ring to rule them all.
Great, right? We've got all 20 rings from the Ring-verse. The only issue? The order in which the overpowered trinkets are forged. In the books, we get the Seven and the Nine first, then the Three, and then the One. Writer Gennifer Hutchison told Looper the reason for the reorganized forging when the Season 1 finale aired, saying, "This season was about tracking the Elves and their story." Okay, so they moved the Three Rings to the front of the line. Why does that matter? Context.
In Tolkien's original story, there is no Halbrand. Instead, Sauron shows up as Annatar and helps teach Celebrimbor and his smiths to make the Seven and the Nine. Eventually, Sauron leaves, and Celebrimbor critically makes the Three Elven Rings without the Dark Lord present. Then Sauron makes the One Ring, which he uses to control the 16 Rings for Men and Dwarves. But the Elven rings? They are made last, at the peak of the craft, and Sauron doesn't touch them, nor can he claim them with the same legitimacy as the 16 he helped forge. It's a big shift on a fundamental level, but don't expect the show to spend much time dwelling on it.
4. Gandalf's story arc in the book doesn't include the Second Age
One of the more fun random subplots of the show so far has been the arrival of a mysterious man via fireball in Episode 1 of Season 1. This "Meteor Man" turned out to be, drum roll please, The Stranger (Daniel Weyman). Yep, that was his frustratingly cryptic name — for two whole seasons. It wasn't until the finale of Season 2 that we got confirmation of The Stranger's real identity. He's Gandalf, folks (as if we didn't see that one coming). The Grey Wizard is here to fight off Sauron. All will be well.
The only issue? Gandalf is nowhere near Middle-earth during the Second Age in Tolkien's writings. He's presumably at home, on the other side of the ocean in the Undying Lands in the West. The appendices of "The Return of the King" mention that "when maybe a thousand years had passed [into the Third Age] ... the Istari or Wizards appeared in Middle-earth." So the one thing we know for sure is that Gandalf arrives thousands of years later than he does in "The Rings of Power."
In the book "Unfinished Tales," Tolkien reworks some of the lore, but even then, it's mainly the Blue Wizards who may have arrived during the Second Age, not Gandalf. The point? Having a Wizard in a Second Age story is okay. Tolkien wasn't clear on that. But Gandalf? There's nothing to clarify that he was around at this time. There's a vague, undeveloped note about the Five Wizards being around in the First Age, and we know for sure they were back by the Third Age, but there's nothing about the Grey Wizard in between.
5. The story for Galadriel's husband, Celeborn, is way off
Galadriel overshadows her husband, Celeborn, every time she shows up in Tolkien's writings, but he's there, nonetheless — and not just occasionally. Once Galadriel and Celeborn meet in the First Age, they are nearly inseparable. (There are a couple of points where they split up, but it's really rare.) Tolkien even wrote a chapter of "Unfinished Tales" called "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn." Despite being in his partner's shadow, Celeborn is also a fearsome warrior and wise leader in his own right.
That isn't what we get in "The Rings of Power." It took until Season 3 for Celeborn to finally show up (officially confirmed to be played by Jamie Campbell Bower). Before that, all we got was a brief reference in Season 1 about Galadriel calling him a "silver clam" before he went off to war and never came back. There's that timeline warping again. Celeborn is finally entering the story halfway in, but there is still an issue, and it's even bigger than the Rings of Power forging conundrum.
By the time of the events of "The Rings of Power," Galadriel and Celeborn are supposed to have had their daughter Celebrían. In fact, she's supposed to be centuries old — old enough that when she meets Elrond (Robert Aramayo) at some point in the near future, they'll fall in love. Instead, Celeborn is just entering the picture (it'll be interesting to see how they explain his absence so far), Celebrían doesn't seem to exist yet, and Elrond kisses Galadriel (his future mother-in-law) in Season 2. This is a massive plothole JD Payne and Patrick McKay are going to need to explain post-haste in Season 3, so fans can connect the adapted dots and hopefully breathe easier again.
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Read the original article on Looper.
