'The Rings Of Power' Season 2 Episode 7 Spoiler-Free Review
Image Source: Tech Radar
The penultimate episode. The beginning of the end. All the storylines start to converge, and secrets are revealed. The seventh episode title, “Doomed to Die,” fits quite well with this newest episode of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. This episode reminds us that much of what J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in the Second Age doesn’t always end happily and is definitely much darker than what most fans know him for.
Understandably, this episode focuses mostly on the main storyline of this season, which is no surprise. Everything is starting to come together, and the character’s storylines are reaching their fates for this season, for better or worse. This episode is much darker, story-wise, than any of the others so far, which fits with J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings on the Second Age of Middle-earth. And it does such a great job of conveying the darkness, the hurt, and the sadness that permeates this age. The actors did an absolutely superb job of conveying their emotions and telling the story. They are taking their characters deeper than they ever got in Season One, especially Celebrimbor, Sauron, and Elrond. The visuals are great, and the plot is good, but it’s the actors bringing the characters to life that really make this show. Throughout the first season and this one, we’ve fallen in love with these characters, so now, with this season becoming even more intense and leading to massive plot points that affect many of our favorite characters, it’s upping the stakes and adding so much depth and emotion to the story that we haven’t gotten thus far in this series.
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In this episode, we’ve already had to say goodbye to one, possibly two named characters (it is, at yet, unknown for sure if the one character is for sure dead or not), and there may be more next week as Tolkien’s lore, and the show, have set it up that we will probably see more deaths before the season is over. There is a strange plus side to this, which sounds weird even saying, but that is with the storylines converging and characters starting to die, we are slowly having less storylines to bounce between, which is making the story feel more cohesive. This episode, by far, has felt the most cohesive, but that was partly because it only focused on two main storylines that do go together more than the others, even if there was a cutaway. This helped the episode to feel more full and less disjointed like some of the others have felt throughout this season and last. The episode was very cinematic, and you could clearly see why this season cost more than the first one did, which paid off and made it an even better episode.
Image Source: USA Today
The costumes, especially the armor and the make-up, are top-notch in this episode. We finally got to see some of our favorites in armor and one in particular wielding his very famous weapon, which was very exciting. One of the coolest things about fantasy shows is the armor design, and this show doesn’t disappoint with all the details. It is also mostly practical as well, which is a plus when designing armor. One of the other neat things was that they fixed the Peter Jackson and fantasy movie issue where if you have a character that has arrows, they never seem to run out. In this show, they do, which is much more realistic and makes the battle that much more real.
The CGI in this episode, especially, is quite good and, for the most part, moves flawlessly with the plot. There are times when it’s hard to even tell if something is a practical effect or CGI (except for obvious characters, of course), which adds to the seamless and overall real-world feel of this episode in terms of visuals and effects. On the flip side, the practical effects in this episode especially are fantastic, and it’s great to get to watch something that isn’t just done through CGI.
One odd thing about this episode was its jarring scene changes from night and day to night and day again. Because this episode mostly takes place in one location, the jumps from the different times of day were jarring a few times because they happened abruptly with no dusk or dawn to signal the start of a new day. It was just…and now we’re in daytime/nighttime. It’s not a big complaint, obviously, but it takes the viewer out of the story for a moment because the transition didn’t feel as seamless. It was probably partially done because of having to squish a longer time frame into one episode, but they could have maybe played around with the lighting some more so that it didn’t go from pitch night to almost noon looking.
There is one other section in this episode that is drawing a lot of attention on the internet and has already sparked memes. At first, while watching, it seemed surprising and like the showrunners had finally gone a bit too far (although, of course, this is subjective), and it did shock a lot of viewers. However, a closer glance at the scene is very similar to how, in last week’s episode, Galadriel shocked everyone by telling Adar what he wanted to know. She had a motive, though, and so did this character. So, while it seems at first like all the lore suddenly got thrown out the window, a closer look at what is going on and the character’s body language, you can tell that it’s not that big of a deal. But it is still probably going to make lots of fans a bit upset, regardless.
Image Source: CBR
Anyone who knows Tolkien’s lore for this part of the Second Age knows that this episode only showed the start of everything that snowballs from here on out as the story speeds up and brings in major plot points. Since the series’ timeline is squashed together anyway, some plot points are definitely happening, not exactly when they did in Tolkien’s writings. However, despite this, the writing in this season has been much better and has brought a cohesive story to the elements that are coming together when they weren’t written that way originally, which is definitely making this season better than the last. Hopefully, this trend will continue into Season Three. However, the fact that the show is still speeding things along continues to be a point of contention among fans who have read much of Tolkien’s lore. Certain points don’t seem to matter as much as others, but this next episode is definitely going to show viewers just how far the showrunners have decided to smoosh the timelines together. It will be interesting to see.
Based on the sneak preview for the season finale, it seems like we may get more answers than we initially thought, and it looks like the storylines will be on track for the next phase of the Second Age, which is very exciting. How they will wrap everything up (or mostly) in one episode will be quite the feat, but last season, they did a pretty good job of it, so there are high hopes for this finale as well. Next week can’t come fast enough!
Rating: 9/10
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