So last night I reluctantly sat down to watch the final episode of the inaugural season of The Rings of Power and I had already heard that most of the huge action had intentionally happened in episode 7, just like they would commonly do in Game of Thrones. I believe the ROP is intentionally borrowing a lot of aspects from GoT, but just none of the stuff that made GoT epic.
After seeing episode 8, which I had hoped would bring a bunch of the stories together, I instead left about as disappointed as I had expected to. The amount of pregnant pauses, completely coincidental encounters, and inconsistency of powers that appeared was just laughable. Oh and it ended with the creation of some rings and I am sure there are TONS of people that were really surprised when that happened.
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They end by making some rings in a show called The Rings of Power? NO friggin way!
Now I am going to get some names wrong here because I either didn't care enough to learn them or they don't actually have names in the show (that's just one person.) I'm not trying to work on my Master's thesis, I am just writing a gripe about what I consider to be one of the worst big-budget shows I have ever seen.
Let's start with the mystery magic ladies that seem to be desperately following "The Stranger" or meteor man.
We learn very little about this trio other than the fact that they wield magic power that no one else seems to have. They also seem rather heartless and uncaring about anyone other than what their objective is. Even though they seem to be able to conjure fire out of nowhere, they still avoid crowds for some reason.
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The showdown with "The Stranger" in the woods would have been a lot less stupid had it not been for how it was set up. The Stranger is meant to be walking in the opposite direction than the 3 witches are pursuing him because of how the Hobbit-folk lied to them, yet here we are just a little while later and they teleported right in to his neighborhood. Then, they also do not just directly approach him but instead lure him into a trap by polymorphing into a likeness of someone that stranger trusts. There is also an apple that is dropped involved in the path that they travel and no one could have foreseen that happening yet the entire plan seems to be developed around it happening.
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Up until this point "The Stranger" had powers but was unable to control them. Of course during this battle he figures all of that out based on his love for one of the Hobbits who has always been nice to him. He has rather extreme control of it by the end of the battle and also has magically learned to speak the entire English language as well - which was something he only knew a few words of back in episode 7.
The whole encounter is stupid but at least it was visually impressive.
Let's look at the other major occurrence which was Galadriel or something (the main Elf lady) taking a critically wounded Halbrand (the new man king) to an Elf city where he is to receive much needed "elf medicine." The fact that he got there at all is such an absurd thing in many ways. For one thing, in episode 7 he was gravely wounded and barely capable of movement and in the very next scene he is walking without assistance and then gets on a horse to ride off after being congratulated by the masses who just hours before learned that he was their new king because: reasons. He doesn't ride for just a bit to a boat or anything - that would be too sensible given his medical condition - nay, he rides for 6 straight days without any rest according to Galadriel. Not only does he not die from blood-loss thanks to being upright and bouncing around for that time, but he seems pretty fine and is just sleeping on the back of his horse because that it totally how that works.
Once inside the elven stronghold everything goes in a fast-forward type sense even if the rest of the world and the story that we are presented in does not do so and the next thing we know Halbrand is perfectly fine and has full access to the entire kingdom and is instrumental in helping them decide to make rings instead of weaponry or crowns, as they had initially decided.
I understand that this decision to make rings is absolutely essential to the story and it had to happen regardless but I just don't like the fact that they made it this big downgrade from swords to crowns to eventually rings. Why bother with that? I understand that the scarcity of mithril was a central part of the whole thing but the audience ALREADY knew we were making rings so why take an hour and half to get to that? This is just poor writing and possibly why the original LoTR films skipped all of this to begin with (and it didn't exist in writing at the time.)
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The above is another scene from a part of the storyline that they desperately want us to love but it also sucks.
The story of the traveling Hobbits suddenly deciding that what they previously wanted nothing to do with (the Stranger or Meteor Man) makes just as much sense as the rest of this series. They just up and decided to completely change their opinion of this guy out of the blue and once again it conveniently aligns with where the story needed them to go. Moments before all of them changed their minds about the guy they were all prepared to completely leave him behind. However, once the story calls for it EVERYONE, including the person who was a step away from casting him out of their society, chooses to ABANDON THEIR OWN PEOPLE in order to follow his quest, which he hasn't even been capable of explaining to any of them!
This get's worse once the season is over when they all of a sudden completely abandon family or any other sort of values and just tell the girl that has been looking after him that she needs to go and travel with him.... despite the fact that they have been preaching precisely the opposite for 7 hours up to this point.
Look... It's just stupid. I could go on about the big reveal in the garden in Elf Village about who Sauron actually is and how absurd that situation was (I likely will) or I could focus on the fact that the offensive capabilities of the white witches change dramatically depending on who they are facing. I'm not looking for perfection here, I was just looking for some semblance of continuity. It all changes so much, so fast, and just for the specific demands of whatever situations happens to be in place already. It's as if the location scouts were in charge of the story instead of the other way around.
Almost everything that happens in this season finale is stupid... and I suppose that shouldn't be a huge surprise considering that the rest of it was also very very very disappointing as well.
We'll never know if Amazon makes money with this because just like Netflix they do not disclose their financials and are not obligated to. I think it should be evident though, despite their bot network and team of professional reviewers that this series is not well-liked, and with good reason.