The eighth and final episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power aired we finally find out who Sauron is. With some epic reveals and a big battle, we look at the final episode and see what it means for the next season/
There will be spoilers so if you haven’t watched the episode yet and do not want any major spoilers, then stop reading and come back once you have seen the episode.
Alloy
The opening sequence follows the meteor man and he is being followed by someone. It turns out to be white mage who transformed into Nori. They reveal meteor man to be Sauron and they serve him. The harfoot show up and they have a battle with the mages and meteor man has to step in and save them. He announces that he is good and vanquishes the three mages.
Galadriel and Halbrand arrive in Eregion and Halbrand is tended to by the Elves. He recovers very quickly and starts helping Celebrimbor make use of the small mithril that Elrond returned with. But Galadriel becomes suspicious of Halbrand and has an Elf librarian search up the lineage of Halbrand. She finds out that Halbrand is not who he claims to be.
Galadriel confronts “Halbrand” and he admits to being Sauron. He puts Galadriel in a trance and tries to convince her to join him. She refuses and finds herself drowning. Elrond saves her and she has Celebrimbor make three rings to balance them out. Sauron has escaped and we see him in the final shot back at Mordor.
The Numenoreans sail back to their island only to find out that King Tar-Palantir has died.
Commentary
The switch and bait of trying to make the viewers believe that meteor man was Sauron was a good twist. We were certain that Halbrand was Sauron and pulling the rug from under us would have been brilliant. But it was not meant to be. Halbrand is too suspicious and making meteor man Sauron would have been a horrible decision.
It would have worked if the plot twist was written better. Too many of Halbrand’s stories end half sentence and it always implies something bad. The opening scene where he kills the other people on the raft to save himself was an open admission that he was not good. Galadriel almost ended up falling for Sauron. I wonder if J.R.R. Tolkien ever imagined that to be canon one day.
This episode was much more enjoyable than most of the season and comes in second to episode 6. But I do have some problems. It takes like 15 minutes of screen time to forge three of the rings. That really makes the title of the show useless. Seems like they should have just called it Middle-earth considering how that seems to play a much bigger role.
The show could have been one hour-long episode and it would have gotten the story of the rings of power down. There is a lot of fluff in this season and I don’t blame people for tuning out after a couple of episodes. It takes the sixth episode for the show to pick up and the whole season to confirm who Sauron is. I imagined Sauron making things happen from the background but no, he does not do anything to help his case. I enjoyed the actor but Sauron was poorly written.
Do we need to discuss the Numenoreans? I wrote one sentence to sum up their story in the episode but even that seems too much. It is not an interesting plotline and I feel like they should have saved it for season two. We will see the ramifications of it but why even mention it when it is in the same episode as Sauron’s reveal?
Conclusion
This was a good final episode and we are starting to see everything fall into place. The problem is that it can be done in one episode and doesn’t need a full season. The writing needs to improve because it is hurting the potential of the show. Now that we know who Sauron is, maybe we will get to see him be a villain next season instead of the boogeyman.
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