Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry: Did Halloween Horror Nights Use a Glorified Chucky Ad To Reveal the Show's Fate?
This column contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2.
Prequels have a high barrier of entry for a lot of viewers. Knowing the outcome of a story has become ever more frustrating to audiences in a fiercely spoiler-averse society. But, as someone who doesn’t love spoilers herself, knowing exactly where Middle-earth is about to end up hasn’t negatively impacted my enjoyment of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. In fact, being the weirdo history nerd that I am, knowing where we’re going to end up has, in some cases, enriched the experience.
Sometimes, It Doesn’t Matter if You Win or Lose, It Just Matters That You Fight
In May of 2004, the series finale of Angel hit the airwaves. It wasn’t meant to be the series finale, as the cancellation news took the creators by surprise in February of that same year, but it still goes down as one of my favorite endings of all time. In it, Angel (David Boreanaz) and his team, about to face off against a horde of monsters, know that survival is unlikely. Still, Angel looks at the impossible odds and says simply, “Well, I kind of want to slay a dragon.”
My love for that much maligned finale is the perfect illustration of why Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power works for me, I think. Picking your battles can be important, if you have the privilege to do so. But when you’re thrust into the face of certain darkness, the (likely) inevitable loss isn’t the point. What matters most in those impossible moments is showing future generations that no matter what the outcome, you didn’t give up.
At the end of the day, in the world of The Lord of the Rings Numenor will flood and Eregion will fall. That is simply fact. But learning the context of those facts is meaningful, I think, especially as our own world continues to grow darker. Hope is, was, and will always be a central tenet of The Lord of the Rings, and to abandon it in the face of defeat is the only way to ensure that one will truly lose.
In History Lays All the Secrets
History is a fascinating subject. When we are young, we learn it as fact. As we grow, we learn that there are certain contexts and perspectives not provided in textbooks. (Our nation’s fading praise of Christopher Columbus being the perfect example.) Now fiction is far from history, but the First and Second Ages make up the history of the great epic that is The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s stories of those ages, largely found in footnotes and posthumous texts such as The Silmarillion are, to the heroes of the Fellowship, history.
That history is painted with broad strokes, leaving so much opportunity for new contexts and perspectives to thrive. In the original lore, the intention for the Rings of Power at first was that they all go to the Elves, as Sauron sought to control the elves over all other races. In Season 2, we see them immediately end up with their ultimate owners (at least as the Dwarves and Elves are concerned, the rings of Men are still cookin’). Further still, Queen Regent Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) was barely a footnote in the story of Numenor while now we get to experience her in full force.
A story that has such a long period of time between what we know and what came before it has the freedom to shed the rigidity that comes with a more recently-connected prequel like, say, Rogue One and Andor (both impeccable). Of course, that freedom to play with the source material is also one of the things that has vexed many die-hard Tolkien loyalists, something that we’ve seen with HBO’s House of the Dragon and George R.R. Martin’s purists as well.
But, in response to that, I would offer my belief that the father of The Lord of the Rings would be quite pleased to see the histories that reduced Arwen and Aragorn’s children to “Eldarion and three unnamed daughters” and Isildur’s nameless wife evolved to serve contemporary audiences, even as they remain firmly rooted in fantasy. After all, Tolkien’s grandson Simon — the sole Tolkien to break ranks on the belief that the Peter Jackson films should not have been made — has been a consultant on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Stories are about the journey, not the destination. As such, knowing where we will ultimately end up and seeing the lore evolve and change as the franchise grows isn’t a negative. In fact, it’s something that I find thrilling in many ways.
