‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Season 2 is a Love Letter to the Quirky, Campy Corners of Tolkien

I went on quite the journey watching The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2. One could almost call it “an unexpected” one.

As one of the many Tolkien fans who felt somewhat burned by Season 1, I approached the new iteration of the Prime Video series with apprehension. Soon, I found myself cackling in delight to watch a diminished version of Sauron oozing across Middle-earth like a slime mold, horses back-kicking orcs left and right, and Círdan the Shipwright (Ben Daniels) casually shaving with an iridescent clamshell while giving Elrond (Robert Aramayo) advice. I groaned every time a character conveniently had a detailed map to show them the way and I rolled my eyes with every clunky exposition drop — which meant I was groaning and rolling my eyes a lot. I swooned over new romances, yawned over old, unresolved family spats, and found myself comparing the vibes in Celebrimbor’s (Charles Edwards) Eregion-based forge to the work room in RuPaul’s Drag Race.

I was not bullish on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 throughout my initial run watching it, but then I got to the penultimate episode of the season. To cap off an episode full of the best fight sequences in the series yet, showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne queued up a Bear McCreary-penned heavy metal ballad, “The Last Ballad of Damrod,” to play over the closing credits. It was there that I realized what defined The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 wasn’t a quest to be the next big prestige fantasy series, but a dear love of all the strange nooks and crannies of genre storytelling.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 is a love letter to when fantasy was still too weird for the normies, and for that, I’ve got to give it props for sheer gumption.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 opens at the Dawn of the Second Age in Forodworth. We meet a different iteration of Sauron, played by Jack Lowden, as he attempts to convince Adar (Sam Hazeldine) and his orc children to follow him after the death of Morgoth. There’s something honestly hilarious about watching big, bad, evil Sauron struggle to make his case. The lukewarm reception to his stump speech truly reminds one of Jeb Bush begging the audience to “Please clap,” in 2016. From there, things only get worse for Sauron as we get the backstory of how he went from Morgoth’s right hand man to Galadriel’s (Morfydd Clark) shipwrecked crush Halbrand (Charlie Vickers). You almost feel sympathy for the embodiment of evil.

When we jump back to the main events of the series, it takes three whole episodes to catch us up to speed on how the show’s sprawling ensemble cast is dealing with the fallout of Season 1. (Hence why Prime Video is leading with a three episode premiere on August 29.) Galadriel and Elrond are in complete odds about the three Elven Rings of Power crafted by Celebrimbor last season. Galadriel believes they are the Elves’ only hope while Elrond warns they cannot trust any gift from Sauron.

In Khazad-dûm, Prince Durin (Owain Arthur) refuses to make amends with his stubborn father Durin III (Peter Mullan), leaving him and his dreamy wife Disa (Sophia Nomvete) struggling in poverty. Things are grim back in Númenor, where Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) has tapped into the nation’s outrage with Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and her loyal Faithful in the aftermath of her strategic failure in the Southlands. And when we finally get back to the land now called Mordor, its citizens are struggling to survive in the shadow of evil. We also catch up with halfling Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and her buddy, the Stranger (Daniel Weyman), as they wander through the mysterious eastern land of Rhûn, which evokes The Legend of Zelda‘s Gerudo Desert more than anything from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films.

Throughout The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, I sometimes did feel more like I was watching a live action video game than a Tokien adaptation. It was in the way time slowed down for an elf to knock a sweet trick arrow or how preludes to fight scenes were basically the exposition-dumping cut scenes you’d see before a video game battle. Is that good, is that bad? I suppose it depends on what you want from a live action fantasy show.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power doesn’t just offer viewers sweet action sequences and Tolkien lore; it’s also serving a lot of camp. It’s in the way Disa can’t help but flash a bit of leg when she’s strutting through Khazad-dûm or how Benjamin Walker’s High King Gil-galad massages each line of dialogue like he’s the second coming of Olivier. Most of all, the camp peeks out when Charlie Vickers becomes Annatar. Plenty of other characters on this show sport blonde wigs and contacts, but only Annatar stirs the pot like a Bravo housewife, manipulating Celebrimbor like a mean girl does an insecure tween in her thrall.

The glue that keeps all these divergent tones together is the emergence of a character called Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear). Tolkien-heads already know the jolly character represents a puzzling detour in the original Lord of the Rings book; here, he is reimagined as the Stranger’s version of Master Yoda, offering sage wisdom in riddles and the most magical moments of the season. Peter Jackson infamously cut Tom Bombadil from The Fellowship of the Ring to streamline Tolkien’s quirky style for big screen audiences. McKay and Payne make the mysterious being a key figure in The Rings of Power. That choice — to embrace the baffling qualities of genre storytelling usually sanded over for the mainstream — is what eventually sold me on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 isn’t a prestige drama like Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, but it is a beautifully ballsy piece of genre storytelling. By leaning harder into the weirder aspects of Tolkien’s world, The Rings of Power finally asserts its own voice. It’s necessarily for mainstream audiences and yet it’s bound to piss off the purists. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a show for fantasy fans eager to let go of their preconceptions so they can embrace the unexpected journey.

The first three episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 premiere on Thursday, August 29 on Prime Video.