As far as I'm concerned the Rings of Power has come into its own.

This last episode really sealed the deal for me. The Rings of Power has not been a fast burner, at least as putting together a cohesive plot has gone. But the individual threads that have storylines in 1) the people of the south lands, 2) the harfoots (an ancestor of the hobbits I think), 3) the dwarves of Moria, and 4) the elves trying to stamp out the last vestiges of Morgoth are at last becoming entertaining to me (spoiler alert: they fail at doing this).

I just needed to switch my focus from trying to force a story out of this thing, to realizing that what I was witnessing was a "slice of life" tale that peeks in on all those living in a significant portion of an age of Middle Earth. This series is a chronicle of those lives that influenced the great ones that have most been visited upon in Tolkien adaptations and in the Tolkien books of which we are familiar. It isn't here to give us another Frodo or Elrond. It's here to give us the reason as to why there is such biting emnity between elves and dwarves (just one example). It's here to explain why Gimli says, "Never trust an elf" in his casual off-handed racism. There's a story behind why this happened.

So, I needed to let go of "What is the purpose of this character?" and embrace the idea that "this character is one that did a thing in Middle Earth, and it was important enough to warrant a footnote" in The Return of the King. But in order for me to like that character, I need to watch them eat, train, and interact with other characters. So there's a lot of the boring minutiae of life interspliced with these "events" that happen, which are significant for the characters.

Events like: 1) Is Sauron returning, and 2) what does he look like, and 3) yes the dwarves eventually release the Balrog, but...before that happened...what did their homes look like and was Durin a nice guy? These are all things that we get to see, and I actually love it all. The series is there to build the world, and in all of that world-building there are few plot-based stories and more "slice-of-life" stories that allow us to sympathize with these characters that (honestly) are not fleshed out enough by Tolkien to even be interesting outside of "facts about Middle-Earth."

Amazon is also being pretty daring with their series, which is angering some people who may not have wanted that daringness (I am not one). These are the same people who really could have cared less about what Durin looked like or even what his wife looked like or if she had a nice voice or cooked a tasty dinner. All that they were interested in was that the Balrog in Moria was called "Durin's Bane." That's where their interest began and ended.

It was also enough for these people that mithril was this legendary metal that only the dwarves had, and it was as light as silk and stronger than steel. It didn't need to have an origin. But Amazon is deciding to give us an origin. It's choosing to say that the light from one of the lost Silmarils went into a tree and that it penetrated the earth through its roots, and this may be where mithril gets its precious light from.

Okay...I have no problem with that, and it's actually kind of cool. Whatever. I also like that Amazon is explaining how important light is to the elves. In Rings of Power, physical light is so important that it actually sustains their immortality. I didn't realize this, and it's probably a thing that Amazon made up, but I don't care. It actually makes more sense in all the things I've read and seen because light is always the magical thing that gets rid of evil. It makes it seem more mystical rather than Gandalf just needing to turn on a lightbulb to drive a swarm of Nazgul away.

I also love the scenery and the music. Amazon got its money's worth on this series, and I hope that there is a season two. It's absolutely stunning in its beauty, and I don't mind that I'm actually walking side by side with these characters just going through the motions of their lives as opposed to being focused down on a singular quest: to throw the one ring into Mount Doom to destroy Sauron forever! I'm glad I gave this show the time it needed to unfold what it wanted to say about the magic rings. It turns out that there were a lot of puzzle pieces that needed to come together in order to get these things forged. It just took me longer than I expected to understand this about the series, and with my expectations properly adjusted, I'm finding it pretty hard to wait for the next episode to drop.