Sauron is an incredibly interesting character and I'm glad Rings of Power is exploring him in depth.

With the return of Rings of Power today with three episodes on Prime, I want to talk about the thing that I liked the most from the first season: the portrayal of Sauron. Peter Jackson's Sauron is much the same as what you get when you read the books. He's this menacing ancient foe that is more of a force of nature than anything else. But any of us that read deeper and took on the other writings know that Sauron was a person. This is even hinted at with his alliance that got struck between Isengard and Mordor. Saruman talked to someone on the other end of the palantir, and whomever he talked to wasn't scary enough to make Saruman hang up the phone. Additionally, that person made sense, and thus was Saruman deceived.

Now, in Rings of Power...we got a pretty smokin' hot Sauron (not gonna lie on this). At least that was my interpretation by the end of season one. I'm sure he shall become a lot more menacing as time progresses (and probably a lot less pretty), but for now color me intrigued. In the Silmarillion, I'm pretty sure that Sauron takes on the forms of vampires and werewolves. But, he's still a person, admittedly a powerful one. He was Galadriel's friend, and it's so telling that he deceived her (because that is what he does). Sauron deceives, he lies, and he tells people what they want to hear so that he can manipulate him. If you're being that kind of a sycophant, you can't really be all that menacing because you don't want your audience to be scared of you. So, I'm on board with this very human take on Sauron. The menacing guy in armor that we see at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring is probably way down the road.

And that's just the thing, right? By the time The Lord of the Rings story unfolds, Sauron is just a faceless, reclusive, oppressive entity who is holed up in his fort doing who knows what. He doesn't even ride into battles anymore or interact much with his subjects. He only showed up once during the peak battle of the last alliance, and that is after ignoring the whole skirmish for seven years or so. In the third age, no one really saw him save for Gollum when Sauron tortured him. Everyone else who had interactions with him only spoke to him through the palantir. He never came out or showed his face. His looks were left to the imagination.

The great thing about Amazon's first season (I think) is it got people thinking about Sauron as he could have been. He saved Galadriel from the ocean. He's a talented smith and craftsman capable of great beauty. He's charismatic and persuasive. It makes what he becomes all the more evil knowing that he didn't have to be that way. It was a choice he made. From the books:

"[Sauron] repents in fear when the First Enemy is utterly defeated, but in the end does not do as was commanded, return to the judgment of the gods. He lingers in Middle-Earth. Very slowly, beginning with fair motives: the reorganizing and rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle-Earth, 'neglected by the gods', he becomes a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power--and so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves)."

All in all, Sauron is an incredibly interesting character, and you just don't get any of that in either The Lord of the Rings or in the film adaptations. But in Rings of Power, we are getting it. And thus far, I'm really liking this exploration of who Sauron really was, and I'm definitely looking forward to more this week.

Rings of Power returns for season two in less than seven days.

Let's talk about Rings of Power which is returning next week on Amazon.

I watched the first season, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, and this is despite things like Galadriel having physical invincibility and for diversity to be injected into a story that (for the most part) has no diversity in it at all. None of these things bothered me, and I eagerly consumed the episodes and the songs, and by season's end I wanted more. Fantasy shows and movies like Rings of Power are a great way to pretend that we don't actually live in a world where everyday human beings are actually cruel and even revel in their cruelty to others. We don't like that part, and we try to hide it. But sometimes we cannot deny this thing, because it is at the core of what it means to be human. People (including our "leaders) want to remind us to be "better than." Better than what, exactly? I got no answers.

Well this next week, I get my wish because Rings of Power is returning with more beautiful episodes, and it's my guess that the story is building toward the war of the elves with Sauron. There are also (probably) some real world parallels to this particular tale. As powerful and wonderful as the elf civilization was, this evil literally came out from underneath their noses and just kind of blossomed in a devastating way. You can see what I mean, right? If not, that's okay...I'll move on.

There is one frustrating thing about Rings of Power that I don't like, and that is its online community. It's next to impossible to have a discussion about the show because the weirdest nerds alive decided years before it came out that they'd hate it no matter what. It's a good show with its problems, but a nuanced take like this is next to impossible online. I sum up nearly all of the grievances I've seen as, "preconceived notions of what the show would be like did not meet expectations." Part of the problem is that Tolkien has become a sacred thing to many people. But why do humans keep putting things on a pedestal? Why has Tolkien become sacred. The truth is that he's a long dead author who made his family rich and who was as flawed as all people are in what they like and what they hate.

However...and here's the weird thing...I bet a lot of nerds who hated the show will tune in for season 2. Now, think about that for a moment. People who hated the show will probably "hate watch" the show so that they can continue to be mad about it. That's gotta be weird, right? I mean...what kind of person would do that?

Maybe you have some answers for me. But if not (and if you're reading my words) will you let me know if you're excited for season 2? Or are you going to pass?

Here are all the thoughts I have about Rings of Power that must be said.

This last Friday, we were treated to a pretty spectacular episode of Rings of Power. The title of the episode was called Udûn, and from what I understand, in the Elvish Sindarin it means "dark pit" or "hell." Additionally, it is a valley of Mordor thought to have been formed by volcanic activity. Okay then.

In the events of episode 6, we saw (essentially) the formation of Mordor. I wasn't expecting this, but it was a real treat. I had just assumed that Mordor was always a choking ash-filled place of death. I never thought that it would have been green and lush with livestock around and people living there. I just didn't. And suddenly, I have so many questions and thoughts about what is going on in Rings of Power.

Using the magical handle of a broken sword, one of the humans (Waldreg) who swore allegiance to Adar (an elf that claims he killed Sauron, but obviously serves Sauron) in the last episode grabbed the handle and used it to "unlock" whatever it is that it was supposed to unlock. It turns out that it started a series of events that had been built (presumably) by Sauron. All of this is so damned unclear. But who else could engineer something like that? Here's what happened.

A dam that trapped a lot of water was released, the water flowed through tunnels dug by the orcs (so this was purposeful and maybe they got the message that these tunnels are essential for them to have a home), and it all emptied into the heart of a volcano which forced an eruption. I can only assume at this point, that this volcano is Mount Doom. And its eruption must create Mordor, which is a safe place for the orcs to live. They burn in the sunlight, and they really don't like green things at all. Smoke and ash and apocalyptic landscapes are kinda where they do their best thriving. And this suddenly made me understand that the orcs just wanted a place to live, and Sauron gave it to them.

So suddenly, I'm like...wait...the orcs just wanted a home? Am I becoming sympathetic to these blackened, slimy, crusty, ugly, and evil creatures? I mean...if I was an orc, I'd want a place where I could live and have baby orcs. I'm so confused now. Rings of Power is inserting all of these thoughts into my head that just weren't there before about this Tolkien property. But I seem to recall that Tolkien (somewhere) wrote that the orcs weren't inherently evil creatures. I just never assumed that this meant anything of real note here as it is a subtle thing to assume about orcs in Tolkien's Middle Earth. Like...what does that mean exactly? It turns out, it means a lot.

Here's another thought: I think Halbrand is Sauron, and Adar killed him like Gandalf got killed, but now he's back because some of the Maiar do that thing where they come back (sometimes more powerful). I also think that Halbrand/Sauron might have kinda wanted to go straight and just live as a Numenorian smith for a while, but Galadriel fucked that up. So suddenly I'm seeing that Sauron might not have been all bad (read this as he had good within him), and Galadriel has evil in her in that she's directly responsible for returning Sauron to Middle Earth (because she has a clear obsession with him). Additionally, there are such things as orcs who don't want to serve evil at least in the form of Sauron, but other kinds of evil. Maybe. Honestly, my mind has really been opened a lot by Amazon's take on this.

But someone might ask, why would Sauron be content with being a smith? I do remember something from The Silmarillion which described Sauron humbling himself and showing true repentance to Eonwe, the herald of the Valar, after Morgoth's defeat. Sauron was told that he would have to travel back to Valinor to beg forgiveness from the Valar directly, and then do many years of penance. Would you want to do that? Me neither. So suddenly, Sauron seems more humanized when I recall this tidbit of information. So Sauron, just like what we'd do, hides away until the Valar had all left Middle-Earth. So this is essentially what he's doing now, and killing time as a Numenorian smith seemed like something that wasn't "unreasonable" for Sauron to do.

And then there's the stuff about Sauron being in the North, and about trying to find some dark magic that eluded even him. I think this "dark magic" thing is probably Mount Doom. He needed to get that volcano going, and Mordor transformed so that he could use it to forge the One Ring. There's something special about Mount Doom. Maybe its fires burn hotter or there's some magical concentration of something that we don't know about yet that is crucial to him being able to forge the One Ring there. I need Amazon to tie the threads together for me on this, and relate it back to Celebrimbor and the super forge being constructed which will obviously be producing the other rings. 

Anyway, as you can see a lot of thoughts got started because of this last episode. I'm looking forward to more, and season 2 is already filming. What a treat we have all been served. Anyone else have any thoughts?