Dwarven Lady Macbeth Gimli’s wifie

Episode seven of The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, “The Ring”, opens with Hellish scenes: beautiful, evocative and compelling visuals reminiscent of the Fassbender version of Macbeth. Absolute carnage, apart from Galdriel who is somehow still standing. Effective, shocking and wonderful imagery.

Sadly, that’s about all that’s good. The problems? The flabby dialogue and acting ruin anything remotely good. “He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone” and “what cannot be known hollows the mind, fill it not with guesswork” inspiring stuff that was surely homaged (a.k.a. nicked) straight from the pages of Henry V. Verily, I sensed the tongue of Lawrence Olivier on the brain of some of these players and screenwrights. Bad lines badly delivered: this is a case where two negatives don’t make a positive.

An emotional moment between Gimli 2 and Legolas 2 was probably the best moment of the season so far. The quadrangle between this duo, Gimli 2’s Daddy and Dwarven Lady Macbeth Gimli 2’s wifie is probably the most interesting component in the whole show and one of the few that has any flesh on its bones at all. Nonetheless, Wifie’s transformation is all-of-a-sudden and has no arc attached to it. That’s a shame, as it surely would have been a good character arc had they actually bothered to do it.

Bad writing. Bad acting. Characterless characters. A lack of character arc. And plot points that make no sense. The few good moments only serve to highlight how truly awful everything else is. The show is like a billion dollar budget fanfic. But even the most amateurish and deranged fanfic wouldn’t handle the name reveal of “Mordor” like LotR: RoP does in this episode; truly, this was one of the most absurd things I have ever seen in all of my life.

Oh, and actually, let’s think about that compelling opening scene: how did everyone survive a volcano going off in their face? The writers didn’t even go with the cop outs of a deus ex machina or the “it was all a dream” tosh. The characters just… survived. That’s all. I bet the denizens of Pompeii must be kicking themselves.

The episode makes no sense. The characters are not characters and they have no arc. The series doesn’t hang together.

2/5

© 2022 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Galadriel-Rings-of-Power.jpg