LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER | SEASON 2 EPISODE 1 REACTION AND REVIEW

INTRO what's up y'all my name is Jr and for those of you who don't already know I'm a huge movie and TV nerd if you're new here I appreciate you taking the time to check out my channel I hope you consider sticking around and joining the film Community I'm trying to build here on YouTube so in today's video I'm going to be giving my reaction and review of the first episode in season 2 of Amazon's fantasy television series Lord of the Rings the rings of power and I want to be clear here that I'm only going to be reacting and reviewing to uh the story and the macro writing on this one um not necessarily breaking down any of the small writing uh because I'm just going to be honest with you guys I don't necessarily trust the writers fully of this series just yet um I've been burned too many times as some of you well know um still having said that just so you guys know this video will contain some mild spoilers so if you haven't gotten around to watching the episode yet and you don't want to know anything that happens in it you might want to exit this video now and with that being said no more wasting time let's get into it so we start the episode off with a MY REACTION different looking Sauron in what looks like um one of morgoth's outpost with Sauron proclaiming himself leader of the Orcs to some of their dismay Adar then goes to place the crown upon sauron's head but ends up stabbing him with it instead now the Orcs see this and decide to jump on Sauron killing him or so they think but an intense light emits from his body and then it disappears leaving a ton of snow and ice behind uh and it doesn't kill Adar or the Orcs but it does incapacitate them all for a bit but sauron's blood does trickle down through the floor and it ends up down in a cave or some kind of Cavern beneath the castle and there it takes on a life of its own kind of like a primordial ooze of some sort uh and then that ooze kills every living thing that it touches as it escapes out into the countryside I'm sliding along until it happens upon a human being driving a horse cart um killing her and it's at that point that Saron takes on the form of a human man uh that we saw him as last season he then wanders around until he meets a band of people uh one of which a man named deid who tells him that the way that he is headed is trouble that there's an Army Of Orcs wreaking havoc and that they're headed across the shimmering sea to a place where a man can escape himself and find another path now Sauron eventually chooses to go with them and as they are traveling across the sea you know by boat of course they are then attacked by a large sea creature and most of the people die now Sauron manages to survive though and he and a few others take refuge on a makeshift raft made up of the remains of their ship and that's when how br/ Sauron meets gadriel who we all know from the first episode in season 1 is stranded at Sea and look this is all a flashback um with the writers kind of filling in the gaps of how Sauron came to be a part of the story that we watched in episode one of last season and this part of the episode basically functions as a cold open of sorts um and will end up leading to the episode's a story and you know I think this was a good move to start the second season you know because now we know why Sauron was set on Vengeance as it pertains to Adar and the Orcs And we also know why Adar thinks he killed Sauron and why he didn't recognize him upon his return to the Southlands you know late last season and you know the interesting thing is that it would appear that you know Sauron uh at least contemplated trying to be good and do good uh but ultimately chose violence now I will say that I don't know that we needed to watch you know the Ooze slide down the mountain side and through the crunch Countryside before taking human form I thought that was overdoing it a bit but the thought of the flashback as a whole I was I was okay with and I think it served this episode well now from there we get to the present and we find gadriel chasing Elon through the woods on Horseback it turns out right outside of Lyndon and she's trying to take the Rings from him uh before she is ultimately detained by mirthless guards and taken to the high King and Aon you know had the Rings in a pouch on his waist um and that's you know Galadriel was kind of reaching for them as they were riding you know chasing each other through the woods on Horseback now when gadriel is brought before the high King she tried to tell him about the Rings but Elon has already basically snitched on gadriel to the high King about her relationship to how brand who he now knows isn't who he claimed to be and upon sharp questioning she's kind of forced to admit that how brand is in fact Sauron um which comes to a shock to everyone and then you know the high King then demands the Rings but you know eron refuses uh jumping off a nearby cliff into the water below and and the high King orders both him and the Rings found now this is the episode's B story and what I got from these scenes were a couple of things the first being that the chase was about different things to Elon and gadriel Elon was going to the high King uh you know it it's obvious to tell on gadriel and gadriel was chasing him to get the Rings uh the second thing is that the high King needed to find out about suron and so this this group of scen kind of serves to get him that information so that the elves can kind of bust and move from that point uh even though I thought it was kind of convenient to the plot that everyone seems to believe Galadriel so quickly about saon after everybody was so convinced last season that he was gone um you know but okay uh third the prescription by the high King that now the elves must not leave Middle Earth lest all who live there fall victim to the rule of another dark lord and him believing that the Rings may help Pres the elves light which is still currently going out and finally Elon believing that H br/ Saron wants the Rings to be used as a part of his uh master plan and so he kind of sees it as his duty to keep them from The High King Galadriel and essentially everyone uh maybe even by destroying so you know from there we get hron slson arriving back in Mordor um as a slave um and this is the official start of the a story and you know he's being brought before Alder who has since declared himself Lord father of the Orcs now he presents himself as king of the Southlands and wants his people released uh let my people go he literally says like I'm like Moses much um but Alder refuses and hbr tells him about the return of Sauron and of the Rings um before he is locked away and tortured and one of alder's henchmen asks if it was possible that Sauron could return and Alder tells him no that Sauron is dead and you know I absolutely understand why you know um uh Adar would um would say that because um you know what is he supposed to say right yeah my man's coming back he going to get clean on me and everybody like you would never stay in charge that way so I understand what's going on there now after that we see the stranger roaming the desert still looking for uh I call it the top hat constellation uh with Nori um we see that someone wearing a helmet seiz them from a distance uh so that's something that we can pay attention to you know moving forward that somebody's watching now Nori thinks they're lost and the stranger remarks they need to find food so Nori convinces the stranger to Alakazam a nearby tree and he does it and a bunch of bugs spill out so they can eat them and as night falls they sit eating their bugs and they notice that they're being followed because they see another fire off in the distance you know so they they kind of come to the conclusion okay somebody's following us and you know this is the episode C story and it's simply the continuation of nori and not Gandalf's story from season one uh with her trying to get him to the land of run um you know a land in the Far East so next we find how br/ Saron um sitting changed up chained up that that is in a makeshift cell prison cell and he hears the growling of uh a war you know th those middlee wolves um and the Animals chained up nearby he's then joined by walri you know the sellout um and offered some food under the condition that he tell him all about Sauron now you know H br/ Saron refuses and wreg tosses his food onto the ground and you know one of the Orcs comes behind him and Yanks the chain around his neck which prompts him to promise to kill walri after he's released by AAR um he is beaten up by the group a little bit you know they don't show it but we just kind of hear the sounds of him kind of being you know you know you know lightly tortured if you will um we then see him take the bone he was offered as a meal and feed it to the war um casting some kind of spell on it in the process um now from there we see Elon in the great havens of Lindon near the shipyard and inside one of the workshops we find San an older elf um we would later come to find out the oldest elf uh helping um young elf Artisans build a boat he pauses his work and he looks out over the water as if he can feel something coming um he goes and sits the top of hill and he watches the sunset you know he's deep in his thoughts you know and when he arrives back at his boat house he finds Aon who tells him all about the Rings and asks for his help now from there we see the high King signing a decree letting Lord Kell bmore of orian uh that H brand I suppose is s he sends Kenway to deliver the message telling him to trust no stranger in his path now Galadriel thanks the high King for trusting her regarding the Rings and The High King tells her that that she and he are only momentarily aligned because her action simply left him no alternative now Galadriel promises that she will not stop until Sauron is stopped and she has put things right the high King explains that she would not be there if he thought otherwise and you know the high King is then briefed in like a war room of sorts by adal um I'm probably saying that name way wrong uh but one of the elf soldiers who tells him that they can't find elron that they have searched everywhere where water meets rock AAL wonders If the fall may have killed Aeron before gadriel proclaims nope he lives the high King then demands that the soldiers expand the search that Elon must not Escape but gadriel explains that escape is not elon's plan that he spoke of destroying the Rings so that he will seek out someone he can trust someone older and wiser than the high King even himself uh in the hopes of turning the tides his way so next we see Elon giv sdan the pouch containing the Rings telling him that he can inspect them if he wants to now San explains that he has seen Kell bmo's uh work before that he heard him speak of crafting objects so powerful that they could change the hearts of any who beheld them and that if the Rings have already indeed turned elf against elf that it would appear that he had succeeded now Aon explains that it may not have been Kell Bimbo's hand that produce the rings that the enemy is cunning and that the Rings may be a ploy you know part of some larger plan now sardan asked eron what he would have him do and Elon Wishes the Rings destroyed so sardan explains that if they are that the age of El's will be over and Elon accepts that fact sardan agrees to drop the Rings into a deep trench nearby and just then we hear horses outside and it is gadriel and the high King who have arrived at the Boatyard with several soldiers in tow uh Gabriel gadriel excuse me asked if they can go if she can go inside and convince Aon to come peacefully and um after some cajoling some light cajoling her wish is granted by the high King now once inside um Galadriel begs Aon to come with her without quarrel she explains that she should have trusted him as she asked him to trust her that they must now trust in the Rings and that the three of them because there are three of them there will be balance Elon claims that gadriel seems incapable of seeing that the Rings may be corrupt she explains that she knows the Rings are free from sauron's influence and Elon asked gadriel if she herself is free from his influence he explains that the light of valanor had shined upon her very face and that she turned her back on it he asks if it was to fight the darkness or if it was the darkness that was calling to her that all of this was sauron's plan now Galadriel claims that she did what she felt was right and that time will tell whether her decision was folly or wisdom and ask gadriel what time she thinks she has and at that moment Galadriel realizes that sard is missing and Aon explains that he did what he had to do as well galatro then ask Aon where the Rings are and then we see sardan sailing on a boat out to the area that he spoke of with Elon and you know in the earlier scene we learned that Kell bmore has always talked about making object with uh subjective properties so maybe Kell Bor uh turning Arian into you know a k jewers wasn't all on Sauron that maybe this would have happened at some point anyway and you know in the later scene what Aon is talking about with gadriel is how in the P episode back in season 1 um gadra was being sent home on a boat across a shimmering sea but um when she got to um the destination or at least when the destination was in sight uh she turned and jumped off the boat in the middle of the shining sea and got back to Middle Earth and he's questioning essentially whose side gadriel is really on like whether she did that because she truly thought it was the right thing to do or whether you know Sauron was kind of calling calling at her so uh from there we see Nori and the stranger still trekking through the desert and now knowing that they're being followed they set a trap for the culprit and it turns out to be poppy proud fellow so the PA talk about how things are going back home with her family and the Caravan before she left and then the stranger remarks that they're lost but poppy then pulls out a map and remembers that there's a song apparently called the walking song that might provide some direction to where they're going they sing the song and they walk along and eventually they find the land of room uh but there is someone wearing a mask watching them or a helmet however you want to put it um watching them as there as there has been for a while um and you know one of them um Rides Away on Horseback in the dark as if they're going to tell someone about uh the small group's arrival so next we see sardan has finally reached his destination and he takes the pouch containing the Rings and he holds out over the water as if he's about to drop them in but then just then something hits the boat causing him to drop the pouch inside the boat instead of outside the boat he then picks up the pouch and you know it's kind of slightly opened and he can now see inside it and upon staring star ing at the Rings he kind of becomes mystified and he empties the contents of the pouch out into his his hand and he sits there staring at the Rings and this kind of creepy smile kind of comes over him you know my precious that's what it kind of felt like to me um you know so like I said it would appear that as old and as wise as San is that he himself got blinded by the sparkle Sparkle you feel me um so from there we go back to hellbrand slson and he's still chained up in his little makeshift prison cell but Adar is there with him now telling him about how he was one of 13 elves chosen to be blessed by morgoth's hand um with the promise of power um how he was led in Chains to a dark mountain peak um and he was then chained up and left and after he was made to suffer from a seemingless ending third I mean endless excuse me thirst and hunger how Sauron appeared offering him wine and that he drank it he drank at all he tells h/ saaron that his people have indeed been set free and then he demands to know of Sauron so hbr Sauron tells Adar that Sauron has indeed returned but that he doesn't know what shape he will take Adar then tells him that if he doesn't know what saon will look like then he is of no use to him but howan tells him that he has something that he needs and that he has the trust Of The Elves and that if he releases him he will go to them and seek Sauron out giving Adar a chance to Marshall his forces in an effort to destroy Sauron once and for all Adar thinks about it and then he makes him kneel and swear allegiance to him you know as Lord father of the Orcs And how br/ saon does in fact kneel but he swears to serve the Lord of Mordor instead you know with a creepy smile upon his face so you know he's already about to um about to bust a move on my man you know it's already planned out so Adar then lets him go on Horseback but demands that one of his henchmen follow him every step of the way and as walri comes into the makeshift cell I'm assuming to clean it up he finds the war's collar hidden under a blanket meaning that the puppy is loose and it jumps on him and it kills him so he indeed lives up to the promise that he made that he was going to kill him as soon as he was released and you know again like I said my man Sauron here is playing chess not Checkers and um he likely knew he would be followed from the camp as well so he's truly playing the long game here um I suppose while he gains the strength he needs to fight whatever fight lies ahead anyway next we see the high king and a bunch of elves on the hilltop overlooking the waterfall you know the same one that my man eron uh jumped off of earlier in the episode and he sings a song before telling the elves that the the lives um the elves excuse me that that their time in Middle Earth has come to an end you know mostly due to the light from the gold tree being almost entirely diminished and at that point my man San shows up rings in hand well one of the Rings on his finger and he offers the high King one of the other Rings now Elon yells out no causing the pair to drop the other two rings and lo and behold one of the Rings you know the dainty Girly one bounces down the nearby stairs and it lands right at the feet of one gadriel now she bends down and she picks it up and of course she puts it on her finger as does the high King with the other and would you know it the light in the gold tree comes back brighter than ever now gadriel then climbs the stairs and approaches sardan and the high King and they all hold out their hands and compare jewelry um now next we see Kell bmore back in Arian um in his Workshop admiring the new Forge um which has finally been built and a young Elven woman comes in and tells him that a messenger has arrived now he asks if it's word from Lyndon you know cuz he wants to know hey did the Rings work the young Elven woman claims that the messenger is from the Southlands and says that he wants to negotiate and that's when we see my man hellbrand on horseback ride through the open gate as Kell bmore and the young Elven woman look on from a nearby Tower and that's when the episode cuts the black and you know look here we have have no real way of knowing whether Hal br/ Sauron beat the message the high King sent via Kenway to Arian or not but Keller bimro did promise Galadriel that he would not treat with how brand again in the season one finale so it's probably safe to assume that hram won't be granted an audience at least not immediately um either way I assume that'll probably be one of the first things that gets addressed in the next episode which at this particular point in time the time that of this video being recorded I have not seen in case you're wondering uh and I did it that way on purpose so that I can kind of give you guys in the minute kind of reaction and not kind of be swayed by things that I know may happen in episodes to come so I said I was going to watch episode one make a video then two make a video three make a video and so on so look this episode and this series in MY REVIEW fact is is organized much like Game of Thrones was you know that being with an a story a b story a story and so on now you know we don't see a Deere or Prince during the fourth in this episode so keep in mind that we will likely um even be into maybe even a d story at some point throughout this season as I'm sure they'll need to be involved in this story at some point um as the season progresses um likely the next episode um to keep the character Arts kind of moving at even speed you know so that not too many characters get too far ahead of other characters so I'm assuming that that would we'll probably see them in SE um in episode 2 and look I'm going to give a little bit of uh a hot take here um and it's that only one episode into the new season I'm wondering if this show might not be the better show narratively speaking when compared to HBO's House of the Dragon especially after the season of that show we just got um and again certainly from a narrative perspective it looks like this show will be a much cleaner one um as I can draw straight lines from plot point to plot Point both from a macro point of view and within the individual character arcs um it's easier to see what each character is doing to know what their motivations are and it feels like their motivations will evolve more naturally than kind of being jerked around by the writers to kind of suit whatever it is they think should be happening in a particular scene um and that those you know those motivations you know won't be just changed on the whim just to kind of like I said suit well hey in this scene it would be cool if this happens or that happens so let's just change what the characters think about a great many things in order to facilitate what we want to happen in a particular scene I feel like we're not going to get that um in this particular show but I mean I I you know it's still time um we also have the same number of episodes this season as we got in season 1 which gives this show a great Advantage where pacing will be concerned and you know as I said the writing is just as good here if not better than that of the HBO show especially when you consider that this show doesn't have um direct source material to draw from um even gadriel has calmed down a bit since season 1 because I I'm not going to lie to you she was extremely unlikable in the first half of season 1 uh yeah it it was I'm like come on man like yo G chill um but she's become much easier to stomach than she was in the first half of the first season like I said and and look I want to be clear I'm not here saying that this show is some kind of Mis understood Masterpiece you know in fact you know it's a show that has its share of problems for sure um I know a lot of people don't like some of the directorial choices that we saw especially in season 1 you know claiming that the show ripped off Peter Jackson's Trilogy from a visual perspective um but I hate to be the bearer of bad news shots get ripped off all the time I mean there are even websites making a ton of money right now as we speak uh that you can go to as a filmmaker and download shots from your favorite movies and use them to make storyboards um it's a practice as old as time and and quite frankly being that this show is a prequel of Lord of the Rings I would have been surprised if they didn't rip off elements from the original movies you know now even though the show Runners have claimed that this show is supposed to be its own thing but you know why wouldn't you replicate things that clearly worked um where you know the world of Middle Earth is concerned um I I mean it just you know it I mean it makes common sense to me um now now I also know that some people have a real problem with aand being black and they're being black dwarves and black Hobbits and and I'm not going to lie I'm not a fan of the race swapping um characters either mostly because this world has already been established but also because this is not the kind of diversity I think that we as minorities need in the film industry but I'm not going to go on tense and I'll save all there for another video but I'll also remind you guys that house of the Dragon did a lot of this race swapping too so this show is just kind of par with the proverbial course in that regard where Hollywood is concerned I I just have to just go you know what this is where we're headed and you can sit here and fight at all you want to but it's not going to stop in fact it's just going to get worse so just deal or don't deal that's kind of my opinion about it at this particular point now overall I'd give this episode MY SCORE a 65% or 6.5 if you're thinking IMDb score now I've already seen some YouTubers um that have made videos about the first episode calling the episode boring but I would contend that it's simply what First episodes tend to be and that is the setting of the table you know you set the chest pieces up in various spots on the board and then we spend the rest of the Season watching them all move towards each other um and you know I I I'll be honest I'm I am truly honestly interested in how these particular pieces will end up moving especially with gadriel and saon um cuz you they was almost like you know booed up if you if you really you know wanted to take a deeper look at it and so that's why you know um I think gadriel is so butt hurt um and look the few issues I had with this episode are not substantial enough for me to just hop on the internet and just go ham for the sake of going ham um especially like I said when you factor in that the writers here don't have any of the answers to the test um so I I take that into consideration as well now you know I suppose there will come a time when we can argue about the show existing in the first place you know being that none of us was asking for it um and in that regard I'll speak truly as nobody hates a reboot SL remake SL prequel more than your boy um but where the writing is concerned I didn't really see any major major issues other than you know I guess the people who want to just go at the writers because of you know them being disloyal to the lore or whatnot but again like I said there's there is no Source material here so they're just kind of freehanding this whole thing and I definitely take that into consideration um now one one issue I did have with writing the the one maybe my biggest issue is the sheer length of these scripts which you know they're creating episodes running like an hour and 16 17 minutes and and that just feels like bananas to me especially since we're dealing with a lot of scenes where not a whole lot of stuff happens and not even in a lot of these scenes not even a whole lot gets said so I'm going like why is the script so long y'all got to y'all killing me with the with the hour and 17 minute episodes um but the writing does feel fluid um and especially the small writing and and I think that the small writing especially is superior to that of Hot D to this point um even if only marginally so and I think that by the time the dust settles on this particular season of this particular show this show will rule the other and you know I never thought I would have said that and I never thought that would have even been possible a few years ago when these two shows were first announced but what do you guys WHAT DO YOU THINK? think have you seen the first episode of season 2 of the Rings of power if you have did you like it or did you think it was boring if you didn't like it do you think it's better than season 2 of House of the Dragon even if you didn't like it do you think it's better than season 2 of House of the Dragon let me know in the comments and for those of you that OUTRO might be new to the channel be sure to like and share this video If you really like the content be sure to subscribe and hit that notification Bell that way you'll be notified whenever I drop a new video also be sure to go and check out the mccrew writer.com for more television and film reviews and info on my upcoming film projects and with that I'm going to go ahead and get out of here I got screenplays right and I'll catch y'all on the next video