Rings of Power S2E1: why is it called 'Elven Kings Under Sky'?

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 (2024), the Prime Video series starring Morfydd Clark and Charlie Vickers, opened with an episode titled 'Elven Kings Under Sky.' It's dense with Tolkien references, nods to Peter Jackson's films and motifs that run through the early episodes of the season. Let's start with the title itself.

That phrase comes from the first line of Tolkien's epigraph to The Lord of the Rings, the Ring verse: "three rings for the Elven Kings under the sky, seven for the Dwarf Lords in their halls of stone, nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, one for the Dark Lord on his dark throne." This episode focuses on those three rings: Narya, the Ring of Fire; Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, also known as the Ring of Water; and Vilya, the Ring of Air.

Why the Rings of Power premiere calls the elves 'under sky'

The elves are described as under sky because, unlike dwarves or men, they are considered the closest to the Valar and Eru Ilúvatar. With that status comes a folly, a blindness to the light. Tolkien's phrase "where the Shadows lie" also has a double meaning. It is not only where shadows lie upon the ground or other surfaces, but where the personified shadow, in this case Sauron, lies and deceives.

The episode opens on the three pointed iron crown. Peter Jackson's team designed Sauron's crown on a John Howe painting of Morgoth and the spider killing the trees, and the three points were designed to hold the Silmarils. In the text the crown was melted down, but in Peter Jackson's films and in this universe, Sauron took Morgoth's crown to make it his own.

I think it's interesting that the episode's title evokes the Elven jewels on Narya, Nenya and Vilya, while its opening image is the crown that evokes the Elven jewels of the war from the previous age. Sam references Morgoth's iron crown in The Two Towers text, in one of the passages Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens adapted for Sam's monologue in The Two Towers film, where Sam recognizes their own role in the same great tale that never ends. These elves, by letting themselves become so dazzled by the three new jewels in the light of their tree, fail to see that they are in that same First Age conflict as well.

Mairon's flashback in the Forodwaith and his betrayal by Adar

We then go to the Forodwaith centuries earlier, at the dawn of the Second Age. This flashback opens in the same place where Galadriel finds Sauron's mark in the season 1 premiere, creating a parallel between the characters. Galadriel will one day be abandoned by her group in the same spot where Sauron, under his original name of Mairon, suffers his Julius Caesar betrayal.

Mairon says that after a defeat the shadow takes another shape and grows again. That line comes from Gandalf's description of Sauron's return to Frodo at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring: "Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again." Jack Lowden plays Mairon in the flashback, which makes sense, since Adar needs to have not recognized him in Charlie Vickers' form in the present day of the show. Adar was also recast: Joseph Mawle played him in season 1, and he is now played by Sam Hazeldine.

Mairon says he sees a new power, not of the flesh but over flesh, a power of the Unseen World. That refers to the alternate plane of existence that those who wear the One Ring and other rings have access to. It's believed Sauron retreats into the Unseen World when he's defeated at the end of the Second Age, as we saw in the Fellowship prologue.

Celebrimbor used this same phrasing back in season 1, and at the time Galadriel asked him where he heard those words. Many of us wondered whether Sauron had got to Celebrimbor at some point in the past, but this flashback proves that did not happen. Sauron never met Celebrimbor before the Second Age, but they seem to be corrupted by the same Shadow. A question posed by the series is whether evil in this universe is sourced to beings like Morgoth and Sauron themselves, or whether these characters are giving in to external temptations that weigh like gravity upon all souls.

Sauron says he wants to heal Middle-earth

Mairon preaches that his aim, at least for now, is to heal Middle-earth by bringing its peoples together to rule them all as one. He shouts "rule them all" to tease his ultimate desire to forge one ring to rule them all. But it's interesting to hear him talk, at least publicly, about wanting to heal, because that is how Tolkien described this phase of Sauron's transition after Morgoth's fall.

Adar holds the iron crown over Mairon's head, and Mairon looks straight up through it with almost exactly the same framing as Gollum looking up through the Ring at the climax of The Return of the King. Then Adar flips the crown and stabs him with it, and a swarm of orcs attacks. I like how Mairon manages to stab one on a sword that is sticking out through his own chest, then pulls that sword out of his back to fight the others. It's important to see that he was Morgoth's lieutenant.

On his death he emits a blast that freezes over the Forodwaith, similar to the 360 degree blast he releases when Isildur defeats him in the Fellowship prologue. The black blood oozes down into the cavern, and there's a great transition: we fade to black and return to find the cavern's stalagmites have risen significantly, showing the passing centuries and Sauron's coming rise. It's not unlike the sequence in The Return of the King showing Sméagol's transition into Gollum over hundreds of years.

The black goo consumes a rat, then a centipede, and gains the ability to slither. It slips over a ledge, and I love the drunken breath it lets out. Then it latches onto a cart, and you can see it crawl up the back and block out all the light on the other side, suggesting it widened and fully enveloped a woman. We see her wine pouch dripping.

The wine motif in Rings of Power season 2

That wine pouch is part of a motif across these first few episodes. Adar describes how Sauron offered him wine when he was chained to the top of a mountain in the First Age: "He offered me wine, red as a blood moon. He offered me wine on that dark and nameless peak. I drank it. I drank it all." In episode two, Celebrimbor opens a First Age bottle of red he has been saving, which suggests that while the War of Wrath was going on, he was collecting wine. Fittingly, he never gets to drink it, because he knocks the bottle over in shock.

In episode three, Pharazôn talks about drinking the wine left behind by his dead father the night before. He says emptying the glass seemed a betrayal, but he also hated wasting good wine, so he drank it. Pharazôn then asks Míriel whether she wants red or white for her coronation dress, which also feels like a red wine versus white wine choice: crimson for Pharazôn's future, white for her past.

So what's the deal with the wine? It sounds like drinking or even uncorking wine means surrendering to the temptation of power on the show. Wine does not quench thirst; it dulls and intoxicates the senses. But it is also sourced from the earth, from the grapevine, bound to generations of decomposed life and volcanic ash that enrich the soil. It's as if Sauron is running the vineyard from the soil that Morgoth tilled.

Halbrand, Diarmid and the fish dragon

After regaining human form, Halbrand steps into a crossfade superimposition that makes it look like he's walking directly into flames, as if reforging himself on a new life path as a smith. He meets a man named Diarmid, who tells him there are places across the sea where a man can escape himself and perhaps find another life. Since Morgoth was a Vala who was banished and denied access to Valinor, the Maiar who served him, like Sauron, were also denied access. So the idea of a new life across the sea stings bitterly for Sauron.

Diarmid keeps calling him friend, which Halbrand will pick up as a way to disarm strangers, as we saw him do throughout season 1. On the ship, Diarmid tells him the way to be good is to choose to be good each day, and the next, until it becomes part of your nature. Sauron doesn't even make it one day. A sea serpent attacks, which Tolkien would also call a fish dragon, so that's what I'm calling it. Given his first chance to be good, Halbrand snatches the Southland king heraldry pouch from Diarmid and leaves the old man to die.

The fish dragon beelines for Halbrand but veers away at the last second. As we'll see later with the wargs, Sauron has the ability to manipulate animals. That is part of how he is considered the Lord of Werewolves. He's a shape shifter who has taken all kinds of forms, but he can also control animals in this way.

Tides and waves as a Tolkien motif

We return to the moment Galadriel met Halbrand, but this time the look lingers a few seconds longer with menacing music, and the line "Tides of fate are flowing. Yours may be heading in or out." The importance of tides and waves to Tolkien is a motif we see more on The Rings of Power than in the films by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

Tolkien often wrote about a recurring nightmare he called his Atlantis complex: the Great Wave, an apocalyptic tsunami rising up to swallow the land. He gave this dread to Faramir in the text, and in the films Éowyn describes the dream in The Return of the King extended edition. It is, of course, the fate of Númenor, which Míriel saw in her vision last season.

Tides play a far bigger role for most of the characters on the series. Tides brought Galadriel and Halbrand together. Tides took Isildur's mother from him. There was even the very first scene of the series, the flashback to Valinor with young Galadriel and her boat, and Finrod's wisdom about knowing the difference between the sky and the water that reflects the sky. So far, I'll say, water on the series has largely been a source of darkness, chaos and destruction.

Galadriel, Gil-galad and Elrond argue over the three Elven rings

Galadriel arrives to face Gil-galad as dead leaves continue to fall from their great tree. Gil-galad asks who this man is, and her answer, "he is no man," is a nod to Éowyn's big line in The Return of the King, "I am no man." The series has to be careful with how much it references the Lord of the Rings movies, which are Warner Bros. properties, and the Tolkien estate has dictated exactly how much this Amazon Prime show can reference. We should also recognize that Éowyn's line in Tolkien's text is different: "But no living man am I."

Gil-galad uses an expression I guess is Neo-Sindarin, meaning something like danger, but the way Benjamin Walker says it, it sounds more like a curse. Galadriel says, "I was deceived," and Gil-galad replies, "No, Galadriel, you were blind." Morfydd Clark repeating the word deceived seems to echo Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in the Fellowship prologue: "But they were all of them deceived." Meanwhile, Elrond echoes his future Hugo Weaving self by saying the rings must be destroyed. You can imagine this character standing right behind Isildur inside Mount Doom.

As the High King's position swings against Elrond, the camera swings around to frame Gil-galad and Galadriel together. Elrond's cape bears a compass icon, a circle in a diamond shape that also appears in the clasps of Gil-galad's cape. It seems to honor the guiding star and moral compass of Elrond's father, Eärendil, who is honored as a statue in Númenor's harbor looking out at the sea, much as Elrond does at the waterfall cliff. In the War of Wrath, Eärendil was aided by the Valar, and his fate was to eternally traverse the great ocean with the Silmaril from Morgoth's iron crown.

So when Elrond says he cannot hand over the rings, he's saying it would be a betrayal of his lineage and his father, as Círdan compliments him later: "You do your father proud." Elrond pulls a Dr. Richard Kimble over the waterfall, and I love how, based on what happens in this episode, he ultimately does it for nothing.

Sauron at Mount Doom and the Stranger's journey to Rhûn

We transition to the volcanic fire of Mount Doom, where Elrond will one day beg Isildur to throw the One Ring. Halbrand turns himself in to Adar, and Charlie Vickers heightens the Southlander accent for the masquerade, so he can rattle Adar with the phrase "power over flesh" without tipping him off that he is Sauron.

On the way east to Rhûn, an area mentioned but unexplored in Tolkien's writings, the Stranger has a nightmare vision of a staff. We don't know for sure yet whether he is Gandalf, one of the Blue Wizards or a new character. Revealing that Halbrand was Sauron, and freeing us from that mystery box guessing game, made him so much more fun to see on screen, and I hope the same will be true of this wizard. I'm tired of wondering if he's Gandalf or someone else.

But this season focusing so much on the staff could itself be a clue. Tolkien derived the name Gandalf from Old Norse: gand, meaning wand or staff, and alf, meaning elf, so his name translates to staff elf. Nori and Poppy underline this in episode two, when the Stranger says he's afraid he'll lose control again without a staff. In this scene, touching his staff gives him visions of the lava and Mount Doom in the shape of an eye, as well as the Dark Wizard in the whirlwind with Nori and Poppy.

He places his hand over the ground to work magic on a tree, and the shifting pebbles remind us of the grains of sand showing the formation of Arda in the opening titles. There has got to be a connection between this and the Ainur singing the world together, and even Disa singing to connect to the mountain. Similarly, the Stranger producing beetles from the dead tree feels like a false resurrection, the way the great tree in Lindon coming back to life is a false celebration.

The Stranger talks about his half forgotten homeland and "a longing for a feeling I can't remember or even name, but I know it's real, just beyond the sunset." It reminds us of Frodo deep in Mordor forgetting the pleasures of the Shire, like the taste of strawberries. But I can't help feeling the Stranger is talking about Valinor, reaching for the details Gandalf paints for Pippin in The Return of the King, when the grey rain curtain of this world rolls back to reveal a far green country.

Círdan's beard and the Grey Havens

We meet the elf lord Círdan, played by Ben Daniels, whose roles include The Crown and General Merrick, the Blue Squadron pilot in Star Wars: Rogue One. Círdan was largely omitted from Peter Jackson's films, but in Tolkien's text he was at Elrond and Isildur's side for the major events at the end of the Second Age. He is a master shipwright for the elves and oversees the construction of the boats they take to Valinor.

He's depicted with a beard, and the following episode shows him shaving with a seashell. I love this, because it references a debate among Tolkien scholars. When Frodo meets Círdan at the Grey Havens at the end of The Return of the King text, Tolkien describes him as having a beard, but elves are generally understood to be clean shaven. Showing him bearded, followed by the shell shave, is the writers having fun with that debate.

The Grey Havens of Lindon aren't yet as built up as they are at the end of The Return of the King, because Círdan is keeping things simple with a humble workshop. The trip to Valinor is supposed to be a spiritual transition anyway, so the workshop feels like a simple monastery or a funeral home, as if they're building floating elf caskets. As Círdan looks out at the sunset, we hear the music of Valinor from last season. He's also yearning for his brother, because he was supposed to sail west to Valinor with him but missed the boat. He will eventually be on the very final boat that leaves Middle-earth, long after Galadriel, Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo and Elrond leave at the end of The Return of the King.

The bones of Middle-earth and a place to destroy the rings

Gil-galad says he should have Galadriel cast to the Ettenmoors for what she's done, highlands known for the two headed ettins who resemble hill trolls. Círdan tells Elrond of a place to destroy the rings, the site of a long ago battle "whose weapons were the very bones of the continent." He's referring to the War of Wrath, which resulted in the sinking of Beleriand.

It's interesting how he describes the land as having bones, since in episode two the mountain is also described as having bones. Across these cultures, characters talk about Middle-earth as if it's all part of one body, and here Círdan is describing a scar in that body. It follows that if one part of the body is poisoned, as in the case of Mordor, all of Middle-earth is now ill.

Poppy's song becomes a map for the Harfoots

Nori and the Stranger reunite with Poppy, who helps them realize that the words of the Wandering Day, the song that closed their arc last season, are meant to be a literal Da Vinci Code for them to follow based on visual landmarks, like we're in a National Treasure movie or The Goonies. Yes, it's very silly.

But it does suggest that Poppy's mother, who taught her the song, might have come from a generation of Harfoots who explored Rhûn. She may even have included the closing lyric, not all who wander are lost, as encouragement: the path requires a bit of feeling like you're wandering, a bit of imaginative wondering about whether something looks like a tree or a stone, and trusting the song in your heart. I think there's something beautiful about that.