The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 review: a vast improvement

For all of the impressive fantasy imagery that it had to offer, the first season of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power proved to be disappointingly empty. A large portion of its episodes was dedicated to the search for a villain without a clear face — the infamous Sauron — and that only further muddied the stakes and storytelling of a season that already felt too meandering, lethargic, and all-around vague. Even when Sauron’s long-hidden identity was finally revealed in the season 1 finale, The Rings of Power still didn’t seem like it knew what show it wanted to be. Its debut season’s eventual emergence as a prolonged prologue to the series’ actual story only made its first eight episodes seem both worse and slighter in retrospect.

All of which is to say that The Rings of Power didn’t do much in 2022 or in the years since its premiere to suggest that its second season was going to be considerably stronger than its first. It comes as a genuine surprise then that The Rings of Power season 2 isn’t just a marked improvement on its predecessor, but also one of the best blockbuster seasons of TV that has hit our screens so far this year. The series is still a bit too ambitious and unwieldy and, much like in its debut season, certain storylines seem far more fleshed-out and substantial than others. There is genuinely affecting majesty, poignancy, and tragedy waiting in the new season’s episodes, though, and there are numerous moments when The Rings of Power manages to answer its viewers’ ache for truly large-scale, live-action fantasy storytelling better than any of its current or recent competitors.

After making viewers wait an entire season for answers that never came, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power wisely doesn’t waste much time following through on its years-in-the-making promises this time around. Its second season begins with a long-awaited explanation that not only crystallizes a character that The Rings of Power previously kept shrouded in mystery, but also injects a sudden jolt of darkness into a show that had initially gone out of its way to avoid embracing the grimmer aspects of its source material. Despite that, The Rings of Power quickly reveals itself to be well-suited to the darkness that its Second Age story and villain, the now-unmasked Sauron (Charlie Vickers), demand. The series, consequently, does a better job of faithfully representing all the various shades — whether they be warm and whimsical or dark and cold — of J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic fantasy world across its latest chapters than it did in its first eight.

This is due, in no small part, to its latest season’s larger focus on Vickers’ Sauron, who spent much of The Rings of Power season 1 masquerading as an exiled human king named Halbrand. With his carefully constructed facade now torn away, Sauron immediately begins pushing forward with his plan to conquer Middle-earth. In order to do so, he realizes he must convince the legendary Elven smith, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), to help him forge new Rings of Power for the most powerful Men and Dwarves of Middle-earth. Those familiar with Tolkien’s work will know how exactly Sauron goes about doing that, and Rings of Power handles the storyline as deftly as it could have. Along the way, it finds increasingly effective methods of highlighting Sauron’s corrosive influence on others, as well as both the misguided ambition and admirable sense of honor that define Celebrimbor’s story. This subplot is undoubtedly the new season’s strongest, and Sauron’s increased agency provides The Rings of Power with the narrative glue that it needed two years ago to keep its many disparate threads from drifting too far away from each other.

The show’s second season is one steeped in dread from its very first scene, and showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay ensure that you always feel the effects of Sauron’s growing influence over all of Middle-earth. The duo, along with their fellow writers, establish a ticking clock early in The Rings of Power season 2, which provides it with a sense of urgency that the show previously lacked. That, in turn, makes watching Sauron’s machinations unfold a frustrating and skin-crawling experience, but rarely a dramatically unengaging or unsatisfying one. Vickers, for his part, plays Sauron with an off-putting balance of maniacal glee and deceptive softness that makes it easy to accept the character’s “Great Deceiver” moniker. As one of Vickers’ biggest scene partners this season, Charles Edwards also excels as Celebrimbor. The actor, who was little more than a background player in The Rings of Power‘s first season, taps beautifully into his character’s flawed humanity and helps elevate the story of Celebrimbor and Sauron to eventually operatic heights.

The season’s other standouts include returning figures like Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), and Prince Durin (Owain Arthur), as well as one of its few new faces: a wise Elven shipmaster named Círdan (Ben Daniels). As the series’ resident action hero, Córdova remains a quietly charismatic screen presence, while both Aramayo and Arthur are given the chance to wade into more difficult waters this season as Elrond and Durin each face challenges that force them to reconsider their long-held positions and places within a rapidly deteriorating Middle-earth.

At times throughout its first season, The Rings of Power notably struggled to communicate enough depth and intelligence beneath Galadriel’s actions to make her a worthwhile protagonist. In the wake of Sauron’s season 1 deception, though, both Rings of Power and Clark find a new and more emotionally compelling journey for the latter’s character than her previous, one-note revenge tour. The Prime Video series, meanwhile, manages to successfully weave many of its storylines together this season, including Galadriel and Elrond’s combined efforts to stop Sauron, the Dark Lord’s mission to rule Middle-earth, and the growing fissures in Durin’s mountain society of Khazad-dûm.

Certain other, more distant subplots unfortunately aren’t handled as well. The ongoing journey of The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) and his Harfoot companion, Nori (Markella Kavenagh), continues to progress at a glacial pace this season, and it doesn’t go anywhere interesting enough to really justify its inclusion in The Rings of Power season 2. The same goes for a C-plot involving Isildur (Maxim Baldry), who was left stranded at the end of the series’ first season and is forced to go on a difficult, but not particularly enriching journey in order to survive on his own. Unlike those two stories, the importance of the island kingdom of Númenor is never in doubt. The over-the-top villainy of politicians like Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) and his smarmy son, Kemen (Leon Wadham), nonetheless results in many of their scenes jutting out tonally from the rest of The Rings of Power‘s second season.

Even now, it’s The Rings of Power‘s overambitious tendencies that continue to prevent it from fully replicating the narrative brilliance of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The TV series remains an occasionally ungainly production — one that still doesn’t know how to keep all of its storylines moving at the same pace or, on a smaller scale, how to avoid awkward, blunt-force lines of exposition. (It’s hard not to roll one eye’s or chuckle when Aramayo’s Elrond introduces Daniels’ Círdan to the audience by greeting his elder with, “Círdan, you are the oldest and wisest among us …”) The series hasn’t lost its initial, endearing charm, though, nor is that — along with its impressive budget — the only thing holding it up anymore.

In its second season, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is just as big and beautiful as it was in its first, but it is also sharper than it ever was two years ago. In 2022, it often felt more like a visually stunning mirage than a complete TV show. Even when you most wanted to embrace it and wrap your hands around it, you’d find yourself grasping nothing but air. This time, The Rings of Power doesn’t just give you plenty to hold on to, but its second season has a habit of reaching out and grabbing you. Its vise-like grip may lessen from time to time, but you’ll rarely find yourself wanting or daring to look away.

The first three episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 premiere Thursday, August 29, on Prime Video. New episodes premiere weekly on Thursdays. Digital Trends was given early access to the entire season.