The following contains spoilers forThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerrecently aired its finale, and had an overall positive but slightly mixed reaction from fans. Most enjoyed the production value and thought the look into a different time in Middle-earth’s history was interesting, but some felt that it ignored or even rewrote significant parts of the lore, and suffered from some writing and pacing issues. Since the show had little material to work off of (they only had the rights to theLord of the RingsAppendices and Tolkien’s lore has some blanks around the Second Age), they had to create more original ideas in order to tell their story, but how well did they succeed at this?
While the story itself works pretty well on its own, so many of the plot points are things that are pulled straight fromThe Lord of the Rings. While there are a lot of more original story elements, so many events that have happened over the course of the series so far are things that feel a little too familiar forLord of the Ringsfans. Sure, the writers may not have had a lot to work with, but it still feels lazy (andedging on the side of too much fan service) to repeat many of the same elements, some of them beat-for-beat.
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This is actually a similar strategy to whatStar Wars: The Force Awakensdid. They introduced a new story with new characters, while repeating story beats and bringing back characters from the original trilogy in order to have things still feel familiar for fans who are returning to this world. In theory, it’s a good strategy if there is enough balance, as should keep things fresh while also giving fans more of what they already love. However,The Rings of Power’s execution of this writing stylesort of just feels like it’s retreading the same steps (and themes) that the originalLord of the Ringsalready explored.
It seems as though every separate plot point in the show borrows something fromThe Lord of the Rings. There is a storyline about a friendship between an Elf and a Dwarf despite their cultural differences and prejudices, which is similar to the classicLOTRstoryline of Gimli and Legolas’s friendship. There is also a plot line abouta romance between and human and an Elf, though it’s perhaps a little less star-crossed than Aragorn and Arwen’s story.
Speaking of Aragorn, his arc inLord of the Rings(the Peter Jackson films, at least) is about coming to terms with the fact that he is heir to the throne of Gondor, and how he has to take up this responsibility and become King. Halbrand is given a similar storyline inThe Rings of Power, where Galadriel has to convince him to go back to his homeland and fight for his people, despite how reluctant he is (or at least, seems to be) to be King. Of course, this arc is subverted in the end, as Halbrand’strue identity as Sauronis revealed, which is actually a good way to use the familiar trope, rather than just having it play out the same way in the end.
The Harfoot segments, much like bothLOTRandThe Hobbit, include the story of a halfling protagonist who is drawn towards adventure and is different from the other Harfoots around her - and in the end goes on said journey with a wizard, most likely the very same wizard that took Frodo and Bilbo on their journeys. That same wizard even directly quotes a line fromLord of the Ringsto Nori about following her nose when she’s not sure which direction to go in, which is the exact same thing Gandalf tells Merry duringThe Fellowship of the Ring(which is the main factor that has led fans to becertain about the Stranger’s identity).
The problem with repeating all of these plot lines is that it means thatThe Rings of Powerfails to create its own identity separate from whatThe Lord of the Ringshas already established. It can’t have its own flavor when it so closely follows what fans areused to from Middle-earth. It seems that rather than do something new or subversive that Tolkien fans haven’t seen before,The Rings of Powerjust decided to take a safer (and much more boring) route and explore storylines that have already been established.
Perhaps this was just their way of place-setting for the first season: easing the audience in with content they already recognize in order to get them acquainted with the new version of this fictional world. As long asthe second seasontakes a few more liberties and tries to separate itself a bit more, this could be an effective strategy. However, if Season 2 continues to just copy plot points fromLOTR, it’s going to come off as lazy writing and be uninteresting to people who want to see a new side of Middle-earth. If Season 2 can correct this and create its own new story beats, it could be even more exciting than the first one.
