One does not simply recap the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power before Amazon Studios' lustrous fantasy series returns for season 2–but like Frodo and Sam walking up to Mount Doom, I'm gonna be brave and try. The show tossed together familiar Lord of the Rings characters like Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), J. R. R. Tolkien lore deep-cuts like Tar Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and Isildur (Maxim Baldry), and original characters like Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) for one epic Middle-earth adventure. If you don't have time for a rewatch—or only paid attention to a certain enemies-to-lovers storyline the first time—, let me walk you through everything that happened in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 1. You won't get any judgment here!
The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before Frodo leaves the Shire. It's about the sequence of events that lead to Sauron creating the One Ring and ruling over Middle-earth as the Big Bad Dark Lord. You may remember, from the prologue read so beautifully by Cate Blanchett in the Fellowship of the Ring movie, that Sauron gave three rings to elves, seven rings to dwarves, and nine rings to men before making the most powerful ring for himself. (Sneaky bitch!) What was going on with the elves, the dwarves, and the men of Middle-earth that made them think rings of power would solve their problems? As it turns out, quite a lot....
In season 1, Galadriel makes a new friend.
We all remember Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings, right? She's blonde and aloof, lives in the woods, and fits Frodo and his friends with matching outfits. When Frodo offers her the One Ring, she turns super spooky and scary as she imagines the dark power that ring would hold over her. We now know the reason she fears that particular temptation.
At the beginning of season 1 of The Rings of Power, a young and passionate Galadriel leads an army exposition to find Sauron, who she believes is still alive after a massive war against his master, the Dark Lord Morgoth. It's personal: Galadriel's brother died trying to find him. Her soldiers low-key hate her, and the High King Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker) tries to force her into early retirement by sending her on a ship to Valinor, the Undying Lands. (Galadriel and Frodo ultimately go there at the end of Return of the King.) She jumps off the boat and is rescued by a man on a raft who calls himself Halbrand (Charlie Vickers). They bicker a little! He's hot and angsty and seems to really get her for some reason, so Galadriel goes into "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)"-mode. He drops hints that he is the long-lost heir to the Southlands, so she urges him to reclaim his destiny. They travel to the island kingdom of Numenor and then back to Middle-earth and the Southlands together.
But then... in the season 1 finale and after a critical battle that ends with people hailing King Halbrand, Galadriel takes him to a place called Eregion to receive elvish medicine for an injury. There, he meets a blacksmith named Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and brainstorms a way to make three magic rings–huh–for the elves that might solve a problem they're having (see below). Galadriel does some last-minute research and discovers there is no heir to the Southlands. When confronted, Halbrand tells her the truth: He is Sauron. Not only that, but he asks her to be his Queen. She turns him down, and a thousand fanfics and edits were born that day.
While Elrond mends an old friendship.
Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor kind of do Elrond dirty. They're worried because a very special tree is dying, which Gil-Galad interprets as a sign that the "light" (their life force, their magic, etc.) is fading and they'll have to leave Middle-earth ASAP. So, naturally, they're looking for a magical solution to this problem. They send Elrond to talk to his old war buddy, a dwarf named Prince Durin (Owain Arthur), in Khazad-dûm–a thriving underground dwarven mining community that will be abandoned by the time The Lord of the Rings takes place. It's not an easy reunion. Elrond kinda ghosted Durin for 20 years, which is like 20 seconds to an immortal elf but pissed Durin off! He started a whole family during that time!
And just after Elrond apologizes and makes a new friend in Durin's wife Disa (Sophia Nomvete), he has to betray him all over again. What Elrond's elders didn't tell him is that they suspect the dwarves have been mining mithril–a powerful and magical ore that could fix the tree–and they want Elrond to procure some. The dwarves also sense something is up with the mountain they live under, and mining mithril could help that as well.
Elrond begrudgingly hands over the mithril to Celebrimbor and Gil-Galad, breaking the promise he made Durin to keep it secret. This ties into the Galadriel and Halbrand story, of course, because Celebrimbor uses mithril to make the rings with Halbrand Sauron's help.
A shadow falls on the Southlands.
At the beginning of the series, we meet a woman named Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) and her son Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) who live in an area of Middle-earth called "The Southlands" with an ominous-looking mountain in the distance. We learn the people are policed, so to speak, by elves because they supported Morgoth in the war. A rogue dark elf named Adar (Joseph Mawle) starts attacking communities with an army of orcs, and while many Southlanders are taken prisoner, some surrender happily.
Bronwyn, who has a will-they-won't-they flirtation with the elf stationed at her village named Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), doesn't want to be defined by her ancestors' evil alliance. She rallies a group of men and women in the Southlands to fight back. They are soon joined by an army from the island kingdom of Númenor (which includes Halbrand and Galadriel).
While they more or less win the battle, a Sauron-obsessed peasant named Waldrec (Geoff Morrell) takes a key that Theo found buried and uses it to make the mysterious mountain erupt. Surprise! The mountain was a volcano. It's actually Mount Doom, and the Southlands was Mordor all along. The remaining survivors flee the area in the aftermath.
Numenor faces its destiny.
New location alert! The Greco-Roman-inspired island of Numenor was given to the men and women who assisted the elves in the war against Morgoth, but over time a faction of Numenor's residents grew to resent and distrust elves. Those who are still loyal to the elves are called The Faithful. Those who aren't rebelled against the King for simply suggesting they restore their elven connection.
The Queen-Regent Tar-Míriel, a princess who rules the island while her father is sick, is plagued by visions of the future thanks to a Palantír. (Remember Saruman's Palantír in The Lord of the Rings? It was like a crystal ball that can be used for both divination and long-distance communication.) She knows the island is doomed, kind of like Atlantis. She sees bad omens everywhere but keeps this from her cousin, Al-Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), who is not a member of The Faithful and is itching to start a coup.
There's also a single dad who works two jobs who loves his kids and never stops and a nobleman named Captain Elendil (Lloyd Owen), his son Isildur, and his daughter Eärian (Ema Horvath). Isildur is an entitled nepo-baby who gets kicked out of the Sea Guard. Eärian is studying to be an architect and doesn't share her father's Faithful beliefs. Elendil has a third child, a son named Anárion, who left home before the series' events.
When Galadriel and Halbrand arrive on Numenor, the Queen assigns Elendil to watch over the infamous elf. Halbrand is free to roam but gets in a fight and ends up in a cell. Still, somehow, the two of them convince Numenor to go to Middle-earth and defend the men of the Southlands–including Bronwyn and Arondir–against Adar's orc army. They save the day, but by the end of the battle Míriel is blind and Isildur is missing.
To make matters worse, Elendil and Míriel (who I'm getting a vibe from, BTW) return to discover the King has died. In addition, Pharazôn's son Kemen has been flirting with Eärian... who finds the Palantir while sketching the dying king for a school assignment. There's going to be a looooooot of Numenorean palace intrigue in season 2.
Finally, a harfoot goes on an adventure.
Last but not least, it wouldn't be Lord of the Rings without loveable halflings. But the ones we meet in The Rings of Power are far from the Shire. The "harfoots" are a nomadic tribe, one of several who will eventually become known as hobbits. They travel in a wagon train like the Oregon Trail. Nori and Poppy (Megan Richards), two harfoots, are best friends who come across a mysterious tall figure known only as The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), who fell from the sky like a comet. He can't communicate or control his magic powers, which at first makes him a bit dangerous for the little harfoots.
At the end of the season though, an encounter with some even more mysterious people in white cloaks from East Middle-earth grants The Stranger the ability to speak and understand what he is: a wizard. Nori agrees to leave her family and BFF Poppy behind to accompany The Stranger on an adventure to a place called Rhûn in the East, towards the constellation he keeps seeing in his streams, and hopefully some answers about his true identity.
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