Is 'The Rings of Power' about climate change? Environmentalist readings of JRR Tolkien's works have been done before, and can easily be extended to 'The Rings of Power' - the second season finale of which dropped late evening on Amazon Prime Video on October 3. For, images of nature; its bounty, variety and healing powers; and its willful destruction to extract resources are everywhere in this series based on 'Lord of the Rings'. Sample this:
- A volcano erupts in 'The Rings of Power', and lays to waste all of the Southlands which are rechristened Land of Mordor. This is a significant event precipitated by Adar and his Uruk/Orc army as a way to make the area more habitable for them. The volcanic eruption is shot beautifully, and the massive destruction and human migration that it triggers can remind one of the effects of climate change, from floods, storms, forest fires and tsunamis to droughts.
- Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) has a connection with the mountain that her family mines. Using her voice, she can determine where miners should dig for ore, or summon an army of bats. Early in the season, she also sings beautifully to plead - successfully - for safe passage for miners stuck in a rock fall accident. Her broken connection with the mountain under the influence of Sauron and the rings is a significant plot point in Season 2.
- Ents, the tree-like sentient protectors of nature in Tolkien's fantastical world, turn up to capture Theo (Tyroe Muhafiddin) among others in Season 2, and only release the captors when elf soldier Arondir (Ismail Cruz Cordova) promises to see that no harm comes to the trees. Olivia Williams voices Winterbloom and Jim Broadbent is Snaggleroot in the series.
- Also in Season 2, Dwarf King Durin III (Peter Mullan) mines his mountain too deep in search of mithril (the magic ore necessary to forge the Rings of Power) that he unleashes an evil (Balrog) that consumes him.
- In the final scene of Season 2, the surviving elves take courage from the shining sun and the late inventor Celebrimbor's words that darkness will be dispelled by light, not defeated by strength.
All through Seasons 1 and 2 of 'The Rings of Power', there are not-so-subtle messages about the exploitation of natural resources vs a veneration for nature and how to live in harmony with it.
Made in New Zealand, though, Season 1 of the show got some flak in 2021 for using synthetics and plastics to build this gorgeous "natural" world. According to some reports that cited set workers' concerns, the show's carbon and landfill waste footprint was roughly five times that of "blockbuster" British productions. Amazon later clarified in a statement that the show's sustainability team had brought emissions down below industry standards.
According to some reports, Amazon Prime has greenlit five seasons of 'The Rings of Power' and production work for Season 3 had already begun before season 2 aired from August-October 2024.
To take a step back, The Rings of Power is based on JRR Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'. The story boils down to a fight between good and evil, light and darkness, and on the most superficial level great deceiver Sauron and his supporters, versus the elves, dwarves, wizards and others on the side of good.
Like the source material, the world-building in all 16 episodes of 'The Rings of Power' over the two seasons so far is richly detailed. There are different landscapes - Lindon with its majestic trees and rivers, the proof of elvish inventiveness Eregion, the paths of the migrating Harfoots, the mountain of the dwarves with their light shafts and underground farming, Numenor's towers and harbours, the sandy desert to the west where Gandalf and Tom Bombadil sing this song adapted from the original 'Hey Dol!' in Tolkien:
Merry dol derry dol
Ring a ding dillo
Sandflies in the grass
Bees around the willow
Now let the song begin
Let us sing together
Of sun, stars, moon and mist
Rain and cloudy weather
Light on the budding leaf
Dew on the feather
Wind on the open hills
Bells on the heather...
To be sure, reading 'The Rings of Power' as an environmentalist cautionary tale alone too would be reductive. There are, for example, possible readings of race and power in the stories of Adar and the orcs/Uruk.
Also possible is a psychological reading of how fear can twist human perception and guide our actions, or into how deception works. A large part of Season 2 is about Sauron's manipulation of great inventor Celebrimbor to get the three rings for the elves, seven for the dwarves and nine for mortal men. When flattery ceases to work, Sauron uses mind control. Indeed, this segment of the series helps a great deal to establish Sauron's particular brand of evil. In one scene, he tells Celebrimbor: "Since you forced me to torment you to bring them (the rings) into being, I am but a victim of your obstinance. And you, the true author of your own torment." Sauron ends up killing Celebrimbor before the latter has forged the last ring he needs.
Indeed, the death toll in this season includes some major characters, including Celebrimbor, Bronwyn, Adar, and King Durin III. In that sense, the series can also be read as comment on the cost of war.
Or perhaps a reading that finds and privileges adventures in the series by the Harfoot-cartloads - as in the intrepid journeys of the Valar to Middle Earth and The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), who literally falls out of the sky in Season 2, but also of Elanor 'Nori' Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh).In fact a lot of what Nori says over the seasons reads like a veritable guide to adventurers. Sample this: "This sounds like a tomorrow problem," Nori tells her Harfoot friend Poppy when she complains that it would be impossible to hide the Stranger from the others forever.
The series can also be seen as a story about friendships: Galadriel and Elrond, Nori and the Stranger, Elrond and Durin IV. Plus, there's no denying that the series is a feat of fantastic world-building with entire species and races with their own legends, customs, songs, foods, costumes, stories. It's not for nothing that season 1, which dropped in 2022, was nominated for six Emmys - two of them for the title sequence, including Howard Shore's title song for the series. Indeed, the music in 'Rings of Power' merits a study of its own.
As with Season 1 of 'The Rings of Power', the finale of Season 2 also sets up what to expect in Season 3: in the final scene of the season, High King of Elves, Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker), lifts his sword and calls upon the surviving elves to regroup and wage war against Sauron (Charlie Vickers). In the backdrop, there's rousing music by composer Bear McCreary who's also given music for Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, Outlander, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Sony PlayStation video game God of War!
The war between Sauron and Galadriel et al is next. As series creators JD Payne and Patrick McKay said in an interview on Prime Video: "We're teeing up not just Rivendell (the magical otherworld of the Elves in Tolkien's writings), but the war of the Elves and Sauron!"
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