Blind Watch: The Rings of Power; Episode 2, Adrift
“No! This is different. He could have landed anywhere and he landed here. I know it sounds strange but somehow I just know he’s important. It’s like there’s a reason this happened, like, I was supposed to find him. Me. I cant walk away from that, not, until I know he’s safe. Can you?“
Welcome to another Blind Watch! This week we delve back into Amazon’s realization of Middle-earth with the second episode of “The Rings of Power.” Be warned now! This blog is meant to be read after watching the episode. There are heavy spoilers and explanations of the episode, so please watch before reading!
This episode, “Adrift,” follows a stranded Galadriel in the middle of the sea. Arondir as he searches for the root of the plague. Nori Brandyfoot finds a mysterious giant and tries to befriend him. Then lastly, Elrond brings us to see the Dwarves of Khazad-Dûm.
Though the title is a metaphor for all the characters and the uncertainty of what is to come, let’s begin with the most apparent message and cover Galadriel.
A group of shipwreck survivors finds her floating in the ocean. A creature they call the worm attacked them, which is some giant sea creature. It harasses them and breaks up their flotilla, leaving only one survivor after its destruction. However, Galadriel does see (with her elf eyes) some spear impaled into its tail fin. I’m sure there is a significance that I’m missing at the moment, but it’s something to remember moving into future episodes.
In the Silmarillion, many creatures remained undescribed and grew in the darkness of Middle-earth. They were creatures of Morgoth’s creation because he corrupted the land. I believe that this sea creature, this “worm,” is one of those creatures, and it’s fun to see what the imaginations of Amazon can come up with because they have such an open slate.
The last survivor, Halbrand, lets Galadriel know that Orcs destroyed his home, Orcs that were supposed to be gone from the region. Instead, we find that the Orcs come from the Southlands, which we already know from Arondir’s storyline. Eventually, they are seen by someone on a ship, who undoubtedly is a Númenórian.
Moving back to Arondir’s storyline, he heads to the Southlands and finds a city that has been destroyed from beneath. The scourge is Orc that has tunneled underneath the earth and popped up to sack the city. He and Bronwyn find enough evidence to realize that Bronwyn’s town is in danger. They head back to find that Orc’s have come from underneath, and there is a fun fight scene towards the end of the episode where they fight and kill one of the orcs.
The mystery here is Theo, who is Bronwyn’s son. He has a sword hilt with Sauron’s mark on it, and the question is, where did he get that hilt? Could Theo be Halbrand’s son? Could the mysterious broken sword have come from a previous battle where Sauron was defeated? We are led to believe that Sauron’s armies heeded the call of the sword hilt, so all those questions remain to be answered.
Elrond’s storyline is the least impressive of the episode and takes up most of the run time. However, the whole point of the storyline is a setup for the rings of power in general. Elrond meets up with Celebrimbor, the premier elvish smith who wants to create something spectacular. However, he somehow lacks the ability, so Elrond takes him to visit his “friend” (speak friend and enter) Prince Durin. The goal is to get Prince Durin and Celebrimbor together to create what can only be the Rings of Power. There is also a decent amount of back and forth about Dwarvish/Elvish relations, which will only enrich the later storylines.
The final storyline is, to me, the most interesting and is represented by the quote at the beginning of this essay. It follows Nori, who is a precursor to the Third Age Hobbits we know and love (based upon the name, I have to imagine she is a descendant of the Proudfoot and the Brandywine Hobbit lines).
Nori finds the mysterious giant who has some magical powers. I think the showrunners are taking a little more creative license here because I believe this being is a Maiar named Olórin, otherwise known in Middle-earth as Gandalf.
The Maiar are basically celestial beings, second only to the Valar, and indeed are servants of the Valar (Morgoth is and was Valar, and Sauron is his Maiar adjutant). The Istari were a sect of Maiar “wizards” sent to Middle-earth to assist the people against Sauron’s deception and armies. At the end of the first episode we see this giant being shot down to the earth like a meteor, and spends the majority fo the second episode trying to learn speech, and to understand his magic.
That follows with the general storyline of The Silmarillion, but the only issue is that the Istari were all sent in the Third Age, not the Second Age, so the showrunners are ignoring some history of Middle-earth here to work to make a better and more fluid show.
The whole of what I know about the Second Age comes from Akallabêth, which I’ve just finished, and we’ll get a Blind Read over the next few weeks to complete it. The issues I see here are that in the Second Age, Sauron worked his silver tongue to fool the great kingdoms of Middle-earth. He became a consultant of the Númenórians and created distrust from the inside rather than fighting them directly.
Sauron’s real story may still be the case in the show because we are just getting to Númenor in the next episode, but because there are already armies of Orcs fighting, and no one seems to know where Sauron is, I don’t think this is the direction they’re going.
It also is a complete divergence for Galadriel’s character because she was a fighter, but at this point in history, she was married to Celeborn and living peacefully, but there is no mention of him in the show. It was Morgoth who killed her brother, not Sauron, so her motivation has changed entirely.
Despite all that, it’s fun to be back in Middle-earth on screen, and I can’t wait to see their take on Númenor!
Join me next week as we continue with Akallabêth. We will switch back and forth between Blind Reads and Blind Watch every week for the next few weeks, as the last two chapters in the Silmarillion pertain to what is happening in “The Rings of Power.”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, Of Aulë and Yavanna
“But I will not suffer this: that these should come before the Firstborn of my design, nor that thy impatience should be rewarded. They shall sleep now in the darkness under stone, and shall not come forth until the Firstborn have awakened upon Earth; and until that time thou and they shall wait, though long it seem. But when the time comes I will awaken them, and they shall be to thee as children; and often strife shall arise between thine and mine, the children of my adoption and the children of my choice.”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we continue on the journey through the Quenta Silmarillion, learn about a few new races of beings, and discover the evolution of life in Middle-earth!
This second chapter is short and answers a question I’d been wondering since we started the journey through this history: Where did Dwarves come from?
Through the first few chapters as we got to know the beginning of Middle-earth we came to understand that Ilùvatar created his own children, the Elves and Men. There were so many other races not represented here which had me questioning their origins, none more than Dwarves. The Dwarves of Middle-earth are a prideful and powerful bunch and knowing just a bit about their history with Elves, I wondered where and how they came into the story.
Well this chapter starts us off in the first sentence: “It is told that in their beginning the Dwarves were made by Aulë in the darkness of Middle-earth; for so greatly did Aulë desire the coming of the Children, to have learners to whom he could teach his lore and his crafts, that he was unwilling to await the fulfillment of the designs of Ilùvatar.“
So Aulë created the dwarves at the same time Elves and Man were being created, and “because the power of Melkor was yet upon the Earth” he made the Dwarves “stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity.” He also made their lives long, longer than Men, but not eternal like the Elves.
When he created them (in the true fashion of Prometheus disobeying Zeus and giving humans fire), Ilùvatar was angered, because he had yet to finish creating his own children; but when Aulë showed that he was willing to smite them with his hammer, Ilùvatar took pity on them and we get the opening quote of this essay.
Aulë had promised the Dwarves they would sit at the End of the World with the Children of Ilùvatar, led by the Seven Father’s of Dwarves, “of whom Durin was the most renowned in after ages, father of that kindred most friendly to the Elves, whose mansions were at Khazad-dûm.” In case you don’t recognize this name from either the books or the movies, the better known name for Khazad-dûm is The Mines of Moria.
So now we know the Dwarves were created by Aulë as the “Second Born.” and were sequestered in Moria to await the coming of the First Born, aka the Children of Ilùvatar, aka Elves and Men.
But what of Yavanna? We’ve only spoken of Aulë and the chapter head has both of their names! Well, because Aulë kept his creations a secret even from Yavanna, the Dwarves ended up not caring much about her creations, instead, “they will love first the things made by their own hands, as doth their father. They will delve in the earth, and the things that grow and live upon the earth they will not heed.“
Yavanna was afraid for her great creation…nature. The bountiful trees and the beautiful forests were potentially in danger, because of the nature of Aulë, the smith, he instilled in his children that they should be desirous of making their own creations through industry. If Melkor got his desires into these industrial Dwarves, what was to stop them from cutting down Yavanna’s beautiful forests to use in their production?
Yavanna went to Manwë, the Valar of Wind and Sky and spoke her fears:
“Because my heart in anxious, thinking of the days to come. All my works are dear to me. Is it not enough that Melkor should have marred so many? Shall nothing that I have devised be free from the dominion of others?” They discussed it for a while until Manwë finally responded, “When the Children awake (the Dwarves), then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar, and they will go among the kelvar (the fauna of Middle-earth) and the olvar (the flora of Middle-earth), and some will dwell therein, and be held in reverence, and their just anger shall be feared.”
This breath of spirits and life created two powerful and fascinating beings, The Great Eagles and the Ents. Yavanna was able to work with Manwë to build a defense system into her creations, thus bringing sentience to the Great Eagles (which you’ll remember from the end of The Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf speaks with them and gets them to assist in gathering up the Hobbits) and the Ents (Yay Treebeard!) as guardians, so that even if Melkor’s influence encroaches upon the Children (both first-born, Elves and Man, and Second Born, Dwarves) and they foster a desire to mar the land further than even Melkor was able to, these sentient beings would be there for protection.
We are finally getting a broader understanding of how the world came into being, but what transpired to bring the Children to wake into the world? Let’s find out next week as we unfurl “Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor.”
Sean McBride 
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