Blind Watch: The Rings of Power; Episode , The Eye
“We ask for something sacred in this mountain, and so we offer something sacred in return. In exchange for access to your Mithril mines, the Elves are prepared to furnish this city with gain, grain and timber from the elder forests of Eriador for the next five centuries.“
Welcome back to another Blind Watch! This episode and subsequent essay are strange because there is quite a bit of racism between the species, but not how you would necessarily expect it, and not how Tolkien wrote it.
Elrond speaks the opening quote of this essay to King Durin III towards the beginning of the episode. Unfortunately, the showrunners have changed the Elves’ history and relegated their fall to the Second Age of Middle-earth instead of the Third Age. In doing so, they have changed the relationships between the Elves and Dwarves of this age and made Mithril something it is not.
At this time in Middle-earth history, the Elves and Dwarves had a friendship, or if that’s too strong a word, they had peace and an understanding. For example, Celebrimbor and Durin worked together to create incredible weapons and armor using the Mithril. Likewise, Gil-Galad and Elrond had a deep friendship (which the show posits is only on Elrond’s side, Gil-Galad just uses him) with the Dwarves. Beyond the weapons and armor, they build fantastic structures for Elves and Dwarves alike, and Celebrimbor even used Mithril to infuse into the doors of Moria to block outsiders. I’ve mentioned this before, but Gandalf needs to speak the Elvish word for “Friend” to enter the mines in the movies. If their relations were so strained, why would you have to use an Elvish word to enter a Dwarven City?
At this point in Tolkien’s history, there was no rift between the Elves and the Dwarves. Instead, the showrunners rely on the play between Gimli and Legolas to inform the audience of interracial conflict rather than showing the history.
The show also has a scene where Prince Durin throws a piece of newly mined Mithril to the end of a table next to a wilted leaf. The Mithril seemed to bring the leaf back to life, which was supposed to indicate how the Mithril would bring back both life to the world and nature to the Elves, but this was not the case in the book.
Tolkien intended to be vague in his writing and wanted an eventual rift between these two races because that created more drama. But, unfortunately, the showrunners are taking it a step further and dramatizing things that were never written to get more dramatics out of the show itself.
Beyond that, Mithril is just a metal. It’s a precious and rare metal, but it doesn’t have the magical power the show pre-supposes. What it does have is the ability to be a magical conduit, which is why Celebrimbor used it in the magical lock of the doors to Moria.
So the argument that King Durin is proposing to his son seems like a dangerous and backward-thinking proposition, but it’s spot on (at least in the show’s reality).
He tells his son, “The Fate of the Elves was decided many ages ago. By minds much wiser, much farther seeing than our own. Defy their will, and this entire kingdom might fall. Perhaps the entire Middle-earth.”
He is alluding to the Valar and how the deeper the Dwarves delve, the more danger they can bring upon themselves. In fact, one of the most well-known Balrogs was named Durin’s Bane.
If you remember Peter Jackson’s movies, there is a scene right before the Balrog comes out, and Gandalf says that the Dwarves delve too deep, in their greed. This anticipation of the Balrog is what the showrunners are trying to set up.
There are two other plotlines the show covers, and neither has any basis in Tolkien’s works, just the vague understanding of what might be happening behind and between the pages, with some outright falsehoods along the way.
Let’s get the falsehoods out of the way first, shall we?
Galadriel and Theo are speaking one night on their trek to find survivors of the volcanic explosion. Galadriel tells Theo that she lost her brother Finrod and her husband Celeborn to Sauron. There is no truth in these statements; her story of how she met Celeborn is convoluted with the tale of Beren and Lúthien. That is the story of Lúthien dancing in a meadow and Beren coming upon her, not how Galadriel meets Celeborn. To top that off, Celeborn doesn’t die; we see him in Fellowship of the Rings, so I’m not sure what they are trying to prove here.
In addition, Finrod died in the battle against the Dark Lord, but not the Dark Lord you might think. Finrod had one of the most epic battles told in The Silmarillion when he fought Morgoth, the fallen Valar and Sauron’s master. Sauron had nothing to do with Finrod’s death, so it seems strange that they would purposefully change history instead of just skewing it in their favor.
We also follow along with the Southlanders as they all come together, and we learn of Isildur’s death…which never happens in the book. Isildur’s closest brush with death comes when he steals the fruit from Nimloth, the tree of the Valar, when he still lived on Númenor, and even then, he is never considered dead.
Beyond these blatant changes, however, they do show what happened in history. The Southlands became Mordor, just not in the way the showrunners are proposing. Sadly, we don’t get to see Isildur and his brother develop the great cities of Middle-earth and bypass everything to get some fake fan service, but these are differing mediums, so I guess beggars can’t be choosers. You either get screen time in the Second age or don’t.
The last portion I would like to mention is the powerful magical strangers who come across the halflings. There is much mention that this is Sauron, but I don’t think that’s the case. Instead, I think this may be a younger version of Saruman or one of the other Istari.
Sauron didn’t travel in a group. Indeed he was famously solitary and did not need to mess with halflings. But then again, they have changed many other things, so let’s see where the ride takes us.
Join me next week as we delve back into The Silmarillion for the Penultimate essay on Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age before coming back for the final episode of The Rings Of Power!
Blind Viewing: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Rings of Power, Episode 1
“We had no word for death, for we thought our joys would be unending. We thought our light would never dim. So when the great foe Morgoth, destroyed the very light of our home we resisted. An a legion of Eleves went to war. We left Valinor, our home, and journeyed to a distant realm. One filled with untold perils, and strange creatures beyond count. A place known as Middle-earth.”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! Or, in this case, let’s call it a blind watch! This week, we’re taking a step back from The Silmarillion and reviewing the first episode of “The Rings of Power” on Amazon.
The show is pretty much what I was expecting. It corrupts the lore of Tolkien, using some, changing most, and making much up on their own.
That may sound like a denigration of the show, but it is entertaining – Of which you can’t deny when you first look at Valinor and its two shining trees. People who have not read the Silmarillion will probably take great joy in the show because they get to return to Middle-earth and join along with a few characters they remember from the Movies. Namely Galadriel and Elrond.
So there is entertainment value in the show, and the special effects and visuals of the first episode are incredible. If nothing else, you can tell this was a labor of love for at least the special effects crew.
I have not finished the book (nor any of the other histories which expound upon the core that is The Silmarillion, but if you’ve been reading along with me, you know that), but just getting through the Quenta Silmarillion has given me a good enough knowledge to notice the inconsistencies in the show.
The first of which is in this introduction. We start by viewing Galadriel and Finrod Felagund speaking in Valinor, but the show ignores the entire Fëanor and Silmril plot, which was the fundamental basis of The Silmarillion. In the book the storyline was an effort to show a fall from grace and how people born with the best intentions were corrupted by greed, hubris, and familial bond. If you remember, Fëanor created the Silmarils, and Morgoth stole them with the help of the great and horrible Ungoliant, Shelob’s mother.
Morgoth was a Valar, a creation of Ilùvatar, the God of Arda (“God,” for lack of a better term). Ilùvatar created the Valar, who in turn created the world they created through their song from Valinor. Morgoth was a fallen angel who was jealous of the abilities of the Children of Ilùvatar (The Eldar, or Elves). So he stole the Silmaril’s, which held the light of Valinor, and went to Middle-earth. That is all true.
What the show doesn’t cover is that Fëanor and his sons and the rest of the Noldor (Galadriel included), Killed their kin because they were denied an exit from Valinor, and then they stole boats and sailed to find Morgoth and take the Silmarils back.
The showrunners did this because they wanted to keep the Elves the uncomplicated heroes of the show. They needed them to be beings that the viewers would root for, yet that depth of character, which they tried to infuse within Galadriel, is lost on the rest of the Elves.
So we see in the opening quote of this essay, which is part of the opening voiceover from Galadriel, that the Elves chased Morgoth to Middle-earth to battle the called angel. They include every grand battle and say that the war lasted for centuries, but they gloss over the other incredible stories of the age. But, of course, they didn’t have the rights to those stories, so we can’t blame them for it, and there is a possibility that they framed the show this way because they were not allowed to mention the I.P. of The Silmarillion, I.E., the Silmarils.
So all of that is just the setup for the show. The introduction has some spectacular visuals, and it was fascinating to see the aftermath of the Fifth Battle called Nirnaeth Arnoediad. For example, the pile of Elven helms (which probably should have been bodies, but it’s a show), which was called Haudh-en-Nirnaeth, or the Hill of Tears (The fifth battle was called Unnumbered Tears), which eventually grew over with grass. You’ll notice this heartbreaking scene immediately when you watch it.
The first considerable divergence the show takes, however, is that Galadriel’s Brother, Finrod Felagund. In the show he falls in battle with Sauron, which is factually incorrect. Instead, he falls in battle with Morgoth, so the back story of Galadriel in the show is false.
The second divergence is The High King Gil-Galad sends the warriors of the Elves back to Valinor, presumably to get them out of the way because Gil-Galad doesn’t believe that Sauron will come back in the next few centuries, if ever. The problem is that at this time, sending the elves to Valinor is not a decision that Gil-Galad can make. It has to be approved by the Valar, and if he had that palaver, there is no way the Valar would allow all of the warriors to return. Not to mention that Galadriel is the last of the Noldor who are accountable to the Curse of Mandos, so she would never be allowed to return to the undying lands.
The scene of the warriors entering Valinor is breathtaking, however, showing the showrunners’ love for the source material. I just wish they had not changed the motivation and basis of Galadriel herself.
I did enjoy the episode, however there are more things to say. First, there is quite a bit of back and forth about black elves. I have seen articles and posts on Social Media where people thought there were no black elves in Middle-earth. I’m here to say that if you hold this belief and you think all elves are described as golden haired, white, and thin, then you did not read the Silmarillion. The description of the Moriquendi, otherwise known as dark elves, had dark (sometimes grayish) skin and dark hair; not to mention the most famous of the Dark Elves, Eöl, the master of the forge and father of Maeglin.
The second is a specific point of interest. It is said in The Silmarillion that because Galadriel is the last of the Noldor who had seen Valinor’s light (yes, despite the actress’s age, she is the oldest of all the Elves in Middle-earth during the events of the show), the light of the trees are reflected in her eyes. The show does a great job at having that reflection of the light of the trees of Valinor in her eyes at all times.
I hope you all enjoy the show as well! Next week we’re returning to the book with The Akallabêth, which is (I think) the history of the Nùmenorians and the second age!
We have a lot to talk about, so join me every Thursday!
Sean McBride 
You must be logged in to post a comment.