Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 5.
Did you also miss seeing the Dwarves and Númenoreans on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power last week like I did? Well, you’re in luck! I know it’s the same issue Season 1 had, where the ensemble was so large that we didn’t have time to check in with everyone week to week. But last season, the stories were generally so interwoven it felt less noticeable. Sure, they’re still interwoven now, in that they’re all dealing with the ripple effect of the same big events, and the threat Sauron poses effectively underscores all of it, but the further apart these characters’ stories grow, the more they start to feel like distinct plots. But let’s not keep away from them any longer!
Episode 5 begins in Khazad-dûm, where the seven rings for the Dwarf Lords have been delivered. King Durin (Peter Mullan) is the first to take his, even as ominous voices call to him from all the others. While the Elves can hear and see things they previously couldn’t now that they have the rings, it’s worth noting that their rings don’t have the same air of malice around them, at least not initially. Maybe Elrond (Robert Aramayo) was on to something after all.
Narvi (Kevin Eldon) takes the King down into the mines to show him their efforts at finding new sunshafts, but notes it’s not going well, as they’re only making the mountain more unstable. Narvi and Prince Durin (Owain Arthur) follow the King up onto one of the ridges, where he confidently selects a spot and tells them to dig there. The confidence, it turns out, is born not of innate knowledge of their home, but rather the ring he now sports — a ring that is telling King Durin to order the others to dig directly into a load-bearing wall. The King takes his son’s protestations personally, picking up a pickaxe to do it himself when his son hesitates.
They wisely dismiss the rest of the miners, and it looks like their fears of a cave-in are justified until the gamble pays off and sunlight comes pouring into the mine. This does not bode well for future ring-related protestations, but for now, the ring guides King Durin to enough spots to let in the sun that, at least for now, Khazad-dûm’s problems are alleviated. Prince Durin is relieved, but Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) is significantly less so. Her stone-singing might not have helped them find shafts, but what is the mountain telling her now?
Sauron Wants to Forge Rings for Men in ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2 Episode 5
Over in Eregion, Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) is celebrating the success of the Dwarven rings with Narvi and a small group in attendance. To celebrate their collaboration, the pair unveil the Doors of Durin, the new west gate of the mountain which will look awfully familiar to anyone who remembers a certain fellowship of the ring deciding to take a shortcut through the Mines of Moria. While the Elves and Dwarves celebrate, Annatar (Charlie Vickers) drifts away to sulk on the balcony.
He puts on a show, telling Celebrimbor his mood is because he’s thinking about those suffering most at Mordor’s hand right now: Men. Celebrimbor catches on to his line of thought — he still hasn’t given up on that “rings for men” idea — but is still reluctant to do anything for them, and calls Annatar out for his attempts at reverse psychology. They debate the worthiness of Men, with Celebrimbor arguing that anyone from the Southlands who didn’t help Adar (Sam Hazeldine) in his conquest has been given new homes by Númenoreans, and Annatar countering that Númenor is so unstable it is the source of his concerns.
Rings for Men would stabilize Númenor, Annatar argues, but Celebrimbor is adamant that they cannot do it because whatever good might come of it is outweighed by the potential damage it would cause, corruptible as men are. Annatar’s primary method of coercion is not reverse psychology, as Celebrimbor suggests, but rather saying just enough true things that the manipulative thing also sounds like an irrefutable truth. In this case, he cites enough examples of good, uncorrupted Men who rose up when things were at their darkest, and suggests they hand-pick who receives the rings this time, ensuring they are noble and pure of heart. He then goes on to suggest they pick nine kings of Men — the perfection of the Elven Three, times three — and that’s where his argument falls apart, because “pure of heart” and “absolute monarchy” don’t generally go hand in hand. Despite that argument, Celebrimbor still thinks it’s too much of a risk, and Annatar accepts his refusal, saying he will simply make the rings himself.
Elendil Is Caught in a Power Struggle in ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2 Episode 5
And hey, speaking of absolute monarchs who aren’t noble or pure of heart whatsoever, this seems like a good time to check in with Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle). Sporting a red-and-white ensemble — he stole Miriel’s (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) throne and my idea — he muses about how immortality is out of the grasp of Men, which seems to ring alarm bells even for his son Kemen (Leon Wadham). Kemen urges him to make the most of his throne, instead of aspiring to even higher things, and Pharazôn doesn’t like the sound of that. He tells Kemen that when he was a baby, his mother prophesied about his fate, but refuses to tell his son any more until he carries out a task for him.
Meanwhile, up in her tower, Miriel is still reeling from the chaos of her failed coronation. Elendil (Lloyd Owen) assures her that many people are still on her side, and that the Sea Guard would serve her if she commanded them to. She stops him by putting her hand on his chest, in a move that lasts several beats too long for her to only be trying to perceive where he is in her space. They both know it too, because the second he reaches for her hand, she snaps hers back, and in case you were wondering: yes, these five seconds are plenty long enough for me to dig my nails into my face in shipper-related agony. She asks him what he saw when he touched the palantir, and Elendil tells her he saw himself riding away from the city, but no more than that. While vague to him, the vision is encouraging to Miriel, who tells him that all she’s seen for years is the downfall of their city, and if the vision has changed, then Pharazôn’s rule must be a part of that change.
With this new hard left turn into “everything happens for a reason,” Miriel encourages Elendil to do nothing for the time being except to remain calm in the face of whatever they throw at him, and orders him back to his ship to weather the storm. I commend her playing the long game to see how it all shakes out, but I wonder if it occurred to either of them that the reason Elendil was riding away from the city could have been that it had already fallen. He doesn’t seem the type not to go down fighting, but what if there were extenuating circumstances? At the harbor, Elendil arrives to see the Sea Guard all surrendering their uniforms under the watchful eyes of Kemen and Eärien (Ema Horvath). Valandil (Alex Tarrant) explains that any of them deemed loyal to Miriel were stripped of their rank under Eärien’s orders. Elendil is less than impressed with his daughter’s social climbing at someone else’s expense, but she maintains all she does, she does out of grief over her brother. I understand resentment born of grief, but I have to wonder how deep a hole Eärien will dig for herself before she realizes Pharazôn is not the solution she seems to think he is.
In a gesture of loyalty, and because no one in their right mind would side with Pharazôn anyway, Elendil hands in his sword and turns to leave. The rest of the waiting former Sea Guard members salute their captain as he leaves, and Kemen points out that he’s not actually their captain anymore. I feel like if I had just antagonized an entire navy’s worth of sailors who now have nothing left to lose, I wouldn’t also stand there and openly piss them off, but then I also believe I’m much smarter than Kemen. Elendil acknowledges that he isn’t their captain anymore, but all this only makes them salute harder, ignoring Kemen completely. Eärien tries to appeal to Valandil next, saying she can ask the king to take him off the list, but he rebuffs her offer. Kemen’s face makes it clear he also doesn’t care for the way Eärien touches Valandil’s arm, so we can just go ahead and add incel to the list of his sins. Proving hypocrisy is alive and well, Pharazôn decides to consult with the palantir.
The Rings of Power Bring Trouble For Elves and Dwarves in Season 2 Episode 5
Back in Khazad-dûm, Disa is still wrestling with her feelings over King Durin’s newfound ability to find sun shafts. To her, the King bypassing a lifetime of learning to converse with the mountain, as the stone-singers do, feels like cheating — I can’t believe the GenAI conversation has made its way to Middle-earth too — but Durin maintains that his father knows what he’s doing. That statement is put to the test almost immediately as the couple go shopping for their daughter’s birthday gift, and find the prices in the marketplace have doubled — Dwarves, they’re just like us! — owing to the King’s new law, demanding that for every coin a merchant earns, one coin must also go to the crown. They manage to haggle a better price for a perfectly round tuning crystal, but Disa accidentally drops it, and it rolls straight through the market and down into a tunnel. Disa ventures comically far into the tunnel and comes across an undiscovered cavern with a lake in the center. She tries singing to the stone, but her efforts awaken something in the water.
Meanwhile, Durin gathers the emissaries of the other Dwarven realms to present them with the rest of the rings, to carry word back to their masters, and to tell them that the rings and associated power come with a price. After the meeting, the King meets with Narvi to plot out future dig sites, and tells him to disregard all previous safety restrictions in the name of digging deeper — now this is just getting ridiculously on the nose. He notices his ring is missing and initially lashes out at Narvi, until he points out that the King took the ring off himself, saying it felt heavy. The Elves might be relying on their rings, but one thing they don’t seem to share is the same addictive quality that the Dwarf rings have. Narvi is about to leave, when Prince Durin arrives to warn them about what Disa saw under the mines, calling the creature an “ancient evil,” but the king tells Narvi to instruct the miners to dig anyway. He insists Disa is wrong in saying there is danger under the mines, focused only on the jewels and treasure to be had there.
In Eregion, Celebrimbor is alerted to trouble by Mirdania (Amelia Kenworthy), one of his smiths. He rushes into the forge to see tools moving of their own free, and violent, will, after Annatar tells him Mirdania was trying to resize a new ring they designed. It’s only in catching one of the tools that he’s able to trace it back to Mirdania herself, who is wearing the ring and has gone invisible as a result. She tells them she saw a space much like the forge, but dark, and foggy, and containing a creature made of flames — likely sensing the Sauron in the room. Celebrimbor asked them what they changed in the design, and Mirdania explains that they added more mithril to offset the corrupting nature of the ring.
The Elven-smith knows that’s not the answer to fixing the ring, but now suddenly can’t remember what the right answer actually is. Annatar tries to prompt him to advise them, but Celebrimbor can’t bring himself to answer. Just as he clues in that something might be wrong, he receives word that Prince Durin is there to see him, and refuses Annatar’s offer to go instead. Durin explains the changes he’s seen in his father to Celebrimbor, but the smith shuts down the idea that the change in personality is brought about by the rings. Then, Durin suggests that the problem stems from Annatar instead.
As they talk, Annatar lingers above them on the balcony, likely eavesdropping, but he doesn’t stay long as he has other matters to attend to, namely playing the seductive game with Mirdania. Where in Season 1, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) needed Halbrand to be a fiery, strong, potential King of Men, Mirdania benefits more from a sympathetic ear in a high-stress environment, and Annatar has adapted to that need beautifully. He tells her that he too has seen the Unseen World, and twists her understanding of her vision to suggest that it was actually referring to Celebrimbor’s diminished state of mind, a result of forging the rings, and then makes her promise not to tell anyone what he’s told her. Once she does, he smoothly adds that in the firelight, she looks exactly like Galadriel, and I doubt she’s aware of what’s happening with this old situationship of his, but she doesn’t look unhappy to hear it, either.
Over in Númenor, many of the Faithful — including Elendil and Valandil — gather at the oldest shrine in the city to mourn those who were lost in the fighting. Their ceremony is interrupted by Kemen’s arrival, as he announces the shrine is now condemned, and set to be knocked down to build a new aqueduct. Most of those assembled leave, but before Elendil can, Kemen throws a barb about Eärien being ashamed of her father. Elendil is about to confront Kemen, when Valandil stops him, and before they go, Elendil says he will escort the priest out as well. The priest, however, won’t leave without his relic, which Kemen smashes in front of the priest with a smug smile on his face. As if I didn’t think Elendil wasn’t hot as it is, he punches Kemen right in the face. Really, my only critique is that he didn’t follow that one punch up with six or seven more.
Kemen has his men restrain Elendil so he can hit him back — so brave — when Valandil intervenes and throws Kemen against one of the columns. Really, this scene is so very satisfying, right up until the moment where Valandil has his sword to Kemen’s throat, but stays his hand at Elendil’s request. I understand he would have been in mountains of trouble if he’d killed or maimed Kemen, but at least he wouldn’t be dead, which is what Valandil becomes when Kemen stabs him in the back. At least he broke Kemen’s arm before he shuffled off this mortal coil, so that’s something. As if Kemen hasn’t caused enough trouble, he has Elendil arrested for starting it.
Back in Eregion, Celebrimbor privately insists there is validity to Durin’s claim that the ring is corrupting his father, insisting there’s something wrong with them. Annatar warns Celebrimbor that perhaps he’s being manipulated — gee, you think? He asks Annatar if he did anything to the rings, and Annatar says that he didn’t do it, but they did, by lying to Gil-galad about what they were doing in the forge, thereby tainting them with his dishonesty. He tells Celebrimbor to go to Lindon and confess what he’s done. Celebrimbor tries to talk to the smiths about the flaws in the design, but Mirdania pushes back on the critique, saying they were precise in their work. Concerned that the group will forge more faulty rings without him, he says the group will forge the Nine Rings together, and any failure on their part will see them dismissed. Annatar gives them a motivational speech while Celebrimbor retreats to his office, clearly terrified of whatever is happening to him. Trouble is around the corner, though, as the Orcs are practically at the gates.
Things aren’t going much better in Khazad-dûm, as Durin tries to convince his father something is wrong with the rings, but the king is unwilling to listen. Instead, he thanks his son for partnering with the Elves to get them the rings, and asks him to stand at his side, reinstating his title and inheritance. It’s what Annatar suggested might happen, so he did get what he wanted, but at what cost? He goes home to Disa, now wearing his princely collar again, and tells her his father won’t listen. She makes him swear never to take one of the rings for himself, and he swears it to her. So there’s that at least.
In Lindon, Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) receives Celebrimbor’s lie-filled letter about how he is no longer forging rings, and his Commander urges him to turn his attention toward Adar and what he’s doing in Mordor. The High King seems stuck, however, as his ring keeps granting him visions of destruction and the rise of Sauron. Later, when Elrond finally arrives to warn the king that the Orcs are not in Mordor, but rather headed to Eregion, he urges him to send their armies to assist. Gil-galad tells him he can’t do that, as the army cannot take on both Adar and Sauron alone. Speaking of Adar, his camp in Mordor has a new arrival in the form of Galadriel, who has been brought not as a hostage, but to treat with Adar instead, as their mutual enemy resides in Eregion. We’re rolling into the back half of the season now, and at last, it feels like most of the plots are converging again.
The first five episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 are streaming on Prime Video now.
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