The Rings of Power Season 2 Is a Disaster Worse Than Season 1, Despite Its Higher RT Score

The second season of The Rings of Power has begun airing on Amazon Prime Video. In the new episodes, Sauron transforms into Annatar, a mysterious dark wizard appears, and the Rings themselves finally show their power.

The Rings of Power began airing at the same time as another major fantasy series, House of the Dragon. And, of course, they were inspired by the success of Game of Thrones and aimed at its audience.

The first season of The Rings of Power failed to attract viewers: it lost out to the new adaptation of George Martin's books both in terms of ratings and, apparently, viewership. But two years later, when both series received a second season, it seemed that The Rings of Power would be able to catch up. House of the Dragon slowed down a lot, while The Rings of Power was just about to pick up speed. But this did not happen.

The Creators Didn't Solve the Main Dramatic Problem

The showrunners have not figured out what to do about the show's main dramatic problem – predictability. After all, most viewers already know how the story will end.

An example of a competent solution to a similar problem can be the spin-off of Breaking Bad – Better Call Saul. Its main character is a secondary character Saul Goodman – a shady lawyer.

It turns out that he did not immediately become a greedy and unprincipled man. Once Saul was honest, fair and wanted to change the world. Because of the dissonance, the viewer immerses in the changes in his personality and the events that led him down the slippery slope.

The writers and showrunners of The Rings of Power could have gone down a similar path and not only immersed viewers in the nostalgic atmosphere of Middle-earth, but also made character development conflicted and exciting.

Middle-Earth Still Lacks Volume, But Is Full of Endless Dialogue

The writers got carried away with stylizing the dialogues in Tolkien's style and got stuck in pompous speeches, missing the most important thing – the development of the surrounding world. How did Elrond survive the jump into the waterfall? When did Nori and the Stranger run out of food, and why do they not seem to care?

These and other questions about the functioning of the world remain unanswered, although they are of much greater interest than the characters' philosophical reflections on the nature of evil and power. The authors try to add details – they show baby orcs and the market of Khazad-dum – but there are too few such sequences.

The epic scope of the saga is broken by the flat background of the narrative – the vast world of Middle-earth lacks volume. What happens begins to resemble a puppet show whose end is known in advance.

RT Score Is Better, But the Situation Is The Same

The ratings for the second season of The Rings of Power on Rotten Tomatoes have become higher – if the first season received 83% and 38%, then the second chapter received a score of 84% and 58%.

However, in this case it can be said that these numbers are not representative at all – the worst thing that happened to the second season is the fact that the creators did not learn any lessons from the first chapter, and the show continues to look like a waste of money on CGI fan fiction without a soul.