The fantasy series’ latest instalment moves at a hefty pace – even if it doesn’t get very far in the process. Here’s our Rings Of Power episode 4 review.
Even when they’ve spent multiple millennia living in the Rhûnish desert, it’s reassuring to find that halflings will always speak with strong West Country accents.
Episode four of The Rings Of Power’s second season introduces us to a band of diminutive folk we haven’t seen in the show before. The Stoors are a halfling community with a fixed postal address; a community that lives in a series of holes (if you can imagine such a thing).
But though the little (in every sense) world that Poppy and Nori find themselves in, after the last episode saw a magical sandstorm separate them from the friendly neighbourhood Stranger, is charming enough, the sequence here does highlight a problem the show’s been having for a while. Every bit of jeopardy gets resolved a little too quickly. No spoilers, here, but the pair’s relationship with their kin goes on a bit of a journey this episode, only to wind up roughly where it started.
Similarly, Isildur and Arondir spend a lot of their screentime here with newcomer Estrid (Nia Towle), who we last saw burning the mark of Adar from her neck with a hot knife (this is a red flag). Her less-than glamourous past, which could have given the show some much-needed jeopardy, is resolved minutes after her introduction.
While the show’s commitment to keeping up a good pace is in some ways admirable, it’s increasingly lending The Rings Of Power more of a monster-of-the-week feel than it would seem to be aiming for. If The Lord Of The Rings was a story about personal sacrifice, here none of the decisions made by any character seem to be of any consequence. It doesn’t help that the nature of the show as a prequel means we already know the ultimate fate of the majority of the main players.
As if to hammer home the point, episode four’s attempts to fulfil our need for sword-and-sorcery action seem to lack consequence even while they’re happening. Though the introduction of a new, spooky-looking foe here is well done, the conflict with them immediately afterwards is ploddingly shot and over within a couple of minutes.
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Another scene involves a whole gang of opponents patiently waiting their turn to be killed by elven acrobatics which would be entertaining to look at if the camera stayed in one place long enough for us to see them properly. Elsewhere, an elf is shot in the chest with an arrow, and his companions quite literally do not respond. I know how they feel – we never even learnt his name.
The result is an episode in which a deceptive amount of stuff happens. The positions of The Stranger, Galadriel and Poppy and Nori are objectively very different from where they were left in episode 3. The problem is, it doesn’t feel like they’ve gone anywhere. A lot might have happened to them – but none of them seem to have done very much at all.
The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power is streaming now on Prime Video.
