How A Rings Of Power Season 2 Time Skip Can Save Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings TV Show
Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel series The Rings of Power can be saved with a time skip that makes Tolkien’s Second Age less difficult to follow.
A time skip in the second season is just the thing to save Amazon’s The Rings of Power after its divisive debut. The somewhat confusing first season took place thousands of years prior to the events of J. R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and featured Galadriel as a young warrior, Elrond as a budding political pundit, and proto-Hobbits living a nomadic agrarian existence. Most importantly, it examined the hostilities between Numenor and Middle-earth, the return of Sauron the Deceiver, and the creation of the titular rings of power that will one day be bound by the One Ring.
There were a lot of characters, plot threads, and key events to keep track of, forcing the series to condense hundreds of years into a handful of episodes. By the end of Season 1, Elves deceived the Dwarves into mining for mithril, and Sauron, masquerading as a King of the Southlands, revealed himself to Galadriel, while hundreds of Men and Elves died trying to stop the spread of Orcs across the Southlands. Season 1 set up Tolkien stories that lead to highly-anticipated events that shape the history of Middle-earth in the Second and Third Age, but Season 2 needs the time skip to make them streamlined and easier to follow.
Rings Of Power’s S2 Stories Will Be Better With A Time Skip
The Rings of Power already did a time compression in its first season, and Season 2 stories will be better with a time skip. It’s difficult to tell exactly how much time has passed in the series because decades occur in the blink of an eye for some of Middle-earth’s longest-living inhabitants, such as Elves and the Numenoreans. What is seen transpire over a few episodes actually takes hundreds of years in Tolkien’s Silmarillion, where the Amazon series derives bits and pieces of its source material.
By incorporating a time skip into Season 2, The Rings of Power can answer Mordor questions by giving Sauron time to establish his base of operations, the Elves time to get crafting and forget about Halbrand, and Numenor time to head further down a dark path. The Southlanders also need time to resettle, and the Dwarves need time to mine mithril and stir the Balrog. And the Stranger, who hasn’t had very much time to do anything, still needs to reach Rhun.
A Rings Of Power Time Skip Would Solve A S1 Problem
Everything in Season 1 happens quickly (or appears to) because time is being compressed unbeknownst to casual fans unfamiliar with the order of events in Tolkien’s Second Age. The Second Age is an epoch that roughly spans 3,500 years, with the key events from The Rings of Power’s first season happening in the middle. For example, Celebrimbor is shown being deceived by Sauron to cast the rings in 1500 at the same time that Elendil and Isildur are alive in the series, even though they should be separated by another 1500 years.
Characters and events had to be brought together quickly in order to effectively tell certain stories without the series seeming to drag on too long. A time skip can show Numenor as a full-blown military power (as well as more wicked) and a colonized Middle-earth without having to spend time establishing these plot elements. A time skip can also solve certain pacing issues, as well as steer the series’ focus on the most important events in the Second Age.
The Rings Of Power’s Tolkien Lore Makes A Time Skip Easy
Thankfully, Tolkien’s lore makes a time skip easily done in The Rings of Power’s second season. For one thing, the Elves don’t age much at all, and the Numenoreans, Harfoots and Dwarves age very slowly, making it believable that all the cast looks the same. The only character who might need to be recast for Season 2 would be Theo, but seeing him as a young adult could be interesting if that’s the direction the series takes.
The Rings of Power primarily compresses and re-orders events in order to alter the progression of Numenor into Middle-earth and shorten its line of kings while maximizing the dramatic effect of Sauron’s movements. The threat of the Dark Lord’s return had to loom large over the series in the beginning, so his interest in Middle-earth affairs had to emphasize his deception, most notable by the fact that he looks to forge the rings even before building up Mordor. This could mean that with a significant time skip, the Second Age in the series ends a lot faster than Tolkien’s Second Age by several thousands of years.
