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‘The Rings of Power’ Makes ‘Lord of the Rings’ a Boring Slog in a Lifeless Season 2: TV Review


Season 2 of Amazon's 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' is a boring, lifeless slog.

That’s par for the course with this Amazon drama, the billion-plus-dollar, much-ballyhooed prequel to “The Lord of the Rings.” Two years ago, the first season was initially met with polite praise by critics, who rightly lauded the show’s visual worldbuilding, while noting the actual story was not yet its equal. Edwards plays Celebrimbor’s mounting paranoia with affecting self-doubt, and in Khazad-dûm, Prince Durin (Owain Arthur) and his wife Disa (Sophia Nomvete) contend with a ring’s negative influence on the newly covetous and risk-taking King (Peter Mullan). A prologue shows an earlier iteration of Sauron, played by “Slow Horses” star Jack Lowden in a jarring cameo, facing an orc rebellion led by Adar (Joseph Mawle), who engineered the eruption of Mount Doom and establishment of Mordor in one of Season 1’s breakout episodes.

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