The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 4 Review – The Great Wave

We also get references to Elrond and Galadriel’s fathers. Galadriel is referred to as “daughter of Finarfin” by the Númenoreans, while Elrond talks about his father Eärendil with Celebrimbor and with Durin. In these cases, the great deeds of the parents over-shadow their children, providing both inspiration and an impossibly high standard to live up to, something that obviously weighs on Elrond in particular.

We get a little more movement in some of the major plot threads in this episode. It’s looking like the mysterious object the Orcs are searching for might be a palantír. These have been changed a bit from Tolkien’s source material. In the books, there are a number of palantíri around during the Second Age, one belonging to Elendil’s father, and it is Elendil who brings seven of them to Middle-earth. They are used for telepathy and communication, though Sauron also uses them to show only selective truths to Saruman and to Denethor to corrupt them in The Lord of the Rings.

Here, the palantír seems to function more like the Mirror of Galadriel from The Fellowship of the Ring, showing “many visions” that Galadriel says “may never come to pass”. We’re also told that there were only seven of them, and that the other six have already been “lost or hidden”. That being the case, it seems likely that it’s a palantír that the Orcs are looking for.

As was the case in previous episodes, this hour is incredibly beautiful to look at, but moves at the pace of your average glacier. The series is still suffering from a chronic lack of anything actually happening. We meet the mysterious Adar and then he disappears again for most of the episode. Theo is still toying with turning to the Dark Side. Prince Durin is going to go to Lindon but he hasn’t left yet. The Númenoreans have decided to accompany Galadriel to go and help the Southlands, but they haven’t left yet. The Harfoots and Probably-Gandalf didn’t even appear in this episode.

To take the Elrond/Dwarves story as an example of the problem here, for Tolkien fans who know the source material, there’s a major character who doesn’t seem to have shown up yet (unless he is in disguise) and who is central to that storyline. Four episodes in, where is he? For those not familiar with the source material, barely anything seems to be happening. If mithril means nothing to you and you don’t know the basic outline of the plot or what will happen when the Dwarves “delve too greedily and too deep” (to quote The Fellowship of the Ring), then this storyline so far is about Elrond working with some Dwarves who are mining in a mine. This is not the stuff of high drama!

The slow pacing really starts to move into the realm of the ridiculous in the action sequence in which Theo, Arondir, and Bronwyn escape an army of Orcs, which is literally presented in slow motion. Slow motion battle sequences can be a really effective way of focusing on the tragedy of war, showing a character dying (like Haldir in The Two Towers) or making a general statement about the violence and loss of battle (like the opening sequence of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator). But a scene in which three main characters all just barely escape with their lives should be an exciting adrenaline rush, and it started out that way with the fake-out over Theo possibly losing an arm. Slowing it down achieves nothing other than to slow down the story.