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The Rings of Power Tells the Caring of Love Story We Never Verb on TV
Amazon Prime's The Rings of Power, its lavish prequel to The Lord of the Ringsbased on ancillary works by J.R.R. Tolkien, just ended its first season on several enormous cliffhangers, with Heated Sauron gearing up to enact some dastardly plan in the newly established Mordor, leaving everyone else in Middle-Earth basically crying, shaking, and throwing up about it.
While the series certainly didn't skimp on spectacle, it has faced some legitimate criticisms regarding its pacing: the storytelling moved at a glacial pace for several episodes, and the actual rings of power for which the display is named only make an appearance in the last 20 seconds of the season finale.
The show has also been accused by some viewers for queerbaiting, a term which describes writing or acting that hints at a gay relationship without ever making the effort to directly deal with LGBTQ+ content or themes. Given how historically underrepresented queer people have been in pop culture (and how desperate these audiences are to see th
So.
I just finished watching one of my most anticipated shows in years. The Rings of Power is the Lord of the Rings prequel that explores the Rise of Sauron and the forging of the One Ring (and all the others that are linked to it).
Going in, I was a bit concerned about this new franchise&#; after all, it was constructed from whole cloth from some appendices at the end of the Lord of the Rings by the corporate folks over at Amazon Prime. Epic fantasy by committee.
Even so, I actually enjoyed it.
The visuals are gorgeous, every bit as good as the films. We finally get a glimpse at the glorious world that existed before the Third Age, the period when LOTR takes place. The elven city of Linden&#; the human isle of Numenor, and the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm are all rendered in breathtaking beauty here. I long to go reside there.
But where the story really shines are in its female characters. Unlike the original trilogy, women take center stage here.
Morfydd Clark fills in Galadriel&#;s character nicely, crafting a warrior with a spine made of mithril. It was wonderful
Recently, I watched dollar bills rain down onto a Frodo Baggins drag performer at a Bushwick nightclub. Surrounded by kissing hobbits, a dancing Ent, a wizard in pole-dancing heels, and a hundred other nerds, I watched queen Frodo lip-sync Miley Cyrus’s “It’s the Climb” en route to a metaphorical Mount Doom and couldn’t help but wonder, “What would the dead Catholic dude who wrote The Lord of the Rings think about all of this?”
J.R.R. Tolkien probably wouldn’t have approved of a nighttime branded “Fagtasia: LOTR is about to get HELMS DEEP!!” Chances are, it would have melted his Victorian Era-born brain. But the opinions of the presumably but not definitively straight Tolkien are ultimately beside the point: The Lord of the Rings is for the shes, theys, and gays.
And now that the films’ rights have sold for an estimated $2 billion, with talks of a Marvel-style film universe in the works, I just don’t want anyone to forget LOTR’s women- and queer-led fandom. Or worse, trivialize it.
As a pansexual woman who has only recently leaned into her queerness, The Lord of the Rings bo
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