Meaningless Rings of Power Prophesy Had No Purpose Other Than to Trick Us
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has completed its first season, accompanied by praise of some fans, and heavy criticism of others. Well, for now criticism sounds louder. As of the moment of this article's writing, the series has a miserable 39% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Still, The Rings of Power managed to secure a substantial fanbase. But even the fans agree that it had a good number of plot holes. And perhaps none of these plot holes are as big as the whole business about the royal line of Southlands.
To explain, at one point after Halbrand's introduction, a prophecy is revealed that states that the lost king of the Southlands would one day return to lead his kingdom.
Since Halbrand wears the royal crest, Galadriel assumes the lost king to be him. Villagers in the Southlands also recognize the crest. It seems like we have another Aragorn here…
But then Halbrand is revealed to actually be Sauron, in the guise of a mortal man. And Detective Galadriel found that Halbrand is not who he seems to be by checking historical records, which stated that the royal line of Southlands was cut short 1000 years ago.
How anyone, and in particular random Southlanders, managed to recognize the crest then?
Why Galadriel needed to check the books for that piece of trivia, given that Southlands appear to be a fairly big piece of land, populated by people descended from followers of Morgoth, who are still resentful about their lord and deity's defeat, and the land is watched by elven outposts, which maintain regular communications with the rest of the elves, and Galadriel is obsessed with finding and destroying Morgoth's chief lieutenant?
Why finding an heir of the lost royal line of Southlands was even supposed to be a good idea, given, again, that these people were Morgoth worshippers in the past? No answer to any of those besides "the plot says so".
But most egregiously, what was the point of the prophecy? Was it meant only to trick the viewers, and to show that The Rings of Power can also fiddle with unreliable prophecies, just like HBO's Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon, its main fantasy competitors (except without the same subtlety)? Yes, as it seems.