You Really Misunderstand Rings of Power If You Still Expect Mystery
Despite all the fan theories and speculation, the show has never really been about plot twists and secrets.
Throughout its first season, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had one big mystery: who, among the many suspicious characters, is Sauron in disguise? The mystery was never directly hinted at by the showrunners, but fans carried it with them throughout the season, with each new episode leading to a new set of speculations and fan theories.
However, the showrunners never encouraged the fans to do this; rather, they jumped on the hype bandwagon in the middle of the season, turning the speculation into jokes and memes.
Eventually, fans began to criticise The Rings of Power for being far too predictable and failing to keep viewers hooked. Others criticised the show for even trying to inject a hint of mystery into a show that was never about mystery in the first place.
"I've read the Silmarillion before and obviously watched Lord of the Rings, and the main points of the story aren't about who turns out to be who," one Redditor said.
For many people, the attempt to mix TV mystery and Lord of the Rings lore was yet another example of bad writing.
"The worst part for me was that indoing this mystery element they had to have the stranger stuck in limbo for the sake of mystery. He was a much more interesting character when we knew he wasn't sauron, but because they needed the reveal they had to keep him and the harfoots in limbo for the whole season. Which I feel was not only at a detriment for the character, but for the show as a whole because they spent so long on the harfoots and their story only went around in circles," another Redditor explained.
The show does not need to be about mystery, fans argue, but about character and story development. What the first series gave was mystery for mystery's sake, they say, and even that was too predictable to be really exciting.
"The mystery box concept is often quite disappointing for the mainstream media, and to the Tolkien book fanbase, it's kind of pointless as a whole," Reddit user passingavery said.
What was supposed to be the signature style of The Rings of Power should have reflected the lore of LoTR more. As one fan put it, "revealing things to the audience early on can be a hook in itself", and even the Halbrand reveal might have worked better if done that way.
But it is what it is. It's likely, though, that Amazon will listen to the feedback and correct the mistakes of the first season in the upcoming second, which is already being filmed. The premiere date has yet to be announced.