The Rings of Power Fans Sick and Tired of Never-Ending Sauron Tease
Apparently, the fans watching The Rings of Power have much less love for the mystery boxes than the showrunners.
A "mystery box", for those who are unfamiliar with Internet discussion, is a mildly derogatory catch-all term for writing tricks, aimed to make readers guess and speculate. And The Rings of Power abounds with mystery boxes: "Who is the meteor man?", "Who are the hooded cult leader figures?", "What is that symbol?", "Who is Halbrand?", "What is that sword? What does it do?", "What is that constellation?"
But most importantly: "Where is Sauron?" and "Who is Sauron?"
You heard that right, even as the Season 1 approaches the conclusion, we still don't know whether its obvious Big Bad and daddy of all Dark Lords in fantasy had even appeared on the screen at all, and if yes, under what guise. Sure, there is a clear, perhaps too clear, given the propensity for subversion among modern writers, candidate for being Sauron among the characters, but nothing had been confirmed for now. Now, you might say, that this is not unjustified. After all, The Rings of Power covers the age when Sauron had yet to lose his ability to assume pleasant and inconspicuous forms, and was more infamous for deceit and subtle corruption than for laying waste to everything with his orc armies.
While that is true, "mystery box" is not a compliment for writers nowadays for a reason. Secrets and mysteries are perfectly valid writing tools, even outside of genres to which they are foundational, but using them properly is much more difficult that many seem to believe. Today's audiences are justifiably wary of mystery boxes ending up simply empty, thanks to the writers themselves failing to come up with answers to the questions they have posed before the viewers, or containing stupid and unsatisfying answers.
By withholding Sauron's reveal and teasing the audience for too long, writers of The Rings of Power might have stumbled into the situation where their answer too is doomed to be disappointing the fans. Confirm your hints about Sauron's identity? Unsatisfying, 99% of Internet had pointed at the most obvious candidate long ago. Make Sauron be someone else? The twist might end up looking stupid.
And as for postponing the reveal even more… Of course, there are reasons why writers of a multi-season epic might want to avoid revealing everything from the outset. But there also are reasons to conclude each season properly, without too much cliffhangers and unanswered questions, instead of making Season 1 just an overextended prologue, and still failing to reveal Sauron by its end risks creating an impression of the latter.