[COLUMN]The Rings of Power Lacks Sympathy For Its Devil | by Darren Mooney

Note: This piece contains spoilers for the first three episodes of the second season of Rings of Power, particularly the opening 22 minutes.

The second season of The Rings of Power belongs to Sauron (Charlie Vickers, Jack Lowden).

The premiere opens with an extended 22-minute sequence, originally intended to serve as the cold open to the sixth episode of the first season, which offers a glimpse into the villain’s backstory. After the fall of Morgoth, Sauron appeals to Adar (Joseph Mawle) and his orcs, asking them to bend their knee and serve as his army. Adar rejects that offer, instead using Sauron’s distinct (and pointy) crown to stab the would-be dictator to death.

Sauron’s blood oozes into the rocks, and his essence survives. As a grotesque pool of black bile, Sauron pulls himself through the cave system and out into the world. He eventually takes human form, adopting the identity of Halbrand. Joining a group of refugees, he ends up on a raft in the ocean. The extended prologue ends with the arrival of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) on the raft, their first encounter in the early first season, effectively closing the loop – or the ring.

Much of the press and publicity around the second season has been focused on Sauron, even beyond this “show-canon origin story.” Sauron feels much more central to the second season than the protagonist of the show’s first season, Galadriel. Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay explained that ring smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) will be “the principle protagonist” of the season, with his partnership with Sauron serving as the show’s “central relationship.”

In hindsight, this just makes the first season’s decision to treat Sauron’s identity as a “mystery box” even more frustrating, effectively turning those eight episodes into an exercise in wheel-spinning before the show could arrive at the character upon whom it wishes to focus. It’s even more exhausting because the second season continues to set up these mystery boxes with mysterious wizards played by Daniel Weyman and Ciarán Hinds that may or may not be Gandalf and Saruman.

Of course, there’s a reasonable debate to be had over whether it is a good idea for a Lord of the Rings television show to devote so much attention and energy to Sauron, a character who hasn’t traditionally been the most multi-dimensional antagonist in popular culture. He is the embodiment of evil, perhaps more interesting as an influence on other characters than as a character himself. He doesn’t even appear in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, save for the prologue and then as a giant glowing eye.

Still, it’s worth accepting the show on its own terms. The production team on Rings of Power have a very clear influence on how they are approaching the character of Sauron, which comes up repeatedly in press for the show. “From minute one, we talked about Milton’s Paradise Lost, Walter White and Tony Soprano, and how Sauron has the potential to be like these great villain-heroes – hero meaning protagonist,” McKay explained. In another interview, the pair cited “Milton, Ahab, Fagin” as inspirations.

After Halbrand was revealed as Sauron, Charlie Vickers explained that he read for the part by quoting Milton’s Paradise Lost, opining that he was “literally auditioning as Satan.” This makes a great deal of sense. The morality of Lord of the Rings is quite Christian in nature. “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision,” Tolkien confessed of his literary masterpiece.

As such, it makes sense to cite Satan as an influence in exploring Sauron. Building on that, if a work is going to take inspiration from Satan as a central character, Milton’s Paradise Lost is an obvious and essential point of reference. Milton’s epic poem imbues the Adversary with genuine complexity and tragedy, with both sympathetic motivations and fundamental flaws. Indeed, Milton’s Satan is often explicitly described as “the first anti-hero”, and likened to the ‘difficult men’ of modern prestige television.

“There’s something that Milton does in Paradise Lost that we talked about a lot,” admits Payne. “Where he makes Satan a really compelling character. In some ways, he’s the first antihero where he’s compelling and you can’t take your eyes off of him. Milton did that on purpose because he wants you to fall along with Adam and Eve. He wants Satan to be so persuasive that he also seduces [the reader] and you’re unconsciously won over, so that you perceive your own fallenness and your need for redemption.” That is not a bad hook for a Lord of the Rings show.

Even Tolkien has suggested that there could be a tragedy to Sauron. “Very slowly, beginning with fair motives: the reorganizing and rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle-earth, 'neglected by the gods', he becomes a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power – and so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves),” he wrote. “Sauron was of course not 'evil' in origin. He was a 'spirit' corrupted by the Prime Dark Lord (the Prime sub-creative Rebel) Morgoth.”

However, while Milton’s Paradise Lost is now rightly regarded as a masterpiece, it was a controversial work. Romantic poet William Blake took offense to the poem’s portrayal of Lucifer, proclaiming that Milton was “of the devil’s party without knowing it.” Novelist Daniel Defoe was offended by the way that Milton perverted the biblical text, arguing that “Milton has indeed made a fine poem, but it is the devil of a history.” Paradise Lost was radical and arguably heretical.

The Rings of Power is not willing to be that radical or that heretical. As with any adaptation of a beloved property, there is a vocal (and often silly) argument about whether or not The Rings of Power is being “faithful” to Tolkien’s original works. The truth is that every adaptation takes liberties that will upset the most hardcore fans. Even Jackson’s beloved Lord of the Rings was criticized for its changes to the text or its characterization of figures like “Far-from-the-book-amir” (David Wenham).

Returning to that religious subtext, it’s telling that fans tend to treat the original source material of their favorite properties as “canon”, often engaging in discussions about what is or is not “canon” with the same enthusiasm as religious zealots. Edit wars over fan websites take on the fervor of arguments about which books are part of the bible and which are heretical texts. Milton’s Paradise Lost could never be part of the Christian canon, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an essential text.

Watching The Rings of Power, one can see a more interesting show bubbling beneath the surface, but which is buried like the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm. There is a version of The Rings of Power that commits to its study of Sauron and his motivations, embracing him in the same way that the Golden Era of Television embraced Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Walter White (Bryan Cranston) or even Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk).

This version of the show would lean into Tolkien’s characterization of Sauron as a character who began with “fair motives: the reorganizing and rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle-earth”, angry at the failure of its gods and rulers to impose order upon the realm. It would ask the audience to sympathize with Sauron as he amassed power, drawing together the disenfranchised and the disaffected, like Game of Thrones did by making the audience complicit with Daenerys’ (Emilia Clarke) tyranny.

Of course, Sauron would still be the ultimate villain of this version of The Rings of Power, just as Tony Soprano and Walter White were the villains of their shows. This approach would also challenge the audience. It would run the risk of attracting what critic Emily Nussbaum describes as “bad fans”, those who watch shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad only to root uncritically for those central antiheroes. However, all great art runs the risk of being misunderstood or misinterpreted.

This alternate version of The Rings of Power might have something meaningful to say about the modern world beyond rehashing tried-and-tired War on Terror allegories. The rise of Sauron as a seductive political operator in a realm in decline would certainly resonate in a world defined by resurgent far-right authoritarianism. After all, this was the subtext of Milton’s poem; as recently as 2011, Syria banned an Arabic publication of Paradise Lost for fear that it could be “interpreted as an anti-authoritarian work.”

This Miltonian version of the show would be genuinely provocative and confrontational. It would also be literary and considered. Of course, the inevitable angry ranting and raving of the YouTube critics at the perceived blasphemy of such an adaptation would undoubtedly lack the eloquence of Blake or Defoe’s critiques of what they saw as the heresy of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Then again, it’s not as if the discourse around the show has ever been particularly nuanced or sophisticated.

Still, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed with the version of The Rings of Power that currently exists. Sauron is certainly the driving force within the narrative. He has a lot of screen time and there is a lot of attention paid to the intricacies of his scheming. However, he never feels like an actual character. He never seems like he has clear motivations or personality. The audience is never invited to see him as anything other than the pure embodiment of evil. He is a biblical Satan, not a Miltonian Satan.

It's worth returning to that 22-minute prologue. What does it actually tell the audience about Sauron? Sure, it is full of things happening. It explains, in a very literal manner, how the character physically got to the location where he was introduced in the first season. However, it also presents him as pure evil; he has already been corrupted by Morgoth, he tries to crown himself king of the orcs, and survives an assassination attempt by manifesting himself as a literal pool of black ooze. The audience is never rooting for him.

To be clear, this is a perfectly valid way to present Sauron. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy didn’t cast the Dark Lord as an especially complex figure. However, Jackson was also smart enough not to focus so much of his story on this one-dimensional evil. In contrast, The Rings of Power is foregrounding Sauron while making only the vaguest allusions to one of the great literary portraits of evil. It ultimately rings a bit hollow. To paraphrase a famous quote from the show’s inspiration, The Rings of Power might wander, but it’s too afraid to let itself get truly Paradise Lost.