I was a week late but managed to avoid any spoilers online for Rings of Power‘s season finale, which I think is no small feat. However, I almost wish I’d seen a spoiler or two because the finale was deeply disappointing. Overall, this season was much better than the debut season last year, which suffered from poor writing and odd pacing. Then the finale came and it fell right back into those old problems.

(Spoilers ahead)

I’ve mentioned on my Twitter account before that I don’t like how Numenor is portrayed in this show, even as I accept that it’s largely due to the compressed timeline compared to the books. The decay and fall of Numenor took place over many centuries and obviously that won’t work when trying to make a show about all this. I get it, and I accept that.

What I refuse to accept is the infantile portrayal of Numenorians. In the previous episode, the rightful queen, Tar-Miriel, had passed what is essentially an ancient witch trial: jump into the sea and if the sea monster down there doesn’t eat you, then you have the Valar’s favor. The Numenorians in attendance cheer and accept her as their queen.

Fast-forward to this episode and Ar-Pharazon, the usurper of the throne, hands a committee of citizens called The Faithful a letter that says Tar-Miriel is in league with the enemy Sauron and based on this she is to be arrested. We never get to read this letter, all we get is the character saying, “Sauron?” after he glances at it for a second.

Worse yet, nobody questions the letter at all. Not one person wonders if maybe, just maybe, this convenient admission of betrayal was fabricated by a man who stands to lose everything if Tar-Miriel is installed on the throne.

The Numenorians are basically a race of demi-gods. They have seen the Valar, their very island was raised from the depth of the sea as a gift from the Valar for standing with the Elves in their war against Morgoth. But in Rings of Power they are stupid, fickle, cowardly, and worst of all, boring. Almost every scene set in Numenor is a colossal bore.

Which segues nicely into my next problem with the show. As aforementioned, I can deal with compressed timelines because it’s a necessity. But things wouldn’t have to be so compressed if the showrunners didn’t waste so much time on useless characters who add nothing. Isildur is given a short-lived love interest who added nothing to his character development. Both Theo and the elf warrior Arondir lost all use as characters when Theo’s mother, the only thing tying them together, was written off the show after Season 1, yet they receive vast amounts of screen time.

And the writing, which had been so much better, was just atrocious. If you’re going to shoehorn in not one but two names of the story (Rings of Power and Lord of the Rings), don’t put it in the same sentence. It wasn’t a cool moment as intended; it was just awkward. Galadriel also had a really dumb ‘go screw yourself’ line delivered to Sauron near the end of the episode that made no sense in the moment. And in another moment, one of the faithless Numenorians, instead of artfully deceiving Isildur about the state of affair back home, immediately revealed his evil intentions. What could have been a cliff-hanger of sorts was thrown away.

The storyline at Khazad-dum and the struggles the dwarves face is by far the best of the show, and I really have no complaints here. The casting is excellent, the sets and costumes are gorgeous, and the writing is brilliant.

In a climactic scene in the finale, when Durin faces his father the King who has been driven mad by the ring he received from Sauron, Durin tearfully says (I’m paraphrasing), “Remember when I was a wee lad and we would arm wrestle? You would let me push your hand down sometimes and I would think that maybe I had finally grown strong enough to beat you. Then in an instant, you’d flatten my hand back down. And I’d be reminded that no one and nothing was stronger than my father. Be strong for me again, Father. Take off the ring.”

Moments later, as the King prepares to sacrifice himself in combat with the awoken Balrog, he turns to Durin and says, “I never let you push my hand down, my son. Not for a second. You are stronger than you know.”

As both a son and a father myself, that really got to me. I grew up the same way, believing that no one and nothing in the world was stronger than my dad. Even well into my adulthood, when my dad had grown into his sixties and I had surely become the stronger man by then, I wasn’t sure I’d want to get in a fist fight with him. He was Superman to me as a kid, my own Man of Steel, and that image lasted for decades.

Sauron himself has also been a bright spot in the series. Charlie Vickers is brilliant as the corrupted Maiar, known in his deceitfully fair form as Annatar, the gift-giver. Vickers masterfully projects a subtle, malevolent aura, straddling the line between good acting and corny showmanship. It would have been so easy, I think, for a lesser actor to fail in this titanic role and come across as a Snidely Whiplash type of villain, but Vickers has nailed it, stealing every scene he’s in with a wicked gravitas. A sly look here, a carefully worded lie there, convincing others to do his bidding all while they believe it was their own idea, it all gives us just a glimpse of the unfathomable evil that simmers just below his surface.

There’s more I could say but this post has already run long and I wouldn’t ask you to surrender more of your time reading my complaints. I’ll conclude by saying that if there is a Season 3, I’m going to watch it. There was enough good from Season 2 to make me believe that the showrunners have at least a faint idea of what they’re doing. Their biggest crime of this season was, in my opinion, wasting our time with useless characters.

But man, that finale was a massive killjoy. It’ll take a while to rinse that foul taste from my mouth.