'The Rings of Power: Season Two, Episode 5 – Halls of Stone'

This post is a little bit later than planned but I’ll be honest, that’s been a running theme for everything this week… ;o) I’m so glad that it’s finally the weekend, how about you?

I finally got round to watching ‘Halls of Stone’ last night and really wanted to get my thoughts down before the weekend brushes them all away; especially as last week’s episode really made it look like the show was finally starting to build up a head of steam. That wasn’t the case this week but I think that was all for a very good reason…

As always, no episode recaps here. If you’re after one of those then I would go and read the latest post over at Reactor Magazine, I am constantly in awe of how thoroughly they recap and cover each episode. Just quick thoughts here I’m afraid, that’s about all I have the energy for right now. And with that said, lets have a quick chat about ‘Halls of Stone’.

I’ll be honest, in the early stages of ‘Halls of Stone’, I was ready to come on here and have a right old moan. All the good work that was done last week initially looks like it has already been pushed to one side as we have to take a detour and catch up with everyone else. I still feel like the show, as a whole, could really do with a couple of extra episodes; just to do everything justice and not have to keep ‘chopping and changing’ with the plot. That’s maybe a topic for another day though.

Things do drag then and maybe that’s what you get when you’re dealing with Dwarfs and Elves who can afford to take their time, over things, more than us short-lived mortal folk. They do like to debate things before taking any kind of action. Once I got into the episode a little more though, well… There’s a real feeling that things are building up to a point where they can’t be held back any longer and will have to run their course. The Dwarves are about to delve too greedily, and far too deep, while the Elves are fractured in the face of an Orc army camped right outside Eregion. I’ll be honest, I’m not expecting the Numenor storyline to get to the really apocalyptic stuff until next season (at least) but even there, some interesting seeds have been sown and I think good things will come from them over the next/last three episodes of this season. I think Elendil will play a lot more prominent role and I’m here for that, he has been underused, this season, in my opinion.

Charlie Vickers continues to be brilliant as the kind of Sauron who insinuates himself into Elvish society and goes about subtly breaking it down to get what he wants. It’s chilling to watch at times, especially scenes that leave you feeling that you’re the only person who knows what Sauron is up to and, of course, you have no way of letting the Elves know..It’s television cleverly done. Special mention has to go to Sophia Nomvete’s Princess Disa, another character who can see disaster coming, just not well enough to be able to face it head on, not yet anyway.

Should a TV show really need a season and a half to properly find its feet and get going? Maybe not but maybe that’s just what you get when you’re trying to cram a lot of Middle Earth’s history into ‘viewing sized chunks’. And I think that episodes like ‘Halls of Stone’ can be a natural result of that. Where chunks of plot have to adopt a holding pattern but you can really see big things start to appear on the horizon. Colour me cautiously optimistic for next week’s episode.