The Rings of Power’s best episode is built on sacrifice

“True creation requires sacrifice.” This is the simple yet profound truism Sauron drops late in The Rings of Power season 2, episode 7. It’s a standout line and, fittingly, it doubles as a quasi-mission statement for what turns out to be the second season’s best installment. Indeed, by grounding its blockbuster action sequences in the hard choices facing its ensemble, episode 7 is arguably the best of the series’ entire run, period — an engaging blend of spectacle and archetypal drama that we always knew the Lord of the Rings show could deliver.

[Ed note: This article contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, episode 7.]

Unsurprisingly, much of the episode’s sacrifice-fuelled narrative is rooted more in destruction than the creation Sauron mentions. And props to second unit director Vic Armstrong and writers J. D. Payne, Patrick McKay, and Justin Doble: they’ve come up with a fresh take on elf versus orc combat. Watching Adar and his troops contend with a river as a strategic obstacle — and overcoming it with a makeshift dam — isn’t something we’ve really seen before in a live-action Middle-earth battle. Ditto the horses bogged in mud, exploding torch arrows, and latch-on battering rams; these are all novel flourishes that go a long way to differentiating the Siege of Eregion from past Lord of the Rings dustups.

It’s plenty entertaining. It’s also a useful backdrop for episode 6 to explore its overarching sacrifice motif. Some of this stuff is pretty obvious: Adar’s cannon fodder tactics as he sends wave upon wave of his orc “children” to die on the frontline, supposedly for the good of wider Mordor. The martyrdom (maybe) of Arondir, following an unsuccessful attempt to take out Adar one on one. Sauron sneakily giving his own blood, his very essence, to make the Nine — an effective, extra-canonical foreshadowing of the One Ring’s manufacture — and casually bumping off those around him as needed (RIP Mirdania) to complete his world conquest long con. It’s not hard to see what Payne, McKay, Doble, and director Charlotte Brändström are driving at here.

Yet there’s also plenty being given up in Rings of Power season 2’s latest entry that’s not so immediately apparent. Elrond completing his transition from bookish geek to military commander is a form of sacrifice — it’s him shedding his true self. (He also loses his awesome jump-kicking horsey, but I digress.) The same goes for Adar’s arc; the single-mindedness of his “Sauron Must Die” position ironically completes his transformation from the orcs’ savior to their new oppressor. Is it a nuanced or even original journey? Not really. But it works, partly because of Sam Hazeldine’s understated performance, and partly because it’s actually paying off seeds sown throughout season 2. What’s more, it’s in line with what Lord of the Rings scribe J.R.R. Tolkien had to say about power in a way that last week’s episode wasn’t. Adar’s undoing is a very Tolkienian demonstration that even the best intentions are easily perverted. No one actually comes out and says this in episode 6 (Adar flunky Glûg’s “Are you fucking serious?” face notwithstanding), but it’s there just the same.

Equally unspoken is what Durin IV bailing on Elrond late in the game amounts to: him sacrificing their friendship — and his code of honor — for something he cares about more. For all his big speeches about dwarven loyalty, our guy leaves his BFF hanging when it becomes clear that the cost of saving Eregion is potentially losing Khazad-dûm. He may hate himself for it, but he’d make the same call again. This is Durin’s home, these are his people; they’re always going to come first over even the best of buddies. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like hell.

Collectively, these conundrums lend episode 7’s proceedings genuine heft. The Siege of Eregion is worth the season-long wait not because of its impressively cinematic scope and staging — or not solely, at least. It’s because of what all the fighting and associated fallout tells us about our characters and their stories. 

More than that, it brings some much needed thematic cohesion to The Rings of Power season 2 more broadly. The Prime Video series’ second batch of episodes has often struggled to lock in a clear throughline, however, the question of whether the ends ever justify the means — of what price is worth paying in service of a worthwhile goal — has cropped up enough in this season that it finally registers in the seventh episode. It’s there in Galadriel’s continued willingness to embrace the rings of power if it means Sauron’s defeat further down the line, and Adar’s aforementioned brute force battle plan. Let’s also not forget poor Celebrimbor, whose increasingly pathetic situation (dude’s a finger short, for chrissakes!) frames him as the poster child for the Machiavellian mindset’s inevitable downsides. 

And then there’s Sauron, who, if you hear him tell it, is the guy who’s given the most back to Middle-earth this season — even if what he gave largely belonged to other folks. As Celebrimbor points out, the “great deceiver” has hoodwinked himself into believing every messed up thing he’s done is in service to the greater good. Using lies, mind games, and outright violence to get his rings finished? In true gaslighter fashion, he won’t take responsibility — if anything, he’s the real victim. Engineering the downfall of a city full of innocents that puts the Renaissance to shame? Nothing in the grand scheme of things, when Sauron’s mean ex-boss Morgoth left so much of Middle-earth to repair and improve on. This isn’t quite Tolkien’s Sauron — he saw the dark lord more as a control freak on steroids — but that’s besides the point, since it ensures that at least some of what the showrunners had to say with The Rings of Power season 2 is at last breaking through. Sauron’s the living endgame of the “at any cost” mentality; regardless of whether he’s fixated on ordering or healing the world, our heroes and even our villains follow his lead at their peril.

That this messaging comes through so clearly also speaks to yet another kind of sacrifice. Episode 7 is all about Eregion and its subterranean next-door neighbor. That’s it; there are no cutaways to whatever’s happening elsewhere in Middle-earth (or beyond). That’s why there’s so much room for characters’ arcs to properly play out and themes to take root, without skimping on the epic action that a Lord of the Rings show is obligated to deliver. Imagine a season — an entire series, even — where this Eye of Sauron-like laser focus is applied to each entry. Where the goings on in Rhûn, Númenor, and Pelargir got the chop (or were dramatically reworked) so that the main, Sauron-centric plot thread got the attention it deserves.

It’s a frustratingly tantalizing prospect, especially with season 2’s finale around the corner. That episode will almost certainly zoom out from Eregion and its immediate surroundings. There’s no way it can’t; season 3 demands that we check in on the Stranger, Elendil, Isildur, and the rest before calling time on season 2. And when this happens, all of episode 7’s storytelling clarity will vanish, not unlike someone slipping on a magic ring. If only this extraneous material wasn’t there. Sure, getting rid of it would mean losing some great characters, vistas, and set-pieces, or having to wait longer for them to arrive (particularly where Númenor is concerned). But that’s the trade-off when you’re telling a story like The Rings of Power: you have to kill your darlings for the sake of the bigger picture. True creation, as Sauron so keenly observed, requires sacrifice.