The Rings of Power Quiz

What the show adapts from the Second Age

Amazon did not have the rights to The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales, so the series builds on The Lord of the Rings and its Appendices. Those give the bones of the Second Age: Sauron returning in a fair form, the Elven-smiths of Eregion led by Celebrimbor, the forging of the rings, the rise of Númenor and its queen Míriel, and Elendil and Isildur.

From that frame the show takes its biggest arc, Sauron’s deception of Celebrimbor. In Tolkien he comes to Eregion as Annatar, teaches the smiths, and helps make the Seven and the Nine, while Celebrimbor makes the Three alone. Season 2 dramatises that story with scenes and dialogue of its own. Our map of the Elven, Dwarven and mortal rings sets out Tolkien’s version ring by ring.

Where the series invents

The show compresses thousands of years into a few, so characters who never met in Tolkien share scenes. Galadriel meets Elendil and Isildur, the Stranger is a wizard in the Second Age, and a Balrog wakes under Khazad-dûm ages before Tolkien’s Dwarves disturb it in the Third Age.

Several leading characters are new: Arondir, Bronwyn, Theo, Nori and Poppy, the Stranger and Adar. Others are expanded far beyond a line or two, such as Durin IV and his wife Disa. The mithril motive for the rings, Halbrand as a disguise, and Mordor’s birth in a flooded volcano are all the show’s own. None of this makes the series wrong as drama, but it is not evidence for what Tolkien wrote. The timeline is the biggest change of all. In Tolkien the Rings are forged around the year 1500 to 1600 of the Second Age, Númenor falls in 3319, and the Last Alliance fights Sauron at its very end. The show brings these ages-apart events within one lifetime of its mortal characters, so that Isildur, Galadriel and Elrond share one story from its first episodes and the mortal cast lives to see all of it. Our posts on Adar and the Stranger look at two of those inventions closely.

The Elvish you hear on screen

The Elves speak both of Tolkien’s main Elvish languages. Sindarin, the Grey-Elvish of Middle-earth, is the everyday speech of Lindon and Eregion, while Quenya, the High-Elvish of Valinor, appears in more formal and solemn moments. The language consultant is Carl F. Hostetter, a Tolkien linguist; David Salo, who wrote the Elvish for Peter Jackson’s films, is not involved.

Names are the easiest place to start. *Eregion* is Sindarin for “Land of Holly”, which is why Men called it Hollin, and *mithril* is Sindarin for “true-silver”. Some words on screen are pure Tolkien. *Adar* is the ordinary Sindarin word for father, and *Annatar* is Tolkien’s own name for Sauron in disguise. Longer lines are reconstructed from Tolkien’s roots, since he left no complete grammar. Our Rings of Power Elvish guide covers the dialogue, and our translator lets you try short Quenya and Sindarin phrases yourself.

The storylines, season by season

Season 1 runs on several threads at once. Galadriel, refusing to give up her hunt for Sauron, is rescued at sea alongside Halbrand and brought to Númenor, where Queen Míriel eventually leads an expedition to the Southlands. There the Silvan Elf Arondir and the healer Bronwyn try to protect the villagers from Adar’s Orcs. Further north, Elrond goes to Khazad-dûm for Celebrimbor’s forge and learns the Dwarves have found mithril, while the Harfoot Nori befriends the Stranger, who fell from the sky in a burning meteor.

Season 2 widens the map. Sauron, now Annatar, works on Celebrimbor in Eregion until the Seven and the Nine are made. In Khazad-dûm, King Durin III grows hard and greedy under the influence of his ring, and his son tries to hold the kingdom together. In Númenor, the struggle between Queen Míriel and Pharazôn ends with Pharazôn taking the crown. The Stranger travels east to Rhûn, meets Tom Bombadil and faces the Dark Wizard, and Adar’s army besieges Eregion.

By the end of season 2, Eregion has fallen, Sauron has the rings he wanted for Dwarves and Men, and the Stranger has chosen his name. In Tolkien’s chronology the fall of Eregion comes in the year 1697 of the Second Age, almost a century after the One Ring was forged; the show reorders those events to keep its characters together on screen.

Watching for the details

Many of the best trivia moments are small. The Harfoots’ wandering life, the Dwarves listening to the stone, a darkened leaf on the tree in Lindon, and the episode titles themselves, such as Udûn and Eldest, all point back to Tolkien’s names. Udûn is the hell of Morgoth; Eldest is what Tom Bombadil calls himself in The Fellowship of the Ring.

If a question trips you up, rewatch the season 1 finale and the season 2 finale. Most of the series’ turning points, from Halbrand’s unmasking to the Stranger’s choice of name, land in those two episodes.

A good habit while watching is to keep two lists: what comes from the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and what the writers added. The first list is short but solid: Annatar, Celebrimbor and Eregion, the Seven and the Nine, Míriel, Pharazôn, Elendil and Isildur, Gil-galad and Elrond. The second is long, and it is where most surprises in the plot come from. Knowing which is which makes the show easier to follow and Tolkien easier to read afterwards.