The summer of 2024 will be especially remembered for the return of two great fantasy series. The first one, based on the literary universe of George R.R. Martin, welcomed the summer season with its new episodes, and the end of the hottest season comes with the return of another fiction based on a classic of the genre's literature. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returns, and its comeback with the second season confirms that this two-year wait has been worth it.

After setting up the pieces on the board in its first chapters, the game begins. Or, rather, a war between good and evil, whose distinction is more than clear. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) believed she could trust Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), but the motivations of the latter were very different from hers, and in the end, we end up discovering that behind that victim role was the identity of Sauron, the Dark Lord.

However, even though the series could stay at the point of presenting this confrontation between two opposing sides, its approach manages to go further, and in its 2nd season, we see how the characters navigate through a morality of different shades of gray. All of them will make their first moves on a path that seems to have been laid out from start to finish, but which will leave us viewers doubting until the end.

Even though we know that Galadriel and Sauron are destined to meet again - as if they were the protagonists of a capricious romantic comedy - we will remain to discover the journey each of them undertakes, observing a kind of campaign to regain freedom and save Middle-earth from darkness. Or, in Sauron's case, to see how he manages to take over everything starting from scratch after being uncovered.

In this 2nd season, the young elf will have to face a heart-wrenching truth: the person she trusted and defended is the personification of Evil. And not only has she failed to defeat him, but she has helped him land and infiltrate society. A doubly painful betrayal for her, because she will have to undo a very serious mistake and make amends both to herself and to those who trusted Halbrand through her.

This will be the starting point of the 2nd season of The Rings of Power, a series that took its time to place us in its universe and introduce us to its characters and that wanted to raise the bar in its new episodes, justifying having taken the time to narrate this fantastic story calmly at the beginning.

In fact, the fact that it did not rush at the beginning is appreciated when watching the first episodes of season 2, which do not hesitate to press the button that triggers the chain reaction of the decisions the protagonists made previously.

No more waiting to find out who the Stranger is (Daniel Weyman) in reality or what happened to Isildur (Max Baldry), because the script provides us with the information we so eagerly wanted and moves the story forward without detours and with much greater agility. This leads us to think that perhaps the first delivery was simply a prologue or an introduction to the explosive chain of events that was about to unfold.

And all this without neglecting the impressive setting, where it is once again appreciated that every dollar invested is justified by what we see on the screen. The universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien is vast and very imposing, but it cannot be said that the creators of The Rings of Power have not pampered this adaptation. 

Even those most reluctant to remain or those who dropped out of the series halfway through could find in this second batch a more welcoming place to escape to. Because if the first season of The Rings of Power was already remarkable, the second has come in even stronger, ready to excite us even more and to give us the action we were asking for. And also to show us that it remains one of the biggest TV releases of recent years.

Perhaps it is not enough to evaluate its return having seen only three episodes, but the truth is that the series has managed to generate enough curiosity again to accompany its characters and suffer with them and for them every week. Or, at least, to see how far they are capable of going in this brutal struggle between good and evil. Moving forward with them in this universe will surely be a journey and a reward in itself.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence