Rings of Power S2E1 Recap: "Elven Kings Under the Sky"

We're in waiting for you. welcome to the podcast of power the only lord of the rings the rings of power podcast that ever existed on the internet ever we're the only ones that did it no one else has been talking about this show and that's why we decided to kick back and take a couple year break because we're just resting on our laurels i think chris you ended up buying yourself a was it a golden throne. Is that correct Yeah, man, boy, I wish I could say that the last time we recorded one of these episodes, four fucking years ago. Two years, two years, right? Oh, wait, no, you're right, four years. No, it is four fucking years, man.

You know, I wish I could say that times have gotten better for a lot of us, but I think like the inhabitants of Middle Earth, maybe not the dark storm clouds are looming on the horizon, because that would have been what we would have said in 2024, but... But it feels like the storm clouds are upon us even in 2026. So I empathize with the people, the good people of Middle Earth, as it were, because for me, I feel their pain. I was going to say something pithy about Mordor, but I forgot it, probably because the tongue that it's spoken in is just not that easy for me to pronounce things. That tongue should never be spoken here.

That's right. Not outside of Mordor. Yeah, I'm sorry. I was confusing August 29th, 2024. with the last time that we recorded, which was 2022. Back in 2024 is when they released the second season of Rings of Power, and we didn't get back to it.

We were a little busy back then, so now it's time to finally pick up the mantle and Come back. We know that season three is looming, so we are back to talk about season two all this time later. Damn, you can take two years between seasons of television and then two more years before we get the next season? This is kind of crazy. Can I just...

Say something here. And you, you said this in the opening, like, well, you know, nobody's been talking about this show. Yeah, you're right. Nobody has like this. This show did not make waves the way the news.

And this is the crazy part. And I actually think it's, it's rather nice that we didn't talk about this in 2024 because it's, Since 2024 even, there's been a fair amount of things announced. And even now in 2026, there's things still being announced. As recently as Stephen Colbert getting his own Lord of the Rings film that he's writing because he's such a massive fan of the series. There has been so much Lord of the Rings stuff announced in the last four years.

And guess how much of it has had to do with this TV show? None of it. Absolutely fucking none of it. People are more excited about Andy Serkis returning to the series and directing a Gollum film than they have been for this TV show. And I will say, for me, it's a bit of a shame because for me, I was pretty excited to come back to this show because I don't remember disliking it when we watched it.

I actually remember rather enjoying it. And when I rewatched the first season, to prepare to talk about the second season with you. By the end of it, I was like, man, I can't wait to see where they go with this, because it's kind of Empire Strikes Back right out of the gate, which, if you know this story that they're telling, there ain't a lot of hope on the horizon. It takes a while to get to that point. And I appreciate that the story is seemingly not happy, happy, fun times, and... where this second season is ultimately, I think, taking us, I think, is further pointing in the direction of, like, again, there will be light at the end of the tunnel, but it's going to be really dark because that's the story that they're telling.

And so I just, like I said, I really am disappointed that this show hasn't got talked about more, but I'm glad that Lord of the Rings is still a thing people are engaging with in a positive way because people still care about Lord of the Rings, even for as bad, because I rewatched it recently to prepare for this, Those Hobbit movies, that third Hobbit movie is interminable still, still. And the fact that smog is effectively in those three movies for like 20 minutes is also a fucking shame because the best part of those movies, other than Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen. and Richard Armitage, and the guy who plays Beauford, the one who played Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is Benedict Cumberbatch. And there's not enough of him in it.

And so it's funny because the movies, even as bad as The Hobbit was received, people still yearn for the return to those Peter Jackson movies, which is why anything Peter Jackson movie related gets such a uproar of interest around it, while something that's still in the same universe, this is canon to those movies, not the books so much, but this is canon to the movies, is not talked about at all. Like, I remember when people got angry about the Black Dwarfs, and that was about it. Then the show kind of was like, people hemmed and hawed, people said, eh, it's kind of unnecessary, but it's fine. I don't necessarily disagree, but I would say that if you want to know more about this time in a visual format, this is going to be the only way you're ever going to get there.

Well, and then I think just a few weeks ago, they announced that they're, they are doing a Silmarillion film or films and that Jackson is returning. I kind of feel bad for Peter Jackson. It's like, he feels like he's locked in as a doom or something. He's just like, you can do other things. Like your early films were freaking fantastic, sir.

Like you do not have to be beholden to the Lord of the Rings for the rest of your life. I mean, unless he's just that massive of a fan. But I know he wanted to get rid of the Hobbit films and give those to Guillermo del Toro. I would have liked to have seen that. I would have liked to have seen what del Toro came up with because what we ended up with was not, like you say, not that great.

There is a, I think there's a four hour fan edit of the three movies and it does such a better job and just moves along and they do a great job of removing the romance plots and just like the whole thing with the, orc with the one arm like all of that stuff is just stripped right out of there which is fantastic. Tariel the least necessary character in lord of the rings history that goes nowhere means nothing and feels like evangeline lily just. Needed a paycheck yeah yeah and man odd. I don't know, like, yeah, those, you know, her in those Ant-Man movies where she's kind of phoning it in, she's kind of phoning it in there. Like, I don't know.

Like, I don't understand the attraction of her as an actress. And I feel like when you have another actress in those movies, Cate Blanchett, who kind of does that same, like, really, I wouldn't say monotone, but like, she's always kind of the same energy with most things she's doing. I just feel like those movies will always be lesser because they're just trying to do too much. And that's the thing about this show that I appreciate, is the show doesn't feel locked in to certain things that the movies felt locked into, those second movies. I think this might actually have the same thing for me, the feeling of the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, where it's like the last couple of things that have been Star Wars were so... atrocious with the sequels the the you know the sequels after four five and six because i would say lord of the rings is in a different spot lord of the rings didn't really sour people with its sequels because there haven't been any it soured everybody with its prequels which star wars had like we'll hold my beer we've already done that like lord of the rings i think has an opportunity with the new things coming out to kind of win people back and i actually think if people sat down with this show, I think the second season, this first episode does enough to like draw you right back into the world.

Cause again, like you, like you said at the opening of this, we are coming to this two years after it comes out. You know, the, the, the show starts the third season opens this year. We're going to be airing this episode, essentially. you know, eight weeks before the new season starts. So, and then we'll be covering the new season live as it comes out, like we did with the first season. So I I'm, I'm hoping that there will be more of a groundswell with this because I, I have this first episode, I think it's really good.

Well, it's funny, you know, you're talking about how people aren't talking about this and I completely agree. Like I belong to the L O T R subreddit and I, I mean, other than talking about the big wolf in door knocker, what is it? Grom? Grom? I'm trying to remember.

They all chant it so many times. Grom, yeah. Yeah, there was a whole thing about Grom on that subreddit for a long time. They still post on there, but it's never about this. It's usually not about The Hobbit.

It's usually about the three original LOTR films. And when the new season of Rings of Power, when the second season came out, I think it made a blip on their radar, but it was very, very slight. And yeah, I feel like this is kind of the redheaded stepchild of the LOTR universe. And yeah, I agree with you. I went back, I rewatched the first season in preparation of talking about the second season.

Just so everybody knows, we are watching these episode by episode, kind of trying to remain pure so we don't give away any spoilers for the next episode or just ruin it for ourselves. Because this is obviously... a very selfish endeavor um we like lord of the rings and we like talking about it so this just gives us an opportunity to talk about this new season of rings power new to us and yeah continue on from there because it's fun so hopefully you will find some fun along with this. So in this first episode, we're talking about Elven Kings Under the Sky, and it came out August 29th, 2024, directed by Charlotte, is it Bronstrom, I believe, and then written by Jennifer Hutchinson. And I seem to remember their names were all over the first season, so this is kind of keeping with those same writer-directors.

And I think other than Ettar, they have kept all of the original actors though i was very confused in this opening when they uh open at the dawn of the second age and i will admit i don't exactly know like what which this age is versus that age yada yada so they've got this guy and they're like hey we're gonna crown soran and they've got attar there and i'm just like wait a second like so he made it back into mortar because the last time we saw soran you know the the former hal brand now soran The last time we saw him, he was entering into Mordor after he had been found out by Galadriel. And I'm like, okay, so he's just going to walk right back in there. And Attar is going to be like, yeah, welcome back.

So I was very confused until I realized. And then the other thing that confused me was this guy doesn't look like the same guy. What is going on here? This guy looks more like Michael Sheen than the actor that played Sauron. I don't know what's happening.

And then when he gets ganked by Attar, I'm like, oh, that's right. Attar said, I killed Sauron. when he was in that village. Okay. Now things are starting to make sense. Yeah.

The recasting of, of the eight, our character from, uh, Joseph Molly to Sam Hayes and Dean, I think was really distracting for me because as someone who watched game of Thrones, uh, Joseph Molly plays, I guess it would be Sean beans brother in the show. who, spoilers for a show that nobody should be watching or cares about, is in the first couple episodes and then doesn't come back until the final season in one of the final episodes and is completely wasted. So it was a little distracting for me that it goes from him in the last season to this actor in this season. I I think it was really smart to open with a flashback to the second age because again like some people who watch that first season that weren't super Lord of the Rings nerds may not have realized that Sauron has been around forever but it should be made even more obvious by the opening of this season.

But he's been around a lot longer, like a lot, a lot longer, like a lot longer, like at the beginning of the second age is when he was around initially. And that's a long time before we were saying last season. So I think it's really smart to open it with a flashback just to see like this has been going on for a really long time. Like this isn't just... And again, like it's been going on, you know, from the first stage even.

So that's, that's the other thing about this story is like this, we're seeing like things a thousand years, whatever, you know, into the, into the timeline of this universe. So I think it does a good, good job of reinforcing. This is a really big conflict, bigger than just a couple of characters that were interacting with cons. Absolutely. Yeah.

And I, I'm kind of curious why the orcs really don't like this version of Sauron, and they're the ones that, along with the help of Etar, take him out. And just that there's the one, I thought for sure, we see someone with a knife behind their back, and I was like, ooh, is that like an elf in disguise or something? Like, ooh, who's in the crowd that really hates Sauron, because obviously everybody else likes him? No, it's an orc. An orc is the one that stabs him in the back, and Then they all pretty much, you know, after Attar points down the crown and gets him right in the head, they just curb-stomp this guy into almost oblivion, other than they don't take care of the blood.

The black blood of Sauron leaks out. I mean, I kind of like that image of him just laying there, like the... The guy, the civil servant in Beetlejuice, who's like, how do I look? I feel a little flat. The guy that got ran over by the car.

It's just his face. And then his body kind of all spread out and blood just pouring everywhere. And then that blood decides to come back. Kind of reminded me a little bit of Pickle Rick. The way that the blood takes over that rat.

I was hoping that he would have the rat legs and rat arms and make a little spear. But instead, he kind of turns into Swamp Thing for a little bit before he ends up grabbing a body and doing almost like an egger from Men in Black, takes over somebody else's physical form. It reminded me a lot of a villain you encounter very early on in Resident Evil 5. That's like a huge mass of like, not like squids, but like snakes and like writhing things. And it's like, it's just kind of gross because it's like this amorphous humanoid writhing shape.

And I think it's really interesting that it like, we don't like, Sauron's just pure evil. He's the devil. He's pure dag-nag evil. He's the devil, right? Like he is the devil who walks them, you know, and he's going to deceive, you know, I mean, again, not to get like biblical, but you know, J.R.R.

Tolkien was inspired by a whole host of, including mythology and mythology has a lot of this kind of stuff in it, you know, characters that are gods walking amongst humans and Sauron's only way of becoming powerful again is to go do the devil's work himself. Like, and, you know, deceive. And so in the first season, he deceived not just Galadriel, but the audience. And so now the fun of this season is we just get to see Sauron being a piece of shit, which, you know what? I just want to say this.

I'm so fucking here for it because it's just like all the other kinds of things that I watch. Like, it's like the Sopranos in a way. It's like Game of Thrones in a way, like House of the Dragons specifically. It's like Sauron is a terrible character. doing terrible thing we know in the end he'll get his comeuppance because if you've seen the Lord of the Rings you see what happens to Sauron and unless there's well I guess there's three Lord of the Rings things coming up there's The Hunt for Gollum, which is a prequel. There's the Stephen Colbert thing.

And then there's that other movie that's going to have Sean Astin in it, where it's like a post the Lord of the Rings movies coming out. So that'll be the first time. Yeah. And it's going to be with his daughter, I think, like Samwise's daughter, unless it got canceled, unless I'm crazy. But there's not a lot of stuff about post the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

There's very little. I mean, Tolkien was working on a very short thing that got taken, not taken away, but taken to the grave with him. He didn't do much with it. It was a very short amount of writing. So we don't know about much that happens with Sauron after he's defeated.

So we know where this is going. So it's more just we're along for the ride. Now, with a lot of these characters, a lot of these characters are going to be in Lord of the Rings without older actors playing. So it's just fun because Sauron, I think, is for me the thing I'm most excited for about watching the show. It's just I didn't expect that it was going to be a show about Sauron.

But here we go. Like it's seemingly a third of the show is just Sauron, which I'm totally on board for. Looking at the BBC on last season, it definitely set me up for knowing that we were just going to concentrate pretty much on Sauron, Galadriel, a little bit of Elrond. No dwarves in this episode. Not at all.

None of the stuff with Theo and his mom and the elf protector of the Southlands. We were just talking about Sauron, and then we're talking about the two Harfoots and... The person that we will soon know as Gandalf, I believe. So still known as the stranger in this one. Are you sure?

Are you sure? Are you sure? Yeah. It feels like it. Yeah.

It's gotta be. I'm pretty darn sure. Yeah. Yeah. And again, to the point that I made earlier, I didn't even see a spoiler at any point saying that that was fucking Gandalf.

At any point, it's like season two reveals, like didn't see anything about it anywhere. So I'm with you. I agree. It's probably Gandalf, but I never saw a damn article, anything from any pop culture website say anything any more than you did clearly. So yes, possibly Gandalf.

Gandalf question mark. I'm just curious when this timeline is. They're talking about the dawn of the second age. How long does it take for this new Sauron to reconstitute? Also, because it feels very much like after he reconstitutes, he goes out wandering like Cain from Kung Fu and ends up running across this group of humans who are basically trying to set sail It sounds like they're trying to go to the same shores where the elves live.

They're like, okay, we're leaving this place. And that's how we see him end up on that boat that gets destroyed. So this first episode of the second season gives us just a little bit of backstory of Sauron version one, the four-odd-waif version of Sauron, who's played by Jack Loudon. That's technically like Sauron version. Well, there's him.

And yeah, I know that there's another Sauron out there. But then also, the, it shows us the origin story of this Charlie Vickers Sauron. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, but it's like how much time has passed because. A couple thousand years, it would seem. Okay. If you say so. So he's just wandering around in this Charlie Vickers body for all that time.

No, it took that long to get out of that. I think, and again, just looking at the stuff that I've read, that fade to black where you just see the puddle of blood and then re-fade in, that's meant to be a couple thousand. Oh, wow. Okay. Because assume that no rats or anything wandered near that puddle and that rat wandering near that puddle was completely arbitrary.

All right. All right. And so it took a couple thousand years for that to happen. Ant-Man was more lucky. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, he managed to get out of the Quantum Realm pretty quickly. That rat, though. Oh, yeah. They should be making MCU merch for that rat. Well, I think they're all offshoots of Pizza Rat, correct?

Once Pizza Rat came around, we were all about, okay, how are rats going to save the world? They helped out Ant-Man. He's the one that came up with the time travel thing. But then, on the other side, I guess it's kind of the unfortunate rat situation where It's, you know, reconstituting Sauron. Okay, so it takes a few thousand years for all that to happen.

To be fair, the rat in the end leads to Sauron being destroyed. Because Sauron would have been, I guess Sauron was already destroyed, to be fair. Mm-hmm. But one might assume if not a rat, something else. That's the thing.

I love that Sauron is just so motivated. Sauron like never say die, you know, like Sauron refuses to go away. And I love that as a storytelling device, which is why to go back to what I was mentioning earlier, we don't know if J.R.R. Tolkien wasn't going to bring Sauron back again. Right.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because, I mean, there's there's always going to be evil in this world no matter what. Why wouldn't it just be Sauron again? Evil takes many forms, I think is the overlying nature of at least this first episode.

And I love that Elrond is just like, Galadriel, what the fuck? Elrond is so... Robert Aramayo as an actor has one of the best disappointed faces I've ever seen. He has like resting disappointed face as an actor. And he is just constantly disappointed in Galadriel, which I mean, only go down from here.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, that whole situation where now they have created the Three Rings, and she realizes or she finds out who Sauron really is, who Halbrand is, that he is Sauron, but she's so tempted. She just is probably one of the weakest characters. Well, one of the three weakest characters in this whole episode, if not this whole series, where She sees that ring and she wants that.

And I know there's the tie, of course, to her brother's blade and everything that they use that to help make the ring, make the alloy, that little piece of mithril that they got from Durin IV. Okay, great. And the stones, those aren't the. Simirels but i don't know where those stones are coming from but she just cannot resist even though she knows it came from evil she's just like well he never just touched these it's okay everything's fine you know we need to save the elven kind we're going to put these rings on it everything's going to be hunky dory and it's just like you are kidding yourself in the worst way lady But I love this whole thing of Elrond being like, nope, you are not getting these rings to the point where he does a Richard Kimball and jumps off of this waterfall.

Thank you. We have you, John. I was like, someone should recut that scene with him, with Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Aramayo. These rings are evil. I don't care.

I don't care. I really appreciate the, again, we have such a strong, evil character with Halbrand, and then a character who we are supposed to like with Galadriel, who, to your point, I can't help but dislike as a character. Oh, yeah, now. Because she kind of reminds me, well, she reminds me a lot of Christopher from The Sopranos, where it's like, I'm supposed to feel something for you, like, in a relatable way, maybe, or sympathy, but all I am is just irritated at you as a character. Because you're so awful and you're so weak-willed.

And I love that it's that thing of like, we're going to save the elves, but it's like, but you're not. You had your time and your time has passed. Why are you holding on to the, why are you holding on so hard? Why can't you just slip peacefully into oblivion? One is funny because now when I see her, you know, like the first time we see her in this episode, she is chasing after Elrond, literally reaching out and trying to grab this bag that contains the three elven rings.

And I'm thinking about that, and I'm thinking about when Frodo offers her the One Ring, and she has that moment of, you know, I will become a great and powerful queen! Oh, shut her! Da-da-da! And it's like, okay, that was probably a real test for her. And she says, like, okay, I pass.

Like, she's okay at that point. But it's like, you see her all these thousands of years ago where she didn't have the will to resist this, where she is just... well, yeah, I know that Sauron is evil, but gosh, we need this, and we have to have these rings, and gets so mad at Elrond when he, like I said, yeets himself off of a waterfall, and then she's right there trying to lead the charge, trying to get him back, going all around, trying to find him and everything, and then poor Elrond goes to, I don't know what his relationship is with Círdan, this guy from, oh, is it Grey Havens, I think it is? Yeah. And it's like, okay, you are so wise and so great. And, oh, thank you so much.

I think he might've been a former mentor of Elrond. And then he sends them out on a ship like, hey, go through these in the deepest part of the entire ocean, which we know isn't going to work because the fish is going to find that and it's going to swim upstream and some, you know, Harfoot is going to find it or something. But yes, goes out on that boat and just ends up sailing right back. Just rolling it back. Okay, Gary.

He also cannot resist the temptation of the rings. Is that one of those other characters that you were mentioning that was weak? Yes. Yeah. Because he looks at that ring and can't do it.

Can't do the job. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. Yeah. That'd be like if Nettie, you know, came back to shore with Fredo still in the boat.

It'd be like if Frodo didn't toss the, oh, wait. Yeah. Exactly. Well, yeah. These characters just, you know, between Cure Don...

And they don't even give the ring to Celebor, which is pretty bad. And I think he's pretty insulted by that. So Cirdan gets one, Galadriel gets one, and then High King Gil-Galad gets one. And yeah, it's pretty sad when they put those rings on. Of course, they think they're doing good, but we all know that it's just feeding into Sauron and his master plan, which is fucking diabolical, man.

There's a reason why he's the Dark Lord. Well, and boy, by the end of the episode, we sure figure out why, what we find out as the audience. And again, for those who didn't know where the show was going, this is where the show finally kind of shows its hand. It's taken an entire season to get to it. But now if you don't know what the point of this series is, now you will see that this is how, not only is it an origin story for a lot of the characters that you see in the original series or original trilogy of books with, again, like you said, gandalf or again a frodo or frodo adjacent character a frodo frodo uh samwise adjacent frodo adjacent and gandalf uh so gandalf has been up to this for a while now so we're finding out like these things you know it's like poetry it rhymes it's uh these things have had been happening over and over again the stuff that's exciting for me as much as i enjoy the the Gandalf, if he is Gandalf character.

I enjoy the stuff with the elves more and the stuff with the ring more because it doesn't feel like retreading old ground. And yes, I know Frodo and Gandalf and Samwise didn't journey out together in the original trilogy, but So, okay, it's maybe not treading old ground as much as maybe just treading somewhat old ground with new shoes. It's kind of hitting some of the same beats, but that's probably the comfort food part of this for some people, I would assume. Because there are stakes with that story, but it's clear that this character's not going to die. It's Gandalf.

We know when Gandalf died. Well, but does he? It's like Sauron. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, from what I understand, these beings are sent from the heavens.

They're basically angelic beings. These wizard characters are basically their version of angels. So they are immortal. So I guess it makes sense for Gandalf the Grey to come back as Gandalf the White. But in this one, right now, he is the stranger and he is Iztar.

At least that's what they think. Because I forgot about those three witches actually making a mistake and thinking that he was Sauron. in that previous you know the the finale of the first season and my wife forgot about how he turns them into the three witches into butterflies through his uh use of their staff and this whole episode he's like trying to remember if i have a you know what this thing is he's having dreams about having a staff and the staff that he he dreams of looks very much like a like a shepherd's crook i would. Say well isn't it the staff that he has in the movie. I don't think so, because that's got that cool. But doesn't the one that he's seeing have a crystal in it?

It may, but it looked more like it was just a hook to me. It looked very plain Jane. It didn't look like it had a pipe holder whatsoever. I was going to say, because I guess, you know, my thinking was that this is if the first season was the story of who is he and where did he come from? This season is how does he become Gandalf?

Right. I'm assuming is or how does he realize he's Gandalf is probably a better way of putting it. That's my assumption. Right. You know.

Yeah. Kind of reminded me very much of Moses and his staff that could turn into a snake. The way that he, you know, it's moving around in his vision and everything. You see he's kind of dreaming about that while he's walking with Nori. And I was glad that they brought back Poppy as well.

That whole thing was good. And then this masked rider that's following them around. And I like the double blind thing where you think they're going after the masked person, but then it ends up being Poppy. So the masked person is still out there. And then eventually you see that person, plus you see the reconstitution of Just one of the three witches.

I don't know if they couldn't hire the other two back, but the main one who was the most striking, kind of the most gender-fluid looking of the three, they come back. And yeah, it's like, oh yeah, this guy's Istar, and we don't know where Sauron is, basically. It's interesting that they can't really sense him. But then we get to see Ciaran Hines as the Dark Wizard. So far in this episode, that's his only name, is Dark Wizard.

Yeah. By the way, thank God for Kieran Hines, huh? Oh, I love him. I was like, hey, look, it's Sauron. I mean, Dark Wizard.

Dark Wizard. Yes. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. I was like, is he going to turn into Sauron? Because I'm not sure.

I mean, it's one of those things where, like, I'm assuming the show will meter that information out the more we watch it, I would assume. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And So, so much of this episode is, you know, them, Nori and Gandalf.

I do like how he explodes the tree and they end up, she's like, oh, I'm, I'm really hungry. And then they end up eating the cockroaches that were living in the tree or the bugs. That was pretty nice. Yeah. She just doesn't give a shit.

She's like, oh, cool. Protein. Nice. I mean, I really love the three of them together. I think that they're probably, for me, the core heart of the show.

If you're looking for the sympathetic leads of the show, I think they are the sympathetic leads of the show. I will say the other thing it definitely reminds me of, and you tell me if it reminds you of this. I don't know if this is something you have any exposure to, but... It reminds me a little bit also of like Doctor Who. Oh, yeah.

It's like, I don't know my name. Talking to my companions. I have like magic, sort of. Like, it reminds me of Doctor Who. And I'm just like, you know what?

Again, like, okay, if we're going to lean into the things that have been popular since the TV or since the movies came out, that this could kind of draw inspiration from as a kind of TV style or format or framing device, like something Doctor Who adjacent. Not a bad idea. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, and you know, you have three characters, you know, a main and his two companions.

Yeah, it's a little Doctor Who adjacent. Just a little. I can see that. I really like this whole thing of, it's because as I'm watching this as an audience member, I'm like, oh, Charlie Vickers, he's Sauron. Like, I'm just screaming that in my head every single time he's on screen now that it's been revealed with the past season. but then I'm watching this going, Oh yeah, nobody else knows other than Galadriel and the elves, but a tar doesn't know none of the, you know, the South men that are hanging out with the tar knows that none of the orcs know that.

So he's just playing them the whole time and just pretending that he's still this King character. Cause when they called them your majesty, I was like, well, yeah, it's Soran. Of course he's the kid. And I'm like, wait, no, no, no. They don't even know that.

And the way that he's trying to play them and like, if you let me go, I'll go talk with the elves because I'm down with them and they can help us out here with this stuff and do our bidding. And I'm like, wow, okay, that's pretty remarkable that he's just able to manipulate them. But yeah, to your point, he's the devil, man. He's the lord of lies. And we're just going to get that over and over again, the way that he promises things to people, but there's always a catch.

Well, and, you know, at the end of this episode, we see where it's going. We see what that payoff is. We see that he has, in fact, gone to Celebrimbor and he is now going to be the inspiration behind and driving factor to create the rings. Exactly. Well, that's what I'm very curious about.

Like, is he going to go in there and say, hey, these other people that the The elves now have the rings. If you want more Mithril to make more, like even to make one for yourself, Celebrimbor, because I think he's really offended that he didn't get one of the rings. At least that's my impression is that Celebrimbor thought he was in line for one of these. And plus his whole purpose is making things. So I'm like, okay, is he going to want to make more of this stuff?

I mean, this wonderful metal that, you know, he was shown, there is no more of it that's available for them. Is it going to turn into, let's go talk to the dwarves, get more of this Mithril, and you can make, in exchange, you'll make five rings for them, right? Yeah, that's right. I do really appreciate the music in this episode. I think the last episode of the first season ended with the Song of the Rings, and I can't even remember which of the movies... ends with that i want to say fellowship but it was nice to have that back and then you hear like the musical motif i mean the whole that was the thing i loved the most about the movies and what they kind of really fucked up when it came to the the hobbit movies was the use of musical motifs you know like all you had to hear was that thin violin sound and you're just like oh the ring you know that and you're like i'm right there i know that we're talking about the ring now.

And I honestly think that this second season's opening really does hit those Lord of the Rings moments more for me than that first season. And I think to your point, this time I feel like the use of the leitmotifs in the music, I actually feel earned. And I don't know, maybe I'm just optimistic. maybe I just want to enjoy something for a change on television that's an adaptation of something else or a furtherance of something else because a lot of the stuff that I've watched that's like this or adjacent to this, Last of Us, Mandalorian and Grogu. I'm trying to think what else I mean to some extent Fallout like they've been varying degrees of successful and I just want one of these things to be like really good and that kind of like sets a watermark for an adaptation or a further and show of that does something more in a universe.

And I know Andor for Star Wars has kind of set that bar really high, but I'd like a non Star Wars thing to set that bar really high. And I'm hoping maybe this second season and, you know, upcoming third season are going to do that. Cause they were really good actors in this, in this show, Ben Daniels, Robert Aramayo. Um, I mean, uh, Charlie Vickers, like you mentioned, like, um, Pretty much everybody. The principal cast is great.

I mean, the actors that we didn't get to see are great as well. Like the actors who play the dwarves or like you mentioned the other elves. I just, I really hope that maybe the third season people will come around on this show. Cause it's kind of, I mean, in the second season, I can't imagine like what's, what is unfairly maligning this show at this point. It's not being advertised on the front page.

Let's put it that way. So it almost feels like it's not being given any sort of importance either, which is a shame. Let's go ahead and take a break and play an interview with the person who does the score for the show. That is Bear McCready, and we'll be back with that right after these brief messages. ¶ ¶. I've only spoken to a few composers over the years, and I'm so curious about your process and how you actually approach things in order to breathe even more life into a project.

How do you approach your projects, and when do you actually come in? I come in when I'm invited. I'm like a vampire, okay? It really is up to the filmmaker how they want to collaborate. So part of my approach is being flexible to work with how the storytellers want to work.

Sometimes they know that and other times they don't. So it's a matter of reading the room. How do I prefer to work? Look, I like being able to have some time to digest ideas and think about things. That back burner processing sometimes takes a while.

My mentor was Elmer Bernstein, one of the great film composers of all time, who scored The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, Far From Heaven, Ghostbusters, Animal House. You go on. Robot monster. Robot monster. The deep cut.

Nicely done. Women of the moon. So he used to say that the movie just tells him what it needs. All he had a short answer for your question. He said, I watched the movie usually about a dozen times and it just, it tells me what it needs.

And then I do that. Okay. So there you go. That was Elmer's process. There, there is something about it.

That's very intuitive. Sometimes it comes very quickly and, Having more time doesn't necessarily yield a better product. I've written some of my best scores incredibly fast, just partly because they're so inspiring. I get the idea and I'm ready to go. Other times it involves more R & D, so to speak.

So my approach is ultimately very flexible, but it's all about the character and the story. Look, if I don't understand your character and your story, I'm the wrong guy for the job. I... have to know what you want the audience to feel. And character and story are the two ways we make people feel something in a story. And if there's a way in there, then I can write music that supports that.

On a project like Rings of Power, it's an entire TV series. So are you watching everything as it's being done? Do they invite you to set? Or is it more, okay, here's everything, Bear. Go to it.

Or hopefully not this. Here's an episode. Good luck. You'd be surprised how often it's that. in television. And that's okay.

There's advantages and disadvantages to everything. One of the advantages to doing it an episode at a time is I get to have the experience you have. This is how I did Battlestar Galactica. I didn't talk to them about what was coming. I won't spoil any of Battlestar Galactica.

I highly recommend anyone following you, go check it out. But episodes would come along and I would go, oh my god, that just happened? I'm so excited. I'm just writing music right away. I don't work on Rings of Power that way.

Rings of Power, I feel the need to know everything that is happening, everything that is going to happen this season, what's going to happen next season. I am relatively informed and it helps me make decisions as I'm telling the story. With Rings of Power, I started with character themes. I wrote 17 character themes before I started scoring a second of footage and that be a better part of a month in season one. And then in season two, I had to write five or six new themes.

And so that's usually how I start. I get material that I feel works for certain characters or certain events. And then I hit the ground running and open up each scene and actually start getting in there and really writing the actual score that's needed. Now, you mentioned Battlestar Galactica, and obviously that was an existing property before you got to it, and it was that wonderful reboot of the series or reimagining of it. When it comes to something like Rings of Power, how much do you need to pay attention to the Howard Shore?

Because that was a pre-existing property as well. Do you pay homage to that, or do you just say, that was the movies, this is the TV show, I'm doing my own thing? I'm predominantly doing my own thing. partly because we were so fortunate to have Howard Shore write our main title theme. So I thought there's this fantastic connection to the legacy of the Peter Jackson films that allows us to catapult out and tell our story. And I was grateful for that.

So ultimately, look, I'm not Howard Shore. I couldn't write in his style if I had a gun to my head. So I have no choice but to use the voice that I have to tell you the story that were telling. So in that way, I woke up every morning and just thought, I want to write a theme for Harf. What do I want it to sound like?

I want to write a theme for Elrond. This Elrond, not Hugo Weaving. I love that dude, but this is a different arc. So that was really liberating. If anything, I found season one, I've gotten this question a lot, and season one was really I don't want to say not a challenge, but that aspect of it wasn't a challenge.

I just started writing and really just thought whatever happens, it was season two that I felt the pressure. Not coming from Howard Shore, from me, because suddenly I had written these 17 themes and I was pretty proud of them and people liked them. And suddenly I had to write new themes that could sit alongside them. And I thought I've written themes for these areas like Khazad-dûm, and Numenor, and people love those tracks. Now I've got to write Rune.

And I thought, oh my God, how am I going to match those other ones? So for a split second on season two, I felt the pressure. I think everyone thought I felt in season one and didn't, but it was just living in my own shadow. And of course it's all mind games, right? Like I just had to trust in myself and do what I did last time, which is wake up in the morning and write music that I would want to hear.

Now the stereotype is that You in front of an orchestra with a big screen in the back and everybody's playing while the property is playing in the background. Is that still the case today or is that an old school thought? It depends on who you're talking to. Everybody has their different ways. I don't do that.

Here's why. The reason to have the footage up, there's a couple of reasons. If your filmmakers are there and you want them to get that cell phone shot of their footage, it's great for them, right? If you are off click, meaning every take, the orchestra is completely loose, you need to see it and line it up. I don't like leaving it to chance.

Okay, when I write, I not only map everything out to a click, but I do this. I'm sitting in my studio and I'm conducting. And I think to myself, I want to slow down there. I work it all out down to the frame in advance. And so when we're with the orchestra, I find if there's no one there from the production, and very often showrunners are juggling a million things.

They've already approved my demos. There isn't anybody there that would want to sit back and enjoy it. And on top of that, the security concerns of sending this footage around. That would mean we are transferring an episode of Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power, six months in advance to some studio. We trust our studios, but why even take the risk?

So I have found I don't. I like to have everything mapped out in advance. I don't leave my tempos up to chance. They're perfect. But I have in the past, and it's wonderful, of course.

I love the experience. But there is something that's more theatrical about that, meaning I do that almost more often in front of an audience in a concert than I actually need to do in my job. I imagine you've done a lot of concerts like that where you have been up at the front and had the footage playing. I've done quite a few. I'll tell you the most exciting one was God of War.

When we debuted God of War, I had a big orchestra. They let me play a suite, then the curtain lifted and we went into the game, but it was the game. Someone had a controller in their hand playing it. Okay, so talk about not being on click. I'm like, what?

Okay. He's turning that way. Oh, he started to fight the bad guys. Is he winning? Like I keep vamping you guys, you know, that, that was a thrill, a total tightrope act.

So the other stereotype that I have in my head is you in front of a piano, like guy smiley and you're there and then you, okay, let me write down that little note. Okay. That, Oh, yep. Any truth to that one these days, or is it all right there on that computer? I have no nostalgia for writing anything by hand.

I was born in 1979. I got my first computer in 1989, maybe 90. So I was like 11 years old. I was sequencing material. I'm classically trained.

I can write. I have done it. I read music, but it's too slow. It's too slow for me. So I'll tell you the most important tool in my writer's arsenal has actually become the cell phone.

The voice memo. I will sing little ideas as I get them as I'm walking down the street or I'm doing dishes. Something will come to me and I can just quickly sing it. And that has become where I get these spontaneous ideas. But I do find that being able to lay out a sequencer and have all my tracks, have all my sounds, when I sit down to be creative, it is a digital environment.

Nothing beats it. When you're coming up with those little fragments of things, is this like, this is the project I'm working on, or this is just an idea that I had and I'll try to fit it in someplace later on. I have found mostly that ideas come to me all the time and it's hard to fit them into things. It's actually why I released my first solo record, The Singularity, this year, which much of that was born from ideas that were just floating around and there was no place to put them. Because I'm such a reactive composer, when I look at footage, Hopefully, this happens when I go to the movies, which is terrible.

But let's say I'm working. I look at footage in progress that somebody wants me to write music for. I start hearing things right away. I don't start thinking, huh, what in my catalog of sketches would fit here? My brain doesn't work that way.

I'm already ahead of that. I've skipped that step. What does this. Need, right? And I start imagining things.

And then it's so much faster. to write what I'm thinking. Sometimes when I'm stuck, I will, when I'm at my wits end, I'll go, all right, let me go into the file of weird, abandoned ideas and look for some inspiration. And that does happen from time to time. But usually those end up turning into symphonic heavy metal songs. Somehow every composer that i've ever run across has either purposefully or inadvertently plagiarized themselves or they'll play with a theme and then they'll pick it up a little bit later and just give it a new twist to it have you ever found yourself doing that and being like.

Ah i'm the wrong person to ask you gotta ask my fans mike because the answer is absolutely not because for me it's The emotional connection has so much baggage. Once I go, oh, that's the theme from the Sarah Connor Chronicles. I can't un-hear it. Can't, right? So I, while there's nothing wrong with that, I would say, no, I don't do that.

But now I challenge your followers to go find 50 examples of me doing that. And I'm sure they're correct. I have yet to run into an instance that for me, That's the thing I like about your scores is that they are so distinct and that either the instrumentation is completely different or just the way that it comes across. I don't tend to hear a score and go, oh, that's Bear. That's definitely him.

I appreciate that. I'm always trying to learn new things. I didn't know anything about taiko drums when I started Battlestar. I didn't know anything about Nordic folk music when I started God of War. I didn't know anything about 17th century pirate music when I started Black Sails.

And then I learned these new sounds and new colors and new melodies and harmonies and I apply it. And I find myself frustrated when people will say, I heard two seconds of Black Sails and I knew it was you. And I say, how? How did you know that? I went out of my way to make the weirdest thing I could.

It sounds nothing like anything I've done. But I do think It is my voice, not my literal voice. But the one thing I can't get around is the filter that is my brain. Everything's going through my brain, my lens. So when I study Nordic folk music, it still comes out my brain.

And there's something that is probably permanently stamped there. My influence will always be something. But I do always, I always try to learn something new. I don't want to say I strive for my music to sound different, but I try to learn something new. And I'm almost sort of amazed when people say that they hear something that I've done and they can tell it's me.

And I really don't know what it is they're hearing, but I find it fascinating. Many of my favorite composers have their signatures. It's like putting in the Wilhelm scream. The thing about the Wilhelm scream is, you know, my daughter, I told my daughter about it when she was four. And for the last six years, I mean, she's 10 now, she's always like, there it is.

There it is. And I'm almost like, I regret telling her because it's like, yeah, it's everywhere. And actually, now that you're aware of it, you're annoying me. You know, can we just enjoy Temple of Doom, please? When it comes to your bigger projects, your movies, your TV shows, your video games, these things, I don't imagine you can work on two projects at the same time, or can you?

I work on a lot of stuff, man. I have a lot of things going. I find, A, I thrive from multitasking. I was on a couple of shows that ran a long time, beyond 100 episodes. Walking Dead, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Outlander still.

That is present tense. I am on. So I find that I love writing lush, lyrical, romantic bagpipe music. All right. That's Outlander.

And after a while, it's like, that's cool. But man, I got to go do some horror music. Switch gears. I need to do some superhero stuff. I've never had the problem of ideas cross-pollinating because it's almost like they're completely different muscles.

That's a good analogy. When you're working out, you do arms for a little bit and then you don't do arms for an hour straight. You switch and do legs. You switch and do abs. And then you come back and do a little more arms.

That's the way my brain works. I also have a substantial team at my multimedia company, Sparks and Shadows, that help me. When I'm on a deep dive on Rings of Power, I'll say, guys, I need your help on Foundation this season or Percy Jackson, both of which I ended up crediting my studio. It says themes by Bear, music by Sparks and Shadows, because I ended up deep into Rings of Power that I was just handed off some of that stuff completely. But I'm still involved.

I'm still listening. It's very rare on a given day that from sunup to sundown, I only think about one project. That's pretty rare. You talked a little bit about some of the challenges of rings of power, especially having yourself as the elephant in the room, as it were like, Oh geez, now how do I come up with this? But what were some of the other challenges or challenges of just doing a show overall?

Because it seems like it's going to be a tough gig. Usually when I started a show, I got to write three or four themes. Sometimes you're going to, it's just one or two hero theme, the villain theme it's basic, the love theme. And when I started, Watching the cuts of Rings of Power, I made this list. And I was trying to make it as compact as possible.

I want to write the fewest number of themes. Part of me was like, there's six story arcs, that's it. Six themes, that's it. But then I was like, Khazad-dûm definitely needs a theme. Prince Durin needs a theme.

Because he goes against his father. That has to be minimally two themes for the dwarves, right? So on a tour, the list came out to 17. And I thought, that's madness. That's madness.

And I couldn't condense it any further. And then I thought, all right, I'll try it. But it worked. The challenge is the scope. Writing 17 different ideas and not overlapping, that was quite a challenge.

And one of the ways to set myself up to succeed, I set up some guardrails. I wanted it to be possible for you to hear two notes of a theme and know which theme it was after only two notes in the context of Rings of Power. So I made a chart of what the opening interval is. Galadriel leaps up a minor seven. That's the only theme that's going to do that.

The stranger leaps up a major seven. Sauron leaps down a minor third. Okay. I think I did fudge that one. Numenor also leaps down a minor third.

Bad example. But you can see there's only so many ways I want to start a theme. I mapped it out to the point that I was happy with it. You hear the perfect fifth, and that's Nori. And you hear the flat sixth, that's Rondir and Bronwyn.

And that took a hot minute. That's why it took me a month, man, to write just those themes. Because there's nothing worse than writing a theme, liking it, and then you get started. Maybe two episodes in, you realize that theme is the same as some other theme. Right.

Or what has happened to me before. I write a theme for the hero and theme for somebody else. And then the hero has some terrible thing happen or their moral convictions questioned. Take the hero theme and set it in minor. Oh, that's a cool idea.

When you set it in minor, it becomes the other theme. You realize they were the same theme. They were just in a different mode. They had one note that was different. So I'm really careful in trying to figure all that out.

That was a beast. I'm not going to lie. I've never had to do that before. Before we depart, it's Don Music is the composer Muppet I couldn't think of before. I respect his process, man.

Mr. McCreary, thank you so much for your time. This was such a pleasure talking with you. Hey, thanks, Mike. This was a lot of fun.

Thank you. All right. We are back and talking about rings of power, or I should say the full thing, right? The Lord of the rings, the rings of power. So many rings in there and yeah, we're, we're up to three so far.

So when we come back next week, Maybe there'll be more. I don't know. I'm very curious what's where we're going to be taking this season, Chris. Well, there's a less than 0% chance there will be more rings because so far we've only seen a handful. And per the beginning of the Lord of the Rings, we know that there are many hands, several hands worth.

No, I'm excited. I actually didn't watch the this season on. I just I skipped it. I didn't even watch it. I could have.

I know that it's right there at the end of this first episode, but I skipped over it. Didn't want to know. No, no, I It's almost nice that the, you know, the fans aren't talking about this all the time because, you know, there were other shows, like it took me a little while to go from season one of Dexter to season two. And before I. had a chance to even watch one episode of season two, I had a bunch of things ruined for me. I know nothing about the second season of Rings of Power, which is fantastic.

I'm really glad that the fans don't talk about it all the time. Yeah, no, and I'm pretty sure at some point Robert Aramayo's Elrond develops a Tourette's condition, I believe. It just starts cursing. Really? No, I wish.

That's the movie he was nominated for this past year for an Oscar. The one that the actor said dropped the N-word at the Baptist. The real life person. Which, I mean, hey, you get a guy with Tourette's in a room. Yeah, maybe it would have been good to turn off his mic or yeah.

Put them in a quiet place. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Or something.

I just, yeah. So whenever I see Robert Armao now, that's all I can frankly think of is that, uh, I think the movie is called, I swear it's really good. Um, but yeah, the actors even involved in this show since the last time that they were doing this show, they've, They've all come a long way, especially, like I said, Robert Aramayo, who I think is more well-known now as an actor than he was. I mean, I think he played Ned Stark on one of the flashbacks in Game of Thrones, and that was all I knew him from before this show. So I don't know.

I'm excited to see everybody in this show become much more... in my mind, well-known to me as someone who watches these shows because I feel a little out of touch with a lot of really good new actors because movies don't necessarily cast a lot of new people in things all the time. There's actually an incentive to not do that in a lot of ways, especially if you want to guarantee making money. So I'm enjoying seeing new faces, new actors, and I'm with you. I can't wait to see where the rest of the season goes. Well, Chris, when we're not talking about The Lord of the Rings, where are we talking about things?

We are over at weirdingwaymedia.com where everything that we work on can be found. We just wrapped up a Patreon exclusive show called Rankin on Bond, which can be found at mine and Mike's Patreons, which is patreon.com slash culturecast or patreon.com slash projectionbooth. But other than those two things, or two places to find the same thing, I guess, and technically you can find one of our other shows soon to be on a feed, but ad free on our patreons that's where everything is is a weirdingwaymedia.com so that's the singular place for all the things we work. On all right until we are back and talking about the second episode of the second season of the lord of the rings rings of power definitely take it easy