The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Recap: The Long Walk

The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power
Episode 3
Season 3 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★
Previous Next
Previous Episode
Next Episode

If you’ve spent the past two episodes wondering what Gandalf was up to, wonder no more. The opening of this third episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s third season puts the focus on Rhûn, the desert in the east of Middle-earth. This is the last major Rings of Power setting to debut this season, so let’s do one final bit of catching up.

• This one’s actually pretty simple: As the second season drew to a close, the Wizard Previously Known as the Stranger, now known as Gandalf (Daniel Weyman), did battle with the Dark Wizard (Ciarán Hinds) in the valley occupied by the Stoors, a halfling group who’ve long called the region their home. By the time the battle is over, however, they’ve been turned into nomads, their valley having been destroyed after Gandalf refused to become an ally to the Dark Wizard and take on Sauron. On their way out, accompanied by Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy (Megan Richards), they gave Gandalf his name, a corruption of “Grand Elf.”
• Also, Gandalf has been hanging out with Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), a bright spirit in a dark world who seems to have some wisdom to impart.

So what’s going on in Rhûn? Nothing good, it would seem. The Dark Wizard remains in control, and, if anything, his following has expanded in the five-year gap between seasons despite his inability to use his magic to accomplish what seems like ought to be a relatively simple task: growing a flower that used to be plentiful in Rhûn. “Once I have the Ring, everything will be as it once was,” he says to one acolyte, though it seems like he’s really speaking to himself. 

Not all of his followers are as dedicated as he believes, however. In addition to Gandalf and Tom Bombadil having infiltrated his acolytes’ ranks, Khamûl, the returning Gaudrim warrior — now a Nazgnagôl — tells the Dark Wizard that he’ll be taking the Dark Wizard’s throne, thank you very much. The ensuing confrontation ends in something like a draw. Khamûl doesn’t give up his Ring, but neither does the Dark Wizard surrender power. To save face, the Dark Wizard tells his followers that Khamûl has returned as an emissary to reveal that Sauron has accepted a proposal that Rhûn and Mordor become allies. He’ll be back soon, Khamûl, with his legions; then they’ll all team up to take on Middle-earth. The Dark Wizard survives for now, but the “Hail Sauron!” chants don’t bode well for the future, nor does Khamûl’s cryptic threat that he might lose his following if “they were to learn what became of your partner.” Hmm … 

All this worries Gandalf quite a bit. (Tom Bombadil not so much.) But he’s not exactly powerless. Outside, he takes out a Dark Wizard henchman without even realizing it, shortly before reviving an oliphaunt and using magic to restore its natural, gentle personality and helping to remove its battle armor. There’s nothing dark about him or his use of magic, it would seem. 

The previous episode ended with Pharazôn preparing to send Kemen to attack the Havens of the Faithful on the west coast of Númenor. Here we learn that Númenor isn’t exactly defenseless thanks in part to Anarion (Andrew Richardson), Isildur and Eärien’s brother, whom we meet for the first time drilling a bunch of heavily armed troops. After the exercise ends, his father, Elendil, takes him aside to share news from Eärien, whose death they don’t yet know about, that there is a traitor in their midst. Anarion can’t believe it, but Elendil knows it to be true and knows the turncoat has plans to hand over a map of the havens at a secret meeting. Obviously, this must be thwarted, but at this point Elendil only trusts himself and Anarion, so they make plans to do the thwarting themselves. 

It looks like if the Middle-earth bad guys are to be defeated, it’s going to be the responsibility of only a handful of people because, just as the Faithful’s fate rests on the success of Elendil and Anarion, it’s only the small party of Galadriel, Arondir, and Marnûkhh charged with traveling to Gundabad and keeping the Elven-smith Maitalle from falling into Sauron’s hands. For the Elves, this is not a happy outing, but Marnûkh seems to be having a grand time, chattering away about piss as thick as tree sap and (maybe) joking about how he likes to eat small children. “We eat all ages,” he then clarifies, and it’s not certain if this is a joke either. 

After the trio comes upon a group of fallen soldiers — both Orcs and Elves — Marnûkh advises them to veer off the trail in order to avoid Sauron’s legions, who are scheduled to attack the nearby hills with trebuchets. Arondir and Galadriel aren’t sure if this is a trap, but they don’t have a lot of other options, so they follow Marnûkh’s lead (but make him go first). Soon it becomes clear that even Sauron doesn’t know whose side Marnûkh is on. After getting word of his location from a pair of Nazgûl — by way of a bird turned into a dreadful crow by dark magic — an Orc henchman offers some possibilities: Maybe Marnûkh wants them to follow him? Maybe he’s in it for himself? “I want to know more about this Orc,” Sauron tells him. Everyone does, really. 

In Rhûn, Gandalf and Tom Bombadil seem quite aware of how overmatched they are, but Gandalf has a plan. They don’t need to take out the Dark Wizard and Sauron’s forces. If they can just take down the Dark Wizard and break the spell he holds over his followers, the whole house of cards might collapse. But Tom Bombadil’s not so sure. Or, more precisely, Tom Bombadil has some thoughts that he’ll only share via frustratingly cryptic statements like “Mayhap you’re not meant to defeat it at all.” This, understandably, frustrates Gandalf, leading Tom Bombadil to suggest this might be a good time for him to return to the Withywindle. 

Gandalf begs him to share one hint about how to defeat their enemies before he leaves. It arrives in the form of a song. Sort of. If this is really a hint, Gandalf can’t figure it out and leaves to fetch the rabbit Tom Bombadil has requested. In the process, he stumbles on — or is led to — a flame he recognizes as the Secret Fire, who provides some backstory with a side helping of advice. Gandalf was one of five servants sent to save Middle-earth. Also, the Dark Wizard used to be called “Pallando.” Whether the Dark Wizard/Pallando was one of the aforementioned five remains unclear, but we do learn that the Dark Wizard first traveled to Rhûn with a partner he then murdered, which is how Rhûn became the wasteland it is now. That being said, the Secret Fire continues — Gandalf is meant to save the Dark Wizard, not defeat him, and thus prevent the impending Rhûn-Sauron team-up. Knocked out (literally) by this information, Gandalf awakens and returns to Tom Bombadil’s home to discover that his host wasn’t kidding when he said he planned to vamoose. With work to do and no good reason to hang around, Gandalf decides to do the same.

Shortly after a helpful Orc informs Sauron that Marnûkh was a torture master who fought at Eregion, information that makes him want to know more, the episode returns to Marnûkh, Galadriel, and Anarion’s journey. As they make progress, the Elves are surprised to learn that Marnûkh likes to compose poems, including one about a fallen comrade whose body they found — and even more surprised to learn he’s pretty good at it. But they only have a moment to consider his artistic merits before a threat arrives in the form of the Nazgnagôl, one they’re able to fend off by hiding as Galadriel uses her Elven ways to summon a swarm of butterflies. 

Later that night, the Elves question whether or not their companion intentionally led them into a trap. Where, for starters, was that promised trebuchet attack? The answer remains unclear as the antipathy between Marnûkh and Arondir deepens. When Marnûkh learns that his late master, Adar, was responsible for the death of someone Arondir loved (Bronwyn back in the first season, in case you’d forgotten), the two almost come to blows. Later, Arondir suggests to Galadriel that they might be on a wild goose chase that will bring them to a bad end. Galadriel, however, thinks that grief has clouded his judgment and that it would be best if they parted ways and that Arondir go back to his original plan of returning to Pelargir and checking in on Theo. Whether he’s trying to betray them or not, one thing is clear: Marnûkh can be a big jerk. 

Across the sea on Númenor, Anarion confesses to his father that he has a bad feeling about their plan as they lay in wait for the traitor to appear and betray them to Pharazôn. It’s soon revealed that Anarion was right to feel ill at ease. There is no traitor and no map; it’s all been a trap set by Kemen to lure him out in the open and take him prisoner. As they exchange words, Kemen breaks the news of Eärien’s death to Elendil in the least sensitive way possible. But all is not lost. Despite Elendil’s orders to flee, Anarion has stuck around and manages to single-handedly take out Kemen’s men. Most of them, anyway. It’s not enough to prevent the survivors from shoving Elendil into a carriage and whisking him away, which might be all that matters. 

The episode ends with a string of incidents intensifying the drama around the search for Maitalle. In a truly horrifying scene, Sauron tortures a nice Elf couple into supplying some additional information on Marnûkh via poison and the false promise of an antidote. Before dying, they give him enough to go on to put him on Marnûkh’s scent. He then tells his henchman to “saddle the beast,” an order followed by a glimpse of what appears to be a dragon (?). He’s headed to Gundabad, but Galadriel and Marnûkh are already there, where they’re soon joined by Arondir, who’s come to trust Marnûkh after witnessing the trebuchet attack he thought the Orc had made up. It looks like these opposing forces will soon converge, and it probably won’t be a peaceful meeting when they do. 

This season’s third episode alternates between ratcheting up the tension and piling on the lore. It’s fairly successful at both tasks, but it’s getting hard to keep track of all the legendary wizards from days gone by and who betrayed whom. (Not impossible. It just takes some work.) Regardless, the Gandalf-focused scenes are the season’s least lively to date. It’s also not clear who gave Elendil bad intel about a traitor in the Havens. This was alleged to come from Eärien, so it would make sense for Kemen to have supplied it, but how would he know what methods she used? Maybe we’ll find out soon. And does every episode have to attempt to up the ante with increasingly grim reminders of just how evil Sauron is? Regardless, there’s quite a bit of intrigue around every storyline, and we haven’t even caught up with the Harfoots yet. Surely they also have some role to play, although the series has yet to reveal exactly what that will be or where it will occur.

Mithril Links

• Is this the last we’ll see of Tom Bombadil? That’s unclear, which makes it a little too soon to do a postmortem. But this episode keeps with Tom Bombadil’s appearance in the previous season. It’s an interesting characterization, and Rory Kinnear has a lot of fun playing a beatific, gnomic, sort-of mentor to Gandalf. But this Tom Bombadil doesn’t really seem to have that much in common with the Tom Bombadil we meet in The Lord of the Rings.

• Based on the first episode, it seemed like we would have seen more of Celeborn by now, in flashback if not in the current timeline. 

• That is a big hill that Galadriel & Co. will have to climb.