This is a blog post about The Rings of Power Seasons 1 and 2. It contains spoilers.
My rewatch of Alloyed (season 1) over the weekend brought some thoughts about the idea of an alloy as a metaphor for the ways in which characters were manipulated by Sauron in the series. In episode one of season two, Galadriel insists that Sauron was not involved in the making of the three. But Sauron held that dagger from Valinor more than once. In Numenor, and when he was trapping Galadriel in a joined mind-palace. This theory is valid if we assume he physically held that dagger while he was also in the mind-palace with Galadriel. We already know how Sauron contaminated the Nine, by magicking his blood into a semblance of mithril to fool Celebrimbor. Of course, Sauron had held the dagger in Numenor as well but perhaps the idea had not come to him them. But by the river, the intent would have been there. I mention this dagger which is of the finest metals of Valinor, because it is smelted to be included into the Alloy of the three ringsa
It seems to me as though Sauron as depicted in the miniseries went through a series of trial and error with the rings of power. With the Three, he did not have as strong a hold even though there is contamination as noted above. With the Seven, he participated in the making of the rings more actively, but he saw that it was a failure despite the dwarven kingdom basically in turmoil after he was done with them. With the Nine, he took a more active hand by adding his blood to the Alloy but I think those seeds were already planted in the first season. In a sense, this charts Sauron’s further fall from being Mairon ( Morgoth’s elegant middle-manager) to the ultimate manifestation of the abject we see in The Lord of the Rings.
Perhaps Sauron thought by touching the dagger and the mithril it was enough to contaminate the rings and the Elves. And likewise, his manipulation and gaslighting of Galadriel was subtle but ultimately failed. This failure led to a more aggressive and active approach not just with the subsequent rings but with his next victim, Celebrimbor. He becomes increasingly erratic and vulgar in his approach. I feel therefore that Alloy effectively foregrounds the final two episodes of the Rings of Power Season Two and of the further spiralling of Sauron to his next stage of villainy.
Alloyed really plays with the binaries of purity and impurity on many levels. The irony was when Celebrimbor said they need the purest ores (hence, dagger of Valinor) for the alloy but all the ores had actually been corrupted. The episode is chockfull of visual metaphors and parallels. Alloyed in this context reveals impurities hiding within a vision of purity — such a the vision of Eregion Celebrimbor was enfolded in when it was falling to ruin in Season Two. But more immediately in Season One, it showed the insidious effect of Sauron on Galadriel’s mind; how her perspective of her mission and of herself had been tampered with, leaving us with a woman of confused purpose. This leads to her narrative arc out of the silken confines of his gaslighting in Season Two.
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Published in Petaling, Selangor, Malaysia, 2024