What do the Elven rings from The Ring of Power do and who has them in The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power lived up to its name in the final episode of the first season, but also may have left fans with a lot of questions about what comes next. What does one do with the Ring of Power when you have it? How did it all play out in the books?

And the biggest question of all: Who will actually get these magical pieces? They'll have to start planning a wardrobe update.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2.]

The premiere episodes of Season 2 step in to answer some of these questions, and give viewers a better idea of ​​why the Elves bothered with their rings in the first place, given how involved Sauron was in their creation. The answer, as in many of Tolkien's stories, has to do with the limitations of nature and their own changing place within it.

There's a catch to the Elven rings, at least for modern viewers. Vilya (the sapphire ring), Narya (the ruby ​​ring), and Nenya (the adamantine ring, which was the only one made of mithril) are all named after the “primary elements” of the Elven world: air, fire, and water.

But they have no elemental powers at all.

As Elrond explains in The Fellowship of the Ring“They were not created as instruments of war or conquest: that is not their power. Those who created them did not desire power, dominion, or the accumulation of wealth, but understanding, creation, and healing, to keep all things unsullied.”

This is pretty close to the reasons for their appearance. Rings of Power: Celebrimbor and Elrond sought a solution to the deadly corruption that beset their people in Middle-earth. And as The Silmarillion says, “those who [an elven ring] by preserving them, it would be possible to prevent the destruction of time and postpone the fatigue of the world […] Wherever they lived, there was joy, and everything around was not stained by the sorrows of time.”

But the Elven rings had a rather big flaw. Sauron's hand in their forging made them vulnerable to his own One Ring. Again from The Silmarillion: “While he wore the One Ring, he could perceive all that was done through the lesser rings, and he could see and control the thoughts of those who wore them.”

Fortunately, thanks to the power of the Elven rings and their bearers, this flaw became apparent the moment Sauron put on his ring for the first time, creating a window for wearers to look inside his intentions to rule them and everything that belonged to them. They solved this problem quite easily by simply removing the rings.

After Sauron was defeated and the One Ring lost, the Elven rings were once again safe and used for their intended purpose: to protect the corners of Middle-earth from wasting time and the slow decay of the world. (Why did the world decay? Tolkien was a Catholic.)

Early in the Second Age, after the defeat of Morgoth, Sauron appeared to the Elves of Lindon and Eregion in a “beautiful” form, calling himself Annatar and claiming to be an emissary of the Valar – so you can already tell that this is a little different from Rings of Power, Sauron first uses the guise of Halbrand in Season 1, and appears before Celebrimbor as Annatar only in Season 2.

In fact, Tolkien The SilmarillionBoth Gil-galad and Elrond immediately distrusted Annatar, refusing to allow him entry into Lindon. Unfortunately, Celebrimbor was fully prepared for this. Sauron was preying on the Noldorim Elves' love for Middle-earth, the land they had defended for so long, and their conflicting desire to return to the splendor and bliss of their homeland. The Silmarillion says that he argued: “Why should Middle-earth remain forever deserted and dark, when the Elves could make it as beautiful as Eressea, and even as Valinor?” and urged them to devise ways of transforming and preserving their environment.

As Elrond tells it in The Fellowship of the Ringthe smiths of Eregion “received his help and became mighty in their craft, while he learned all their secrets, and betrayed them, and secretly forged in the Mountain of Fire the One Ring to become their master. But Celebrimbor knew of it, and hid the Three that he made.”

Yes, you read that right: by the time the Elven rings were forged, Celebrimbor had already realized that Sauron could not be trusted. The Silmarillion It is stated quite clearly that the rings “were forged by Celebrimbor alone, and the hand of Sauron had never touched them.” However, Celebrimbor had learned enough of his craft from Sauron that the Elven rings were inevitably subordinate to the One Ring.

This is fundamentally different from Rings of Powertimeline, with Galadriel well aware of Sauron's trickery (or at least the potential for nefarious influence he exerted as “Halbrand”) before the rings were made, and Celebrimbor completely unaware of Sauron's trickery during the making of the Elven rings. Sauron now introduces himself to Celebrimbor as “Lord of Gifts” Annatarthe other rings still seem closer to Sauron's influence. Although Galadriel – along with, now, Elrond, Gil-galad, Cirdan and a handful of other elves present in Lothlórien – knows that the rings contain some Sauron's influence, they're not quite sure how yet. (More on that below.)

When the wearers of the Elven rings took them off, against Sauron's will, he gathered the armies of Mordor to conquer Eregion and take it by force, and when that did not work, he made the Seven and the Nine, giving them to the Dwarves and Men.

The rings never worked on the dwarves because they “proved tough and hard to tame,” according to The Silmarillion. «[Dwarves] “They cannot bear the domination of others, and the thoughts of their hearts are hard to find, and cannot be turned into shadows.” This did not allow Sauron to control the seven dwarf hosts, but only increased their base emotions, such as greed, and indirectly contributed to the collapse of the great dwarf civilizations and their burning by dragon fire.

However, men were much easier to corrupt and control; we all know who the Nazgul are.

When Sauron waged war on the Elves over the Elven Rings in the books, Celebrimbor divided the Rings for safekeeping. He sent Nenya to Galadriel, Vilya to Gil-galad, and Narya to Cirdan (who, as the show also says, is the leader of a faction of Elves who lived on the western coast of Middle-earth, closest to Valinor, and built all the ships that sailed west and never returned). But with the exception of Nenya to Galadriel, the Rings did not remain with these owners.

Gil-galad eventually gave his ring to Elrond before he died with Elendil in battle with Sauron, and Cirdan eventually gave his ring to Gandalf for reasons you can just read here.

“That's how it was,” The Silmarillion says, “that in two regions the bliss and beauty of the elves remained unchanged while this Age lasted: in [Rivendell]; and in Lothlorien […] where the trees bloom with golden flowers, and no orc or evil dares to appear.”

But Sauron's involvement in the making of the Elven rings meant that their power depended, at least in part, on Sauron's existence. This was one reason why Bilbo's mere rediscovery of the One Ring was something of a death knell for the Elves of Middle-earth. Whether Sauron found the Ring or it was destroyed, the Elven rings would be useless.

This is why Elrond and Galadriel sail across the Western Sea at the end The Return of the King — they sacrificed their power to hold back the flow of time and keep Middle-earth as it was in the days of their youth, to keep at least two places in Middle-earth where the Elves could live without burden, and to prevent Sauron from taking complete power.

In Tolkien's lore, there is a 10-year period of tense calm where Sauron hides in Mordor to gather his armies and forge the One Ring. But then Sauron's deception is revealed much later in the process; Rings of Power In the second season, the elves are already trying to fully understand what power they now control – or whether it is actually Sauron's power that controls them.

Galadriel has been having strange, ominous visions, and when she shares these with King Gil-galad, she also shares that she fears that these are glimpses of the future. Unfortunately, Gil-galad has had similar premonitions: “I have seen the mountains crumble; the waters dry up; and black clouds gather over the white towers.”

For now, at least, Círdan is not so worried; to him, the rings seem more like a rare opportunity, a power they can “influence all forms of life,” one they need not fear. “You are wise to fear this power,” Círdan tells Elrond. “But do not let that fear blind you to its use for good.”

It's a conflict that Payne and McKay hoped to explore by moving the creation of the Elven rings up the storyline. “We [talked] “about the nuclear age,” McKay told Polygon at a panel ahead of the season two premiere. “Nuclear energy can be used for good, but it's also very dangerous, and it can also be used for evil. And it can be incredibly creative or incredibly destructive. And the rings are all of those things.

“I think there are things that feel really timeless and close to reality, you know, about a new force coming into the world and you’re not sure how it’s going to change you and change the world.”

Considering Rings of Power reduced Sauron's manipulation of Celebrimbor to create the Elven rings to a simple three weeksThere will likely be several other parts of Tolkien's timeline that will be sped up as we explore what exactly the consequences of that decision are. But theoretically, the bones of the world (if not the season) would be the same from here: Once the One Ring is on Sauron's finger, the Elves defy him — plunging Middle-earth into war with the Dark Lord once again, with the Men of Numenor at their side. And that certainly feels like something Rings of Power will want to have his own cinematic interpretation.