Review: Where the Stars Are Strange

It’s praise with faint damnation to say that McKay and Payne’s best recent decision is to front-load this season with the show’s two best writers. Jason Cahill isn’t going to magically turn this into The Sopranos or Halt and Catch Fire, but having an actual writer at the helm helps this intangible sludge become somewhat potable for 62 minutes.

“Where the Stars Are Strange” spends its runtime dealing with the consequences of Season One. Galadriel’s past friendship with Halbrand/Sauron puts her at odds with Elrond and Gil-galad, Sauron entices Celebrimbor with the promise of greatness, and Durin and Disa rebuild their lives after their estrangement from Moria. There’s a semblance of thematic togetherness to this episode. It broadly deals with characters trying to redeem themselves after dire falls from grace. Sauron’s transformation into Annatar is thematically solid. And the tease at the end indicating that Celebrimbor will give the Rings of Power shows that this season might actually head somewhere. No doubt this show will find some way to drop the ball, but as television, this was fine.

More or less. The subplot about “The Stranger” and the Harfoots remains tedious. It’s completely separate from the rest of the show and continues to labor under the delusion that Gandalf not yet being Gandalf is interesting. And the bits where not-Saruman shows up are a bit of a waste of screentime. And we still get lines like “we may be able to crush two spiders with one boot.” This is the same old Rings of Power, with its lack of drama and pacing, but these next few episodes might fool some viewers into believing that they’re interesting.