Season 2 of the most expensive TV series ever made is here, and it still feels like something of a loss leader.
Prime Video’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” has yet to develop characters we care about or put them in settings and situations — regardless of however handsome or awesome they may be — that make their fates more than rudimentarily moving.
The eight-episode season also fails to move the narrative needle much beyond where the smoking ruins of Season 1 left matters. Sauron (Charlie Vickers) is still the shape-shifting superbad. Elves, dwarfs, humans and orcs remain too blinkered by their own political in-fighting to counter him effectively.