Changes in the lore of Tolkien’s world are nothing new for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerBut the changes to the Palantíri, the spherical vision devices that have appeared primarily in Númenor in the series so far, are starting to get a little confusing.
While fans of the Peter Jackson films will certainly recognize the particular threat the Palantíri pose in the series, the books do not indicate that the devices were intended to function this way at this point in history. Sure, by the time of the Fellowship’s mission to destroy the One Ring, the devices were primarily tools of deception used by Sauron. But by the time of The Rings of Powerthey’re not meant to be evil at all. In fact, they’re basically just walkie-talkies.
The Palantíri, like all things good and bad in Middle Earth, were originally created by the Elves and later given to the Númenóreans. Seven of them survived the destruction of the island and enabled communication between the realms of Gondor (where Boromir is from) and its sister country Arnor. Essentially, they’re something like Facetime walkie-talkies. They could be used to communicate over long distances, usually just two directly to each other, and they could provide visions of their surroundings during these communication sessions. Because of this, when we see them in the series and films, the characters would touch the Palantíri and see visions of different places without there being any context as to what they were. In other words, there’s nothing inherently evil about them or the images they show.
The problems with the spherical structures only arose in the Third Age (where the main trilogy is set), when the seven Palantíri gradually became lost, falling into rivers or disappearing during the sacking of cities. The remaining Palantíri were locked away (one in Orthanc, the fortress of the great and noble Saruman, leader of the wise wizards), for the same reason that one would not reveal confidential information in a Zoom meeting where the guests are hidden. There was no way to prove that someone who was not supposed to be listening (especially Sauron) was listening – and in The Lord of the Ringswe saw exactly that happen. Although Gandalf says that Sauron could not use his Palantír to completely fabricate the images Denethor and Saruman saw in their own, he could manipulate the visions to fragment them and ensure they only saw those he wanted them to see. It is these Sauron-influenced visions that nearly drive Denethor to his state of despair and denial in the main trilogy, and that frighten Pippin (and give away his whereabouts).
The problem is that this is also a pretty accurate description of how The Rings of Power also covers the Palantíri. Based on what we’ve seen of them in the series and their complete lack of description, they already seem to be exerting a negative influence on the characters.
As with any adjustment, a change is not automatically good or bad. But it is hard not to feel that this change The Rings of Poweras a prequel. It’s supposed to be a story about how a golden age of Middle-earth was destroyed by the subtle influences of Sauron and the corruption his evils brought. But the series didn’t do much to prove that that age was golden at all, and the Palantíri could have played a significant role in that, showing something we recognize as a tool of evil being used innocently and without qualms.
Part of the fun of a prequel is letting the audience know things the characters don’t, so for example, seeing good characters freely use the Palantíri to communicate could have been an excellent way for the series to prove to us how far Middle Earth has fallen by the time Frodo and Sam leave the Shire. They could have become another beautiful thing ruined by Sauron and his minions. Instead, the one Palantír we saw is immediately seen as evil by the people of Númenor and a critical object of prophecy by Míriel, suggesting they weren’t used to communicate and have a completely different canonical place in the series. The Rings of Power seems so desperate to give us something we recognize from the original films that it jumps straight to the fallen version of the world rather than letting us witness that organic collapse.
Image: Prime Video
And the Palantíri aren’t the only places the series takes this shortcut. In episode 5, Durin IV is in awe of his father’s use of the Ring of Power for only a few minutes before realizing it’s a sign of evil. It seems easy to imagine the version of this storyline being fleshed out over several episodes, where the rings initially bring great happiness to the dwarves, but only Durin can see how a ring slowly turns his father selfish, greedy, and cruel. With this version, perhaps we as viewers could see how Sauron’s rings came to hold such a large portion of Middle Earth under his spell. Instead, the characters catch up with our understanding almost instantly.
At their best, prequels don’t just tell us what happened before the stories we love. They tell us how the world got to where it was – and in the case of The Lord of the Rings, that should mean telling the story of how the world fell so low. How Sauron was allowed to rise again, and why the kingdoms of Men, Elves and Dwarves were so ill-prepared to stop him. They should show us all the glory and majesty that Middle-earth had to offer in the Second Age, and show us the price of resurrecting Sauron back then. However, instead of deepening our understanding of Middle-earth, The Rings of Power seems far more interested in pushing us back to something familiar: a distorted version of a vision in a corrupted Palantír.
