No major fantasy saga begins in a vacuum. Star Wars is basically a chopped-and-screwed remix of Dune, and most medieval fantasy realms owe something to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. But The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power just proved that inspiration is a two-way street. As the Prime Video prequel is only loosely based on Tolkien’s works, it can’t entirely lean on the source material. Its characters may belong to Middle-earth, but their misadventures are beginning to savor strongly of other fantasy media, especially in The Rings of Power’s second season.
Take the Stranger (Daniel Weyman), a wayward wizard who is most likely a younger version of Gandalf the Gray. The Stranger has been on a quest to discover his past and unlock his latent powers since he fell from the sky in Season 1, and The Rings of Power has been withholding the truth of his identity to frustrating effect. The introduction of a new mentor in Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) seemed destined to fast-track the Stranger’s development, but the pair haven’t done much together just yet. And the latest episode of The Rings of Power only doubles down on its most frustrating habit, focusing less on the Stranger and more on a trope from another familiar franchise.
