- 16 hours ago
- #ringsofpower
- #nazgul
- #lordoftherings
Complete story recap and breakdown for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
#RingsOfPower #Nazgul #lordoftherings In 1958 Tolkien read a draft for a movie of his book that never got made, and one of his biggest complaints was about the Black Riders. He called it a misconception of them throughout. Honestly, I think most of us still have it, and season three of Rings of Power is about to show who the Nazgûl were before the black robes. I start with the costume, since that's the part everybody remembers. What's funny is that the movie itself calls the riders disguised, and the book, for instance, says the robes are only there to give shape to their nothingness. And it's no coincidence, because Ngila Dickson, who designed the costumes, began from a king's robes and tore them down into a ringwraith. Then I go through who they actually were, kings, sorcerers and warrio
#RingsOfPower #Nazgul #lordoftherings In 1958 Tolkien read a draft for a movie of his book that never got made, and one of his biggest complaints was about the Black Riders. He called it a misconception of them throughout. Honestly, I think most of us still have it, and season three of Rings of Power is about to show who the Nazgûl were before the black robes. I start with the costume, since that's the part everybody remembers. What's funny is that the movie itself calls the riders disguised, and the book, for instance, says the robes are only there to give shape to their nothingness. And it's no coincidence, because Ngila Dickson, who designed the costumes, began from a king's robes and tore them down into a ringwraith. Then I go through who they actually were, kings, sorcerers and warrio
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00:00In 1958, Tolkien read a draft for a movie of his book that never got made.
00:05And one of his biggest complaints was about the Black Riders.
00:08He called it a misconception of the Black Riders throughout.
00:12And honestly, I think most of us still have it.
00:14Which is a problem, because Season 3 is about to show us who they were before the Black Robes.
00:23So, I'll start with the Robes, since that's the part everybody remembers.
00:28Nine Riders, black horses, hoods with nothing inside.
00:32And that's Scream.
00:34And the funny part is, the movie itself tells you, pretty early on, that all of this is a costume.
00:41Just look at how Saruman says it to Gandalf, almost in passing.
00:46The Nine have left Minas Morgon.
00:49The Nine?
00:50They crossed the River Aizen on Midsummer's Eve, disguised as Riders in Black.
00:57Disguised.
00:58Notice how it's right there in the line.
01:00And I'd bet most of us never really heard it.
01:03And it's no coincidence that the book says the same thing in almost the same words.
01:09At the council in Rivendell, Gandalf repeats a message from another wizard.
01:13And the message says, the Nine have taken the guise of Riders in Black.
01:19And a bit earlier, when Frodo wakes up in Rivendell, he asks Gandalf something I think a lot of people
01:24have wondered.
01:25If the Riders are invisible, how come everyone could see their horses?
01:30And, you know, Gandalf's answer is one of the most unsettling lines in the whole book.
01:34At least for me.
01:36Because they are real horses.
01:39Just as the black robes are real robes that they wear to give shape to their nothingness when they have
01:45dealings with the living.
01:47To give shape to their nothingness.
01:50So the black cloak is something they put on.
01:53Basically so the living have something to look at.
01:55Underneath it, there's barely anything left.
01:58And I find that a lot creepier than any monster.
02:03And I love that the people who made the movies took that idea pretty literally.
02:09Neela Dixon, who designed the costumes for the trilogy, said she started from royalty.
02:14These were men and they were kings.
02:16So she drew a king in full regal costume.
02:20And then she broke it down more and more into a ringwraith.
02:23And she said there are still traces of that king left in the costume.
02:27So if you look closely at those torn black robes, you're actually looking at what's left of a king's clothes.
02:33Which makes sense if they were kings.
02:35Oh, and just so we're all on the same page, because I see people mix this up a lot.
02:40The Black Riders, the Ringwraiths, and the Nazgul are the same nine.
02:44Gandalf tells Frodo plainly in the book that the Black Riders are the Ringwraiths.
02:49Sauron's nine servants.
02:50So it's one group with three names.
02:53And the point is that the first name is just the costume.
02:59Now, the movie also tells you who's under the robes.
03:02And it does it in Brie, the night the Riders break into the inn.
03:06Frodo asks Strider what these things are, and his answer starts like this.
03:11There were once men.
03:13Great kings of men.
03:15Then Sauron gives them nine rings of power.
03:18They take them.
03:19And one by one, they fall into darkness.
03:22And of course, the scene ends on the version we all remember.
03:26They're slaves to his will.
03:30They are the Nazgul.
03:33Ringwraiths.
03:34Neither living nor dead.
03:36Sure, neither living nor dead sounds like Tolkien, but it's the movie's line.
03:41You won't find it in the book.
03:43But the part about kings is Tolkien's.
03:46And I think it matters most.
03:48In the Silmarillion, he gives the nine one short passage.
03:53And to me, it reads almost like an obituary.
03:56Those who used the nine rings became mighty in their day.
04:01Kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old.
04:04They obtained glory and great wealth.
04:07Yet it turned to their undoing.
04:09They had, as it seemed, unending life.
04:13Yet life became unendurable to them.
04:16So they weren't only kings.
04:18Some were sorcerers.
04:20Some were warriors.
04:21And elsewhere, Tolkien adds that a few of them were great lords from the greatest kingdom of men.
04:27And there's one more detail in that passage that I think matters a lot.
04:31They fell one by one, he says.
04:34According to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning.
04:39Which means, if I read it right, some of them started out as good men.
04:45And you know what's funny?
04:46Ask who actually got these rings.
04:49And you'll get a different answer depending on who you ask.
04:52Peter Jackson's prologue gives you one.
04:54The rings went to the race of men.
04:56Who, above all else, desire power.
05:00Of course, the show gives a completely different answer.
05:03In season two, when Annatar, who is Sauron in disguise, pitches the idea to Celebrimbor,
05:10he describes exactly who should get them.
05:12We find men we can trust.
05:16The wisest.
05:17The most noble.
05:19The purest of art.
05:21And then season three gives a third answer.
05:24Patrick McKay, one of the showrunners, told Collider that Sauron is giving the rings to men
05:29who will strategically help him win the war.
05:32So, you can see the pattern.
05:34Power, purity, and usefulness.
05:37And personally, I think that's pretty much the whole story of the nine right there.
05:42Because by the end, it doesn't matter which kind of man you were.
05:49So, let's look at what the ring actually gave them.
05:53You'd think the answer is power.
05:54And sure, they got that.
05:56But the thing is, if you read Gandalf explaining it to Frodo early in the book,
06:01what the ring really gives a mortal is time.
06:04And I'd say the way he describes that time is honestly horrifying.
06:08A mortal Frodo, who keeps one of the great rings, does not die.
06:13But he does not grow or obtain more life.
06:16He merely continues.
06:17Until at last, every minute is a weariness.
06:20He merely continues.
06:22And what's interesting is that Gandalf goes even further.
06:26If you keep using the ring to turn invisible, he says, you fade.
06:30Until in the end, you're invisible for good.
06:34Walking in the twilight under the eye of the power that rules the rings.
06:38And then comes the sentence that, for me, explains the whole season.
06:43Yes, sooner or later.
06:45Later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with.
06:49But neither strength nor good purpose will last.
06:52Sooner or later, the dark power will devour him.
06:56Later, if he's strong or well-meaning to begin with.
06:59I mean, think about what that does to the whole idea of a villain.
07:03A good man doesn't escape it.
07:05He just lasts a little longer.
07:07And I find that genuinely sad.
07:09And that's why season three is set exactly in that window.
07:14And you can actually hear this feeling in the movie, put better than any wizard does.
07:19It's Bilbo, at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring.
07:22After carrying a ring for decades without knowing what it was.
07:26Drenched like butter scraped over too much bread.
07:31And the showrunners, of all people, reached for that exact image to explain season three.
07:37At Comic-Con back in July, J.D. Payne, the other showrunner, said the nine didn't instantly turn into wraiths.
07:45Men only have so much life in them.
07:47And if you spread it over too many years, it's like Bilbo says.
07:52Butter spread over too much bread.
07:55And he said season three catches them at the peak of their powers.
07:58Before all that.
07:59Which means their whole take on the nine starts from a hobbit's tired joke.
08:04And I like that a lot.
08:06And sure, the show has already shown us what wearing one of those rings feels like.
08:10In a scene that's really easy to forget.
08:12In season two, while the Smiths are working on the new rings for men,
08:17Celebrimbor's assistant, Myrdani, tries to resize one, disappears, and comes back shaking.
08:22This skin was made of flames.
08:25It saw its eyes, pitiless and eternal.
08:29So, in a sense, the first person in the show to put on one of those new rings sees Sauron.
08:36And a little later, Annatar tells her something that sounds kind.
08:39But if you know where this is going, it's really a warning.
08:43Some who behold the unseen world.
08:47Never quite at home in this one again.
08:49Never quite at home in this one again.
08:51Which is pretty much the nine described by Sauron himself.
08:56They didn't die.
08:58They just slowly stopped belonging to the world of the living.
09:05Now, if all that sounds a bit abstract, the movies actually give you a perfect example of what it looks
09:11like.
09:11And I'd argue it's the best example there is.
09:15Gollum.
09:17Zubin Varla, who plays Kamul in season three, told Empire that the nine go on the same journey as Gollum.
09:23And to me, that one sentence is the key to the whole thing.
09:28I want to go back to how The Return of the King opens.
09:31Two friends fishing on a river.
09:33Smeagol and Diagol.
09:35Diagol finds a ring in the mud.
09:38Smeagol wants it.
09:39And, I mean, he kills his friend for it.
09:42On his birthday.
09:43It's my birthday.
09:45And I want it.
09:47And then the movie shows what the ring does to him over the years.
09:51In one short montage.
09:54His own people drive him away.
09:56He hides in the mountains.
09:58And he starts losing pieces of himself.
10:01One at a time.
10:02You can actually hear him counting what's gone.
10:05And we forgot the taste of bread.
10:09We even forgot our own name.
10:14We even forgot our own name.
10:17And honestly, I think that's one of the most important lines for understanding the nine.
10:22Because of a small detail about them.
10:25Tolkien never gave most of them names at all.
10:28There's their leader, the witch king.
10:30And there's Kamul, the one the show picked.
10:33The rest are just the nine.
10:35As if they forgot their names too.
10:38That's my reading, of course.
10:40Not something Tolkien says.
10:42But once you notice it, I don't know.
10:45It's hard to unsee.
10:46And notice how the movie's prologue says the same thing about Gollum.
10:50Very quickly.
10:51The ring brought to Gollum unnatural long life.
10:54And for 500 years, it poisoned his mind.
10:58Long life and a poisoned mind.
11:01Which, if you pay attention, is the same deal the nine got.
11:05Just on a bigger scale.
11:07In fact, Tolkien himself made that comparison in a letter he drafted to a reader.
11:12It leads the small to a Gollum and the great to a ringwraith.
11:18The small to a Gollum.
11:19The great to a ringwraith.
11:22You see, it's the same road.
11:24And the only difference is who's walking it.
11:27A fisherman ends up talking to himself under a mountain.
11:30While a king ends up as a shadow on a black horse.
11:34So, when people call Gollum pathetic and call the Nazgul terrifying,
11:39I'd say they're looking at the same disease at two different sizes.
11:43And the movie connects them in a way that's really easy to miss.
11:47When the nine first ride out of their fortress in the Fellowship of the Ring,
11:51we hear someone in Sauron's tower screaming two words.
11:55Shire and Baggins.
11:58That's Gollum being tortured.
12:00Gandalf confirms it a few scenes later.
12:02And then the first words we ever hear a black rider say to a hobbit in the countryside
12:07are those same two words.
12:14So, the first thing the nine ever say in the movies is something they got out of Gollum.
12:20Two prisoners of the same ring.
12:22And the way it's cut, one of them is hunting with the other one's words.
12:27And it's no accident.
12:30Anyway, Gandalf in the same movie is the one who refuses to give up on Gollum.
12:34When Frodo says it's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him,
12:38Gandalf answers that it was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand.
12:42And that his heart tells him Gollum still has some part to play.
12:46So, he still sees the person under the creature.
12:49Which, for me, is the right way to look at the nine, too.
12:56Because, the thing is, what I think most of us miss about them isn't a lore detail.
13:01It's what Tolkien thought the whole book was about.
13:04In 1968, the BBC filmed him in Oxford.
13:07And at one point, he says it himself, on camera.
13:11Stories, practically always, a human story, is practically always about one thing, aren't they?
13:16Death.
13:19Inevitable death.
13:20And then he reads a quote from the writer Simone de Beauvoir, about how every man has to die.
13:27And yet, for every man, his death feels like an accident and a violation.
13:31And he calls that the key spring of his book.
13:35So, for Tolkien, the spring of the whole book is death.
13:40And, of course, what people will do to get away from it.
13:44And you'll notice the same idea in his letters, more than once.
13:48And in one of them, he explains what he saw as the real danger in his story.
13:54It's confusing true immortality with simply not dying.
13:59With just lasting longer and longer.
14:02And then, for instance, he picks this example.
14:05Compare the death of Aragorn with a ringwraith.
14:08So, just compare the two.
14:11At the very end of the book, in the appendices,
14:14Aragorn is an old king.
14:15And he decides it's time to go.
14:18While he still can.
14:19He doesn't wait to wither and fall from his throne.
14:22He lies down to say goodbye to Arwen.
14:25And Arwen, who gave up her own immortality for him,
14:28tells him that if death really is a gift to men,
14:31it is bitter to receive.
14:34And he answers her, like this.
14:36In sorrow we must go, but not in despair.
14:41What I find so honest about that exchange is that Tolkien doesn't pretend it's easy.
14:48Now, put that next to the Nine.
14:51Aragorn lets go of his life.
14:53The Nine grabbed theirs and refused to let go.
14:57And that's what turned them into ghosts.
15:00That's why I don't think they were born monsters.
15:02They were men who were afraid of dying.
15:06And somebody offered them a way out.
15:08And, I mean, how many of us would be completely sure we'd say no?
15:16Now, if you're new to all this, you probably want the practical stuff too.
15:21And I don't blame you.
15:22What can they actually do?
15:24And why are they so scary?
15:27And this is where Tolkien's complaint from the very beginning comes back.
15:31Because he explained exactly what that movie draft got wrong.
15:37Their peril is almost entirely due to the unreasoning fear which they inspire.
15:44Like ghosts.
15:45They have no great physical power against the fearless.
15:49No great physical power against the fearless.
15:52So their main weapon is fear.
15:55And it turns out that explains something people point out all the time in the comments.
16:00Which is how easily Aragorn drives them off on Weathertop on his own.
16:05In the book, he does it with burning branches in both hands.
16:09Because, as he says earlier, they fear fire and those who wield it.
16:14And in that same letter, Tolkien basically describes how he'd filmed that scene himself.
16:19A dark hill lit by a small red fire.
16:23The wraith slowly coming closer as darker shadows.
16:27Until the moment Frodo puts on the ring and the king steps forward revealed.
16:32Which is pretty much the scene Jackson ended up making decades later.
16:36The one thing Tolkien didn't want was the screaming.
16:40In his words, the black writers do not scream.
16:44But keep a more terrifying silence.
16:46And yet, I'd guess, the scream is what everyone remembers from the movies.
16:51By the way, that sound started as the voice of Fran Walsh.
16:54One of the writers and producers.
16:57And the sound designer, David Farmer, pitched it up and mixed it with his own voice.
17:01And in Jackson's defense, in the book, they do wail in the shire.
17:05Just not on Weathertop.
17:07That's why in the book, the quiet is the scary part.
17:11Now, how do they find you?
17:13They don't see the world of light the way we do.
17:17Strider says our shapes only cast shadows in their minds.
17:20And that the black horses can see.
17:22But they can feel the ring.
17:23And the movie makes that pretty clear.
17:26At all times, they feel the presence of the ring.
17:30And here's the part I really like.
17:32You'd think putting on the ring would hide you from them, right?
17:36It does the opposite.
17:38The Tolkien wrote in a letter that the wearer wouldn't be invisible to them.
17:42But the reverse.
17:43And you can see exactly that on Weathertop.
17:46Frodo puts the ring on and suddenly he's in their world.
17:50He sees them as they really are.
17:52They're pale, gray-haired kings.
17:55And the tallest of them wears a crown.
17:58Which brings us to the worst thing they can do.
18:01And that's make more of themselves.
18:03When the Witch King stabs Frodo with the Morgul Blade,
18:06a piece of it stays in the wound and keeps moving toward his heart.
18:10Strider says it plainly in the movie.
18:12He's passing into the Shadow World.
18:14He'll soon become a wraith like them.
18:16In the book, Gandalf goes even further.
18:18If they had succeeded, Frodo would have become like they are.
18:22Only weaker and under their command.
18:25So, to me, a Morgul Blade is basically a shortcut to the same place.
18:30The Nine took centuries to fade.
18:32And a knife could do it to Frodo in a matter of days.
18:36That's why that wound matters so much to the rest of his story.
18:40And if you enjoy putting the books and the show side by side like this,
18:43hit subscribe so the next one finds you before season three starts.
18:50Which leads me to a question people ask a lot.
18:53Did the Nazgul actually wear their rings?
18:56Because if they did, why are they still working for Sauron?
18:59And the answer, at least in Tolkien's later letters, is no.
19:03Sauron held them.
19:04He wrote that Sauron, through their nine rings, which he held,
19:08had primary control of their wills.
19:10In a way, I'd call the rings a leash.
19:13And the movie says the same thing in its own way.
19:15Now they are slaves to his will.
19:18Which means the scariest thing about them was never really theirs.
19:23And what's curious is that the show already told Sauron where this road ends.
19:28At the end of season two, Sauron stands over the dying Celebrimbor and says
19:33he's the master of the rings.
19:35And Celebrimbor corrects him.
19:37I am the creator.
19:39I am the master.
19:41No, you are the prisoner.
19:43Prisoner.
19:46So everyone in this chain is someone's prisoner.
19:49The nine are held by their rings.
19:51The rings are held by Sauron.
19:53And Sauron, according to the man who made them, is held by the rings too.
19:58That's the trap, I'd say.
20:00Nobody in it is actually free.
20:03And then, of course, there's the one at the top.
20:05The Witch King.
20:06In the third movie, Gandalf calls him the leader of the Nazgul, the greatest of the nine.
20:12And in the book's appendices, he isn't just a servant.
20:15Long before Frodo, he ruled a kingdom of his own in the north and spent centuries at war with a
20:21kingdom of men.
20:22So, in a way, I'd say the ring did give one of them a kingdom, which is exactly what Kamul
20:28is about to be offered in season three.
20:31And if you've seen the extended cut of the movie, here's another thing worth knowing.
20:35In the book, the Witch King never breaks Gandalf's staff.
20:39He rides into the broken gate of the city and Gandalf doesn't move.
20:42Then, a rooster crows somewhere behind them, horns sound in the distance, and the riders of Rohan arrive.
20:50That's it.
20:51Tolkien even wrote in a letter that their battle never happens.
20:54It passes to other mortal hands.
20:58Which, if you remember how this story ends, is exactly the point.
21:02And I'd take the book's version over the extended cut, to be honest.
21:05Oh, and you'll notice the flying creatures aren't a later invention either.
21:09In the book, Legolas shoots one down with a single arrow in the dark, over the river, long before anyone
21:15reaches Mordor.
21:16The movies cut that.
21:18And according to the showrunners, in season three, Sauron tells a story about where those creatures came from in the
21:24first place.
21:27And that's why, for me, season three is such a big deal for these characters.
21:32For the first time on screen, we're going to see the nine before they became the Black Riders.
21:37The show even made up a word for them at this stage.
21:40Ring servants.
21:41And J.D. Payne put it very simply.
21:44But before they were ringwraiths, we know that these were just men.
21:48McKay said almost the same thing at Comic-Con.
21:51They're not yet the ringwraiths.
21:53They're the precursors.
21:54And when they show up on the battlefield, Payne said,
21:57the elves know they have to run.
22:00In other words, we're not getting the slow, hollow riders from the movies.
22:04We're getting the nine at their strongest.
22:06Still with bodies.
22:08And still with ambitions.
22:09And the face of them this season is Kamul, played by Zubin Varla.
22:14In the official cast list, he's Kamul, the Easterling of Rune, which is the wild east of Middle-earth.
22:20And Payne described him to Empire in a way that, for me, sums up everything I've been saying.
22:26From Kamul's point of view, he's a warlord who deserves to be a king,
22:30whose power was taken by a dark wizard.
22:33And Sauron offers him a way back to the top.
22:36And in case you don't remember, we've already met a dark wizard in the east.
22:40In season two, he controls much of Rune, and the stranger walks straight into his followers.
22:47Nobody from the show has said it's the same wizard.
22:49I'm not saying it is.
22:51I'm only guessing here.
22:52But if it is, then Kamul is a man who lost his kingdom.
22:56And the ring is the way to get it back.
23:00And that, to me, is a much scarier origin than a monster.
23:04And here's something else about Kamul that gives me a chill.
23:07Now, in Tolkien's later notes, the black rider who comes to Hobbiton and asks the old Gamgee about Baggins is
23:14Kamul.
23:15So, the man we're about to meet as a proud warlord in season three is the same one who, a
23:22very long time later,
23:23will be riding through the Shire looking for a hobbit.
23:27The point is, what are they actually doing for Sauron right now?
23:33Charlie Vickers, who plays Sauron, joked at Comic-Con that they're his crew,
23:38and that they're out there looking for the three elven rings,
23:41so he can figure out the secret of making a ring of his own.
23:44Payne also said Sauron is recruiting a massive army from Rune to tip the scales in the war.
23:50And Amazon's new posters put a few of them right behind Sauron, in masks with crowns.
23:56Which, by the way, takes me straight back to the book.
23:59On Weathertop, Frodo sees that their leader still wears a crown.
24:04Now, to be fair, a lot of people are angry that the show brings them in so early.
24:09In the book, this takes centuries, and the show squeezes it into a few years.
24:13I get that complaint, I really do.
24:16But I'd say the show is at least honest about it, since it isn't showing us ghosts yet.
24:22It's showing us the men before the fading, which is the part Tolkien left almost empty.
24:28It all kicks off on November 11th, with four episodes at once.
24:32And the finale lands two weeks later, on the 25th.
24:35And in an interview with Collider, one of the cast said Kamul has a big moment near the very end
24:41of the season.
24:42That's why the last two episodes are the ones I'm most curious about.
24:48And that's why, for me, the right way to end this is with the one person in the books who
24:55isn't afraid of them.
24:56You know this scene, I'm sure.
24:58The Witch King is standing over the King of Rohan.
25:01And he tells the writer in his way that no living man can stop him.
25:08You fool, no man can kill me.
25:12And Eowyn takes off her helmet.
25:15In the movie, it's one short line.
25:18I am no man.
25:19In the book, it's longer.
25:21And I think the longer version says more.
25:23But no living man am I.
25:26Eowyn, I am.
25:28Eowyn's daughter.
25:29Be gone if you be not deathless.
25:32If you be not deathless.
25:34You see, the one thing the Witch King bought with his ring was not dying.
25:39And Eowyn, who's ready to die, is the one who ends him.
25:43Remember that letter from the beginning?
25:45No great physical power against the fearless.
25:48And notice how, when her sword goes in, the book gives us one last image.
25:54The crown rolls away, and the mantle and the armor are empty.
25:59Shapeless.
26:00They lay on the ground.
26:02Torn and tumbled.
26:03Which means the robes we started with were just robes, after all.
26:09And there was nothing inside them.
26:11That's what I'd keep in mind when season three starts.
26:13The men we're about to meet still have faces, names, and kingdoms to win back.
26:20And for a little while, they can still say no.
26:23Every one of them is going to take the ring anyway.
26:25And we already know what's left of them in the end.
26:28A black robe wrapped around nothing.
26:31Waiting for someone brave enough to stop being afraid.