Following an underwhelming first season, Amazon Prime’s Rings of Power has returned to Middle-earth’s Second Age, with hopes to salvage its thus far billion-dollar debacle. Set as a prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, the series follows Sauron’s rise to power and the forging of the great rings.

Charlie Vickers reprises his role as the prodigious manipulator and emissary of evil. There is a scene in Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring in which Gandalf, recounting the history and reappearance of the fabled One Ring to Frodo, says, “The spirit of Sauron endured.” It is precisely this dogged and patient pursuit of world domination that Vickers, easily the only redeeming facet of Rings of Power, communicates in spades.

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