The Eagle and the Sceptre

Plot

After his son Isildur is presumed dead in the eruption of Mount Doom, sea captain Elendil returns to Númenor with the blinded Queen Regent Míriel and other survivors. He attempts to take Isildur's horse Berek with them, but the horse refuses to go and Elendil releases him. Berek returns to Mordor and finds Isildur, alive, in a nest of giant spiders. Berek awakens Isildur, who fights a particularly large spider and escapes. Elsewhere in Mordor, Adar asks the Hill-troll Damrod to join his army in fighting Sauron.

Celebrimbor and Sauron, the latter posing as Annatar, invite Prince Durin IV and Princess Disa to Eregion and reveal their plan to create Rings of Power for the Dwarves. Durin IV does not trust Annatar and reluctantly brings this proposal to King Durin III, who agrees to give the Elves the mithril they need to create more rings.

In Númenor, many citizens express their disapproval of Míriel's ascension to the throne following the death of her father, King Tar-Palantir. This is due to her decision to go to Middle-earth, which led to so many deaths, and also due to her blindness. Lord Belzagar counsels Míriel's cousin Pharazôn to claim the throne for himself. Pharazôn is concerned that there is not enough public support for such a move, until Elendil's daughter Eärien reveals that she has stolen Míriel's palantír seeing stone.

Leaving Mordor, Isildur comes across a young woman named Estrid. On their way to Pelargir, an old Númenórean colony, they are attacked by Wild Men who steal Berek. The pair are saved by the Elf Arondir. In Pelargir, Arondir holds a funeral for Bronwyn, the human healer he fell in love with, who succumbed to her injuries from the battle before the eruption. Bronwyn's son, Theo, dismisses Arondir's attempts to comfort him. Isildur bonds with Estrid over the deaths of their respective loved ones, not knowing that she bears the brand of Adar. Theo and Isildur attempt to steal Berek back from the Wild Men and almost succeed, until Theo and the Wild Men are captured by something unknown.

During Míriel's coronation, Eärien reveals the palantír which causes outrage among the people who are widely against Númenor's old Elven ways. A Great Eagle arrives at the coronation, a rare and powerful omen for the new ruler. However, Belzagar claims that the Eagle's presence signifies support for Pharazôn instead.

Production

Development

Amazon acquired the television rights for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) in November 2017. The company's streaming service, Amazon Prime Video, ordered a series based on the novel and its appendices to be produced by Amazon Studios in association with New Line Cinema. It was later titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Amazon hired J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay to develop the series and serve as showrunners in July 2018, and Helen Shang joined as a writer by the following July. The series was originally expected to be a continuation of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) film trilogies, but Amazon later clarified that their deal with the Tolkien Estate required them to keep the series distinct from Jackson's films. Despite this, the showrunners intended for it to be visually consistent with the films. A second season was ordered in November 2019, and Amazon announced in August 2021 that it was moving production of the series from New Zealand, where Jackson's films were made, to the United Kingdom starting with the second season. The season's all-female directing team was revealed in December 2022: Charlotte Brändström, returning from the first season; Sanaa Hamri; and Louise Hooper.

The series is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings. Because Amazon did not acquire the rights to Tolkien's other works where the First and Second Ages are primarily explored, the writers had to identify references to the Second Age in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and its appendices, and create a story that bridged those passages. After introducing the setting and major heroic characters in the first season, the showrunners said the second would focus on the villains and go deeper into the "lore and the stories people have been waiting to hear". The season's third episode, titled "The Eagle and the Sceptre", was written by Shang and directed by Brändström and Hooper.

Writing

The episode briefly introduces the wife and baby of the Orc Glûg. The showrunners explained that they were exploring how the Orcs are more complex beings during this time period, before they are enslaved by Sauron, continuing a storyline from the first season where Adar gave the Orcs their own homeland in Mordor. Payne and McKay said Glûg was a pivotal part of this storyline and he takes the position "we have this home now in Mordor, so do we really have to go to war and die?" They showed his family early in the season to establish his motivations ahead of further character developments in later episodes.

Casting

The season's cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Míriel, Owain Arthur as Durin IV, Maxim Baldry as Isildur, Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir, Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor, Trystan Gravelle as Pharazôn, Tyroe Muhafidin as Theo, Peter Mullan as Durin III, Sophia Nomvete as Disa, Lloyd Owen as Elendil, and Charlie Vickers as Sauron. Also starring in the episode are Alex Tarrant as Valandil, Ema Horvath as Eärien, Leon Wadham as Kemen, Will Keen as Belzagar, Sam Hazeldine as Adar, Nia Towle as Estrid, Kevin Eldon as Narvi, Robert Strange as Khruge and Glûg, Ken Blackburn as Tar-Palantir, William Chubb as the High Priest of Númenor, Kirsty Hoiles as Niluzor, Benjamin Walker as the voice of Damrod, Nazanin Boniadi as Bronwyn, Gabriel Akuwudike as Hagen, and Murray McArthur as Ammred. Jonny James plays unnamed Orcs in the episode.

Filming

Filming for the season began on October 3, 2022, under the working title LBP. Episodes were shot simultaneously based on the availability of locations and sets. Alex Disenhof returned from the first season to work with Brändström as director of photography, alongside Laurie Rose. The production wrapped in early June 2023.

Visual effects

Visual effects for the episode were created by Rodeo FX, Outpost VFX, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), DNEG, The Yard VFX, Midas VFX, Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies, Untold Studios, Atomic Arts, and Cantina Creative. The different vendors were overseen by visual effects supervisor Jason Smith.

Music

A soundtrack album featuring composer Bear McCreary's score for the episode was released digitally on the streaming service Amazon Music on August 29, 2024. McCreary said the series' episodic albums contained "virtually every second of score" from their respective episodes. It was added to other music streaming services after the full second season was released. A CD featuring the episode's music is included in a limited edition box set collection for the season from Mutant and McCreary's label Sparks & Shadows. The box set was announced in October 2025, and includes a journal written by McCreary which details the creation of the episode's score. All music was composed by Bear McCreary:

Release

The season's first three episodes premiered on Prime Video in the United States on August 29, 2024. They were released at the same time around the world, in more than 240 countries and territories.

Reception

Viewership

Luminate, which gathers viewership data from smart TVs, said the first three episodes of the season were watched for 63.2 million minutes on their first day of release, and for 553.5 million minutes over the following four-day Labor Day weekend. Whip Media, which tracks viewership data for the 25 million worldwide users of its TV Time app, listed the series second—behind Hulu's Only Murders in the Building—on its US streaming chart for the week ending September 1. Nielsen Media Research, which records streaming viewership on US television screens, estimated that The Rings of Power had 1.02 billion minutes viewed in the week ending September 1. Around 70 percent of those were for the first three episodes. It was the top original streaming series of the week and second overall behind Prison Break. The number was 19 percent lower than Nielsen's calculation for the opening week of the first season (1.25 billion minutes). Samba TV, which also gathers viewership data from smart TVs, listed the series seventh on its chart of top streaming programs for the week ending September 1.

Critical response

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes calculated that 83% of 12 critics reviews for the episode were positive, and the average of rated reviews was 7.1 out of 10.

Keith Phipps at Vulture gave the episode three stars out of five and said the decision to release the season's first three episodes at once made sense, stating: "Each involves a certain amount of table-setting but also an escalation of the action, particularly in this episode". He highlighted the quick rise and fall of Míriel and felt the series was "ready to really get moving", but was less positive about the number of characters and complex motivations for viewers to keep track of in the Númenórean storyline. Arezou Amin of Collider gave the episode 8 out of 10 and said "the ball [is] well and truly rolling" on the season's stories. She found the politics and scheming of the Númenórean stoyline to be compelling and well told, and was also positive about how nuanced the episode's story of grief and loss is. On the other hand, Amin was critical about how little the Dwarves had to do in the episode.

Writing for Gizmodo, James Whitbrook said the episode did a "noble job" catching up the audience on key plotlines from the first season, and highlighted the Southlander stoyline and their grief following Bronwyn's death. He thought Isildur's encounter with Shelob was "completely unnecessary but suitably creepy". Whitbrook was more critical of how quickly the Númenórean storyline was being told. Matt Schimkowitz at The A.V. Club praised the episode as the best of the season so far, partially attributing this to the focus on Isildur who is "the closest thing we've got to a regular human on the show". He enjoyed the spider sequence, calling it a "blast". Leon Miller of Polygon felt the episode was "more of the same" from the first season, with some changes from Tolkien's lore that worked in context and others that did not. He said the Pharazôn storyline made the series more interesting, but was concerned that it was not getting the time it needed. Miller had negative thoughts about the Southlanders storyline, feeling its "you're not my dad" scene between Theo and Arondir and the meeting of Isildur and Estrid were both beneath the works of Tolkien. Despite this, he found the episode to be "inexplicably watchable" and thought the same would hold true for all but the "most die-hard Tolkien truthers".

Audience response

The introduction of an Orc wife and baby led to negative responses from some viewers and commentators, partially due to misconceptions about how Orcs reproduce stemming from scenes in Jackson's films that show Uruk-hai—which are Orc-Man hybrids—being created in the ground. There were also concerns that the series was making the Orcs more sympathetic than the "pure embodiment of evil" that Tolkien intended. Other commentators responded to these thoughts by noting that Tolkien confirmed the existence of female Orcs; depicted some Orcs in The Lord of the Rings as being more sympathetic; and provided multiple accounts of where Orcs come from, including a line in The Silmarillion (1977) which says they reproduce through sexual intercourse. The showrunners said they were shocked by the negative responses to the scene, pointing to Tolkien's description of Orcs reproducing sexually and taking issue with the perspective that depicting an Orc family "would somehow feel like moral relativism, or that we're saying that Orcs are victims", which was not their intention.

Companion media

An episode of the aftershow Inside The Rings of Power for "The Eagle and the Sceptre" was released on August 29, 2024. It features actress Felicia Day, the host of The Official The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Podcast, interviewing cast members Addai-Robinson, Gravelle, and Horvath about the making of the episode, with some behind-the-scenes footage.