There's one major plot twist at the end of the series, and this post spoils that. I somewhat think everyone knows what it is at this point, but in case you don't this is your warning.
So. The first episode of Rings on Prime has The Main Character convinced that even though Morgoth was defeated, his lieutenant Sauron was still out there, and despite finding no trace of him after hundreds of years of searching, she is determined to find him. Then High King Gil-galad calls her back and declares the war is over and there is to be no more searching for Sauron. What he didn't tell The Main Character is that he knew Sauron was still out there because a tree was getting infected; he decided to stop The Main Character from searching for Sauron because "The same wind that seeks to blow out a fire may also cause its spread." (Or approximately those words.)
I've heard a variety of critics of the show saying something along the lines of, "We know The Main Character will be right in the end, even if she has no proof now", but something I've realized in the last couple of weeks is that she isn't right--Gil-galad is. In the very actions of trying to destroy Sauron, The Main Character returned Sauron to power.
I mean, the show never highlighted that. A moment of reflection from The Main Character when she realizes she probably shouldn't have tried to "touch the darkness" because "touching the darkness" didn't show her the light, it just caused all the problems for everyone, might have been nice. But no.
Anyway...
The Metaphors Are Weird
There are two metaphors that are essential to the plot of the season. The first metaphor--not the first one the show says, but the first one I'm going to discuss, because it makes sense--is Gil-galad saying that wind can put fire out or make it spread. The Main Character is the wind, and Sauron is the fire; if she keeps trying to "put him out", she might make him return to power instead. Interestingly, Sauron is linked closely to fire, so this isn't too unrealistic to say. The problem is that this metaphor is weird for one person. Fire is out of control; a person (usually) is under their own control. This metaphor would make a lot more sense if we were talking about a large group of people, or a cause.
Think about something like the Intolerable Acts from the American Revolution. After the Sons of Liberty destroyed a lot of tea in an act of protest, the British Parliament passed four severe laws to punish the entire city of Boston as an example to other colonists--blow out that fire, if you will. However, it made people angrier instead, and other colonies were spurred to action instead of frightened into obedience. The attempt to quash the Revolution instead made it spread.
So in theory, this analogy could make sense, but it doesn't make sense for Sauron, because Sauron is not a cause or an ideology. The orcs do not believe in the virtue of Sauron. They're not going to rally to his defense. They were described as slaves of evil, for goodness' sake--if slaves' masters are defeated, will they rally to avenge him? This is not a situation where any fighting will continue once Sauron is gone; this is more of a head-of-the-snake situation. So, it doesn't make sense.
It ends up being right, but it doesn't make sense. Jeepers, this show...
The second metaphor... you know, I'm not going to quote it, because it's confusing, bewildering, and cumbersome. I'll just say it has a ship, a rock, light, darkness, and light reflecting on dark water and therefore dark water looking like light. What it means is that sometimes it is unclear what the right course of action is, and you learn what the right course of action is by choosing the wrong course of action. (But wait, if you don't know what the right course of action is, how do you know what the wrong course of action is?)
A lot of other people have said that this metaphor makes no sense in the context of the story, and I... sort of... almost... kind of disagree. It can make sense in the context of the story. It doesn't because the dialogue didn't set it up particularly well, but it could.
Here's the context in which the metaphor plays out: The Main Character is ordered to stop her search for Sauron because the war is over (the High King didn't tell her that he knew Sauron was still out there), and so she's ordered to return to Valinor. When The Main Character remembers this metaphor, she decides to disobey Gil-galad and follow her instincts, doing what she believed was right, and continuing to fight.
So, in this particular situation, there are two possible light-dark-ship-stone interpretations, where the "light" choice isn't clear. The first possibility is the debate on when it's right to follow your proper leader and when it's right to follow your own instincts and do what is right. There is a time to trust your leaders, even when they don't tell you everything, but there is also a time to stand up to the people over you and do what you know is right--and it's not always obvious which one is right in any given situation. The other possibility is knowing when it's right to fight for what's right and when it's right to accept peace. There's some meme on Facebook (I can't find it now) that says something like the strongest person knows when to use a pen and when to use a sword, but again, that's not always obvious, and you probably have to learn that from experience. Both of these moral debates could plausibly fit the metaphor and the situation The Main Character finds herself in.
Now, that's me putting those interpretations on there. That is not the show properly explaining the dilemma.
Either way, The Main Character decides to be the "stone" and chooses "darkness" (defying the leader, choosing fighting over peace) and returns to Middle-earth... by jumping out of the boat and swimming across the ocean...
So Gil-galad Was Right, Because...
Because The Main Character decided to swim back to Middle-earth, because she decides to be the "stone", she finds a raft in the middle of nowhere, and lo and behold, a fellow called Halbrand is on this raft. They end up going to Numenor. The Main Character really wants Tar-Miriel to send an army to the Southlands because she thinks Sauron is gathering orcs there, but Halbrand is the lost king of the Southlands and with an army from Numenor, he can reunite the Southlands and defeat Sauron. Halbrand insists that he is in fact not the king of the Southlands, but The Main Character doesn't listen. Halbrand also says that he did a lot of terrible things in the past, and so he doesn't want to be the king because he is unworthy, and he just wants to work as a nobody blacksmith. However, The Main Character keeps insisting and prodding (and manipulating) until he eventually agrees. They fight together to take down the orcs in the Southlands, there are a couple of heart-to-hearts between Halbrand and The Main Character in which he says she inspired him to have faith in himself again and hope that he could be redeemed. Then it's revealed that he's actually Sauron. He says again that The Main Character inspired him, and then he lays out his plans to dominate Middle-earth, with her by his side, and said he couldn't do it without her.
So what that means is that by "choosing the darkness" The Main Character did indeed "spread the fire she sought to put out". Becuase she kept hunting for Sauron, she inspired him to return to power.
Because she hated him, she inspired him to be him.
Here's the problem with all of this: yes, Gil-galad ended up being right and The Main Character ended up being wrong, but not through any logical, standard, or predictable sequence of events; rather, through a whole lot of deeply implausible events that involve finding the only raft in the middle of an ocean and The Main Character refusing to believe the honest truth. The prediction was right, but not in any way Gil-galad could possibly have guessed (unless he was a prophet of some kind; I don't remember if he is in the books, and if he is in the show, the show didn't establish that). This makes Gil-galad lucky rather than right, and that does not inspire any respect for him.
It also doesn't exactly make for a strong plot. It makes for a sequence of events, I suppose, but not really a plot.
All That Is Assuming...
That Sauron was telling the truth, of course. I remember reading, but can't find now, an article when the two showrunners say that you're supposed to go back and second-guess if Sauron was ever telling The Main Character the truth, and if anything he says at all can be trusted. If he wasn't telling her the truth, then the alternative is that he was somehow manipulating her into doing all this. Gil-galad being right depends on Sauron being "out there" but not a threat until he encountered The Main Character, which tracks with everything that he said. On the other hand, if the whole time he was manipulating The Main Character, that means he was a threat from the beginning, so The Main Character was right and Gil-galad was wrong.
The problem, of course, is that we don't know which it was.
Like I said, I couldn't find that one article of them saying not to trust Sauron, but I did find this quote from them:
She also has to bear some responsibility; “I empowered the Dark Lord. I saved his life on a raft. I was party to him coming from obscurity to head an army.”
Hm. Okay. Lots to unpack here.
Obviously, this doesn't say whether he was telling the truth or not. What it does say is that Galadriel was responsible for Sauron's rise to power, and it implies that she was necessary for Sauron's rise to power. All the stuff that she did--getting him in good graces with the Numenoreans, using them to defeat the orcs and subdue Adar, and finally getting into good graces with Celebrimbor to start forging the rings with mithril--he needed her to do all that. I mean, that does indicate Gil-galad was correct and she was incorrect, so I guess that's something.
In theory, this isn't a bad method of storytelling--a lower-down person befriending and using a well-placed person in order to rise through the ranks is a time-honored story, both in fiction and nonfiction. The reason this is baffling is that Sauron isn't a low-ranking person, he's Sauron! He's a shapeshifter in the First and Second Ages, and he does in fact corrupt the Elves of Eregion without needing Galadriel--as a point of fact, Galadriel is one of those people specifically mentioned to not trust him, while Celebrimbor trusted him quickly. See, in the books, he took on the form of Annatar and claimed to be sent by the Valar to assist the Elves left in Middle-earth, which he could plausibly do because he did in fact have special powers and he did have skill in craftsmanship to share with the Elves. This is when they make the rings. No assistance from anyone else necessary.
Now, I checked the appendices and didn't find this spelled out (it's mentioned briefly as part of the timeline of the Second Age in Appendix B), so maybe they didn't have the rights to this story.
But let's just say for the sake of argument that Sauron did need The Main Character to get into the good graces of Eregion--that means he had to somehow predict to meet her in the middle of the ocean on a raft, depend on her not believing that he's not the king of the Southlands, depend on her convincing Miriel to send an army when he won't help convince Miriel, and then somehow depend on her taking him to Eregion after that, in order to participate in a project that he had no way of knowing was happening, given that The Main Character had no idea it was happening and (if the timeline is to be believed) didn't even begin until after he met The Main Character. This isn't master plotting, this is getting unbelievably lucky.
In fact, it's the same level of luck that Gil-galad had in order to correctly predict that Galadriel's attempt to destroy Sauron would return Sauron to power (when Sauron shouldn't have needed her to return to power in the first place!).
Now, I will say, with a certain sprinkling of magic--magic that is hinted at in the lore, I might add--this could make sense. If Sauron has Tar-Palantir-esque powers, then theoretically he could pull this off. But I don't think he does. As far as I know, Sauron's powers involve manipulating fire, making magic rings, and shapeshifting. He is described as a liar and a deceiver, but that doesn't mean he can change your mind magically, and--most of all--if the showrunners decided to change Sauron's powers, they need to somehow explain Sauron's powers, because as it stands, we have no idea what Sauron can and cannot do.
Alternatively, maybe Sauron's actual plan was to just get into The Main Character's good graces and then just go from there, without having Eregion as an end destination or having anywhere as an end destination; work spontaneously rather than create a long-term plan. That's never explained in the show, and I don't know why he would have picked The Main Character instead of any of the other Elves, so... explanation, please?
Or maybe his actual goal was Numenor the entire time? Maybe, as he was floating on some random raft in the middle of the sea, his real goal was to get picked up by the sea-faring, sea-loving Numenoreans, and running into The Main Character was just a coincidence and everything that happened afterwards was his adapting? I mean, that could be vaguely interesting, if the show would explain it.
In Conclusion
I originally was going to have another section about how the show confused feeling guilty about doing evil with not believing in yourself, or thought that believing in yourself was the way to move on from doing evil, but I don't remember the dialogue well enough to pinpoint exactly what the problem was, so I'm just going to leave it be. I will say that Sauron's motivations are never properly explained--that is to say, his motivation at the end, at least, was clearly defined as wanting to bring order to Middle-earth, but his smaller motivations, such as how any of his actions helped him reach this actual goal.
A major, major issue with this show was characters being right about things they shouldn't have been right on. There were little moments, like The Main Character just getting lucky about a hidden door in the first episode or Elrond lucking out and guessing that a children's rhyme has the rhythm to open the most secret door in Moria, and then there were long plotlines like the whole one about Sauron returning to power. None of this makes Gil-galad seem wise or Sauron seem clever, because it doesn't rely on wisdom or cleverness. It relies on implausible, unpredictable nonsense. That's not a compelling conflict.
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