The Rings of Power (Season 2)

Skippable, and a clear improvement on the first season. It needs the first season, which is the main practical point: it opens mid-plot with no recap worth the name and assumes you know who roughly twenty people are.

The improvement comes from dropping the mystery. The first season spent eight hours concealing something the audience had largely guessed; this one puts Sauron on screen as himself from the opening and becomes a story about manipulation instead. He arrives in Eregion as a helpful stranger with good ideas, and the long thread of Celebrimbor being flattered into forging the rings that doom his own people is the best writing the show has produced.

Charlie Vickers plays the part as somebody who believes his own account of what he is doing, which is far more unsettling than menace, and the scenes where a craftsman slowly loses the ability to tell what is real are the closest the series comes to earning its subject.

The rest is uneven in the familiar way. There are still too many plotlines, the Harfoots are still the weakest, and the big siege at the end is competent rather than memorable. Worth continuing if the first season held you, and not a reason to start.