**Spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 4 “Eldest,” now streaming on Prime Video**
There’s so much in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 4 “Eldest” for Tolkien fans to tear into with gusto: the arrival of Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), the introduction of a “new” ancient halfling race in the Stoors, a battle between Elves and Barrow-wights, and a literal Entwife played by Olivia Williams!!! However, the development that I find myself swooning over the most is the connection brewing between the noble young Númenorean Isildur (Maxim Baldry) and the scrappy Southlander Estrid (Nia Towle). The Prime Video series only introduced Estrid last week and I’m already profoundly moved by the impossible situation she finds herself in: torn not only between a believed dead fiancé and the handsome Isildur, but also between literal good and evil.
I’m super duper rooting for these two crazy kids, ‘shipping them like they’re Bridgerton characters or something. How did this happen so quickly? How did The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 crack the romance code so well?
Honestly? I think it’s all down to the perfect creation and casting of Estrid.
When it was initially announced that The Rings of Power would be adding yet another wholly original human character to the Southlands storyline in Season 2, my reaction was one of skepticism. It seemed like this “Estrid” was just there to replace mom and healer Bronwyn in the Southlands storyline after actress Nazanin Boniadi opted to leave the series. You know, there needed to be “a girl” to balance out the testosterone in the outskirts of Mordor.
However, from the moment I met Estrid, I loved her. Showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne devised a perfect Middle-earth meet cute for her and Isildur, letting the gutsy young women stab Aragon’s forefather in the leg after mistaking him for an orc. The two survivors quickly team up and she even sagely advises him to avoid a trap set for the good guys by Adar’s (Sam Hazeldine) “wild men.” Isildur ignores her advice, naturally, and the duo only survive through Arondir’s (Ismael Cruz Córdova) aid.
By the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 3, I was feeling the sparks between Estrid and Isildur heating up in classic rom-com fashion: boy meets girl, girl stabs boy, boy and girl catch feelings surviving in the shadow of Mordor. But then The Rings of Power tossed a curveball by revealing that Estrid herself had bowed to Adar and the orcs of Mordor to survive. She bears the mark of the wild men…even if she tries to blot it out with a fire hot blade.
When Estrid’s true nature is quickly uncovered in this week’s episode, I found myself wanting to rush to her defense. As we saw in the The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 premiere, conditions in Mordor are so extreme, it’s either submit or die. (Even Charlie Vickers’s Sauron takes the knee in a strategic turn.) Perhaps she wanted to escape this hell, and was not, as Isildur suspected, plotting to follow him all the way to Númenor to cause mayhem. Or maybe she was!
Whatever lurked in the heart of Estrid was immediately fascinating to me precisely because we’ve never encountered her character in Tolkien’s work before. Can there be redemption for someone who slips under evil’s yoke for a hot minute to survive? We already know that Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) will eventually transcend Sauron’s influence to become the serene figure of wisdom portrayed by Cate Blanchett in Peter Jackson’s films. We don’t know Estrid’s fate. It is still to be written by McKay and Payne.
Estrid is a perfect example of how a wholly original character can raise the stakes in a big literary adaptation. We already know what happens to Sauron, Galadriel, Elrond, Isildur, and company. Estrid is a loose cannon waiting to either blow up our heroes’s best laid plans or eventually become Isildur’s unnamed wife in the lore. She could be a villainess in the making, a simple detour in Isildur’s storyline, or the ancestor of Aragon.
Adding to the tension is Nia Towle’s beautifully realized performance. Her chemistry with Maxim Baldry has such a fun, natural sensuality to it. Her eyes reveal that she is not only haunted by the horrors she’s seen, but also emboldened to survive at all cost. When her long-lost fiancé Hagen (Gabriel Akuwudike) actually does show up, I literally groaned. She and Isildur were finally just about to kiss! Get lost, Hagen!
Will Estrid turn out to be Isildur’s one true love? Or a thorn in his side? Only time and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power can tell, which means I’m definitely tuning in next week to see what happens between them next.
