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Where Is He? increases the mounting pressures across Middle-earth with a steady hand and a growing sense doom. It gathers several of the season’s threads and tightens them, particularly around Eregion, while allowing quieter moments of character confrontation elsewhere to carry emotional weight. The result is an iepisode that feels purposeful, visually rich, and increasingly ominous without rushing its revelations.
The episode opens in the woods with Arondir tracking a pair of deserting orcs. He dispatches them with ease and discovers a map pointing towards Eregion, a detail that quietly signals the approaching collision of forces. This brief piece of action sets a tone of pursuit and impending conflict that echoes through the rest of the chapter From there the story shifts to the elven city itself, where Celebrimbor is consumed by the task of forging the nine rings intended for men. His frustration is palpable. Tools go missing, tempers fray, and the delayed shipment of mithril from the dwarves only heightens his agitation. Annatar, ever solicitous, steps forward to relieve him of administrative burdens, gently assuming greater control of Eregion’s daily affairs. When a scout’s body is found with the words ‘where is he?’ carved into the chest, Annatar ensures the matter is buried quietly and kept from Celebrimbor. The moment is understated yet chilling, underlining how thoroughly the supposed emissary has embedded himself in the city’s workings.
Meanwhile, Galadriel remains in Adar’s custody. Their conversations are among the episode’s most telling. Adar proposes an uneasy alliance, revealing that he possesses Morgoth’s crown and believes its power combined with the three elven rings could destroy Sauron once and for all. Galadriel, pragmatic and wary, eventually confirms that Halbrand was Sauron and that he is now in Eregion forging rings of power. Adar takes the information and promptly discards the notion of partnership. He has no intention of sharing the kill. Instead he prepares to march his vast orc army on Eregion, convinced that overwhelming force will finish the dark lord. Galadriel’s horrified realisation that this assault is precisely what Sauron desires lands with real force. The scene captures the tragic irony that has defined so much of the season: characters acting with incomplete knowledge, each step furthering the designs of the very enemy they seek to defeat.
In Númenor the political drama reaches a stark personal climax. Elendil stands trial for treason against the new regime of Pharazôn. Offered clemency in exchange for renouncing Míriel and swearing loyalty, he refuses with quiet dignity. The solution proposed is trial by the sea, a plunge into the abyss where the sea worm waits to render the Valar’s judgement. Míriel insists on taking his place. The scene that follows is the episodes most fantastical. She is pulled under by the creature, faces it in the depths, and is returned unharmed to the surface. The crowd hails her as Queen of the Sea, a moment of public affirmation that undercuts Pharazôn’s authority even as he consolidates power. Later, alone with the palantír, Pharazôn receives troubling visions that include Halbrand and fire, a brief but effective reminder that the shadow’s influence reaches even across the sea.
Beneath the mountains of Khazad dûm the ring given to King Durin continues its corrosive work. The king’s appetite for deeper mining and greater wealth has become all consuming. When his son confronts him, pleading that he remove the ring, the older Durin reacts with sudden violence, hurling the younger across the chamber. Disa intervenes with her gift of song, summoning a swarm of bats to block the lower tunnels and buy time. The temporary measure is acknowledged as such. The tension between father and son, and between the king’s growing obsession and the practical wisdom of those around him, gives the dwarven storyline a human scale amid the larger mythic stakes.
Elsewhere the Stranger receives further guidance from Tom Bombadil. The older being leads him to a grove of dead trees and indicates that a staff of power lies somewhere within, necessary if the Stranger is to face both Sauron and the darkness within himself. A vision of Nori in peril interrupts the lesson. The Stranger must choose between the path of destiny and the bonds of friendship. The scenes are brief yet thematically consistent with the episode’s broader concern with loyalty, temptation, and the cost of power.
The episode builds to its most memorable moments in Eregion. As Adar’s army begins the siege, alarms sound throughout the city. Celebrimbor, still focused on the rings, pushes past Annatar to investigate. Outside he finds only a serene, sunlit evening. Children play, merchants close their stalls, and the air is calm. Annatar produces mithril, encourages the smith with words about surpassing even Fëanor, and sends him back to the forge. The doors close. The illusion falls away. Night has returned, fire arcs through the sky, and the people of Eregion flee in panic. Annatar stands on the battlements and smiles. The contrast is masterfully executed, a quiet demonstration of Sauron’s mastery of deception that feels more unsettling than any open display of force.
Performances throughout are assured. Charles Edwards conveys Celebrimbor’s growing isolation and self deception with painful clarity. Charlie Vickers continues to refine Annatar’s mixture of charm and menace, never tipping into caricature. Morfydd Clark and Sam Hazeldine share a wary chemistry that makes their scenes the intellectual heart of the episode. Peter Mullan’s Durin is increasingly haunted, while the Númenórean sequences benefit from the quiet resolve of both Lloyd Owen and Cynthia Addai Robinson.
Where Is He? isn a strong second act chapter and a turning point. It deepens the moral and strategic complications surrounding the rings, ups the personal stakes for several key figures, and stages the opening of a siege that has been building all season. The careful layering of illusion and reality, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and consequence gives the episode a satisfying weight. It leaves Middle-earth darker, more divided, and poised for the confrontations still to come, while demonstrating once again the series’ capacity for moments of genuine dramatic power.
Where to watch The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power – Season 2, Episode 6: Where Is He: