Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power begins with an data dump. Elves! Trees! War! Destruction, demise, and eventually — a terrific peace.

But is it sufficient exposition? Due to the unusually particular means by which creator J.R.R. Tolkien’s work has been licensed for movie, there are a lot of issues that the artistic group can allude to however not clarify. And the largest of these is the conflict towards the darkish god, Morgoth, which varieties the majority of the occasions of The Silmarillion.

You might need heard The Silmarillion known as a “sequel” to The Lord of the Rings. But it’s really one thing extra difficult: a complete historical past of Middle-earth, from earlier than the daybreak of time to the tip of the War of the Ring, compiled from Tolkien’s drafts and notes to the very best of his son’s means. It’s much less a novel than a group of myths in regards to the creation of the world and the nice, millennia-long battle towards an evil god.

The Rings of Power is ready after the shut of that conflict, which the writers can allude to with out element as a result of the movie rights to The Silmarillion have by no means been offered. In the primary two episodes characters point out names like Fëanor and Morgoth, but it surely falls to nerds like me to unpack it for the layperson as succinctly as attainable.

So, what occurred within the conflict towards Morgoth? We have to start out on the creation of the universe as Tolkien imagined it.

Who is Morgoth?

Image: New Line Pictures

In the start, the supreme creator-god Eru Ilúvatar created a number of subordinate gods, the Valar, with whom he sang Middle-earth into existence. Only Eru may create life; the lesser gods’ job was to organize Middle-earth for his most vital creations, Elves and Men.

Morgoth was among the many Valar, however from the start desired mastery of dwelling issues, till that need festered into hate. “From splendour he fell,” Tolkien writes, “through arrogance to contempt for all things save himself.” How highly effective was Morgoth? Sauron had the Witch-king of Angmar as his most terrifying servant; Morgoth had Sauron.

How did the conflict begin?

Image: Prime Video

When the Valar clashed with Morgoth, their powers would degree mountains and transfer oceans, and finally they feared to go to conflict lest they destroy any newly born elves. So they went to the far west, constructed the heavenly metropolis of Valinor, and invited the elves to come back reside with them. Middle-earth didn’t include a solar or moon out of the field, and so the Valar created two huge, glowing bushes in Valinor that waxed and waned to offer golden mild throughout the day, silver mild at night time, and mingled mild in between. Elsewhere on Middle-earth, the one illumination was starlight.

Morgoth despised and coveted the bushes’ mild, and plotted to destroy what he couldn’t make his personal. Which introduced him into battle with a tribe of Valinorian Elves, the Noldor, and kicked off the majority of the story of The Silmarillion.

Meet Fëanor, the freakin’ worst

Photo: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

Tolkien known as Fëanor the best of the Noldor (Valinor’s craftsman elves) in thoughts and ability, and mentioned that he invented the written Elven alphabet — excessive marks from a professor of linguistics. But Fëanor is greatest recognized for gem-craft, fashioning jewels extra good than may very well be found within the earth. He created the Silmarils, three gems that captured the phases of sunshine from the bushes of Valinor.

Fëanor was egotistical and suspicious, and he turned paranoid that the Silmarils could be stolen. He was not precisely incorrect. Melkor invited Ungoliant, an ancestor of Shelob, into Valinor to suck the bushes dry. In the darkness and confusion, he plundered the Silmarils and fled east throughout the ocean. In response, Fëanor made the worst resolution within the historical past of Middle-earth: He swore himself and his seven sons to an unbreakable oath that they’d kill anybody, god or mortal, who saved them from the Silmarils.

It’s not that the ultimate conflict towards Morgoth wouldn’t have occurred with out Fëanor, it’s that this one man’s hubris would trigger it to occur within the worst means. In defiance of the Valar’s recommendation, Fëanor rallied the Noldor to chase Morgoth throughout the ocean, however they wanted ships. And the coastal Teleri elves, the one shipwrights in Aman, declined to assist.

So Fëanor made one other contribution to elven historical past: He invented elf-on-elf homicide, an act on which the Noldor keep a grotesque historic monopoly. For slaughtering the Teleri, the Valar banned Fëanor and all who went with him from returning to Aman, denied them their proper of resurrection in Valinor, and cursed them with everlasting eager for their homeland.

Six centuries of bloody battles, betrayals, and tragedies adopted. Fëanor himself died lengthy earlier than it was over, and there have been loads of occasions that Morgoth might need been defeated sooner or with fewer casualties if he and his sons had simply gotten over it.

How did the conflict towards Morgoth finish?

Photo: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

Their houses destroyed and youngsters presumed useless by the hands of Fëanor’s final dwelling sons, two mortals of combined elf and human ancestry mounted a Silmaril — obtained by inheritance and tragedy — on the prow of their boat and sailed to Aman. Eärendil the Mariner and his spouse, Elwing, satisfied the Valar to intercede.

The War of Wrath between the Valar and Morgoth drowned most of Middle-earth underneath the ocean. The Silmarils have been misplaced eternally, Fëanor’s sons took their very own lives, and Morgoth was, to cite Tolkien, “thrust through the Door of Night beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void.” The Valar pardoned the Noldor who had aided in Morgoth’s defeat and rewarded new allies: the boys of Middle-earth’s western shores, who got knowledge, energy, information, and Numenor, a brand new island between Middle-earth and Aman.

Happily, Eärendil and Elwing’s sons have been not useless, and provided that the Valar couldn’t determine whether or not they have been extra elf or extra human, the twins have been allowed to decide on themselves. One, Elros, selected mortality and have become the primary king of Numenor. The different, Elrond — effectively, you realize who Elrond is!

And ultimately, the sunshine of the Two Trees was not completely misplaced. The Valar remodeled Eärendil and his Silmaril ship right into a star. The star’s mild was collected right into a vial that Galadriel finally gave Frodo, and Sam brandished at a large spider in their very own quest to defeat a Dark Lord. As Sam says: “Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end?”

The tales don’t, however this account of the conflict towards Morgoth does. If you wish to discover out what occurs subsequent, you’ll have to choose up The Silmarillion, or The Lord of the Rings, or simply preserve watching Rings of Power.