Parental Relationships in Rings of Power

Similarly to how I feel about the relationships in House of the dragon, I wanted to take a closer look at the relationships in Rings of Power. As we know character driven stories are the heart of all storytelling, so it's my goal to analyze these interactions and speculate wildly at what we might see in the future. We are seeing a lot of relationships forge that we see come to fruition in Lord of the Rings and I will continue to explore the growth of these relationships as the series goes on.

Either the most impactful relationship or the most irrelevant one is going to be Durin and his father. We saw very little interaction between Durin and the King but what we have seen is abrasive, and full of a lack of understanding. The King is obviously very fearful of something, perhaps it's the Balrog in his mines, perhaps it's just of letting anyone else into their mountains. But when Durin tries to not only embrace but actively help his friend, the King kind of loses it. He fully disowns his son, which clearly hurts Durin but doesn’t stop him from helping his friend. Now their story is going to feed less into Lord of the Rings and more into The Hobbit. This is the line of Durin we are watching, so I am personally interested to see how this relationship develops and how their relationship with the elves continues.

The only mother/son relationship that we got to see is Bronwyn and Theo. This added an interesting dynamic to the show because Theo was also the only actual child we saw. Isildur and Nori and Durin of course were all older. Theo was a young man who was clearly struggling with not having a father figure in his life. Now that was something that we really didn’t get to hear anything about, Theo’s father remains a mystery to the audience, perhaps that is something that we will discover as the show goes on. Though it isn’t necessary I do think that it will add more depth to both Theo and Bronwyn’s characters. Theo is a very strong willed kid and he most definitely gets that from Bronwyn, she is truly a leader and a fighter and I am interested to see how their relationship develops as well as how their roles develop in the Southlands, especially after the people find out that their “king” isn’t really their king.

One relationship we haven’t gotten to see a lot of but is definitely going to be important throughout the end of the show is Elendil and Isildur. Though in fiction, everything thinks that Isildur is dead, we as the audience who has seen Lord of the Rings knows that he is alive. Elendil was obviously very hurt by the loss of his son, especially right after they had mended fences and talked about how they could further bond and train as father and son. Considering that we know that Isildur eventually becomes a ring-bearer, so I am eager to see 1) How they bring him back, 2) How the relationship between him and his father grows and develops and 3) How their relationship and Isildur’s growth feeds into his role in the war of the ring.

Though the parental relationships are not the only ones present in Rings of Power, they are the driving force for the future of the story. The other relationships in the show were the driving force of establishing the series, and the first season. They will also be getting an analysis article, but I thought it was important to focus in on the categories of relationships.