How not to write a twist: the LOTR prequel (spoilers)

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen The Rings of Power, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel series, you will probably want to stop reading here. This article continues MAJOR spoilers.

I haven’t written much fiction lately, but if you’re familiar with my novels and short stories, you know that I love a good twist. (My first novel, Identity Break, was built entirely around a plot twist, and I incorporated several twists into my collection of short stories, Nightmare’s Eve.)

The writers of The Rings of Power seem to share that affection. Unfortunately, their series on Amazon Prime is a textbook example of how NOT to write a twist.

A twist involves an unexpected change in direction with regard to plot or character. But a good twist has to make sense once it’s revealed: It can’t seem forced, contrived, or inconsistent with what’s been revealed previously. The Sixth Sense is a prime example of a movie with a great twist: The writer, M. Night Shyamalan, even included a series of flashback/recap scenes to show the audience the clues they missed the first time around.

The writers of The Rings of Power should have been taking notes, because they included two major plot twists – both of which felt incredibly forced and contrived. (Here’s where the spoilers begin.)

The Stranger

The first involves a character known simply as The Stranger, a full-grown man who crashes to earth in a meteorite with a case of amnesia. He has difficulty speaking, at least in English, so we’re left to speculate who this person might be, although the Harfoot girl Nori keeps insisting that he’s “good.” It therefore comes as quite a shock when three white-robed characters appear in the season’s final episode and declare him to be none other than that epitome of evil, Sauron, the main antagonist in the story.

This declaration is a major twist, because the writers have kept the audience guessing about who Sauron might be to this point. But the twist feels forced in the extreme. The three robed figures’ background is not explained, nor is their reason for identifying The Stranger as Sauron. They are simply a plot device to throw a halfhearted head fake at the audience that was so unconvincing I immediately dismissed it out of hand. I had guessed early on that The Stranger was, in fact, Gandalf the Grey – a guess later confirmed by his use of a quote (“When in doubt… follow your nose”) uttered by Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings.

But the second twist, if anything, was even more badly bungled than the first. As mentioned, the writers kept the audience guessing throughout the season as to the identity of Sauron, at one point introducing a character named Adar who seemed to fit the description quite nicely. But it was clear he fit a little too well, and that the writers were using him as another head fake to throw the audience off. In their defense, Adar was developed far more fully than the three cardboard-cutout white-robed figures, and was a nicely drawn character in his own right.

He was not, however, Sauron.

Halbrand

In the end, Sauron turns out to be none other than Halbrand, a mysterious stranger the elf warrior Galadriel encounters on a raft in the middle of the ocean. This was certainly a shocking twist and one I didn’t see coming. But after it was revealed, it still didn’t make sense to me. And therein lies the problem: A good twist leaves the audience saying to themselves, “Of course! I should have seen that coming.” This one, though, just left me scratching my head in bemusement.

To be sure, Halbrand never seems like a model of integrity. We know, for instance, that he left some companions to die in the middle of the ocean, but he excused it at the time as an unfortunate necessity to ensure his own survival. He never seems like the megalomaniac we know Sauron to be, but rather a morally ambiguous – and very conflicted – opportunist, more a scalawag than a sociopath. A con artist at worst.

Even stranger, Halbrand never exhibits any ability at all to use magic. In one instance, when he is threatened by a bunch of thugs, he uses his fists – not magic – to get the better of them, then winds up in a prison cell, where he makes no attempt to escape using magic. This, we are supposed to believe, is the world’s most powerful dark sorcerer? Does he have amnesia like The Stranger? This seems unlikely, since he seems to remember doing something horrible, for which he confesses his guilt in vague terms to Galadriel. Besides, even the amnesiac Stranger uses his powers in scattershot fashion, something Halbrand never does.

Or is Halbrand merely trying to remain incognito? Does he not turn fully evil until he is scorned by Galadriel? This, too, seems unlikely, because Galadriel appears convinced she has rejected an irredeemably evil scourge, not a simple misguided rogue.

The point is that none of this adds up. It’s possible that the writers are leaving some revelations for a future season, but twists should be fully resolved within a single work, not left hanging for a sequel. If they are, they seem inauthentic and the audience feels cheated. Unresolved twists should not be left as part of cliffhangers. That’s either lazy or disingenuous – or both.

It leaves a sour taste in the audience’s mouth, which is exactly what The Rings of Power did. It twisted viewers into knots, but the plotline came unraveled when the observant viewer pulled on a strand of loose thread.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist, editor, and author of more than 40 books. As with many others, “The Hobbit” was his introduction to fantasy literature.