“You choose by what you do,” Nori (Markella Kavenagh) insists to the Stranger in a moment of crisis. In the Season 1 finale of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, what we choose to be — and what we cannot choose — leads to friendships sundered and solidified, powers forged and felled, and long-simmering secrets revealed. Can we choose who we are, no matter our past, or are there deeds that must mark us forever?

In the Greenwood, the Stranger (David Weyman) makes his way through moss and stone and tree. In his head, he hears Nori’s long-gone assurance: “You’re not a peril. You’re good.” A branch cracks, and he turns to see a familiar cloaked figure. “Nori?” he asks with hope. But when she blinks, her eyes turn icy blue. She folds in on herself and then unfurls again as The Dweller (Bridie Sisson) as the other two mysterious figures emerge from the trees. But they’re not here to hurt him: “We come to serve you,” the Ascetic (Kali Kopae) whispers, “Lord Sauron.” We’re getting right down to business here in the finale — unless we are all of us deceived.

Inside Eregion, Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) are worried. Gil-galad is coming, and they still have no way of saving the elves. Just then, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) gallops into the ivy-covered courtyard. Elrond and Galadriel are surprised to see each other — especially Elrond, who believed his friend was safely behind a wall of clouds in Valinor. But there will be time for reunion and reconciliation later; for now, the wounded Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) is in a very bad way. They’ve ridden for six days without resting, and he cannot stand without assistance.

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Elvish medicine works fast, it seems: soon after, Halbrand is back on his feet and looking for Galadriel in the workshop. “The Celebrimbor?” Halbrand asks with astonishment when he learns where he is. Flattery will get you absolutely everywhere with Celebrimbor, and Halbrand (or “Halbrand,” she wrote suspiciously) appears to know that. He takes up the mithril, and suggests combining it with other ores to stretch and amplify its power.

Back in Númenor, Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) is at the king’s (Ken Blackburn) own sickbed. “Soon… black flags will fill our harbor,” Pharazôn tells the assembled apprentices, chosen to propose designs for the king’s impending tomb. As Eärien (Ema Horvath) takes her turn sketching the king alone, he grabs her, and speaks as if to his daughter years ago, begging her to return to the old ways to save their island. He opens a door and warns that “I looked for too long, and now I cannot separate what is from what was, what was from what will be.” Eärien follows his prompting through the door, where she pulls away the palantír’s velvet drape. We know what she'll see if she touches it.

Before she does, it’s back to Eregion, where Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) meets with Elrond, Celebrimbor, and Galadriel, who has traded her armor for a bath and the draped velvet and delicate gold of the city. Celebrimbor suggests they make a mithril crown; Gil-galad, the resident crown-wearer, doesn’t love that. But Celebrimbor is insistent. “We are on the cusp of crafting a new kind of power… A power not of the flesh, but over flesh.” Galadriel has heard those words before, in the Southlands that would soon be obliterated by fire. Adar spoke them then, and now Celebrimbor is — under Halbrand’s influence. Gil-galad reluctantly agrees to give Celebrimbor a few more months, and the workshop is suddenly bustling with smiths firing and forging, including Halbrand. Galadriel watches from the shadows, newly suspicious, and asks an elf discretely for any records of the Southlands’ royal bloodlines (due diligence: better late than never).

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Back in the Greenwood, the women tell the Stranger that his mysterious constellation can only be seen in Rhûn, their home. The Ascetic and the Nomad (Edith Poor) assure him: “Every being that walks or crawls shall be your slaves, for you are Lord Sauron.” Methinks the creepy magic ladies doth protest too much, personally. But as they speak, the elements wake for the Stranger, embers circling and the very trees shaking violently. It is too much — The Dweller knocks him out, and the Ascetic and the Nomad bind his wrists to a tree.

A patch of moss moves in the background. It’s Sadoc (Lenny Henry), camouflaged and spying with Nori, Poppy (Megan Richards), and Marigold (Sara Zwangobani). Marigold distracts the women, while Nori and Sadoc untie the unconscious Stranger. But then Marigold stumbles upon the Stranger on the forest floor, somehow both tied to the tree and lying here in the tall grass. The ruse becomes clear: The bound Stranger opens his icy blue eyes, and his cloak sloughs away like dead leaves to reveal the Dweller. The Nomad buries a dagger in Sadoc’s chest, red blooming across his shirt. Suddenly, the wind kicks up, and thunder rumbles. The Stranger — the real Stranger — rises and sends a tremor through the ground. The Dweller lifts him twisting into the air with her staff and tosses him down, then puts both of her soot-caked hands into the fire and blows lashing flames into the trees sheltering the fleeing Harfoots.

Nori cannot leave her friend, but he begs her to get away from him, fearing he’ll hurt her again. He’s speaking in full sentences now — “They showed me what I am.” But Nori’s not buying it. “You choose by what you do. You’re here to help. I know it.” And help is badly needed, as the Dweller prepares to set Marigold, Poppy, and Sadoc afire over Nori’s anguished screams. But suddenly the fires in the trees and in her hands are quenched. The Stranger stands, staff in hand. He’s here to help. We know it. Now the women understand: “He is not Sauron. He is the Istar.” In his own estimation, he’s something much simpler: “I’m good.” He illuminates the forest with blinding white light. The women of Rhûn are lit from within, turning to screaming skeletons before dissolving into clouds of fluttering moths. But Sadoc cannot celebrate — his wound is mortal. He doesn’t mind; he’ll soon be reunited with his left-behind wife. As the rising sun turns the scorched forest gold, he shuts his eyes against this warmer, truer light for the last time, surrounded by his loyal friends who will wait for him always.

The Númenórean ship is heading home. Elendil (Lloyd Owen) is below deck, where Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) offers him leave as he recovers from the seeming loss of his son. The consequences of Elendil’s trust in Galadriel have been unforeseen and terrible, but he will ensure that the ends are worth what they have each lost. Míriel allows herself a moment of rest against his shoulder. But it can’t last long — they’ve reached Númenor, where Elendil sees what Míriel cannot: the black flags draped around the harbor. The king has died.

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Back in Eregion, Galadriel has gotten her answer. On the banks of a river, an open scroll hangs limply from her hand. As if summoned, Halbrand bounds in with the news that the mithril is too powerful for one object, so they’ll make two. But she will not come to see the progress. “There is no king of the Southlands,” she tells him flatly. “The last man to bear your crest died over a thousand years ago. He had no heir.” The jig is up, but he doesn’t seem to care. “I told you I found it on a dead man,” Halbrand shrugs. “Tell me your name,” she asks, a whisper thick with what she already knows. “I have had many names,” he smirks. She tries to stab him, but he stops her without blinking.

Her ears ring, and she falls. When she hits the ground, she is home in Valinor, where she hears Finrod’s (Will Fletcher) voice. “Get out of my mind,” she spits, but the possibility of seeing her brother again is too wonderful, and she turns to him, beaming. “My task was to ensure peace,” he insists. “But I learned that was Sauron’s task as well.” This is not her Finrod — he’s Sauron’s. Tears spilling down her cheeks, Galadriel walks away from the person she loves most. “Galadriel, look at me,” Finrod screams, and then she’s back on the raft, suddenly in the middle of the Sundering Seas with Halbrand. He only ever told her the truth, he insists — he said he’d done evil, and she told him his future need not be bound by his past. In the water’s reflection, he offers her a vision of their future: a powerful pair, Galadriel standing beside the towering, iron-armored Sauron. “I would make you a queen…You bind me to the light,” he insists. “And I bind you to power. Together, we can save this Middle-earth.”

But Galadriel knows the difference between saving and ruling, and she chooses instead to press the blade to his throat. Behind them, over the expanse of sea, bright blue bursts through clouds on one side, while a furious storm gathers on the other. In his fury, Halbrand’s eyes are ringed in an angry red, the pupils only slits, the eyes of Sauron at last. They scream, lightning flashes, and Galadriel is plunged into the sea once more. But this time it is not Halbrand who rescues her — her true friend Elrond rouses her from the river. Halbrand is gone.

Galadriel runs to the workshop, where Celebrimbor is alone. She does not expect Halbrand will return. She insists that they make three objects, for balance, and that they go only to elves. But Celebrimbor needs very pure gold and silver to alloy with the mithril — ores from Valinor. “True creation requires sacrifice,” he tells her as she looks at her brother’s cherished blade in her hand. Perhaps she can finally put it down in the service of what she hopes will be peace.

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Back in the Grove, Nori asks if the Stranger remembers anything more yet, but he only has flashes and must go to Rhûn to learn more. She asks if “Istar” is his kind. “In your tongue, that’s ‘wise one,’ or ‘wizard,’” he answers. Wizard, you say? Meanwhile, the Harfoots are packing up to travel, this time on foot. Nori joins her family, but they drop an already-packed bag at her feet — they’re sending her off to adventure with the Stranger. “You’re part of something bigger now,” Largo (Dylan Smith) tells her. She takes a tearful last leave from her proud mother and her beloved father, her own north star. Poppy bursts through the crowd to clutch her friend tightly and to make me very weepy indeed. And then Nori is gone, all the way off trail, but never walking alone. As they set their course, the Stranger has a piece of wisdom for her: “When in doubt, Elanor Brandyfoot, always follow your nose.” He may not have a name yet, but that is the familiar and very good advice of the future Gandalf the Grey.

Galadriel places her dagger into Celebrimbor’s fires to be melted down. The molten gold and silver is poured into a cauldron with the mithril. As Celebrimbor twists and molds the new alloy into rings, Elrond finds the abandoned scroll in the reeds. He rushes back to the workshop, where the beauty of the first three glittering rings of power stops his mouth. The rings are reflected in an eye — an eye that also reflects the fires of Mount Doom. As this first season comes to a close, a black-cloaked Halbrand treks through the ruined stone of smoke-choked Mordor. You choose by what you do, after all. He is Sauron, king of the Southlands — and, if he has his way, of all Middle-earth. He will seek to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.

The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is available to stream on Prime Video.