Now that Rings of Power is available on TVNZ streaming, I've finally started watching the show. To my great surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed the first season. This is my review of the show in general, with no major spoilers beyond what you'd see in a trailer.
I confess to having a weird relationship with fictional "canon." Intellectually, I accept that there is no canon in a fictional setting. It's fiction. By its very nature, what "really" happened in a story is up to the person telling or retelling the story. If I hear a story about, for example, Batman that I don't like, I can discard that story or change it into something I enjoy. Because no part of the stort ever actually happened, there's literally no such thing as accuracy when recalling or retelling the tale. But for some fiction, I can't see past an annoying turn in the narrative. It's not that a bad turn spoils the property for me, but it usually prevents me from engaging with it further. I think that's often because modern media doesn't understand how to handle a misstep. You can't really engage with Star Wars without being reminded that its storyteller asserts that Han and Leia's romance ends in bitter divorce, and Luke dies from an overdose of the Force. One bad turn in the story, in modern storytelling, is permanent by necessity. Pop culture may have copy-pasted the concept of a multiverse from geek culture, but it has yet to figure out how to implement it.
For me, Lord of the Rings represents the benefit of a strictly enforced definition of its canon, I think because there has been legitimate scholarly analysis of Tolkien's writings long before there were serious attempts to bring it to the screen. I wasn't aware of it myself until I ventured to watch War of the Rohirrim. I knew it wasn't canon, but also (and significantly) that there was no canon for this story. This was speculative fiction within speculative fiction.
We Tolkien fans have always treated his Legendarium as an artefact of history, understanding that nothing can be added to that history. Any film or video game so tabletop game that changes the events of history is itself a fanciful variation of "real" fantasy history.
It probably also helps that most LOTR media (at least so far) rarely strays from the central theme of Tolkien's story. Everything points back to the Ring. Even War of the Rohirrim has a scene of orcs gathering rings from the hands of dead men, and ends with Héra riding off to meet with Gandalf. Normally, I'd loathe the limited scope of the fiction, but in LOTR it serves as a focus for the kinds of stories being told. Stories are, for whatever reason, focusing on one aspect of the story around the Ring and elaborating on it, so that every story being told has a link, however tenuous, back to Tolkien's written word.
It's a little inconsistent, and I'm happy to admit my own hypocrisy. I'm happy to accept The Silmarilion and Children of Hurin as canon, but I regard War of the Rohirrim, and certainly anything in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, as speculation or interpretation.
And that's where Rings of Power obviously must be categorised: Speculation about unknown years within the lives of some major figures of the Legendarium.
I've just finished the first season of Rings of Power, and I've only had to mentally reject a few parts of the story as unlikely speculation within the canon of fictional truth. I know this is "fictional fantasy," so it doesn't bother me that Galadriel probably never jumped off of a ship headed for the Grey Havens and swam much of the way back to the South Lands. (Interestingly, though, I can't quite decide whether it's totally unlike Tolkien or exactly like Tolkien.)
Whatever is in store for me as I continue on to the next season of the show, I've surprised myself by being authentically entertained just by the opportuntiy to spend more time in Middle Earth. I get to see Elrond negotiate with dwarves before the relationship between elves and dwarves was nigh irreparable, and nomadic hobbits before they settle in the Shire, and so on. The events are speculative, but they're set in a geographically accurate Middle Earth, and major events in the timeline are happening as scheduled. It's alternate history fiction, and I can accept that because there's a well-defined baseline for [fictional] facts.
Galadriel has always been a mysterious figure in the canon. Everybody always says she's super powerful, but with the only meaningful interaction we get with her is her temptation at the fountain. It's great that she's technically really very important and powerful in the canon, but it doesn't feel as great as "seeing" Aragorn or Legolas kill orcs.
I've always wanted to Galadriel live up to the power it's hinted that she possesses. This series delivers that in an extremely satisfying plotline. Even if exact details aren't correct, the Galadriel presented in Rings of Power feels at least as true as our real world histories of Artemisia of Caria or Boudica. We may have the specifics wrong, but the archaeology at least suggests the broad strokes for possible storylines.
The great thing about this Galadriel (as played by Morfydd Clark) is that she is, in-world anyway, unlikable. The show walks that impossibly fine line between an "unlikable" character that's [mostly] easy to root for. Galadriel is an elf of principle, never wavering and never allowing for variation. Her goal is to destroy Sauron at any cost, and obviously we know she cannot wholly succeed, but it's easy to admire her determination. However, the same determination we may (or may not, depending on your tolerance) admire is what makes her so abrasive to the humans of Middle-Earth. She's demanding, unreasonable, and resolute. She doesn't seem to care about making friends or even allies beyond what serves her stated goal.
At times, it's awkward and uncomfortable, but it makes this Galadriel and the Galadriel of the movies shockingly believable. I never doubt for a moment that this woman is capable of going to war, negotiating with (or just intimidating) royal courts, or of being tempted by a ring that would promise her total control over the entire world.
By contrast, I'm not sold on (presumably) Gandalf being a bewildered starman when he comes to Arda. This is, of course, what the show is here to do. It's asserting unwritten histories, and that's a bold thing to do, and they got Gandalf wrong for me. I can accept that he wouldn't know the common tongue, maybe (not sure why he wouldn't have been trained for that, but I guess I can accept it), but his utter inability to accept that his efforts to communicate are not working seems shockingly stupid to me, like the classic American shouting really loudly in the hope that the only barrier to shared language is annunciation and volume.
I guess the only backstory I want for Gandalf is that he wanders out of the woods one night and meets some hobbits. But they didn't make a whole show to not show Gandalf's origin, so we have to sit through caveman Gandalf, painful as it is. This aspect of the show, I am not adopting as part of my personal canon.
That's the benefit of understanding the authoritative source of canon. If it's not in Tolkien's notes, then it's optional. Compared to a fictional property with a canon that gets passed from one show runner to the next, this is nothing short of liberating. Imagine how different Star Wars might have turned out, had Lucas legitimately planned out the 9 episodes early on, and established them as canon. We could have had all the expanded universe stuff in the 1990s, and then different takes on the same events in the movies of the 2000s. They could have been wildly different while still adhering to the same canonical timeline of events. I'd probably still be a fan.
We know from The Silmarilion that Sauron ingratiated himself to the elves of old as Annatar, the lord of gifts. According to the Internet, the Rings of Power writers don't have the rights to The Silmarilion, so that story apparently cannot be told. So the writers had to invent a new form for Sauron to take, which I won't spoil here. They wrote a mostly elegant alternate history for this hugely significant part of Middle-Earth lore. It's not perfect, and in the end I think it sorely understates Sauron's connection to Celebrimbor, and maybe, awkwardly, puts too much into Galadriel's relationship with Sauron.
I guess there's basically no way to make an alternate version of a well-known turning point of history. I can't blame the writers, and I think they do as well as one could hope. In service of the show, they're setting up an awfully serious rivalry between Galadriel and Sauron, so I can definitely see her and Elrond and Gandalf working together in the end to banish Sauron.
What I've learnt from Rings of Power and War of the Rohirrim is that I'm happy for fiction to fill in the gaps between LOTR canon, but I don't appreciate when a show replaces LOTR canon. Rings of Power is still good enough for me to give it a pass on its deviations, and it's made all the easier knowing that the assertions against canon were down to licensing issues.
Nobody's more surprised than me to learn that Rings of Power is an entertaining show. I was skeptical for all the hype about how it was the "most expensive show ever produced", and that it was an Amazon TV show (which I've not had great experiences with so far). It's not canon, but it doesn't have to be, because it's universally agreed that the one true canon is the exclusive domain of Tolkien's books and notes. But if you're a long-time fan of LOTR and want to spend more time in Middle Earth, cross-referencing your Return of the King appendices and consulting your Guide to Tolkien, or a new fan who wants to get the general sense for Middle Earth, then this is one tool you have available to you. And don't worry! When something that doesn't line up with your own head canon (or with Tolkien's canon), you're allowed to ignore it as somebody else's weird fever dream.