The penultimate episode of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 showed the series’ biggest battle yet. Adar and his army of Orcs — as well as Damrod the Hill-troll, who joined forces with them earlier in the season — assaulted the Elven realm of Eregion. In doing so, Adar hoped to simultaneously defeat both Sauron and the Elves, the two greatest threats to the Orcs. The setup for this battle was reminiscent of two iconic battles from The Lord of the Rings: The Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers and the Siege of Minas Tirith from The Return of the King. The Siege of Eregion was extremely similar to these battles in many ways, which served to highlight some key differences between them.

In all three of these battles, the Free Peoples of Middle-earth were the defenders, trying to prevent an army of Orcs from overrunning a heavily fortified structure such as a castle or a walled city. In all three, the villains utilized a special device to breach their enemies’ defenses. In all three, the heroes were vastly outnumbered, but they held on to a glimmer of hope; if they could endure through the night, reinforcements would arrive at the break of dawn to relieve them. The Rings of Power‘s writers played into certain tropes from The Lord of the Rings and subverted others as a way to surprise fans who have read J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel or watched Peter Jackson’s film adaptations. The aspects of the Siege of Eregion that set it apart from the Battle of Helm’s Deep and the Siege of Minas Tirith caused it to end far more tragically, setting up for what is likely to be an emotionally devastating season finale.

A Tried and True Strategy Failed During the Siege of Eregion

Battle
Heroic Combatants
Villainous Combatants

The Siege of Eregion (The Rings of Power version)
Elves of Eregion, Elves of Lindon
Orcs, Damrod

The Battle of Helm’s Deep (Jackson’s film version)
Rohirrim, Elves of Lothlórien, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf
Uruk-hai

The Siege of Minas Tirith (Jackson’s film version)
Gondorians, Rohirrim, Army of the Dead, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Merry, Pippin
Orcs, Easterlings, Haradrim, Nazgûl, Trolls, Mûmakil, Fell Beasts

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Elrond’s arrival in Eregion marked the first subversion of expectations. He led a cavalry charge of Elves from Lindon to aid the Elven realm. In The Lord of the Rings, cavalry charges were highly effective against Orcs, including the Uruk-hai. The Rohirrim overwhelmed their enemies both at the Battle of Helm’s Deep and the Siege of Minas Tirith by using this technique. In The Rings of Power, the Orcs held their ground and had no apparent defense against Elrond’s cavalry charge, so it seemed like the same thing would happen again. But this time, the Orcs had a trick up their sleeves; before the Elven cavalry reached the Orcs’ frontline, they unveiled a cage containing the captive Galadriel. They threatened to kill her, forcing Elrond to stop the charge.

After Elrond’s conversation with Adar, he and his fellow Elves of Lindon ended up fighting the Orcs anyway. However, they lost out on the momentum that a successful cavalry charge would have granted them. The Orcs were not taken by surprise, so they were more prepared to deal with the cavalry than they otherwise would have been. This was an example of the benefits that the Orcs gained from Adar’s leadership. Orcs were strong, but they were rarely strategic. In The Lord of the Rings, they relied on brute strength and superior numbers to defeat their enemies. Adar’s cunning mind gave the Orcs an advantage that allowed them to counteract one of the heroes’ most effective techniques.

The Siege of Eregion Introduced a Powerful Machine

In all three of these battles, the Orcs had some sort of weapon to destroy their enemies’ defenses. In The Two Towers, the Uruk-hai used an explosive that Saruman devised to explode the outer wall of Helm’s Deep. In The Return of the King, the Orcs used Grond, a massive battering ram, to break down the Great Gate of Minas Tirith. In The Rings of Power, the Orcs used a Ravager, a machine that did not exist in The Lord of the Rings novel or real-world historical combat. It launched chains into the wall of Eregion to pull the stones apart. The Ravager was similar to the bomb from Helm’s Deep in that an individual needed to move across the battlefield to activate it. In The Two Towers, this individual was an Uruk-hai Berserker with a torch to ignite the bomb, and in The Rings of Power, it was Damrod, who was strong enough to operate the Ravager single-handedly.

In both instances, an Elven archer tried to stop this individual. Arondir shouting “He must not reach the wall!” even echoed Aragorn’s commands to Legolas in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film: “Bring him down, Legolas! Kill him! Kill him!” The subversion came from the fact that, unlike Legolas, Arondir was successful. With help from Elrond and Gil-galad, he managed to kill Damrod before he could break through the wall with the Ravager. However, this subversion of expectations was itself subverted soon after. Though Damrod was dead, the Orcs were able to activate the Ravager without him and crumble the wall of Eregion. The reason that they had time to do so was because of the biggest difference between the Siege of Eregion and the previous battles — one that may spell doom for the Elves.

The Siege of Eregion’s Biggest Twist Came at the End

The Elves in The Rings of Power did not believe that they could defeat Adar’s forces alone, but help was on its way. Elrond had called upon his old friend, Durin IV, and the other Dwarves of Moria for aid. In The Lord of the Rings‘ most important battles, the sudden arrival of reinforcements was often what turned the tide. At Helm’s Deep, Gandalf and the Riders of Rohan arrived in the morning after the first night of fighting. They suddenly flanked and routed the Uruk-hai, forcing the remnants of Saruman’s army to flee into the forest, where they met their end. During the Siege of Minas Tirith, the Rohirrim once again arrived in the morning after the first night of fighting. Unlike at Helm’s Deep, this did not immediately end the battle, but it was still highly beneficial for the defenders. It split the attention of Sauron’s army, forcing the villains to fight the Rohirrim in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields instead of focusing their efforts solely on besieging Minas Tirith. A second wave of reinforcements arrived later, led by Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. In Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King film, these reinforcements were the Army of the Dead, but in the novel, they were the Rangers of the North, some soldiers from Gondor’s southern regions, and Elrond’s sons.

In the morning after the first night of fighting in the Siege of Eregion, Elrond looked hopefully towards a hill on the horizon, but no one arrived to save a single Elven messenger. The Dwarves were not coming, for a monster had awoken within Moria. This was the most devastating of the battle’s many subverted tropes. With no reinforcements to relieve the defenders, the Orcs regained the upper hand and broke through the wall. Elrond believed that the Dwarves would somehow still arrive, but his fellow Elves lacked faith. In Tolkien’s version of the story, the Dwarves were indeed absent from the Siege of Eregion, although unlike in The Rings of Power, Elrond had not asked them for help in the first place. Instead, they lent aid after the battle, engaging the Orcs to prevent them from chasing down the fleeing Elven survivors. However, The Rings of Power has already changed major aspects of the Siege of Eregion, such as making Adar the leader of the invading force instead of Sauron, so there is a good chance that events will play out differently in the series. The Season 2 finale will reveal the ramifications of these subversions of expectations during the Siege of Eregion.