This week’s episode, which included several Tolkien fan-favorite characters and creatures, is the best of the season thus far.

Season 2, Episode 4: ‘Eldest’

“Rings of Power” Season 2 debuted last week with three plot-heavy episodes, which was probably necessary given that the show had been on hiatus for nearly two years — and given that it took all three to get each of Season 1’s story lines back into play. Unfortunately, Episode 3 was easily the dreariest of the first batch, ending last week’s three-part premiere on a sour note. Light on action and heavy on earnest proclamations, the episode represented “Rings of Power” at its stiffest.

Episode 4, though? It’s the best of the season thus far. It’s thrilling and strange, and populated with J.R.R. Tolkien fan-favorite characters and creatures. Even the opening scene has an uncommon flair, transpiring across a single shot that begins on an idyllic image of the waters outside Lindon before tracking a contentious conversation between Galadriel and Elrond, then rising into the sky. It sets the tone for a lively hour.

Enter the ents

In Episode 3, Theo encountered some wild men out in the wilderness, and with them he was menaced by some unseen creature — and apparently a very tall one, given the high camera angle on Theo’s face before the scene ended. This week, Isildur enlists Arondir and Estrid in a search for Theo; and the three of them have a wild adventure, which includes Isildur and Arondir getting pulled under quicksand by a huge, writhing mud-beast (which the trio then slays and eats).

The massive worm-thing isn’t even the party’s most bizarre encounter. Not long after Arondir warns his companions about the ever-present possibility of “nameless things in the deep places,” they discover that Theo and the wild men are being held captive by sapient trees. These are the forest-guarding entities known in Tolkien lore as ents — seen in “The Lord of the Rings” movies in the form of Treebeard, a brave and helpful ent who nonetheless laments the damage done to the trees during centuries of war in Middle-earth.

The ents in this episode are more angry than wistful, because Adar’s orc army has recently marched through, “maiming” the forest. It takes some diplomacy from Arondir to calm the ents’ leader, Snaggleroot (voiced by Jim Broadbent), and to convince them to release Theo.

In terms of this season’s plot, the scenes in and around the ancient town of Pelargir serve a few purposes. Arondir’s rescue of Theo helps to soften the kid’s resentment toward the elf. In this section we also see Isildur helping the Southlanders understand the Numenorean technology of their new home, and we hear Estrid confess to having been branded by Adar.

But it is the ents’ ire that stands out most. There have been attempts at times in “Rings of Power” to make the orcs more sympathetic, but their treatment of these ancient tree-folk are a reminder that orcs, by nature, are not very nice.

Wrath of the wraiths

Meanwhile, on the journey from Lindon to Eregion, Galadriel has difficulty adjusting to her role as Elrond’s subordinate. Her ring sends her dire warnings about the road they’re on, which she is sure is leading them into an ambush by Sauron’s minions. (Galadriel can’t stop talking about Sauron … or “Saurrrrron!,” as she pronounces it.) Elrond believes the ring itself is coaxing them into trouble, given that Sauron had a hand in its forging, and insists they all follow his lead.

So that’s how the elves end up fighting a bunch of zombies.

More accurately, the creatures who attack Elrond’s troops are Barrow-wights: the spindly, wraithlike remnants of the dead royalty buried in the Barrow-downs. The Barrow-wights can only be killed by the blades with which they were buried, so their fight with the elves — another exciting set-piece in this episode — is especially challenging for our heroes, who barely triumph after Elrond unearths the weapons they need.

The takeaway from this encounter for Galadriel is that “someone is awakening evil across all Middle-earth.” (Could it be … Saurrrrron?) She volunteers to face Adar and his orc army, leaving her ring with Elrond. Her comrades believe Galadriel heroically intends to save them all, but an embittered Elrond isn’t so sure. “She did it to save the ring,” he snarls.

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Tanya Moodie in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”Credit…Ross Ferguson/Prime Video

A hobbit summit

Season 1 of “Rings of Power” introduced the harfoots, a race of “halflings” similar to the hobbits of “Lord of the Rings,” only nomadic by nature instead of settled. In this week’s episode, Nori and Poppy — having survived being blown across the desert by the Stranger’s reckless magic — meet a youngster named Nobody (Gavi Singh Chera), who looks a lot like a harfoot but claims to be a stoor. Stoors, as we and our harfoot friends soon find out, are not wanderers but instead live in a little community carved out of the desert rocks long ago.

Harfoots and stoors are both, of course, ancestors to hobbits, and for Tolkien fans, a lot of the fun of their presence in this series is seeing what the race was like before its various types assimilated and migrated to the Shire. Yet another visually delightful sequence is the reveal of the stoors’ vibrant village, and Nori and Poppy’s sense of wonder at seeing their own kind somehow thriving while staying stationary.

The harfoots are not exactly welcomed with open arms by their halfling cousins. Nobody — a charmingly comic character whose real name is Merimac — warns his new acquaintances to be wary of the stoors’ leader, Gundabel (Tanya Moodie), who does indeed distrust these newcomers, with their talk of a missing wizard friend. (The only wizard the stoors know is the Dark Wizard, who is no friend to them.) But Nori disarms Gundabel by mentioning Sadoc Burrows, her tribe’s late leader, possibly descended from a legendary stoor forefather who left their home to seek a promised land.

And so the path to the hobbits’ future begins.

A Tolkien favorite finally takes the stage

As popular as Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films were with Tolkien fans, many of the books’ devotees were disappointed that Jackson couldn’t find any room in either trilogy for Tom Bombadil, a jovial and ageless fellow who lives in the forest with his wife, near a cranky tree named Old Man Willow. So give some credit to the “Rings of Power” creators, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, for bringing Tom into their story — and for casting the charismatic Rory Kinnear in the role.

Payne and McKay bring in a version of Old Man Willow too — though Tom calls this beast “Old Man Ironwood” as he rescues the Stranger from its grasp. (The chief lesson of this episode: Don’t mess with the trees.)

The scenes between Tom Bombadil and the Stranger offer a welcome respite from the intense action elsewhere in Middle-earth. Kinnear brings a proper twinkle to Tom, humming to himself and talking about being the “eldest” — older than the stars. (The stars are “newcomers,” he says. “One year it’s dark, the next you look up, there’s a sea of tiny eyes lookin’ down at ya.”) He gently nudges the Stranger toward his destiny by teaching him a little about the nature of magic and warning him about a potential alliance between Sauron and the Dark Wizard. “If these two flames combine into one, there will be no end to burnin’,” Tom says.

Not that it would rattle Tom Bombadil. He’s seen it all.

And to play us out: Rufus Wainwright!

Just as this episode begins with an eye-catching opening shot, so it ends with something just as special: a merry rendition of the song “Old Tom Bombadil.” It is sung by Rufus Wainwright, with music by the series’ primary composer, Bear McCreary, and its lyrics are taken straight from Tolkien.

Why have I been singing this song more or less nonstop since I heard it? Such is the magic of ol’ Tom.