Sauron, back in the first age, was a shapechanger - which means that to a certain degree, he was something of a trickster figure. Maybe the whole confused old man act is just that, an act, and Sauron is going full-on Method to convince the people of Middle Earth of his harmlessness. Maybe his plan is to win over Nori, so when he appears in Eregion at her side, the elves will be so impressed with his friendship with such an obviously pure hearted and guileless harfoot that they’ll take him in . Or maybe he has some other plan.
“The Southlands” is definitely meant to be southern Mordor, likely the area near the Sea of Nurnen. The village Arondir has been looking after is called Tirharad, which identifies its inhabitants as Southrons, and the map they showed in the establishing scene clearly includes Mordor.
There was a brief shot in the first episode of a lone snow-capped mountain which could potentially be a pre-volcanic Orodruin. It’s definitely an acanonical portrayal of Mordor at the time, but with Sauron in hiding rather than existing in the open it seems to fit.
It’s Aragorn, sent from the future to prevent the Rings from being forged. It’s basically the plot of The Terminator and he’s Kyle Reese.
The fireflies dying are a side effect of the time travel process, it’s lingering temporal displacement energy that is too much for weaker creatures like insects to endure.
He’ll meet his future father-in-law Elrond with a message sent by future Elrond, and it convinces him that Aragorn is telling the truth. And so they have to work to convince Celebrimbor to not trust Annatar, and thwart Sauron’s plans.
That would be a seriously long con, though—the harfoots are about as far from anyone with power as you’re likely to get, hence, the most distant possible starting point. Not saying you couldn’t spin such a tale, but it would seem like needing to waste a lot of time climbing the slope of power that could’ve been saved by starting half way up, say having him being found by some elves or something. And again, even in that case, I just don’t see how the character isn’t going to come out lessened—so if that’s the way they’ll go, I’ll resolve here and now that from now on, whenever Sauron’s pulling some evil shit, I’ll just imagine him as being hangry because he’s not had a good fistful of snails recently . You’re just not you when you’re hungry!
It looks like it includes a lot more than just Mordor. They could be anywhere from the White Mountains to Mordor. I’d include Harad in that as well.
Nitpick - if it was pre-volcanic, there wouldn’t be a mountain there. It could be dormant, but … Melkor created Mt Doom in the First Age, AIUI from online sources (Apparently from The History of Middle-earth vol 12. The Peoples of Middle-earth: P 390 Note 14)
Maybe already an Elvish name for that region, because of its volcano Orodruin and its eruptions - which were not made by Sauron but were a relic of the devastating works of Melkor in the long First Age
It was a volcano before Sauron moves in, as it’s why he chose that location (from the Silmarillion):
a fiery mountain in that land that the Elves named Orodruin. Indeed for that reason Sauron had set there his dwelling long before, for he used the fire that welled there from the heart of the earth in his sorceries and in his forging; and in the midst of the Land of Mordor he had fashioned the Ruling Ring.
You’re citing sources that they don’t have the rights to use. As it is, elves occupying and patrolling the lands of Men for thousands of years after the War of Wrath isn’t canon even in the stuff they can adapt, so pretty much everything else about Mordor is open to reimagination. I think that as this series progresses we’re going to have to treat it as its own deuterocanon that doesn’t necessarily attempt to conform to what Tolkien wrote.
Sure, if you’re assuming that the mountains of Middle-Earth arose from natural geological processes over hundreds of millions of years, but this is a setting where the Sun is less than two thousand years old and the geography of the world has been been magically altered several times. “A wizard did it” is actually a valid explanation in Arda.
That’s irrelevant. Mount Doom is obviously in the sources they have the right to use, since it featured prominently in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And if they want to use it in the Second Age, there is nothing that says that they can’t check sources they don’t have rights to and confirm that there is no conflict with them in doing so.
What they can’t do is go into the sources they don’t have rights to and adapt characters, events, and so on which don’t also exist in the sources they have rights to. But this wouldn’t require doing that.
Here’s another example… Let’s say (making this up completely, it’s a hypothetical) that in the Silmarillion it states that during a certain battle, Elrond is away at some other place retrieving an artifact. The battle itself is in one of the appendices they have rights to, but Elrond isn’t mentioned in it. They could absolutely determine that because of what is in the Silmarillion, Elrond wasn’t in the battle, so the battle they put on screen doesn’t have Elrond in it. There is no violation there.
Now, let’s say someone in the battle asks, “Where is Elrond, we could use his aid?” Then the answer is, “He is busy, he cannot be here.” That’s pretty vague. Let’s say instead the answer is, “He is rescuing the Crown of Manwe from the clutches of the Shadow.” Those details are directly from material they have no right to, and they could be sued for using it.
My point is, it’s not like the writers aren’t even allowed to read those other materials. They just can’t pull things out of them and put them in the show. But they can certainly use those materials to help them make decisions about what to include or not include, as long as they aren’t inserting anything they have no rights to.
I’m aware. But if it informs their choices, without them directly citing the sources, it won’t matter.
No, I’m pretty sure volcanoes need just a few years or decades to form. But they don’t make nice volcano-shaped mountains before they burst. Volcanoes have that shape because of the vulcanism.
Unless you’re suggesting Melkor (or Sauron himself, if you’re going to completely discount the non-licenced sources) picked a volcano-shaped mountain to make a volcano out of. Which would be very extra of them.
Personally, I don’t think Melkor neatly created Mt Doom all solitary-like by punching a neat hole to the mantle from a pre-existing peak. It’s not his style. What he did was just fucking wreck the land, like an asteroid impact, and because of that, volcanoes and inundations and inland seas drying up and the like happened as a consequence of “normal” resultant geological processes.
A wizard set it off, but didn’t micromanage it, basically.
Alright, maybe “pre-volcanic” was a poor choice of words. I meant to say that the mountain appeared dormant. I wish I had a screencap to point to but I don’t know the Deep Magic to get around whatever Amazon does to Chrome to disable the PrtSc button.
Melkor was the first and most powerful of the Ainur, second only to Iluvatar Himself, and the entire reason Arda exists is so that Iluvatar can prove a point to him.
At about the 42:00 mark, there’s an establishing shot of the elven watchtower. As the camera pans towards the tower, there’s a single tall mountain in the background, behind the bridge, that stands alone and is distinct from the mountain range at the right of the screen.
That’s the mountain that I’m thinking is potentially Orodruin before it becomes active. It looks like one of the volcanic mountains in the Cascades, like Rainier or St. Helens, before they blew their tops off.
OTOH. There is nothing obligating them to be strictly consistent with material outside what they have rights to. They may be not allowed to even read the other materials by the people who hired them, lest without conscious awareness something that crosses the line to some judge sneaks in, thinking they had read something in some appendix but actually it was from material they don’t have rights to.
Honestly if I was the show runner I wouldn’t chance it. Previous in depth knowledge of all Tolkien lore would be a point against your hire. Your job is become an expert on the books we have the rights to and riff off of that, consistent with that, unless it makes a much better story to change it. The hardcore fans of the complete works will still watch even if they complain that Elrond wasn’t really there and most of our target audience is not them. Big of a wall as can be between writers and source material we don’t have rights to.
That was referring to life though, not items of power.
Sauron was first and foremost a Maia of Aulë known as Mairon originally. He was very skilled at crafting and making. He and Saruman where similar in this regard.
OK, you’ve managed to convince me - not just that shot, which I agree shows a more isolated peak, but more importantly, the bit where Médhor says “Can you believe this was once a barren scrap of rock?” Missed that the first time I watched it. The clear implication there is that this was a wasteland that’s been rehabilitated.
. You’re just not you when you’re hungry!