As far as the FX execution these are the bits that stand out. Yes she should be tall. The warg wasn’t just herky jerky but like the snow trolls, move without any sense of their heft. The climbing out before getting shot by arrows should demonstrate the lack of heft, the lightness, in movements for elves.
Ulmo or Uinen would actually make some sense. Less mytholgy breaking then a lot of what they’ve done so far.
The Valar are much more hands-on than working in “mysterious ways” or “fate”. When that kind of things happen (like Bilbo being “meant to” find the Ring), it’s not the Valar doing it.
At this stage in history, the Valar did work directly in the world. But when the Big Climax comes they “lay down their guardianship” and said “that’s it we’re outta here.”
I’m not saying they didn’t. I’m saying they did it more directly. Through more physical, not metaphysical, means. Direct application of power in some form, not guiding destiny.
Eru is the equivalent of God, and Valar are greater angels, with Maiar lesser angels. Except that Valar are also considered small “g” gods. Together, the Valar and Maiar are called the Ainur, and the Ainur are the ones who created the world through music that they sang, though that music was all at Eru’s direction. So, think of him as the composer, and them as the choir.
From the fact that Elendil and Isildur are in the story already, and Elendil lived 322 years (born in SA 3119) it appears the story has been shifted so that the rings were forged much later, around SA 3200 instead of SA 1600. So only a couple of hundred years left for the end of Numenor and the battle of the Last Alliance. Here’s how it could go: Sauron is captured and sent to Numenor where his plots fall on ground clearly already fertile; when Numenor falls, Sauron makes his way to Middle Earth and takes on his Annatar guise to help forge the rings, then he goes back to Mordor to forge his One ring, Then he has a pretty short while to do his evil stuff until the last alliance and the end of the Second Age. That’s not a lot of story, actually, to fill five seasons, Maybe that’s why it seems like there is a certain amount of padding in the episodes so far.
As for the Stranger, it seems more and more likely that it is Gandalf, although what he’s going to do in the Second Age, and why he didn’t just come by boat, are still questions.
“A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins . Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.”
Why travel by boat if you can travel by fireball?
So, Adar. I have a wild theory that maybe the serious masters of ring-lore (Ringheads?) can answer. It’s been suggested that orcs are made from “broken” elves, but we’ve only seen those who are one or the other. What if Adar is a “half-orc”? and therefore can run around in the sun with less problem, hence one reason he’s the boss. We know later Saruman made better orcs who were sun-resistant, and perhaps he’d rediscovered the secret used here.
I sadly agree on the warg looking terrible. It should look like an intelligent wolf, not a crazed pug. The hyena-things from LOTR were much better.
He didn’t seem to enjoy it any, and he has no idea how to get from there to where he needs to be. The only reason that makes sense is that it was suddenly necessary for him to get there in a hurry.
There were half-orcs (or humans with some orcish blood) in the Third Age. The Fellowship encountered a person they suspected as being one in Bree. He was an outlaw from Dunland selling pipe-weed. They described him as a “squint-eyed Southerner”. He was one of Saruman’s spies.
Frodo himself said, “So that’s where that southerner is hiding… he looks more than half like a goblin.”
Note that it is believed that Saruman was the one who first bred orcs and humans. That was part of his process for creating Uruk-Hai. It’s unlikely for there to be any at the time period of this series.
That’s right, I forgot about him. Ah well, it was a fun thought while it lasted. 
He looks like an elf or human:
That’s what made me wonder-because he’s gotta have some kind of extra juice, so to speak. I don’t think he’s Sauron, anyway.
Over on the subreddit, the speculation is that Halbrand is either Sauron or the future Witch-King, and possibly also Borowyn’s missing husband. Im not sure if i buy any of those ideas, but they’re interesting to think about.
I’m not feeling either of those - and the Witch King is considered more likely to be a Númenórean.
That’s more plausible, I think.
Stranger seems cast to look like Gandalf to me. Re the dead fireflies–he initially appeared to gain energy from living things in close proximity–Nori’s presence rouses him a few times; when she’s close, he (?) suppresses the fire from the fireball. Maybe he used up the fireflies by causing them to act out his constellation message. He is gaining capacity as well as skills.
I do think Galadriel was intended to be operating a rudder with the rope. The movement of ropes and chains is being used a lot to advance the action.
Also, and not that I’m complaining, this is like the Girl Power version of Tolkien.
Finally got a chance to watch. This is the first episode I don’t have a bunch of questions about, everyone was explained pretty well. Yay for me.
I don’t know if the Galadriel part is poorly written or the actress is not very good, but I’m having a hard time believing she’s a warrior elf. She barely seems like the elves from the movies at all.
Actually, only the elf that seems to have any special abilities is Arondir. He had the great leap and bringing down the roof on the Orcs scene. Then again, he had to scramble up the tree roots trying to escape.
I’ll echo that the warg was done poorly, as was the snow troll(?) from the first episode. Maybe too much budget on objects and not enough on beasts.
Are we to assume the elf that escaped and then was pin-cushioned with arrows was killed by Orcs outside and above ground?
Overall, I’m enjoying the series. I think they could pick up the pace a bit, but I assume they are still into the introducing characters part of the story. Once that is done I expect they action to pick up.
It looked to me like the orcs had dug multiple trenches parallel to each other and he had been shot by the orcs from one of the other ones. The implication of the scene being that Arondir up until that moment had no reason to think there was more than one trench, and realized too late that the scouring of the Southlands (see what I did there?) had progressed much further than he thought.