Ah. Thank you. Another lore-question, if I may: Are Arondir and his fellow patrollers or “watchmen” accurate? Or realistic, if you will?
There is no reference to them at all. It actually seems un-elvish for them to watch over the humans like that but One of the flaws with Elves would be not doing something like shown.
Only the original Klingon.
of course!
But you see- it is not necessarily true. It is simply what Gil-Galad told Elrond to get him to fess up.
I concur. He just wants the Mithril to make some powerful magic rings that will help the elves
Didn’t they show such a thing? Full of old Elvish records anyway.
Yeah, if it’s just a lie then it’s not so bad (but is pretty bad to have Gil-Galad lying like that, unless he’s Sauron in disguise which would also be bad, but less bad than the other 2 alternatives)
The stuff about mithril light to clad the Elves by spring is ludicrous. Durin saves that storyline.
Elendil and Galadriel are going to Middle Earth to fight Sauron and - as I reckon it - they’re taking him along. Arondir and the folks in the tower have a magical Morgothian key that will be their salvation, while the outlook of the other half that swore to Adar is mirky. The Harfoots and the Grey Pilgrim are migrating and they have a lovely song. All good to go there.
What I like about the show so far:
Doogie Howser, Half-Elf… Uh, I mean Elrond, and Durin. Their friendship seems the most genuine thing in this show. A “buddy cop” spin-off where they team up to solve mysteries and fight the Shadow would be awesome.
Arondir is pretty cool. The best single character so far for me.
The Harfoots are okay and interesting. They seem right for proto-Hobbits, like you see the seeds of what they’ll become. I have problems with them (WTF is with the name “Brandyfoot”?!) but overall not much. Nori in particular seems like the typical “curious Hobbit” archetype and seems well-done.
I don’t have as many problems with Galadriel as some in this thread but I don’t see her as much of a weakness, she’s just not much of a strength either.
I am liking the series in general, I have to just roll with it sometimes when something seems to really clash with canon or just doesn’t make sense in general, but it’s not too hard for me.
For the first few episodes, I was intrigued enough to be curious about where the storylines were going, but this most recent episode just made me feel restless. The pacing is starting to remind me too much of the soap operas I watched in my misspent youth. All week, they’d make you think something was about to happen, using absurd contrivances and near-misses to stretch things out until some plot occurred on Fridays. I kept watching because I was young and stupid and YouTube didn’t exist yet. 
I was weirdly disappointed that Theo didn’t lose his arm, as an example. Not because I hate the character – quite the opposite – but because by this point I want something of consequence to happen to a character we’ve come to care about. I need some stakes, rather than so many mysteries that are being drawn out just a little too long.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m overall still interested in the show. They’ve made interesting characters, and I’m very curious to see how things play out. I will add that I’m glad it’s on Amazon Prime, so I can hover over the screen whenever I forgot a character’s name!
So I’ve been aimlessly browsing through some bits of Tolkien-lore in the depths of the net, and now I think that Adar is some amalgamation of Maeglin and his father, the ‘Dark Elf’ Eöl (here’s the youtube-video that led me down this rabbit hole). The latter was born in Beleriand, which Adar has claimed to remember, and wasn’t a fan of the sun, which Adar apparently seeks to extinguish (though he seems rather fond of it). Plus, Eöl crafted a set of two swords, Anguirel and Anglachel, made from meteoric iron, which were apparently somewhat semi-conscious and within which the ‘dark heart of the smith’ still dwells:
Anglachel seems to have held a certain level of sentient awareness, poured into it from Eöl: it was fierce and bloodthirsty, drinking the blood of those it bit.
One of them ended up in the possession of Maeglin, who is eventually captured by Morgoth, and tortured/seduced into servitude and betraying the location of Gondolin.
So I think Adar is probably not Sauron…
In a way, it must be kind of fun mining these little bits of lore for the next episode.
Due to unforeseen medical issues and being confined alone to a hotel room in a foreign country for the last week, I’ve had a chance to watch a lot of TV.
I’ve been through “Obi-Wan” - fun enough. Can’t beat a bit of Darth.
I’ve also watched “Andor” (the first 3 episodes anyway) liking it a lot, can’t wait for ep4.
Then, I’ve struggled through the first few episodes of TROP, and I found them turgid in the extreme. Other than being superficially pretty in places It really does not feel anything like a Tolkien world. The writing is poor, the acting is mostly wooden and the multiple intertwined stories haven’t lead anywhere interesting. I really don’t have a clue what is supposed to be happening to whom and nor do I care.
Not good, shan’t be continuing. Watching shouldn’t be a chore. Wherever the money has gone it wasn’t on the script.
While we’re waiting for everyone to watch the latest episode…
I noticed from the beginning the resemblance of the intro sequence to Chladni plates. In essence these are patterns induced by vibrating a metal plate at a resonant frequency, and watching particles on the plate bounce around until they hit a node–that is, a point where the amplitude of the vibration is zero.
I vaguely wondered if anyone had looked into this, maybe tried to recreate it. And here we go:
It’s a nice effect. They’re certainly doing it with CGI, at least in part, but many of the figures are at least approximately correct. The whole setup has certain a certain metaphorical relationship to Tolkein’s world, though I’m not sure that was intended.
I liked it. Some good action, sneakiness and Adar-ing. He’s certainly not Sauron.
Some good one-on-one dialogue this week. Galadriel with Isildur, G with Elendil, G and fair Halbrand and the fine bit between G and Adar where his words about looking into the mirror to see the darkness clearly get inside her head.
Galadriel will certainly have much to reckon with. She will have seen Halbrand save Elendil and eventually how that turns out later this Age.
I like Adar - good character. He got Waldreg to turn the Morgothian key that fires up Mordor and puts the û in Udûn.
Adar = Redcloak from OOTS, in terms of motivations, which would make Sauron = Xykon, where they finally had a falling out.
spoiler]Still not sure what the motivation of the old man would be to fulfill his little task there. Yeah swore an oath with Adar, but you’d think he’d still have a modicum of loyalty to his original people when it comes to frying his ancestral lands.
Who was the old guy with the key, and how did he get it?
nm for now
Walgren - the guy from the village who kept it before Theo stole it. The one who worshipped Sauron. Adar gave it to him just before the Numenorean’s attacked.
Are they telling us that the humans were living in Mordor before it got Mordored? And now the key or whatever was turned, the mountain…became Mount Doom and the surrounding area got lava-ey and became Mordor?