Sound the alarums!
I’d say that’s an apt comparison. Lord of the Rings was great because the great events are experienced (and at times driven) by the characters.
The Rings of Power feels like The Hobbit trilogy where they crammed in a bunch of Middle Earth history from the Silmarillion or wherever and characters just do things or go places because whatever.
Also, the Southlanders plan felt like a ridiculous A-Team plan. They had a perfectly serviceable fortified watchtower with a single approach via a stone viaduct to hole up in and defend themselves. And the orcs didn’t appear to have anything like siege weapons. What would have been wrong with a traditional battle plan of defending themselves from the a defensible position? Instead they went with a plan that depended on the orcs ignoring all military best practice and throwing their entire army into what appeared to be an abandoned fortress, the elf using his superior athleticism to trigger a complex Rube Goldberg machine to collapse the fortress like a Mousetrap board game, the Southlanders moving their “army” of mostly non-combatants in the open, at night, to a less defensible village without encountering orc patrols, setting up another complex trap that depended on the orc army rushing headlong into their defenses, and ultimately falling back to a stone hut as a redoubt of last resort and hope the orcs don’t simply cover it with pitch and light it on fire.
It just seemed dumb and needlessly complex.
That was my double take that made sense after the fact - when Galadriel wiped Adar’s blood on the cloth surrounding what we thought was the magic hilt of destruction I was expecting something to happen! It didn’t of course because it wasn’t in the wrapping.
Yeah an axe wrapped up would be highly unlikely to be mistaken for the magic hilt of destruction. Beyond suspension of disbelief. Plus just handing it to Theo? To a boy who is expressing the temptation that the power of holding it gives. Just throw the One Ring to Rule Them all in his lap while you’re at it maybe?
And even in that less defensible village … It looked like the only approach was a narrow bridge. We watched the piece go over it one by one, and then the Numenoreans. And I’m thinking, why aren’t they defending the nature bridge?
That would be cool.
And Halbrand, having no more Kingdom, can travel with Galadriel to Eregion and give Celebrimor & Co some crafty lessons in smithing.
Arondir & Bronwnyn had that foreboding “Yes, we’ll have a garden together… someday” kind of exchange before they kissed, yet sure they can go help Elendil build Minas Tirith.
I hope Adar survives, anyway. He’s interesting.
Adar is the Steward of Mordor. He’ll be around for a long while.
Jeebus, yes. And at the end, he still didn’t want to give up the keys.
Best I can rationalize/WAG the whole Mt. Doom thing is as follows;
When the elves built Ostirith, they dammed the river it was built alongside, creating a lake that could be used to irrigate the surrounding lands and help the Men who dwelled there become self-sufficient (as per the ep. 1 comment that the Southlands used to be barren.) They also built the lock to open the floodgates if it was necessary to stop the lake from overflowing and threatening the locals, but over the course of thousands of years and countless rotations of soldiers in and out, the key was lost and the existence of the lock was forgotten.
The orcsaber originally had nothing whatsoever to do with the dam, but its ability to manifest a blade at its wielder’s behest makes it something of a skeleton key. When Adar discovered the existence of the lock, he realized that the orcsaber could unlock it and started devising a way that he could use all of that water to turn the Southlands into a realm fit to be an orcish homeland, and so devised the idea of digging tunnels to funnel the water into the lava chambers underneath Orodruin.
The idea of elves building a massive dam kinda feels off to me, but the only alternative that makes sense is that Ostirith and the dam were built by Morgoth’s forces before the War of Wrath, and I can’t imagine elves willingly occupying a fortress that was built by the Enemy.
I could be wrong, but my WAGs about the Southlands and Adar have been mostly right so far, so we’ll see.
Another prediction I’ll throw out, considering the lore; whenever Miriel returns to Numenor, be it by the end of this season or in the next, she’ll find that while she was gone, her father has died, Pharazon has declared himself regent in her absence, and he’s going to force her into marrying him so he can crown himself king.
I’ve thought the show ok so far. The Durin and Elrond bits have been the strongest parts. I think it’s an improvement over the Peter Jackson team’s portrayal of dwarves, which leaned too heavily into comic relief.
The lack of sense of distance and time between scenes is starting to bother me, though. The show has already felt like a series of disconnected scenes, and the teleportation and seeming time skips with no indication are not in helping putting those together as a whole story in my head. I thought Tolkien did that sense of progression both geographically and in time very well in Lord of the Rings. The inclusion of a few short campfire/traveling scenes would also provide opportunities for character moments.
As an example, the Numenorian army traveling halfway across the world in a scene just to arrive at the perfect second to save Arondir and the humans is enough to break my suspension of disbelief, and I’m not usually that bothered by these types of things.
I like the parallelism of the queen’s vision of Numenor destroyed by water with the bursting of the dam.
Ah good point. Hadn’t thought of that.
I have to say, the chemistry between Arondir and Bronwyn is so electric that whenever they are in a scene together I wish this show had been more like Game of Thrones.
No knock against Robert Aramayo’s acting ability, but Elrond should be much more beautiful. I felt the same way when he played the young Eddard Stark. He has a character actor’s face.
Liked most of the episode aside from the hilt switcheroo. But did Galadriel know about the hilt? She was just told to get the item. Arondir should have checked maybe he just thought Galadriel knew and didn’t remember exactly what he had told her in the heat of battle. Giving it to Theo was still stupid though…
This.
And not a particularily good campaign either.
It’s like they spent all their money on effects, cinematography and props and then hired some hack to write the script with what was left off the money.
The tactics of the numenorean assault on the village were particularily bad:
- Tiring the horses before the final charge
- Charging on horseback against enemies that are not on an open field (they should’ve dismounted)
- Getting separated multiple times even when taking low quality enemy troops by suprise, to the point that there were multiple instances of a lone Numenorean surrounded by orcs.
Reminds me of the later seasons of GoT, when you can tell the writers are TV writers and cannot conceive of a battle as more than a series of independent brawls with some “epic” scenes for effect.
He’s definitely the best character so far.
So I guess Galadriel would have been able to survive the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. 
That much is canon. Honestly, I had sort of been assuming they were already wed, but now that you say this, I realize that will happen later.
I’m glad a lot of you thought this was a good episode, but I couldn’t even make it to the end. I probably should have quit earlier. I thought I could make eight episodes, I just can’t summon up the interest anymore.
Enjoy the rest of the story!
If Adar is telling the truth and he killed Sauron, then I’m worried that the Stranger might be him after all. Because as far as I know, you can’t kill a Maiar, only destroy their mortal form; so the Stranger might yet be Sauron returning.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I see any way for things to play out like that that I wouldn’t hate.
I think Adar is a telling the truth, as he knows it. Sauron, as we call him, being alive, will be a nasty surprise to him.
Adar soon…
