I caught up on the last two episodes tonight. The writers are still engaging in those stupid scenes where they want to make you think someone is about to die, but then you already know no one of consequence will die, so it’s just dumb drama. ffs kill someone we care about already, or at least poke the elf’s eye out.
At least the plot moved forward, and I admit I did like the whole Rube Goldberg with the water and the volcano. Kaboom!
She called him “my husband”, so they’re already married at this point.
It’s a proud hobbit tradition. Just ask the Sackville-Bagginses.
They can’t really do that though. While fiction this is more like a historical drama. As though we were watching Braveheart and realize that the main character lived till the end. Likewise here, we know Galadriel will not, cannot die because we see her in movies that happen in the future.
This is not Game of Thrones.
Are Arondir, Theo, Bronwyn, or Adar canonical? You could certainly kill one of them.
But I do understand that they won’t, and that’s exactly my point – a two minute battle between Arondir and a mega-orc has no tension at all, and certainly no arrow is going to kill Bronwyn. So we just plow through the scenes, hitting our beats.
Oh, and I liked the part where they lifted the helmets and saw who they had been killing. And the reappearance of Expository Orc was a callback to the Two Towers I certainly did not expect.
So… My annoyance with that was after the previous episode. I’ve been watching with a friend (remotely) and after the end of the prior episode, he said, “so, Galadrial is dead, series over.” And during this week’s recap we said the same thing, “yup, they’re all dead”. And of course, we knew they weren’t, because
So i was REALLY annoyed last week. But this week they moved past that, and i felt what followed was better.
I didn’t read that as them telling him to get lost. I thought they were trying to help him find what he was looking for. He’d plummeted to earth for some purpose. And they were grateful to him, and wanted to help him fulfill that purpose.
Heh. As Theo was wandering around, despairing for his mom, my friend said to him, “don’t worry, they’ll be fine. They have plot-shield”.
Up until they hear the sea-calling, apparently.
The elves in question are mostly ones who’ve never been to Valinor, so don’t really have a basis for comparison. Of the ones who have, like Gil-Galad and Galadriel, see below…
Well, there was all that stuff about Silmarils, and Kin-slaying…I don’t think it was necessarily the pull of Middle-Earth itself.
Are you saying the elves want to stay in Middle-Earth so they can dominate it?
I got the sense it was some combo of duty and inertia.
And I’m not saying Middle-Earth isn’t attractive to the elves. It clearly is. Many elves have died for it. already, more will later. But the alternative to “die without mithril” still isn’t Hell on Earth.
Everyone except Galadriel on that ship seemed super keen.
Seems to me that that’s at least some of Gil-Galad’s motivation.
I am saying Morgoth and Sauron wanted to dominate it rather than chill in Valinor with umbrella drinks.
The Valar are certainly committed to Middle Earth and fight for it on a few occasions (not to mention mostly making it).
Indeed, once Eru created the whole place the Valar and loads of Maiar seemed keen to get in knowing they could not leave until the end of days.
You know, now that I think about it, you’re right. You can’t place watch towers over people and not be said to dominate them (even if they were evil).
Sure. But we were discussing the elves, not the Ainur.
Sure, but they definitely don’t live there.
That’s Arda as a whole, not Middle-Earth specifically. AFAIK, no Ainur are bound to Middle-Earth specifically.
Until the Third Age was there a big distinction between Middle-Earth and Valinor? Seemed to me until the end of the second age anyone with a rowboat could get to Valinor.
I mean, certainly they were distinct places but they were in the same world. Like going from California to Japan.
In this TV show (and the books) Valinor is not all that far from Numenor (which many of us know becomes a big deal near the end).
Well, yes - or how could the Hiding of Valinor work?
Not if they didn’t have a Silmaril (or were an elf), they didn’t.
We read nothing of Númenóreans popping off to Aman on sightseeing tours. Because they couldn’t.. And when they broke that restriction, shit went down.
far enough and with sufficient obstacles that mortals weren’t just popping across
Seems to me Valinor was still in the world. They just made it harder to get to like making the mountains taller and more impassable.
Not like in the Third Age where Valinor is impossible to get to except via special (dare I say magical) means.
We know how the Second Age ends. How did men get there if it was not possible except for elves to get there?
Yes, of course it was. I didn’t say it wasn’t. But “the world” is Arda, not Middle-Earth, and you asked me if there was “a big distinction between Middle-Earth and Valinor”. Yes, they were two separate places.
The Shadowy Sea isn’t an absolute barrier (for one thing, it didn’t seem to cover the absolute north and south of Aman), but it certainly precluded Japan-California-style trips from Numenor. Or “anyone with a rowboat” getting through.
In any case, the ban wasn’t that no mortal could ever get through. It was that death was the penalty for any that did. This is brought up in the story of Eärendil, where special pleading gets him exempted from that death sentence (and immortality into the bargain).
My head-canon is that the Valar let the Númenóreans through specifically to clear the way for Eru to fuck their shit up.
Or, Tolkien was inconsistent. Would not be the first time.
So from what I gather, in theory all the elves could just leave Middle-Earth if they wanted? And I have a science question but I will ask it elsewhere. 
Inspirational speeches often are. That’s a time that that truth matters less than a good lie that gets your team up to fight in the second half. And a really good lie really well told may get the team believing it enough to make it true in the next half!
Yes. The Noldor elves, specifically (e.g Gil-galad and Galadriel), were banned earlier, but that’s been lifted ever since Morgoth was defeated. There’s no ban on other elves (like the Sindar, Nandor and Avari ) who never went to Valinor in the first place (and so were never exiled like the Noldor), AFAIK.
So then why is Galadriel’s leaving in the show made to seem like a huge honor? If any Tom, Dick or Arondir (who really is very good) can just sail out to there, why the ceremony?
Somehow I find the harfoots extremely grating on my nerves to watch. I’m not sure what it is, but I find myself skipping through their scenes.
Completely the opposite of my experience of Lord of the Rings, which made me want to move into cozy Hobbiton.