I didn’t think it is either, but every time someone tries to convince me it’s not, I somehow end up leaning further towards that being the case.
Okay, yeah he had a beard- brain fart. But he was shorter than a human.
And he was there all along, he didn’t arrive.
I will give everyone in this thread a foot massage if it’s not Gandalf.
In the meantime, I’ll go back to calling him Stranger since my calling him Gandalf seems to annoy people.
We haven’t seen him up against a human, only Harfoots. Hard to get a good judge of size there.
As I said in the post you initially responded to:
As I said, I didn’t think that it was Tom, but the more people claim it isn’t the weaker their arguments seem to be.
I mean, personally, I still lean on Gandalf, but I will only be disappointed if it’s someone we’ve never heard of before.
Good heavens, they could do anything, of course. But i will be incredibly upset if the stranger turns out to be Bombadil. Bombadil isn’t a confused men who came from someplace else and doesn’t understand his own power.
I initially assumed the stranger was Sauron. Now i think it’s probably Gandalf, although i would personally be happier if it were a blue wizard. I’m pretty sure it’s a maiar, though, based on it’s innate magical power.
(Sauron and the balrogs are also maiar.)
I don’t think we have any idea where the Stranger came from, aside from “probably far away”.
I think most people assume Valinor (that’s my guess too) but we don’t really know, do we?
Actually, the thing that bugs me is the ease with which they just sail directly in whatever direction they want, even straight up a river. With very attractive but unrealistic rigging. I just re-read the 20+ Aubrey/Maturin books which beat into the reader that everything is at the mercy of the wind.
Not that there is anything really that they could do differently (except make the ships into galleys)…
On a different topic: anyone else start hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd in their head every time they mention “The Southlands”? Glad Adar renamed it…
I was wondering about how impractical those sails must be. “To a man with a spinnaker, every problem is a tailwind.” Can you even tack or do anything useful with those sails?
I think I’ve said it before: as best as i can tell, whoever wrote the nautical scenes has never been on a boat.
If we assume the Evil Trio are human, we have a comparison in relative size between them and the Stranger, compared to the Harfoots, and I’d say he’s a mite taller than them.
The fleet of the Númenóreans that broke the Ban was specifically said to be made up of slave galleys:
Thus the fleets of the Numenoreans moved against the menace of the West; and there was little wind, but they had many oars and many strong slaves to row beneath the lash. (From The Silmarillion)
In the scene with the Stranger’s comet or whatever arrive, we see a figure leaning against a tree. Could that be a “cameo” of Bombadil, since I doubt we’ll meet any Ents?
We may or may not meet any, yet IIRC it looked like two figures, perhaps a larger and smaller Ent, or a Huorn/tree.
There’s also this exchange between Marva and Sadoc while the Stranger is healing the tree:
What’s he muttering?
Likely little words, so the tree’ll understand.
Sadoc, trees don’t talk.
Some do.
Could be joke, could be an Easter Egg, or could be foreshadowing.
I rewatched that and didn’t see the figure you reference. Everyone I saw was a known character. But the meteor falling was shown across multiple scenes so I might have missed it.
It seems glaringly obvious to me that the scene is showing an Ent and Entwife. There are two tall tree figures who look up as the meteor passes, then a smaller figure reaches for one of the tall ones, and the tall one put its “arms” around the little one.
I made a clip of the meteor flying over the Ents
[Meteor flying over Ents - Album on Imgur](https://Meteor Ents)
not sure if that will work for y’all. Imgur link: Meteor flying over Ents - Album on Imgur
(I cannot embed media images in a post)
eta: In the clip, two tree-ish figures are swaying in the wind and one smaller ent-like creature is embraced by the larger one on the left.
A couple times they did the non-sailors mistake of having the banner flying in the wind towards the stern. Of course on a sailing ship, the flag/banner flies towards the front, since the wind is behind the ship.
I concur. Maybe an Entling.
Nice!
I am hardly a nautical expert, but I’ve sailed small craft, paddled canoes, kayaks, and rowboats, and been a passenger on larger commercial vessels. And basically every detail seems to be wrong.
Well, the boats float because they look up, unlike rocks.
Didn’t they get that much right? 
“Take cover! What is happening?!”
“The rocks! THEY’RE LOOKING UP!!!”
Doing their HW here sure would have added a very helpful dose of verisimilitude, something which has been sorely lacking in this series so far.
And, on that note, news that it will be at least 2 years before season 2 is broadcast. [Which may mean early '24, at the earliest]