I think they are balrogs. Lesser maiar.
They were not. I’m guessing we’ll get to them and Isildur next season.
As one who has struggled to work his way through the series, I have to say that was my favorite episode. Lots of things happened! Revelations were made! Plot lines came together!
Did Elrond inevitably say a few stupid things? Sure, but that’s what he’s there for. Did Peri’s goodbye seem interminable and leave me wondering if it made up as much as 10% of the episode? Well sure. But we are saying goodbye to a bunch of those actors, let’s give them a little extra screen time. And sure, the harfoot going off with the big stranger has a complete Arya Stark feel, but I like that.
There was even a nice fan callback when the Stranger said “when in doubt, always follow your nose.” That certainly didn’t leave any doubt as to his identity.
I will definitely continue watching.
Oh, wait: what was up with those boats with the black/silversun sails in Numenor? I did not quite follow that.
Made me think of Toucan Sam.
It was to indicate mourning.
Got it. I was a little confused by the timing of his wandering around raving and his actual death.
It will be interesting to see what’s made of the Palantir.
Well, Miriel can’t gaze into it…
Good point. Maybe her chief of staff, or whatever you call him, will sneak a peek. He’s very smooth, and I mistrust him.
They are going to have to do a lot of work to build up Isildur into the dude who saves everything, we barely saw him.
Those rings were a bit gaudy.
Pharazon? He’s, uh, really well-known in lore.
As in, single-handedly responsible for the destruction of Numenor after he gets the population to worship Morgoth (with Sauron’s influence) and ticks off the Valar.
Probably not great to trust him.
(Though who knows, they are really getting loose with lore at this point so it might go very differently on the show.)
Ah! Well, I’m glad I picked up the not so subtle signals being sent to me by the script writers 
though, spoiler alert I guess?
I don’t know if it’s a spoiler for the show though.
He’s one of the major characters from the books. We know what’s supposed to happen with him, though not the details. And lots of stuff in this show have been “wrong”, especially the last episode. (Waiting till tomorrow to get into them though.)
Now that the spoiler period is over, it’s time for me to harp on about fast travel again.
This is the first time we actually had someone say out loud how long it took them to get from Point A to Point B - Galadriel says it took them six days with barely any rest to ride from the Southlands to Eregion - a distance of about 820 miles according to the information posted above. That means the two of them rode an average 136 miles per day, which is close to three times what a normal horse can handle, and there wasn’t any indication that these horses were the Shadowfaxes of their day. And not all of that was over level ground, either - they had to find time to ford the Anduin and get around or through two mountain ranges on the way, seeing as they probably weren’t gonna be getting free passage through Khazad-Dum.
Even at that accelerated pace, Halbrand should have been dead of his infected stomach wound by the time they got there - and just because he’s a Maia doesn’t mean his physical form can’t be killed, as Grima Wormtongue could tell you.
They looked pretty close to the brief glimpses of them that we got in FOTR.
I don’t think balrogs were ever said to assume a “fair form”, and depending on which of Tolkien’s writings you go by there were very few of them, so three in one place at one time would be an extraordinary event. The only time Tolkien ever describes them in plural is when they battle Ungoliant to defend Melkor from her.
The skeletal look they took on when (Gandalf?) cast Turn Undead definitely makes me think that, if they’re not Nazgul, they must be beings akin to the barrow-wights.
Season 2 is already filming, but reportedly it won’t be releasing until 2024, so we’ll have plenty of time to noodle all of this over.
Potentially. Sauron will one day be the Necromancer, and it makes sense that his power over death and spirits goes back very far. They might have been products of his magic or taught magic to allow them to extend their lives unnaturally as undead spirits in human guise. (We already saw that one of them had illusion powers.) The power of the Istari stripped away that guise before unraveling their forms.
So… No Annatar? There was a “wink” moment where he insisted that his advice was a “gift”, as Annatar was the “Lord of Gifts”. But he wasn’t using the proper name or appearance (he should have been “fair” and “angelic”, not looking like a scruffy refugee).
Also, the first 16 rings were forged first, as a collaboration between Sauron and the elves. The 3 rings the elves forged were done later without Sauron’s involvement or knowledge. They did it backward here.
So now I wonder if Sauron is going to forge the others on his own now? Maybe in Numenor?
Well, maybe. Frodo went more than two weeks with a serious wound before getting proper treatment. Ok, it wasn’t an infected stomach wound, but it was magical and nasty, plus he was just a hobbit. Maybe infections took longer to kill their host in those days.
I was going to ask how we know how long their miles are, but apparently Tolkien addressed that:
Measures of distance are converted as nearly as possible into modern terms. “League” is used because it was the longest measurement of distance: in Númenórean reckoning (which was decimal) five thousand rangar (full paces) made a lár, which was very nearly three of our miles. Lár meant “pause,” because except in forced marches a brief halt was usually made after this distance had been covered [see note 9 above]. The Númenórean ranga was slightly longer than our yard, approximately thirty-eight inches, owing to their great stature. Therefore five thousand rangar would be almost exactly the equivalent of 5280 yards, our “league:” 5277 yards, two feet and four inches, supposing the equivalence to be exact.
I guess Galadriel just used her elven horse magic.
This is Sauron. He was a spy for Melkor against the other Valar way back in Almaren, before Melkor destroyed it and they moved to Valinor. He’s a schemer and shape-shifter. He has probably been planning everything for centuries, spying on the Southlands, Numenor, Lindon, Moria. He played everyone like a fiddle and has more machinations planned ahead. He’s the ultimate deceiver and schemer.
And she knows it too. She didn’t buy a bit of what he was trying to sell her.
I dunno–the last scene showed him hiking into Mordor. Seems like he’s planning on holing up there for a while.
I think he may have already made some of the rings offscreen. Adar talked about his seeking “power over flesh” when he gathered the orcs in the north, and the forge Galadriel found in Forodwaith back in episode 1 certainly seems like he was working on something important there.
The dwarven rings drove them to dig deeper and deeper in search of treasure, right? Maybe Durin (or Disa, considering her monologue in ep 7) already has one that helped guide him to the discovery of mithril.
If they stick with the sources, he will lead an army against the Free Peoples which is defeated when the Numenorean fleet arrives. Ar-Pharazon takes him back to Numenor in captivity, before giving in to his influence. Maybe Sauron will forge them there.
He could do it in Mordor I guess, but I don’t think they have much in the way of forges there. You already saw him spending time on Numenor with their smiths and their forges, which might foreshadow him forging the other rings there.
Which again is ass-backwards and misses the point of the original story. The Rings of Power were made by the elves, who Sauron tricked. His big betrayal was forging the One Ring on his own to take over the others, that was his trump card.
Or… Maybe he goes back to Eregion and convinces Celebrimbor to work with him again? And they forge the rings together. Galadriel never told him or Elrond who Halbrand really was. Or… Maybe that’s when he arrives as Annatar. And if Galadriel isn’t around to raise the alarm, Celebrimbor goes along with it.
That’s possible. Though that’s awful writing.
Sauron forges basically all the rings on his own, including the One Ring. He then makes his way to the elves to show them how to make 3 rings that he can’t control? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that?
The initial story was about Sauron tricking elves into unknowingly doing his dirty work. They pull their own trick by using the knowledge he taught them to forge 3 rings all on their own that he couldn’t control.
I really hope that’s not what’s happening here. That’s completely nonsensical. My hope is that he was working on his theories in Forodwaith, figuring out how to make the rings, before he had his chance to use the elves and their resources to make the rings a reality.
I do hope he plans to go back later and get the others forged with Celebrimbor. “You need these to save your people, let’s work together, what other choice do you have?”
In this timeline, nobody - Sauron included - knew about mithril and its unique properties until fairly recently. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to create something greater than he could make on his own in the hopes that he could gain control over it later. Perhaps he’s being pragmatic in that he knows the elves will retreat for Valinor - where they’ll be beyond his reach forever - unless they make some kind of breakthrough, and he wants their help to perfect his ringcraft. I’m just spitballing here with what we’ve been given.
Celebrimbor willingly working with Sauron in the future seems highly unlikely unless he’s already further corrupted than it already seems like it is, and having him show up in a different form as Annatar would just be silly - one unassuming outsider showing up out of nowhere and being an expert in magic ringmaking is one thing, but two of them?
As an aside, I smiled a little when Halbrand mentioned that “the master I apprenticed under” had spoken flatteringly of Celebrimbor, considering that he was probably talking about Morgoth himself. The devil apparently knows quality craftsmanship when he sees it.
I’d be happy if it were episode 8 of 12, not the finale.
I’ve enjoyed the shows for what they were, and whether it respects cannon, logic, or travel time, it was a good story.
My biggest gripe is that now it’s a year, maybe two till the next episode.