What was one thing you liked about the episode and one thing that you didn't? :) EDIT: Apparently the showrunners have confirmed Ostirith was not made by the elves, so we cool. ~ Tim
i love how your intro started with normal mockery, and now is like a chainmail of interwoven rings betwix threads of raw power superposed on top of each other on ungodly layers of more rings and more power. That was one thing i liked about the episode oh about the series? it was aight i guess
Yeah we have the same opinion about the tower and the village. Made no sense. I hate the idiotic battle strategy of letting the enemy past your defenses so you can "ambush" them. They did it in Two Towers at Osgiliath and it was clearly so stupid to let an amphibious landing go uncontested. The tower trick was alright and I thought they subverted my expectations, but then they got to the village and decided the smartest thing to do was set a trap AFTER the orcs cross the bridge. Once again sacrificing the most defensible position/choke point. Makes me pissed every time. Was a good episode over all though. Finally some meaningful action! I liked the design of the Numenorean cavalry:)
The thing I liked best was that there was less dialogue. Most of the dialogue in the other episodes has been terrible. My least favorite thing is a tie between destroying a tower with an arrow, the numenorians knowing exactly where to go, making a volcano by putting water in a hole, and Galadriel surviving the super heated ash from the volcano.
I mean: I thought it was pretty obvious, considering they told you who the lands belonged to during the first 2 episodes. I don't understand why people need to be spoon fed information.
I think my biggest issue with this show overall is that there's no real sense of the scale of this world. Is the Southlands just this one village and the one other one that got killed off? We've had no indication otherwise, so that's how it feels. Numenor, despite its grandeur, has the vibes of a small town where everyone knows each other, rather than the capital of a mighty empire. And Lindon... is just elves hanging out in a forest? I feel like we've barely seen any buildings there. The world feels very small and stagelike, so far. There's no sense that these characters exist in a realm much larger than them.
There’s a problem with scale not only of space but also of time. With the exception of Númenor (kinda), why do all the human settlements we’ve seen look like they were plucked out of the Third Age? I feel like it was a missed opportunity to just go with a medieval aesthetic indistinguishable from the trilogy films - thousands of years have passed between the show and the films!
Agreed, I half expected Adar to trip his horse over a Harfoot with how small the show has felt. The only thing that tells me this must be happening over a vast area is my own knowledge of Middle Earth.
The main thing that bugged me about this episode is how Galadriel and the Numenoreans read an ancient piece of parchment implying that Sauron eventually planned to turn the Southlands into Mordor, and from that correctly intuited that THIS SPECIFIC VILLAGE was under attack RIGHT NOW.
Especially when on the map transitions Numenor is leagues away from that all so specific village. It's laughable how small the world feels despite looking large on the map.
@@billhawkins5633 Exactly! That's one of my biggest problems with the show as a whole. It just doesn't feel like these characters exist in a full, lived-in world.
@@maironaulendil8318 yes the region but that village where no one knows him? They asked him if he was the king they expected, meaning they hadn't seen him before. Mordor, Southlands in the show, is massive. How can someone know that specific village is under attack?
As some have already mentioned, my biggest gripe with this episode was the whole Numenor rushing to this village to save them arc. There is no way they know that they need to be at that village. And if they don't have that knowledge, then they don't need to be rushing to arrive there. It is also confusing because stories, especially on film, are typically interpreted to be happening in chronological order. However, in order for this show to make sense, the Numenor arc had to have occurred months prior. Meanwhile, the Southlands arc occurs over days (maybe a couple weeks). This leads to convoluted and lazy writing, which is what we are getting. It is frustrating because there are ways they could have had the same climax but with a different journey. They didn't take the time to figure it out.
The point you make about chronology I agree with. Following the show’s chronology-logic the sunrise Isildur and Galadriel witness should be the same as the one they charge into the village battle with. Which is… Tony Stark levels of technology.
@@CorePathway Do we know there weren't settlements there already? I think in Tolkien's chronology, Numenor had already established colonies. The show may be compressing things somewhat, because of Ar-Pharazon's discussion of using this small venture to establish larger footholds of control in Middle Earth.
@@thomasb331 funny thing, if we go by the maps made by Tolkien, then the river they are traveling on doesn't exists, its meant to be an offshoot of the Andoin river, but it's not on any of the maps I've been able to find.
I agree with everything you said about this episode. It's really perplexing how small this world feels. The Numenorians leave port, get some cutscenes and are right in the midst of battle for the 8 huts that make up the Southlands.
Haven't they been staying there for 100s of years? Why not try and do something about it? At least jam up the key hole? Or at least renovate the tower? FFS.
Probably because they didn’t realize the keyhole was there or that there was even a key in the first place. The mural is of the sword being plunged into a man in front of Sauron’s face. It’s not like it was obvious.
My most immediate gripe with the specific episode was the fact that no one thought to check the bundle when they got Adar back, even though they'd clearly had enough time to set up a feast. After Arondir specifically told Galadriel that Adar couldn't escape with it, seriously no one unwrapped it?
honestly its death by a thousand cuts with these little logical inconsistencies. Like last episode, numenor is all up and raging about the war, but its only a couple of ships, so then you'd think ''huh weird only a few ships whats the big deal''. Then today we find out the freaking queen is on the ship leading an army of 20 people for some reason. Then they rush to the aid of people they don't know is presently at conflict. Then there's the issue of the wrapping that no one checks. There's the ''no one walks alone'' halflings that leave people alone if they get like 10 meters behind. There's the ''we have to make our stand here'' southlanders, as if escaping isn't even an option to be considered, only for them to escape anyway to a less defensable post an episode later. The girl that flip flops between the courage to fight and 'there's no point' every scene. There's the way elrond phrases the mythrill thing to durin ''i've betrayed and lied to you'' as if he's intentionally fueling conflict and misunderstanding lol. It all feels like a fever dream
Theo was the first to notice the difference and unwrapped it, so it's not the case that "no one unwrapped it". I suspected it was a fake when Galadriel wiped the blood from her knife on the outer wrapping shortly after picking up the package. Since the sword likes blood I was expecting a reaction, like smoke and flames, but there was nothing. Since at that point no one would have had a particular reason to check it as its properties weren't known.
Keep in mind this is the Galadriel took over a thousand years to look at the mark of Sauron from the side a little bit. Nobody has a brain in this show. Everyone is a mindless puppet for the plot.
I think the worst part of her final orc solution is that she hasn’t been shown to hate orcs, but Sauron. Until this episode, that is, where it comes out of nowhere that she wants to genocide them all. It’s not even a hatred of the creatures of Morgoth, which would maybe make sense
“… and then he did. That’s not an arc.” Pretty much sums up the entire series so far for me. Love your analysis of it all - the best out there, I think, because you’re coming at it from both a writer’s POV and that of an open-minded fan.
For me personally, I think the sentiment you expressed, "That could have hit harder if they had put a little more into it" is the whole show. There are the hints and vague outlines of what could have been really cool story beats, but it feels jury-rigged and duct-taped together. They have some cool ideas, but they just aren't executing them in an even vaguely logical way.
That's the thing with badly written shows: they generally know where they want to go but the writers aren't competent enough to get there in a well crafted way. Anybody can come up with cool ideas for scenes and stories. Ideas are cheap. Execution is what matters. Praising this billion-dollar show for having good ideas badly executed is honestly depressing to me. They're doing the bare minimum here.
Sister and I were talking about this, I think the word you're looking for at the end is "unearned". Various scenes where the music and direction clearly indicate we "should" care, but the show hasn't actually made us, so they feel flat. Best analogy we could come up with is the "my name is Khan" scene in ST into Darkness, supposed to be dramatic, but if you don't know who Khan is supposed to be, it's just "erm, why did the film pause for a second? Who's khan, have a missed something?"
Wouldn't that "Khan" reference also have been a problem with the 1982 movie Wrath of Khan? It utilized an episode of the TV series, and so would have resonated more with those who saw the original show and the original Khan.
I understand what you're talking about completely anytime there was a character in danger I didn't feel concerned at all that they might die or would even get hurt so it did surprise me a bit when Bronwyn got hit with an arrow but I still wasn't concerned that she might die and even though at the end when the volcano erupts I still feel like everybody we are supposed to care about will be just fine
@@thomasb331 It’s a bit different in Wrath of Khan because we get Chekov and Khan himself filling in the audience on Khans last encounter with Kirk. Into Darkness ( on top of having that awkward pause for the audience to clap like in Spider-Man No Way Home) doesn’t work because there is no such history or even a hint at it. Wrath of Khan on the other hand works well even if you’ve never seen original Star Trek
What really doesn't help Rings of Power, is that we have House of Dragon running next to it and we can see real character arcs (mostly regressions like with Alicent and Rhaenrya), and when you compare it with Rings of Power, the characters in Rings of Power feel relatively flat.
Yeah, I prefer to watch things on their own merit rather than comparing them, but goddamn. The characters in HotD are frequently frustrating, but they can be that way because they’re interesting and layered, and so even if they’re being a dick you want them to do better. RoP always makes me think “this is what people who don’t like fantasy think all fantasy is like”. Just… bland.
When Galadriel said "its galadin' time " tô Adar and galaded over all those orcs i was both speechless and on the edge of my seat. When the giant man Elendil, the Tall, was overwhelmed by all those extremely dangerous orcs and fell of his horse, It was unbelievably tense, truly more lore-friendly than even Tolkien. The most episode of all time.
I saw the convenient arrival of the Numenoreans as a result of the expedition having scouts. They'd definitely be scouting the terrain so as to be generally aware of various things such as geography or potential threats, like an army of orcs. However, since this isn't communicated to the audience, it's not something that comes to mind immediately and it makes it really easy for it to feel very convenient and forced. I think a short scene of a scout witnessing the orcs marching in the dark with their torches would have made this much better. Perhaps even simply a short of the marching orcs from a low camera angle showing the horse's legs and the scout's boot so as not to immediately give away that it's a Numenorean scout would work better.
I like Adar's backstory and the design of the Orcs. The Orcs have been one of the few consistent things I have enjoyed in the series. The Nampat chant actually rouses some excitement for me, and while I feel pretty meh about the exposition of the alfirin seeds overall, I liked the juxtaposition of Adar also using them in the Elven tradition, as I feel it's a simple thing that adds a lot of flavor to his character. The things that probably irk me the most is, as you and many folks have pointed out, the fact Numenor just happened to go to the right village at exactly the right time, and that the entirety of what we've been shown of Halbrand's "kingdom" has been all of two villages, one of which got razed. The scale just feels so off for the level of commotion over it.
I think Amazon does NOT know what the word "epic" means. The show created CGI ships but there were only three...Columbus' second trip had 17 ships. There were like 300 Numenoreans. That's not an army. That's a small battalion. What kind of powerful queen goes to war with 300?
@@kyrycraft2524 I would have taken it too if it occur to me. That movie was mindless good. It was like watching a comic book which I think it was adapted from. I wish ROP had hired the same writers.
a casual fan here, only read and watched lotr and hobbit. this episode was the first that had my attention from beginning to end. this doesn't mean it was brilliant, but it finally felt like a potential story that i'd like to follow. it was kinda predictable, but still managed to keep me invested. the thing i appreciated the most was how well lit was the fight in the night. everything was easily visible, which is such a relief after too many too dark scenes similar to this one
Re: Halbrand, the vibe I've been getting is that Galadriel is kind of projecting this redemption arc onto him because she wants it to be true, she wants him to be Aragorn and be her useful reliable ally. And he's not entirely unwilling, he's warming up to the narrative she's spinning for him, but he's not as engaged with it as she is, and Galadriel is setting herself up for disappointment and betrayal by assuming this is something she can control.
The moment when Adar inspired his army by saying: "We may be attacking a defenseless village of 50 people, but some of you may die anyway so buckle up. Onwards!"
My favorite is the ending when Galadriel stood there watching 1000F+ degree pyroclastic flow moving over 100MPH+ coming to wipe out everything in that village… Unless this is a dream sequence or magic is about to be used in less than 5 seconds, EVERYONE IS DEAD. #FACTS.
That moment where Isildur gave an apple to a horse, ate the apple, and threw the apple in the sea and the got lectured by Galadriel on humility was amazing. Such taut writing. So moving.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Elrond's "confession" kinda killed that arc for me, and so I've mostly been watching for the pretty. The pretty has been very hit-and-miss, so, meh... But yeah, they haven't properly set up anything, so I only notice that something was supposed to be a pay-off later when I'm at the fridge trying to decide what to eat and I realize, oh, wait...
I struggled with this episode because I wasn't invested in the people or this world. I don't know the villagers, they feel like extras, so when they started dying I wasn't moved. I think the main cast does a good job and is better developed but a lot more could be done to make the conflict feel real.
Copy & pasted extras. Literally. There’s a scene where Bronwyn is trying to rally the villagers and they literally copied & pasted the extras to make the crowd of villagers look bigger.
There is no setup to like anyone including villagers. Who cares if Numenoreans die? Who cares if Harfoots die (well, you sort of wish they die off) Who cares if human villagers die? There is NOTHING real about them for viewers to care for their safety.
@@thomasc9036 the good thing is that the vulcano killed of everyone so the writers get a fresh start to introduce us to a new cast of people going forward. Good riddance...
Rings of Power reminds me of the phrase, "kill your darlings." Its like all the stray darling ideas cut from a dozen other works came to RoP and were haphazardly pasted together. An afterlife for high concepts too good to let go.
There was this one moment where Halbrand catches Adar and says ‘do you remember me’ and I was sure they were going to foreshadow that he’s really Sauron but either they are playing it very close to the chest or that’s just a wrong theory. Other than that I broadly agree, it just all feels very small and a bit too GOT, like I wish they’d channel Tolkien a bit more rather than giving us what they think we want
Since you asked, I know a tiny bit about Tolkien, but basically nothing other than LOTR and Hobbit. Specifically, what happens to the characters in those stories before and after the books, not the lore though. I know very little lore, more character stuff and events. I know a tini tiny bit about Morgoth, and next to nothing about Silmarillion. Frustrated by the way they revealed the old man had the sword hilt. Not much build up, just a line in the beginning. Felt sudden and odd. And did they need the sword? Why not just get pick axes and target a few points to weaken the damn? Loved Adar, he's totally my favourite character. I really hope he sticks around and his relationship with the Orcs is delved into. Great video as usual.
I’m a lotr fan who was mad into Hobbit & LoTR as a teen, but I’ve forgotten more of the lore than I remember in the 20+ years since then. I loved Adar’s plan and the general “humanising” of the Uruk. I thought there were a LOT of issues with the episode, most importantly because a pyroclastic flow is really really really fatal.
Also, it was a watchtower, not a defensive one. That's why I think it was so weak and not the optimal place for defence. Also, the elves didn't want to be there, so why would they maintain the structure with more than ropes?
@@antonietaemparan8741 why maintain a stone tower that’s really really tall, that you have had to maintain constant watch in, for hundreds of years until very very recently? Rope? No, lazy lazy writing.
@@CorePathway you'd that they would at least fix up the place they are working and living in 24x7. Some Lazy fucks the elves are I guess. Why would they not demolish it and rebuild it? FFS
@@CorePathway It wasn't at risk of just falling over, so they had literally no reason to put more than minimal effort into it's upkeep. Especially considering that elves are especially light and there was no risk of it ever seeing combat. There are other examples of lazy writing, but this isn't one.
@Connor_Phillipz No lazy writing in case of a watch tower that stands for hundreds of years and comes crashing down (with no elves inside / atop) after a single rope fails?
i think i agree the Numenoreans arriving at just the right place/time was a bit of an eye roll. I liked how it was handled cinematically though and i also enjoy the fighting. AND considering how important the hilt has been made to be, i didn’t understand why it was just being passed from one character to another after the battle? nobody looked at it? my fav scene was actually the chase between galadriel and adar, the music in this scene was my favorite since the drawvish singing. that and the camera shots to go with; just felt very LOTR. EDIT: thanks for those who pointed out when adar gave the hilt to the man. i definitely missed that!
The old man didn't steal the hilt. Adar said that he had something he needed the old man to do-and that was most likely what needed done. So, Adar gave the hilt to the old man intentionally, most likely because Adar knew no one would be watching an old man's movements but everyone would definitely be watching Adar. (But I actually agree that it's still kinda stupid how no one noticed it wasn't the hilt they still had-it was only wrapped in some cloth or whatever, there's no believable way a hilt and a hatchet feel the same even wrapped like that.)
Chit chad, the Southlander called Waldreg didn't steal the hilt. Adar gave it to him after he left the tavern. And then he sent Waldreg on the errant to set the mechanics in motion. Adar must've instructed him before the battle. When the cavalry from Numenor arrived, Adar needed to improvise. He wrapped an axe with the fabric which had covered the evil hilt. And with that improvised decoy bundle he rode away and dragged Galadriel and Halbrand into a wild-goose chase. Adar probably wanted to buy Waldreg enough time for completing his landscaping mission. That is the only narrative which makes sense. We see that Adar got the hilt from Theo. We also see a few moments later that Adar told Waldreg to do a job for him. We cannot clearly see that Adar gave Waldreg the hilt, but Adar must've given it to him, because we see a bit later that Waldreg uses the hilt as a key. Adar is the only one who could've produced the decoy bundle.
@@chitchad4391 , I didn't see this at first, either, and I couldn't figure out who could have made the switch. When I rewatched these scenes , I realized that Adar was the only one who could've made the decoy bundle. While the show has many troubling issues, I actually like Adar's story line. IMO he is a well crafted character, and we can even sympathize with him to a certain degree. And while Adar acted in a very clever way, it was downright silly that neither Galadriel nor Halbrand or Arondir checked what was inside the bundle after they had captured Adar! And then Arondir gave the bundle to Theo of all people! This shows that some of the writers are morons!
Bear with me here, but could it be possible that Galadriel's "keen eyes", set up earlier, allowed her to see the village not far from that river where they were to make landfall.
Mariano Birdman, these chihuawargs are actually fierce and very dangerous. I know because I have one of them at home. She is tiny but very brave and intelligent. Adar must've developed this specific breed - maybe because these little guys don't need a lot of food and space, and they are cuddlier than the big wargs.
So everyone is like, super dead now, right? Cause of death: Taking the world's biggest volcano eruption directly to the face. Oh wait, it's an EVIL volcano, so according to the lore in this show, the EVIL pyroclastic cloud isn't hot. Brilliant! Seriously, I don't see any plausible way to explain how every single main character survives into the next episode. Genius writing there, team.
The Galadriel orc-genocide speech made me feel uncomfortable, but it makes sense for her character. I love how they are using Adar in the show, and in this episode, Galadriel finally had more than just one mode. While a lot of the scenes were contrived, I was happy. Because of how slow things were going with the Numenor storyline, I was convinced we were going to have two episodes of them on the boats, but now, for the first time, I'm not just intrigued, I'm actually excited for this week's episode. Still, this definitely solidified my thought that they wasted a lot of time and that with a better set-up this could have been a better payoff. Instead of "the elves will take our jobs", more time developing the queen. Maybe instead of having the 5th episode take place on Numenor, do an episode of the army in Middle Earth where Halbrand proves himself, and establish better their arrival to the village. Isildur was better in this episode, but it took us too long to get there. Less Theo sulking, more developing of the villagers and the relationship between Arondir and Bronwyn. Also, while Durin and Elrond are my favourite storyline, and I like the Harfoots, they better have a great payoff because they are feeling like distractions.
@@aesir1ases64 The woman who had an entire speech about how she would abuse the One Ring to turn herself into a Queen not Dark but beautiful and terrible as the Dawn being obsessed with wiping out everything she deems dark and evil makes no sense?
For me Galadriel's little megalomaniacal rant was a good scene as it gives her an actual flaw, something darker than she'd care to admit, rather than the "my only flaw is caring too much" that has existed so far.
Well in creating a new flaw they have succeeded but I feel they pushed too far in the regard that they gave her the flaw of not liking orcs alot which fair enough but then they kept pushing to genocidal Nazi talk of "I'm going to wipe out your entire race with you watching just because you care about them plus your born of darkness so you have no rights and I'm completely justified in ending your species" I do appreciate the epic roast from Adar of "your search for Morgoth's lieutenant should have ended in the mirror". Absolutely pinpoint delivery
Caring too much? She is a PMS elven maiden. She is angry ALL the time. Numenoreans save from the sea and she is angry at them. She approaches the queen and she is angry again. Who and what does she care other than avenging her brother?
She has had a ton of flaws so far. That's a lot of people's (including me) main gripe with the show. That Galadriel, a character that is thousands of years old, is still behaving like an impulsive teen with anger issues. Her rant in this episode was just an extension of that.
@@connor_phillipz5689 To be honest, in Numenor I kinda felt like she was acting more like an arrogant and entitled elf, which was refreshing because elves are very rarely afforded to display the core flaw they are supposed to have in most fantasy media, their sense of superiority. Elves are immortal, ideal beings closer to the gods than anyone else as they originally came from their very lands, so yeah, I think its actually great to have one elf, who we already are supposed to see as an anti-hero with the series starting off with a mutiny against her due to her attitude, being that way.
Non Tolkien fan here. (This is gonna be long) This is my first experience with anything Tolkien. Haven't seen the movies, haven't read the books. This episode was definitely my favorite. Despite not feeling the same way as you, I can definitely understand the points you made on what you thought was bad. I thought it was actually a really smart idea for all of them to leave the tower. Maybe it's just my natural paranoia, but if I were them, I'd definitely believe we'd all be dead in a week. Personally, I feel like the last thing I'd want in battle, is to be cornered with no food or water as someone who's inexperienced in battle and warfare. Yes, the Villagers left a stone fortress to go to an indefensible village. But they regained access to food, resources, medicine, weapons and tools. They could also flee in the woods if they needed to. If they stayed in the tower, they'd only be able to survive for as long as their food and water would allow (which would only be a few days), until they run out of arrows (which they probably didn't have many of) or until the physically stronger Orcs eventually break through. I'm guessing the tower must've had another exit, like Rapunzel's tower in Tangled. It would be weird if it didn't have a way for people to escape in case of an attack. But when it comes to the Númanorians arriving in time and knowing where to go, I thought it was pretty clear. Not only did Halbrand figure out the trajectory of the Orcs, since he was on a boat with a bunch of other villagers from different villages; but Galadriel also mentioned last episode that she knew Elves had been stationed in the Southlands. And since Ostirith is the only fortress in the area, it makes sense that the Villagers would take shelter there. The village was on the way to the tower, so they would inevitably have to go through it. The Númanorians also took two days to get to the Southlands once they reached the coast of Middle Earth. One day through the river and one day riding on horseback. Their arrival didn't feel odd to me, since they heavily discussed it beforehand. But overall, I thought this episode was great. From action to character moments and development. Arondir and Adar were the highlights of the episode for me. I will agree that Bronwyn and Theo don't feel fleshed out enough. But since Arondir cares about them, I care about them. But I do wish that we'd get more moments alone with Bronwyn. I wish the Southlanders made me feel like I do about the Harfoots. Galadriel was amazing in this episode. It was really nice to see her in her element. She has truly at home on the battlefield. Her moment on the boat with Isildur was a highlight of the episode for. I found myself actually blushing the same way he did in that. I just wish we saw her fight more 1v1, or in general. But in general I'm having a great time with this show, not having any expectations, just being here for the ride and taking in everything the show chooses to give me.
I suppose we have to assume that Adar had knowledge of a secret plan Sauron had to dig tunnels and then open the dam to flood Mt Doom. Because if this was Adars plan then that means the sword key thing to open the dam was just a really fun mystical dam release mechanism that had no relation to setting off Mt Doom "hey boss, what type of mechanism shuld we use for the dam release?" "well...i have this cool ass blood sword"
I read a cool theory that the dam and sword were for ritual purpose under Sauron's rule. Sauron controlled the water supply, and would grant the Southlanders water in exchange for human sacrifice (the mural above the keyhole shows this sacrifice) - reinforcing his image as a God. If it was originally for Mount Doom, I feel like Sauron would already have built underground tunnels.
I liked the tragic irony in the end with everyone celebrating as the mountain explodes, but like many have pointed out the scale is just off. If they had shown or at least implied other villages being attacked (or maybe a great column of refugees being attacked as they flee) it would feel less empty. (I know they say more villages have joined them but all the survivors fit into one tavern, so hardly all the southlands). I feel this huge catastrophic event will also feel hollow by the next episode, since our main characters will probably survive (meaning the one village we got cannot be completely obliterated, lowering the stakes/impact further)
The thing I liked most is that this had what might be the first scene where Galadriel was genuinely nice to someone. Her talk with Isildur on the ship. She seemed very encouraging to him. The most frustrating is the whole thing from the collapsing tower, to pulling out an arrow and recovering from it, to the tavern being like a fortified keep just 'cause we're calling it a keep. And the fact that they should all die in the end but I bet most of them will survive the unsurviveable... Not sure if this answers the question, but right now, I don't yet feel invested in any of these characters shown in this episode... The only one I'm really interested in is Elendil (because it's the king in the LOTR intro!). And I guess to a lesser extent (and by association), Isildur... Last add: I see comments saying their favorite thing about this episode was Adar. Well, I do like Uncle Benjen. 🤪 I mean, yes, I would say this is probably the best acted character in the show. I'm just... not sure how to say it... maybe I'm a bit apprehensive of the idea that... am I supposed to like this character or sympathize with him and the orcs? Idk. I'm not sure.
I find Adar & the orcs really intriguing, it's cool to see a leader who has a close relationship to them aside from just being pawns to an evil plan. I agree about them leaving the tower and heading to the village, but I did enjoy watching how they defended the village. I don't like how the Numenoreans managed to get there basically overnight, it killed a lot of tension and makes the world feel small. If I compare it to RotK where you see the Rohirrim having to camp up on their way (even with warning), it allowed you to feel the pressure of the impending doom on Gondor and if they'll make it in time before the city is taken.
I kinda like the show but yeah, I think they should probably have cut some of the Numenor Scenes, which were among the weakest so far, a bit short to have them one episode on the travel and the race to reach the tower, especially since it would have allowed for more interactions between the important characters here, having a bit more for Elendil, Isildur and his friends, but more importantly Galadriel and Halbrandt to interact. Like, I kinda like Galadriels and Miriels interactions just because I kinda feel like they display a sense of elvish arrogance and entitlement that we never got to see in the trilogy because all had to get along, but I think her scenes with Halbrandt are probably the best for her character because she's more authentic with him.
I really like that they are showing Galadriel being so angry, so determined, that it is a big problem. For the first 5 episodes she was completely unlikeable, and I was afraid they were just doing the "Badass Female has to be a jerk" trope.
They couldnt leave over the mountains because they were out of food and the land is barren (so they can't scavenge on foot). So before formulating a plan to fight, it was either stay in the fort or try to flee (were they would either die from fatigue or caught by the orcs).
I mean, they might have been out of food, but they had plenty of freshwater. They could make it a few days distance before needing to really look for more food, by which time it'd be a different area? ~ Tim
@@twothefuture Hadn't they already been basically starving for days though? One cart full of food doesn't seem likely to feed an entire village very much per person for very long. Not to mention low-morale can really bring the pace people can keep down, too. There was also the fact that they mentioned not wanting to leave their homes / not wanting to surrender their homes to the orcs(Didn't they?). Sometimes people do choose to take a stand on principle, as much or more than necessity, even when it might/will be a life-or-death kinda stand. 🤔🤷♀️🤷♀️😅
(That being said, though-I, too, thought it was a little weird at first that they really-really talked up just how much they couldn't leave their specific location... only to promptly leave it? .. what ? Like ..did the area they meant they couldn't leave actually encompass a much larger area than I had originally initially thought it was referring to, or something?? 👀 🤔 Lol I don't have any idea. But, at some point, I guess I kinda just decided it didn't really matter too much because at least the episode was holding my interest / entertaining me-most shows aren't super detailed about completely everything anyhow; even if this one is based on Tolkien's world, which - as I understand it - actually is.^-^😅😅🙃😁)
@@twothefuture I'm sick of diversity in film/ series like this. Let it die. Please review The Woman King or some aspects of its sanitized reality (most of it isn't real but I love it). It is the perfect way to make fantasy epics for people of color without feeling forced like Black Panther or RRR.
I agree with you. So far most of the major developments have lacked any kind of emotional punch for me which is quite an impressive feat as I usually get sucked into any epic fantasy story easily. Aside from Elrond and Durin they just haven't given the characters enough space, I just feel like I've just been watching plot devices furthering the plot.
This series has demonstrated an issue with pacing… walking that fine line between keeping the plot moving and keeping things interesting while actually letting there be enough time for us to care, and also to have an accurate sense of the passage of time within the narrative. It’s like things are slow in some places but rushed in others.
Addar is the best part of this episode. He is an anomaly in this show, proving that the writers are talented (or he is a fluke). The rest of it was the same as before. I think it felt better because it focused on one storyline rather than 10.
Ajay Kumar, I agree! I truly like Adar! We discussed elsewhere that there might be a team of writers who have different tasks, and the writers who are responsible for developing Adar are clearly better than the rest. They have done a good job. It's not at all unusual to employ a team of writers with divided responsibilities for a big show.
@@sabineb.5616 It’s a writers room. Of course there’s a team behind it but you may have noticed that this is the first episode that credited four writers. And it was better than previous episodes. The showrunners are rather green but there are some pretty experienced writers in that room.
Thank you for the great insight you've been bringing to the analysis of Rings of Power. Its refreshing to get away from some of the hysterics on both sides of the argument. I really liked the stunning visuals of Mount Doom erupting and watching the southlands being turned into Mordor as we know it. I feel like the delivery of this was un-realistic and flat. It appears the writers turned this mysterious sword into nothing more than a MacGuffin. They could have used the blade to show the corruption of some humans to darkness. it could even have set up Theo to eventually turn to darkness? You hit the nail on the head when you questioned why the sword was needed to break the dam. There could have been a million other ways to accomplish this feat. Also, with the villagers and Numenorians still in the village when the volcano erupts, its unrealistic to believe any of them would survive that kind of explosion. Personally I think it would have been more impactful to have Arondir distract the orcs in the tower long enough for the villagers to escape to a pass out of the southlands. In doing his tower stunt, the tower breaks the dam which eventually leads to Mount Doom's eruption as the southlander's watch their homeland destroyed from the mountains above, making Arondir unwittingly assist in Adar's plans. This would also set up for the southlanders to meet with the Numernorians to the west and not require to Numernorians to have ridden through the night without knowing a battle was going on.
I mean... _hasn't_ it still set Theo up to potentially turn eventually toward darkness though? The old man, who was established to have had the hilt before Theo found it, clearly has-since that old man tried repeatedly to convince Theo to come with him when defecting to the orcs in the first place[ most likely hoping Theo would bring the hilt as well], then willingly joined the orcs, killed one of his own people without hesitation to prove his loyalty to them and quite happily did exactly as Adar asked when given the job of using the key even though tide-turning aid was clearly on its way. And the conversation with Arondir and Theo, just before they discovered the hilt was switched with a hatchet and had not actually been recovered at all when Adar was captured, sort of implied pretty strongly that it may hold some kind of influence over Theo possibly similar to what The One Ring does to its bearers later on or something. And that's just scratching the surface really of all the possible hints of it still being something even more than just that dam's key. But I do agree that exactly why it was a key to break the dam wasn't built up well enough. Like, yes, we understand why the orcs would want that to happen in that present day battle(and it is possible the orcs' tunnels diverted it from functioning precisely however it might have been intended to function originally)-but why exactly was it wanted/needed/created/used/whatever as a key to that dam specifically back whenever the dam & etc. were *_originally_** constructed* ?? And having it be something really corporeal like that which it was the key for did feel somehow super anticlimactic. ...I just don't know if this is the last we've seen of it, or of its corrupting influences, so I think it might still possibly be both that key and even more; I guess, we'll see, though. It's true. The show doesn't seem to have a particularly strong grasp or measure on time or distance. Or, if it does, it certainly doesn't communicate that grasp or measure especially clearly to audiences....since occasional cuts to the map of the world alone don't really accomplish that. It comes off seeming like they're all Pompeii close to that volcano, but there's no way they could survive it unless it was actually even further away than that initially seemed. And how quickly or how slowly people travel from one place to another seems to change based more on what the script demands than on what the geography or other conditions actually explain. But I guess maybe we're supposed to believe that Halbrand just guessed really lucky, or has even more insider information than we are currently aware, and that perhaps Galadriel was just spurring everyone on with her own reckless urgency having waited so long to have even this little direction even without much external provocation? It is a little thin though, that's for sure.
It’s not that Galadriel threatened to kill all of the orcs. It’s that she was threatening to do it because she knew Adar cared about them. It was the “I’ll save you for last and make you watch” vibe that doesn’t sit well with me.
In The Fellowship of the Ring film she basically said she would become the female version of Sauron if she truly had all the power. Galadriel is a problem, and is on a psychological journey of sorts, as the first episode, including the scenes with her brother, establishes.
@@thomasb331 I think people just want her to act like a pretty girl instead of a WAR COMMANDER 😂 of course as someone who’s seen war she’s gonna have a hardened personality
@@thomasb331 this is a miss reading of the Ring. It is actually evil. It is not the power that corrupts but the actual evil forged into its very existence. It's is part of Saurons soul and the only thing keeping him alive and in the world after the fall of Numenor.
Galadriel threatening genocide works for me. This is because, from what I can tell, all the other elves have moved on and welcome a second age of peace. In the first age, elves were quite violent, to say the least. Galadriel is stuck in the first age. My opinion at least.
Galadriel spent the whole of the first age repenting for the violence of the Kingslaying in Doriath, and in the Second Age she refused violence entirely.
First, I have to say that was so pleasing to watch your review. Everybody is weird about this show! There are two types of review: the haters that look for things to criticise, and the people are (or pretend) blind to all the problems in the writing that you mention (and you were kind to the show), and act like that's the best show ever. I don't know how to react to the craziness of this two types of the review and I'm thinking I'm going mad myself ! Well, I am a Tolkien fan, but I'm watching the show for what it is, and forgetting the books. But, the writing is so convenient, things happen just because they need to happen to move characters to one place to another. So many hours and we don't have conflict, we don't have much characters development, we don't have interesting dialogue or action. People are calling "slow burn", but in slow burn the plot moves slow, bur it moves, and the scenes have a reason to exist. LotR look like filler most of the time. And not a fun one (except for the dwarves). And I not a hater, I was prepared to love this show.
First off, I agree with pretty much everything you've said and get where you're coming from. In regards to Ostirith, I believe the stone carvings depicting the sword and sacrifice at the tower in previous episodes were meant to imply that the tower and dam were a pre-existing structure, re-purposed by the watching elves. The seemingly lack of tactical knowhow bothered me, but not nearly as much as the villagers new found teleportation abilities. That path was the fastest and easiest way down. The women with infants could not have gone down another way in the time it took the Uruks to hike up that path. My favorite part of the episode was seeing the plan of the uruk come to fruition. As soon as I saw where the water was going I said, "Awww yeah. So that's how they're gonna do it." Looking forward to the autopsy video!
The multiple timelines is incredibly confusing. They were in sync in episode one with the meteor. Yet the distances travelled by Galadriel from that sync point logically should have taken far longer than what has been told from Arondir’s perspective. Either the Numenorean ships have engines or the writers haven’t communicated the number of days Arondir spent as a prisoner properly. This isn’t the only time issue either. Timelines are an important part of planning a story and it doesn’t feel like this story has a timeline.
I thought it was easily the best episode so far. I loved the fight with the big ol' orc just oozing blood everywhere. I was kind of bugged by the Numenorians somehow knowing exactly where to go, though I chalked that up to Galadriel's OP elf eyes. EDIT: Actually, scratch the oozy orc part. My favorite bit was the realization of what Adar's plan was, and what all those tunnels were for. Actually said "holy crap, that's clever" out loud.
The problem is for that to be the plan, the tower had to have been purpose built to be a dam with massive spillways that you can open with a magic blood-activated sword-key-thing. And also.... that's now how magma chambers work.
@@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t It's pretty close on how that water can cause the mountain to erupt like that. Also, these were lands and people that served morgoth, that could have been exactly why the tower was designed for.
@@husman2007 It's really not. Under the circumstances depicted, once the rate of water flow into the chamber reduces, the steam would escape through the same hole the water came through.
@@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t It didn't have to be to set the volcano off. That clearly relied on the tunnels the orc dug. But it certainly could have been designed to flood the valley.
I got the idea that the tower was like a former sauron monument thing, based off the statue with the sword, and the elves just moved in. Literally only explanation I can come up with for the sword key
I still thought it was genuinely not a ‘good’ episode, but yes, it was better than some of the others so far this season. 1. A series of ropes and metal straps are what kept the tower from collapsing for all these years? 2. Three ships of that size can hold a few hundred men AND a few hundred horses AND make good speed? 3. Galadriel is now seen as a commander who also intimidates the likes of Isildur, despite her being relatively hated and even locked in a Numenorean jail cell not a few days prior. 4. Having this version of Galadriel lecture anyone about humility is hilariously disingenuous, yet she does just this to Isildur. 5. The people of the Southlands go back to their vulnerable village when they should be on the run and hiding. They also choose to hide the vulnerable (elderly, women and children) in the tavern which has very little security. 6. Arondir fights a huge orc and for whatever reason, this orc came to battle without a weapon? The huge orc can also apparently continue fighting without issues after a splintered wooden shaft is buried deep in his eye/skull? 7. Bronwyn reacts to being hit with 2 arrows, but amazingly she only has 1 arrow/wound to deal with they get her on a table inside the tavern. 8. Galadriel beheading an orc while hanging upside down from her horse is fairly cheesy, but they’re clearly doubling down on the “Legolas did cheesy shit so it’s okay” route. 9. Hallbrand and Galadriel are chasing Adar by horse, Hallbrand in the rear, yet somehow in a manner of seconds he ends up way out in front of Adar, charging at him from the opposite direction?! What? 10. Galadriel proudly tells Adar that she will kill him last, so that Adar can see that all the orcs he created are dead. Adar's rebuttal upsets Galadriel so greatly that she puts a knife to his throat and is about to kill him seconds later! A great irony being that only a few moments earlier, Galadriel had to stop Hallbrand from killing Adar. Now.…Hallbrand is preventing her from killing Adar. 11. No one thinks to check the contents of the wrapped up cloth that they apprehended from Adar until Theo, near the end up the episode…...who discovers they have been deceived. 12. The water from the open dam is flowing through tunnels dug by the orcs and slaves. Yet when the water is shown flowing into Mount Doom, it appears to be entering the volcano through the vent hole at the peak of the mountain?! How? How is it that water can flow uphill several thousand feet in elevation like that? I would expect it to spread out on the lowlands instead. 13. Galadriel stands there with a stupidly blank face and accepts what should be apparent death by immolation/burning/suffocation as the volcano erupts. But, as we all know, she’ll miraculously be okay next episode. Some of these qualms are admittedly minor, others are completely immersion breaking. The biggest issue is that, despite WANTING to like this show, I’m now several hours in and completely indifferent to its characters and either annoyed or dismissive of its plot.
Ehhhh I think a lot of these are nitpicking stuff that is pretty easily explained or just really do not matter. The only one that really bothered me was not checking the weapon. ~ Tim
I agree with most of your points but have some rebuttals for a few. 3. Isildur is the son of one of the Faithful, and the rest of the men on those ships volunteered to follow Galadriel and Tar-Míriel to the Southlands. All of them would represent the half of Numenor that still respected the Elves. 10. I think this irony was totally intentional, and as Tim mentions in the video, these sorts of internal tensions are part of character writing.Putting your character in a situation where they logically proclaim one action but are emotionally driven to another is a potent event and part of why I like that scene. 11. Arondir only told Galadriel that Adar could not be allowed to escape with the content of the cloth, she couldn't know what she was looking for when she captured him. Granted, a modest axe isn't the sort of thing she would expect but she had no reason to doubt his insistence. She only gives the very important item to Arondir after interrogating Adar, though, which is at least poor judgement. 12. While I agree I would expect the magma chamber to be much higher in the volcano than ground level, I don't think there is a vent hole, but the forced entrance of a tunnel dug very close to the interior wall. For Orodruin to explode as it did, there would need to be a massive build in pressure and a vent hole wouldn't allow that.
@@twothefuture Some of it, yes, but when internal logic consistently breaks down in the show, would you not argue that it slowly saps investment and immersion? You are right, however, that the main issue was not checking the weapon.
How on middle earth did three people handle that package and not notice that it wasn't a sword hilt that ruined what would have been a great episode for me I just can't get over that seeming hours passed before they noticed
When I saw that scene I thought Arondir had intentionally given Theo the hammer instead of the hilt, almost as a test to see if he would just get rid of it or give in to temptation and open the package. It felt like a comedic beat - Arondir solemnly hands him the package, tells him to get rid of it, Theo immediately opens it. Then when I saw the next scene I was very confused
@@carlosls166 Firstly, Galadriel has no idea about the hilt nor what it would feel like. Secondly, it was wrapped up in a heavy cloth, and Arondir had no reason to suspect foul play considering they captured the orcs and Adar.
There is no way that Galadriel would have handed Arondir the package over without questioning what it was, and why it was so important to Adar, before she went to interrogate Adar. Because knowing what this important object was would give her valuable intel for her questioning him. That´s rule Nr 1 for interrogations, get as much intel as possible before it. So it was wrapped in heavy cloth, so what? The cloth only hides the shape of the object, not it´s form you feel when touching it nor its mass. The moment Arondig took the package he would have felt that neither the shape, nor the wieght were like he remembered it, so he would have checked it.
Galadiel : And not just the men , But the women and the children too , I WILL KILL THEM , I WILL KILL THEM ALL ! ! ! Stranger : Sit down young starwalker .
the stuff adar was talking about sauron trying to heal middle earth adn tried to fix his mistakes makes sense. tolkien wrote about that in his letters, and he turned to domination because he liked the control over middle earth. im thinking that the show is going to make a more personal reason for why halbrand/sauron turns to evil, on top of the whole domination motive
Yes, I agree. What we are seeing in the first season is likely material that will be expanded upon in all sorts of ways over the five seasons. I think the question of whether Halbrand = Sauron won't be the most relevant one (I think he likely is, but there are other possibilities). Rather I think the question of what Sauron is and what is means to have power will be the bigger questions. I think the "Rings of Power" will be an apt metaphor for what the show will be about-- power and what it does to people. That would be the most Tolkien thing the show could focus on.
@@thomasb331 no. Because it isn't power that corrupts but evil that corrupts power. The ring isn't evil because it is powerful. It is powerful because it is evil.
What I dislike is just why Adar and the orcs needed the sword to open the dam, and why they couldn't have just destroyed it. Seems a bit weird to me, a lack luster finish to the build up around the sword, to open a dam they could've broken open.
Moments where slight changes could've made them better: Galadriel doesn't handle her men quitting the quest like a Commander, the Halffoots don't sing while gathered, Halbred steals yet wins fight in a slow one-one brawl, Galadriel jumps to the sea way too late, the Stranger just doesn't cause any real problems to the caravan, and the dwarves mildly react to things instead of having big emotions.
I feel like people are missing that Galadriel just stood in the face of a PYROCLASIC FLOW. Which, if you don’t know what that is… think POMPEII. You breathe in this molten ash and it burns your lungs and turns into this cement type thick liquid and BURNS you from the inside out as you’re deep fried from the outside. By the third “breath,” you are absolutely not taking another one. Even if she survived because she’s an elf, everyone else should be cremated and buried in ash. I love Tolkien and fantasy. I can suspend disbelief off a 200 story building. But that… oooh. As a lifelong learner type, I just really hate that they CHOSE to have them that close and she just… stands there and survives!
The entire volcano scene halfway convinced me the show was trying to troll me. Like, I'm no geologist, but having the big evil plan to pour water into a volcano to make it active is a bit hard to swallow.
the Shadow Of games don't make the Orcs good, but they do make them uniquely evil in ways that make encountering them again and again engaging, in fact the games almost accidently portrays forcing 'Goodness' onto them as the Ultimate corruption and villainy.
I have the feeling that they wrote this episode first and then work their way backwards to all the moments they wanted to have, that is why so many things feel clumsy or disconnected from what came before.
I kept thinking, why don't the villagers just leave? That connection to home isn't there. And Halbrand as the new king feels weak? The king of this tiny village that they're abandoning? Why should we care? This isn't the homecoming it's trying to be.
I loved the conversations with Adar, he is by far the best character in this series. I found it quite frustrating how Numenor was such a Deus ex machina. They made HUUUUGE progress. Last episode they couldn't even leave the port.
I think the idea with the sword hilt/key is that neither Adar nor the orcs (sorry, uruk!) actually knew what the plan is. They probably had no idea that the tunnels they were digging were to cause an eruption, but probably just following an old plan by Morgoth or Sauron that had those instructions - dig tunnels towards Orodruin, use sword to activate the system. Also it's likely that the dam was protected for centuries by elves and the risk of an open attack on the dam was too high. If the elves realized what Adar is trying to do they would've foiled the plan altogether.
Everyone seems to forget that Bronwyn's town isn't the only village in the Southlands. That or none of you actually paid attention, at all. Arondir literally found the tunnels in another village. Like, we saw that happen on the screen. It's not like they only mentioned or he happened to appear in one from our perspective. But speaking of mentioning, they did talk about the other towns in the area having to evacuate or having the blight or whatever spread through. Also, if the tower was Elven, why would they have a mural dedicated to the sword and Sauron or Morgoth?
The good news is that everyone in the Numenorean/Beforedor storyline died in a volcanic eruption. This episode spent almost all of its' run time reminding the audience of a better film. The remainder, it spent turning Galadriel into a war criminal (or are we to assume she's never tortured orcs before in the last few centuries?) The villagers left the village because it was indefensible, then returned to it because it 'gave a tactical advantage'. It was a bit of a catastrophe before the pyroclastic flow.
I asked my non-Tolkien-reading friend what he thought of the episode, and he said he thought it was the best yet. But he thought it could've used more sword fighting, which is, in his words, "the reason why Lord of the Rings is so good." It was a good reminder to me that the general audience doesn't really care about the poetry of Tolkien, or the themes that are shown through character development. He said the best part of the episode was Galadriel decapitating that orc, and he wished the show had more of that.
I can applaud the show-writers for at least trying and having some restraint, with that new knowledge. Though, to be perfectly fair, the films were full of gratuitous violence that people would have clung to rather than the heartfelt moments.
@@TheSuperRatt (Which is kinda why Tolkien's son absolutely hated the movies, and may have left the Tolkien estate charged with guaranteeing that approach was never taken in a Tolkien adaptation ever again. ...considering the people working on the RoP tv series were supposedly prevented by legal reasons from showing the episode scripts to Peter Jackson, despite having initially approached him to offer/ask if he would look at them.)
I felt like Galadriel's "I will kill all of them" bit was much more of an anger or frustration driven statement than one to be taken literally, and that her thanking Halbrand was in large part a "hey thanks for physically removing me from that situation, I kind of lost myself to rage" as opposed to just being about her not having killed Adar. She hasn't seen any of the beings who directly orchestrated/ were directly involved in the War of Wrath since its end, so it makes sense to me that when she inevitably does all the rage and hatred would come flooding back.
Could be a little bit of both, or possibly even deliberately left open to various interpretation(s). There has kinda been this question posed ever since episode one whether or not Galadriel has become too much like her enemies[ like the other Elves feared] or is simply misunderstood whilst pursuing an actually just and valid cause that everyone else simply finds more comfortable to disbelieve than to consider a genuine issue.
She never saw Adar because he doesnt exist, she never went to Mordor, she was never a hateful character because she was wiser than that. This aint Galadriel.
@@aesir1ases64 The line "[...] any of the beings who [...] were directly involved in the War of Wrath [...]" includes in my mind orcs, dark elves, dragons, and balrogs generally, not just the named figures we know of from the war. This would include Adar.
I don't know a lot about the lore, but with this episode...the part when Galadriel threatened the evil elf Adar with torture and genocide was over the top. Galadriel's character is so full of anger that she comes off as a more evil person than the orcs.
My assumption would be that the Numenorean force sent scouts out. We weren’t shown that - because of course we weren’t - but I think that’s probably how they know where to go
Oh and I hate this "Galadriel" with the absolute lack of empathy and wisdom and anything other than anger. It's hard to believe that she will eventually go to prison and find Eru in the church sessions and find peace and wisdom in her mistakes. Not because it can't happen but because in Mordor I don't see them having Bible study sessions
I loved Adar and his unique perspective towards the Uruks despite being inherently evil and thus not knowing how to find land without conquest. I was frustrated by the lack of scale of the southlands / Numenor
One of my pet peeves is bad MacGuffins. When the sword hilt was introduced it seemed like a precursor to the rings of power, so I thought it was interesting and I was excited to see what they were going to do with it… then they used it as a literal key.
This episode, and series in general, is a good example of a story that looks good on paper but has 1: horrendous execution and 2: not enough buildup. For example: the story of a rag tag group of underdogs banding together to protect their village is a good story. However, the writers messed it up and wrote the specifics of how it happens to make no sense once all is said and done.
Loved the scene between Bronwyn and Theo, didn't love the horses being sped up in post production. And the timeline being.. ignored? Did the Numenoreans land at midnight and ride through the night? Did the battle in village occur during an eclipse? Who told them to hurry? It was night then day and all during one scene
Admittedly copy-pasting from another comment I made, but I did struggle with this a bit as well before I pulled all the time references I could. The timeline is..yeah, confusing. I had to build a rough timeline to try and get things to line up. Most notable points were assuming the meteor came at the same time Galadrie dove off, and her and Halbrand are on the raft about a day. Between various time references mentioned, and Waldreg, after Arondir and Theo return, saying the “sign” was “a few weeks back,” so the Southlanders have been in that tower a few weeks, which leaves about…2-3 weeks for Numenor to travel? If I calculated right? So Numenor timeframe is technically behind Southlands
@@davidbeer5015 But that would mean Arondir has been a captive for weeks, which is impossible since the trench litterally doesn't change the whole time.
@@davidbeer5015 It was already clear that the timeline wasn't adding up when we had Elrond travel back and forth between the Elves and Dwarves. Just think about the time that takes, and then remember that also happens after Galadriel leaves.
@Doragon that is one element, yeah, but that’s an element proposed within the show itself. We don’t know how long Arondir was checking out the tunnel before being grabbed, but when we went in, it was the same day the meteor fell, if not the next day. And then the line we hear after he brings Theo back was that was a few weeks back. So yeah, that’s the sense I’m getting. They needed time to make the plan to get out. Though I think that one is easier for me to suspend disbelief personally for than Numenor sailing within a day or two. Like, I don’t see it as off, but still, not as weird.
Disclaimer, I've only read the hobbit, but it was mentioned that when the baddies were defeated, sauron decided to heal the world (or something along those lines), maybe thats when the sword/dam contraption could've been conceived, or maybe it was done much earlier so his "subjects" could actually live on land. It is very badly explained.
Also I believe the southlands were "evil" territory b4, so I'm guessing the tower is very much not elvish, but a fortification they captured during the war.
Ostirith was made by Morgoth's followers, the contraption is made by Sauron, similar to his machinery that connected his tower with Mount Doom The Numenorians knew where it was, and they had haste because of the warnings of Hallbrand and Galadriel My main grip is that where did the horses came from, the ships were RAR documents
Abandoning the tower could have used a discussion, but it made sense. The reason they hadn’t fled was because the orcs move faster and could catch them at night, but one day was enough to get to the town. They could sacrifice the tower and kill a lot of orcs by trapping them inside, but they couldn’t do as much damage by sacrificing the town. So the best option was to do as they did. The other option, holding the tower as long as possible, would have been a more temporary solution. Without food, the orcs would eventually get in and get the sword. It makes even more sense when you remember that, for Arondir, keeping the sword safe was the most important goal. There was no safe place to hide the sword in the tower. The town offered a better chance to hide it or even maybe run away with it if need be. Again, a lot of that could have been said in a scene that could have given us real character development.
I think the eruption of Mt Doom is probably the best beat of the show. It's such a wonderful encapsulation of Tolkien's anti-industrialization sentiments; the moment beautifully captured the way that he saw rampant ambition and advancement destroyed both nature and lives. And it adds to the greater whole of Middle-Earth in my opinion. We can look back at LotR and what Mordor becomes, what it made into, and feel both the loss of what it was and the hope of what it could become after being reclaimed from Sauron after the war of the ring.
The watch tower is the same place that becomes Minas Morgul later on. It has a path going up the mountain side, through the tower yard and then enters Mordor, going downhill into the wide open land with Orodruin (Mt Doom) that becomes Mordor. I guess the orcs with Adara arrive from the west and the villages ran east (and south), which is where the village was, close to the volcano.
“ I’ve seen smaller armies face bigger foes “ - dude that has spent his whole life farming and at a watch tower and hasn’t seen a single full scale battle in his life .
The very small scale of everything is so weird. The southlands is like 20 people. Numenor has all the naval power of a small fishing village. Galadriel leading the northern army of her and like 5 other elves.
Great video! Articulated, expanding and clear. My favourite thing from the episode is also my greatest annoyance with it: the Galadriel-Adar horse chase scene. Warning: long bit of text. Let’s start with the good stuff. The cinematography was great! I loved the sense of speed it gave me. Much like a high-speed car chase scene, but with horses. It was intimate and engaging enough to make me really appreciate the craft that went into it. Now the bad stuff. From the writer’s perspective it was a reference to the Nazgul chase scene from Fellowship… a blatantly obvious one. The “noro lim”, the dramatic music, a precious (intended) and potentially powerful artifact. Let’s compare the two scenes to see if the reference holds up. Fellowship chase scene: Everyone knows the Ring is a very powerful thing (Frodo, Aragorn, Arwen, the Hobbits, the viewer), the One in fact. All the prologue, the Gandalf-research and the bloody title of the trilogy reference it. We haven’t seen all Nazgul together up until the chase, which makes it all the more horrifying when all of the Nine appear. Especially with the added score (chills everytime). These creatures will never stop hunting, so the stakes are very high. We see the magic of the Elves in Arwen and their connection to horses (“noro lim”) which introduces us to the iconic race (another pun) of the Elves. Finally (again magic and horses) the viewer is treated to the Bruinen river scene… an amazing pay-off. Now for the RoP chase… Galadriel learns everything she knows about her prey Adar in a brief exchange with Arondir: he the boss, he got thingy he can’t have. Nobody (Arondir, Galadriel, viewer) knows what the thing actually is or why it’s important. The bad guy wants it, but we have no idea why. So we don’t know the stakes. It’s just a chase to bring the leader in. So the immense score doesn’t in the slightest hold the gravitas the one in Fellowship did. The series wants us to feel the high stakes in its chase scene, but it hasn’t earned them. The pay-off is Halbrand knocking and capturing Adar… It was a blatant attempt at servicing fans with an “Omg I recognize this!”-moment. In doing so they failed to recognize why Fellowship’s chase earned its stakes and interest and theirs didn’t. And that annoyed me :).
13:10 basically my same feeling. The way I put it is that nothing has been earned. There's so many moments that I think are supposed to feel impactful but just don't because none of it is earned.
Кино
What was one thing you liked about the episode and one thing that you didn't? :) EDIT: Apparently the showrunners have confirmed Ostirith was not made by the elves, so we cool.
~ Tim
i love how your intro started with normal mockery, and now is like a chainmail of interwoven rings betwix threads of raw power superposed on top of each other on ungodly layers of more rings and more power. That was one thing i liked about the episode
oh about the series? it was aight i guess
Yeah we have the same opinion about the tower and the village. Made no sense.
I hate the idiotic battle strategy of letting the enemy past your defenses so you can "ambush" them. They did it in Two Towers at Osgiliath and it was clearly so stupid to let an amphibious landing go uncontested. The tower trick was alright and I thought they subverted my expectations, but then they got to the village and decided the smartest thing to do was set a trap AFTER the orcs cross the bridge. Once again sacrificing the most defensible position/choke point. Makes me pissed every time.
Was a good episode over all though. Finally some meaningful action! I liked the design of the Numenorean cavalry:)
The thing I liked best was that there was less dialogue. Most of the dialogue in the other episodes has been terrible. My least favorite thing is a tie between destroying a tower with an arrow, the numenorians knowing exactly where to go, making a volcano by putting water in a hole, and Galadriel surviving the super heated ash from the volcano.
@@IshtarNike it was the only way to do maximum damage... 🤷♂️
I mean: I thought it was pretty obvious, considering they told you who the lands belonged to during the first 2 episodes. I don't understand why people need to be spoon fed information.
I think my biggest issue with this show overall is that there's no real sense of the scale of this world. Is the Southlands just this one village and the one other one that got killed off? We've had no indication otherwise, so that's how it feels. Numenor, despite its grandeur, has the vibes of a small town where everyone knows each other, rather than the capital of a mighty empire. And Lindon... is just elves hanging out in a forest? I feel like we've barely seen any buildings there.
The world feels very small and stagelike, so far. There's no sense that these characters exist in a realm much larger than them.
There’s a problem with scale not only of space but also of time. With the exception of Númenor (kinda), why do all the human settlements we’ve seen look like they were plucked out of the Third Age? I feel like it was a missed opportunity to just go with a medieval aesthetic indistinguishable from the trilogy films - thousands of years have passed between the show and the films!
They lit their beacons? Easy way out but better than nothing
Wow! Couldn't have said it better myself.
Agreed, I half expected Adar to trip his horse over a Harfoot with how small the show has felt. The only thing that tells me this must be happening over a vast area is my own knowledge of Middle Earth.
hard agree, feels very Hercules and Xena for me at times despite the money.
The main thing that bugged me about this episode is how Galadriel and the Numenoreans read an ancient piece of parchment implying that Sauron eventually planned to turn the Southlands into Mordor, and from that correctly intuited that THIS SPECIFIC VILLAGE was under attack RIGHT NOW.
Another guy in the comments over on Men of the West observed that the world in this show just feels small. Perfect example of this right here.
Especially when on the map transitions Numenor is leagues away from that all so specific village. It's laughable how small the world feels despite looking large on the map.
@@billhawkins5633 Exactly! That's one of my biggest problems with the show as a whole. It just doesn't feel like these characters exist in a full, lived-in world.
From what I understood, Halbrand helped pinpoint the region instead
@@maironaulendil8318 yes the region but that village where no one knows him? They asked him if he was the king they expected, meaning they hadn't seen him before. Mordor, Southlands in the show, is massive. How can someone know that specific village is under attack?
As some have already mentioned, my biggest gripe with this episode was the whole Numenor rushing to this village to save them arc. There is no way they know that they need to be at that village. And if they don't have that knowledge, then they don't need to be rushing to arrive there.
It is also confusing because stories, especially on film, are typically interpreted to be happening in chronological order. However, in order for this show to make sense, the Numenor arc had to have occurred months prior. Meanwhile, the Southlands arc occurs over days (maybe a couple weeks). This leads to convoluted and lazy writing, which is what we are getting.
It is frustrating because there are ways they could have had the same climax but with a different journey. They didn't take the time to figure it out.
The point you make about chronology I agree with. Following the show’s chronology-logic the sunrise Isildur and Galadriel witness should be the same as the one they charge into the village battle with. Which is… Tony Stark levels of technology.
I wonder how long it takes to unload hundreds of horses, men and equipment. There was no port, no pier for them.
@@CorePathway You've given this way more thought than the writers did.
@@CorePathway Do we know there weren't settlements there already? I think in Tolkien's chronology, Numenor had already established colonies. The show may be compressing things somewhat, because of Ar-Pharazon's discussion of using this small venture to establish larger footholds of control in Middle Earth.
@@thomasb331 funny thing, if we go by the maps made by Tolkien, then the river they are traveling on doesn't exists, its meant to be an offshoot of the Andoin river, but it's not on any of the maps I've been able to find.
I agree with everything you said about this episode. It's really perplexing how small this world feels. The Numenorians leave port, get some cutscenes and are right in the midst of battle for the 8 huts that make up the Southlands.
Game of Thrones S07/S08 ass fast travel BS
The tower was built by the Southlanders who served Morgoth, not the elves. That’s why it contained the mural and the key hole.
Thank You🤍
Haven't they been staying there for 100s of years? Why not try and do something about it? At least jam up the key hole? Or at least renovate the tower? FFS.
Probably because they didn’t realize the keyhole was there or that there was even a key in the first place. The mural is of the sword being plunged into a man in front of Sauron’s face. It’s not like it was obvious.
I'm just shocked they didn't take all the stones for their own buildings. That's what ppl did to buildings in real life.
@@Haxerous Because, until Theo found the hilt, no one knew it even was a key hole?
My most immediate gripe with the specific episode was the fact that no one thought to check the bundle when they got Adar back, even though they'd clearly had enough time to set up a feast. After Arondir specifically told Galadriel that Adar couldn't escape with it, seriously no one unwrapped it?
honestly its death by a thousand cuts with these little logical inconsistencies. Like last episode, numenor is all up and raging about the war, but its only a couple of ships, so then you'd think ''huh weird only a few ships whats the big deal''. Then today we find out the freaking queen is on the ship leading an army of 20 people for some reason. Then they rush to the aid of people they don't know is presently at conflict. Then there's the issue of the wrapping that no one checks. There's the ''no one walks alone'' halflings that leave people alone if they get like 10 meters behind. There's the ''we have to make our stand here'' southlanders, as if escaping isn't even an option to be considered, only for them to escape anyway to a less defensable post an episode later. The girl that flip flops between the courage to fight and 'there's no point' every scene. There's the way elrond phrases the mythrill thing to durin ''i've betrayed and lied to you'' as if he's intentionally fueling conflict and misunderstanding lol.
It all feels like a fever dream
Theo was the first to notice the difference and unwrapped it, so it's not the case that "no one unwrapped it".
I suspected it was a fake when Galadriel wiped the blood from her knife on the outer wrapping shortly after picking up the package. Since the sword likes blood I was expecting a reaction, like smoke and flames, but there was nothing. Since at that point no one would have had a particular reason to check it as its properties weren't known.
Keep in mind this is the Galadriel took over a thousand years to look at the mark of Sauron from the side a little bit.
Nobody has a brain in this show. Everyone is a mindless puppet for the plot.
And it was so unnecessary, they could've unwrapped it right there, find out it was a fake and then boom water bomb that makes a volcano erupt, somehow
I think the worst part of her final orc solution is that she hasn’t been shown to hate orcs, but Sauron. Until this episode, that is, where it comes out of nowhere that she wants to genocide them all. It’s not even a hatred of the creatures of Morgoth, which would maybe make sense
“… and then he did. That’s not an arc.” Pretty much sums up the entire series so far for me. Love your analysis of it all - the best out there, I think, because you’re coming at it from both a writer’s POV and that of an open-minded fan.
For me personally, I think the sentiment you expressed, "That could have hit harder if they had put a little more into it" is the whole show. There are the hints and vague outlines of what could have been really cool story beats, but it feels jury-rigged and duct-taped together. They have some cool ideas, but they just aren't executing them in an even vaguely logical way.
It all feels really amateur and small in scope.
That's the thing with badly written shows: they generally know where they want to go but the writers aren't competent enough to get there in a well crafted way.
Anybody can come up with cool ideas for scenes and stories. Ideas are cheap.
Execution is what matters.
Praising this billion-dollar show for having good ideas badly executed is honestly depressing to me. They're doing the bare minimum here.
Sister and I were talking about this, I think the word you're looking for at the end is "unearned". Various scenes where the music and direction clearly indicate we "should" care, but the show hasn't actually made us, so they feel flat.
Best analogy we could come up with is the "my name is Khan" scene in ST into Darkness, supposed to be dramatic, but if you don't know who Khan is supposed to be, it's just "erm, why did the film pause for a second? Who's khan, have a missed something?"
Wouldn't that "Khan" reference also have been a problem with the 1982 movie Wrath of Khan? It utilized an episode of the TV series, and so would have resonated more with those who saw the original show and the original Khan.
I understand what you're talking about completely anytime there was a character in danger I didn't feel concerned at all that they might die or would even get hurt so it did surprise me a bit when Bronwyn got hit with an arrow but I still wasn't concerned that she might die and even though at the end when the volcano erupts I still feel like everybody we are supposed to care about will be just fine
Episode three has many of those problems.
@@thomasb331 It’s a bit different in Wrath of Khan because we get Chekov and Khan himself filling in the audience on Khans last encounter with Kirk. Into Darkness ( on top of having that awkward pause for the audience to clap like in Spider-Man No Way Home) doesn’t work because there is no such history or even a hint at it. Wrath of Khan on the other hand works well even if you’ve never seen original Star Trek
What really doesn't help Rings of Power, is that we have House of Dragon running next to it and we can see real character arcs (mostly regressions like with Alicent and Rhaenrya), and when you compare it with Rings of Power, the characters in Rings of Power feel relatively flat.
You insult the word "flat". "Flat" indicates two dimensions. That's one too many dimensions for ROP chars.
Yea, compared to House of the Dragon, RoP looks like an absolute joke. And not a good one.
Yeah, I prefer to watch things on their own merit rather than comparing them, but goddamn. The characters in HotD are frequently frustrating, but they can be that way because they’re interesting and layered, and so even if they’re being a dick you want them to do better.
RoP always makes me think “this is what people who don’t like fantasy think all fantasy is like”. Just… bland.
@@RainWelsh Its very ironic that they made LOTR into a generic fantasy, they got none of Tolkien's amazing subtle and nuanced writing.
I haven’t been watching house of dragons and the RoP writing is still realllly glaringly pretty bad
When Galadriel said "its galadin' time " tô Adar and galaded over all those orcs i was both speechless and on the edge of my seat. When the giant man Elendil, the Tall, was overwhelmed by all those extremely dangerous orcs and fell of his horse, It was unbelievably tense, truly more lore-friendly than even Tolkien. The most episode of all time.
The real Ring of Power was the friends we made along the way
I saw the convenient arrival of the Numenoreans as a result of the expedition having scouts. They'd definitely be scouting the terrain so as to be generally aware of various things such as geography or potential threats, like an army of orcs. However, since this isn't communicated to the audience, it's not something that comes to mind immediately and it makes it really easy for it to feel very convenient and forced. I think a short scene of a scout witnessing the orcs marching in the dark with their torches would have made this much better. Perhaps even simply a short of the marching orcs from a low camera angle showing the horse's legs and the scout's boot so as not to immediately give away that it's a Numenorean scout would work better.
I like Adar's backstory and the design of the Orcs. The Orcs have been one of the few consistent things I have enjoyed in the series. The Nampat chant actually rouses some excitement for me, and while I feel pretty meh about the exposition of the alfirin seeds overall, I liked the juxtaposition of Adar also using them in the Elven tradition, as I feel it's a simple thing that adds a lot of flavor to his character.
The things that probably irk me the most is, as you and many folks have pointed out, the fact Numenor just happened to go to the right village at exactly the right time, and that the entirety of what we've been shown of Halbrand's "kingdom" has been all of two villages, one of which got razed. The scale just feels so off for the level of commotion over it.
I think Amazon does NOT know what the word "epic" means. The show created CGI ships but there were only three...Columbus' second trip had 17 ships. There were like 300 Numenoreans. That's not an army. That's a small battalion. What kind of powerful queen goes to war with 300?
@@thomasc9036 "What kind of powerful queen goes to war with 300?" A Spartan one?
@@kyrycraft2524 lol...that silly movie wasn't even historically accurate.
@@thomasc9036 Oh, I know. But the opportunity for the joke was there, and had to take it.
@@kyrycraft2524 I would have taken it too if it occur to me. That movie was mindless good. It was like watching a comic book which I think it was adapted from.
I wish ROP had hired the same writers.
a casual fan here, only read and watched lotr and hobbit.
this episode was the first that had my attention from beginning to end. this doesn't mean it was brilliant, but it finally felt like a potential story that i'd like to follow. it was kinda predictable, but still managed to keep me invested. the thing i appreciated the most was how well lit was the fight in the night. everything was easily visible, which is such a relief after too many too dark scenes similar to this one
Re: Halbrand, the vibe I've been getting is that Galadriel is kind of projecting this redemption arc onto him because she wants it to be true, she wants him to be Aragorn and be her useful reliable ally. And he's not entirely unwilling, he's warming up to the narrative she's spinning for him, but he's not as engaged with it as she is, and Galadriel is setting herself up for disappointment and betrayal by assuming this is something she can control.
The moment when Adar inspired his army by saying: "We may be attacking a defenseless village of 50 people, but some of you may die anyway so buckle up. Onwards!"
My favorite is the ending when Galadriel stood there watching 1000F+ degree pyroclastic flow moving over 100MPH+ coming to wipe out everything in that village… Unless this is a dream sequence or magic is about to be used in less than 5 seconds, EVERYONE IS DEAD. #FACTS.
YES!!! HARD AGREE!!! This has been bugging me!!! I just know I'm going to be irritated when people somehow live through that. 🙄😒😒
That moment where Isildur gave an apple to a horse, ate the apple, and threw the apple in the sea and the got lectured by Galadriel on humility was amazing. Such taut writing. So moving.
It was definately one of the most scenes in history
I think you hit the nail on the head. Elrond's "confession" kinda killed that arc for me, and so I've mostly been watching for the pretty. The pretty has been very hit-and-miss, so, meh... But yeah, they haven't properly set up anything, so I only notice that something was supposed to be a pay-off later when I'm at the fridge trying to decide what to eat and I realize, oh, wait...
I struggled with this episode because I wasn't invested in the people or this world. I don't know the villagers, they feel like extras, so when they started dying I wasn't moved. I think the main cast does a good job and is better developed but a lot more could be done to make the conflict feel real.
Copy & pasted extras. Literally. There’s a scene where Bronwyn is trying to rally the villagers and they literally copied & pasted the extras to make the crowd of villagers look bigger.
There is no setup to like anyone including villagers. Who cares if Numenoreans die? Who cares if Harfoots die (well, you sort of wish they die off) Who cares if human villagers die? There is NOTHING real about them for viewers to care for their safety.
@@thomasc9036 the good thing is that the vulcano killed of everyone so the writers get a fresh start to introduce us to a new cast of people going forward. Good riddance...
@@ArjenvanHooydonk lol...I wish that happened.
@@randyjax09 Its actually a standart filming technique which actually was popularized by the original Lord of the Rings movies.
Rings of Power reminds me of the phrase, "kill your darlings." Its like all the stray darling ideas cut from a dozen other works came to RoP and were haphazardly pasted together. An afterlife for high concepts too good to let go.
This show is giving me GOT s5-8 vibes, especially in how small the world feels. The battle also felt very convenient, Battle of the Bastards-wise.
@Chinedu Agu They were giving a personal opinion about something that clearly many others resonate with. How is that a lie?
Bruh ... it aint as bad as season 8 and not as good as battle of the bastards and season 6. This is more like season 7 quality level.
@@aesir1ases64 Well I didn't like battle of the bastards or s6 in general so 😂. Both felt as sloppy and lifeless as ROP currently imo.
There was this one moment where Halbrand catches Adar and says ‘do you remember me’ and I was sure they were going to foreshadow that he’s really Sauron but either they are playing it very close to the chest or that’s just a wrong theory. Other than that I broadly agree, it just all feels very small and a bit too GOT, like I wish they’d channel Tolkien a bit more rather than giving us what they think we want
I took the way Adar said no to be a confirmation.
Since you asked, I know a tiny bit about Tolkien, but basically nothing other than LOTR and Hobbit. Specifically, what happens to the characters in those stories before and after the books, not the lore though. I know very little lore, more character stuff and events. I know a tini tiny bit about Morgoth, and next to nothing about Silmarillion.
Frustrated by the way they revealed the old man had the sword hilt. Not much build up, just a line in the beginning. Felt sudden and odd. And did they need the sword? Why not just get pick axes and target a few points to weaken the damn?
Loved Adar, he's totally my favourite character. I really hope he sticks around and his relationship with the Orcs is delved into.
Great video as usual.
I’m a lotr fan who was mad into Hobbit & LoTR as a teen, but I’ve forgotten more of the lore than I remember in the 20+ years since then.
I loved Adar’s plan and the general “humanising” of the Uruk.
I thought there were a LOT of issues with the episode, most importantly because a pyroclastic flow is really really really fatal.
It’s not an Elven tower. It belonged to Morgoth’s allies that the Elves repurposed for their usage after they won.
Also, it was a watchtower, not a defensive one. That's why I think it was so weak and not the optimal place for defence. Also, the elves didn't want to be there, so why would they maintain the structure with more than ropes?
@@antonietaemparan8741 why maintain a stone tower that’s really really tall, that you have had to maintain constant watch in, for hundreds of years until very very recently? Rope? No, lazy lazy writing.
@@CorePathway you'd that they would at least fix up the place they are working and living in 24x7. Some Lazy fucks the elves are I guess. Why would they not demolish it and rebuild it? FFS
@@CorePathway It wasn't at risk of just falling over, so they had literally no reason to put more than minimal effort into it's upkeep. Especially considering that elves are especially light and there was no risk of it ever seeing combat. There are other examples of lazy writing, but this isn't one.
@Connor_Phillipz No lazy writing in case of a watch tower that stands for hundreds of years and comes crashing down (with no elves inside / atop) after a single rope fails?
i think i agree the Numenoreans arriving at just the right place/time was a bit of an eye roll. I liked how it was handled cinematically though and i also enjoy the fighting.
AND considering how important the hilt has been made to be, i didn’t understand why it was just being passed from one character to another after the battle? nobody looked at it?
my fav scene was actually the chase between galadriel and adar, the music in this scene was my favorite since the drawvish singing. that and the camera shots to go with; just felt very LOTR.
EDIT: thanks for those who pointed out when adar gave the hilt to the man. i definitely missed that!
The old man didn't steal the hilt.
Adar said that he had something he needed the old man to do-and that was most likely what needed done. So, Adar gave the hilt to the old man intentionally, most likely because Adar knew no one would be watching an old man's movements but everyone would definitely be watching Adar.
(But I actually agree that it's still kinda stupid how no one noticed it wasn't the hilt they still had-it was only wrapped in some cloth or whatever, there's no believable way a hilt and a hatchet feel the same even wrapped like that.)
@@jaginaiaelectrizs6341 ah thanks! my feelings on it being passed around blindly still stand though.
Chit chad, the Southlander called Waldreg didn't steal the hilt. Adar gave it to him after he left the tavern. And then he sent Waldreg on the errant to set the mechanics in motion. Adar must've instructed him before the battle.
When the cavalry from Numenor arrived, Adar needed to improvise. He wrapped an axe with the fabric which had covered the evil hilt. And with that improvised decoy bundle he rode away and dragged Galadriel and Halbrand into a wild-goose chase. Adar probably wanted to buy Waldreg enough time for completing his landscaping mission.
That is the only narrative which makes sense. We see that Adar got the hilt from Theo. We also see a few moments later that Adar told Waldreg to do a job for him. We cannot clearly see that Adar gave Waldreg the hilt, but Adar must've given it to him, because we see a bit later that Waldreg uses the hilt as a key. Adar is the only one who could've produced the decoy bundle.
@@sabineb.5616 i see that now! i definitely missed that, thanks :)
@@chitchad4391 , I didn't see this at first, either, and I couldn't figure out who could have made the switch. When I rewatched these scenes , I realized that Adar was the only one who could've made the decoy bundle.
While the show has many troubling issues, I actually like Adar's story line. IMO he is a well crafted character, and we can even sympathize with him to a certain degree.
And while Adar acted in a very clever way, it was downright silly that neither Galadriel nor Halbrand or Arondir checked what was inside the bundle after they had captured Adar! And then Arondir gave the bundle to Theo of all people! This shows that some of the writers are morons!
Bear with me here, but could it be possible that Galadriel's "keen eyes", set up earlier, allowed her to see the village not far from that river where they were to make landfall.
I loved how Adar used the chihuawargs in this very important battle (since both keyhole and key were in the same place)
Mariano Birdman, these chihuawargs are actually fierce and very dangerous. I know because I have one of them at home. She is tiny but very brave and intelligent.
Adar must've developed this specific breed - maybe because these little guys don't need a lot of food and space, and they are cuddlier than the big wargs.
So everyone is like, super dead now, right? Cause of death: Taking the world's biggest volcano eruption directly to the face. Oh wait, it's an EVIL volcano, so according to the lore in this show, the EVIL pyroclastic cloud isn't hot. Brilliant!
Seriously, I don't see any plausible way to explain how every single main character survives into the next episode. Genius writing there, team.
The Galadriel orc-genocide speech made me feel uncomfortable, but it makes sense for her character. I love how they are using Adar in the show, and in this episode, Galadriel finally had more than just one mode.
While a lot of the scenes were contrived, I was happy. Because of how slow things were going with the Numenor storyline, I was convinced we were going to have two episodes of them on the boats, but now, for the first time, I'm not just intrigued, I'm actually excited for this week's episode.
Still, this definitely solidified my thought that they wasted a lot of time and that with a better set-up this could have been a better payoff. Instead of "the elves will take our jobs", more time developing the queen. Maybe instead of having the 5th episode take place on Numenor, do an episode of the army in Middle Earth where Halbrand proves himself, and establish better their arrival to the village. Isildur was better in this episode, but it took us too long to get there. Less Theo sulking, more developing of the villagers and the relationship between Arondir and Bronwyn. Also, while Durin and Elrond are my favourite storyline, and I like the Harfoots, they better have a great payoff because they are feeling like distractions.
nothing about galadriel makes any sense lol
@@aesir1ases64 The woman who had an entire speech about how she would abuse the One Ring to turn herself into a Queen not Dark but beautiful and terrible as the Dawn being obsessed with wiping out everything she deems dark and evil makes no sense?
You nailed it. It's not a horrible series, it's just flat, which is all the more frustrating when you see how much potential there is
For me Galadriel's little megalomaniacal rant was a good scene as it gives her an actual flaw, something darker than she'd care to admit, rather than the "my only flaw is caring too much" that has existed so far.
Well in creating a new flaw they have succeeded but I feel they pushed too far in the regard that they gave her the flaw of not liking orcs alot which fair enough but then they kept pushing to genocidal Nazi talk of "I'm going to wipe out your entire race with you watching just because you care about them plus your born of darkness so you have no rights and I'm completely justified in ending your species"
I do appreciate the epic roast from Adar of "your search for Morgoth's lieutenant should have ended in the mirror". Absolutely pinpoint delivery
It also reminds us she’s a war commander not just a pretty princess so yeah she’s gonna torture dudes
Caring too much? She is a PMS elven maiden. She is angry ALL the time. Numenoreans save from the sea and she is angry at them. She approaches the queen and she is angry again. Who and what does she care other than avenging her brother?
She has had a ton of flaws so far. That's a lot of people's (including me) main gripe with the show. That Galadriel, a character that is thousands of years old, is still behaving like an impulsive teen with anger issues. Her rant in this episode was just an extension of that.
@@connor_phillipz5689 To be honest, in Numenor I kinda felt like she was acting more like an arrogant and entitled elf, which was refreshing because elves are very rarely afforded to display the core flaw they are supposed to have in most fantasy media, their sense of superiority. Elves are immortal, ideal beings closer to the gods than anyone else as they originally came from their very lands, so yeah, I think its actually great to have one elf, who we already are supposed to see as an anti-hero with the series starting off with a mutiny against her due to her attitude, being that way.
Take a shot every time Galadriel threatens to violate the Geneva conventions 😂
Non Tolkien fan here. (This is gonna be long)
This is my first experience with anything Tolkien. Haven't seen the movies, haven't read the books.
This episode was definitely my favorite. Despite not feeling the same way as you, I can definitely understand the points you made on what you thought was bad.
I thought it was actually a really smart idea for all of them to leave the tower. Maybe it's just my natural paranoia, but if I were them, I'd definitely believe we'd all be dead in a week.
Personally, I feel like the last thing I'd want in battle, is to be cornered with no food or water as someone who's inexperienced in battle and warfare.
Yes, the Villagers left a stone fortress to go to an indefensible village. But they regained access to food, resources, medicine, weapons and tools. They could also flee in the woods if they needed to.
If they stayed in the tower, they'd only be able to survive for as long as their food and water would allow (which would only be a few days), until they run out of arrows (which they probably didn't have many of) or until the physically stronger Orcs eventually break through.
I'm guessing the tower must've had another exit, like Rapunzel's tower in Tangled. It would be weird if it didn't have a way for people to escape in case of an attack.
But when it comes to the Númanorians arriving in time and knowing where to go, I thought it was pretty clear.
Not only did Halbrand figure out the trajectory of the Orcs, since he was on a boat with a bunch of other villagers from different villages; but Galadriel also mentioned last episode that she knew Elves had been stationed in the Southlands. And since Ostirith is the only fortress in the area, it makes sense that the Villagers would take shelter there.
The village was on the way to the tower, so they would inevitably have to go through it.
The Númanorians also took two days to get to the Southlands once they reached the coast of Middle Earth. One day through the river and one day riding on horseback. Their arrival didn't feel odd to me, since they heavily discussed it beforehand.
But overall, I thought this episode was great. From action to character moments and development.
Arondir and Adar were the highlights of the episode for me.
I will agree that Bronwyn and Theo don't feel fleshed out enough. But since Arondir cares about them, I care about them.
But I do wish that we'd get more moments alone with Bronwyn. I wish the Southlanders made me feel like I do about the Harfoots.
Galadriel was amazing in this episode. It was really nice to see her in her element. She has truly at home on the battlefield. Her moment on the boat with Isildur was a highlight of the episode for. I found myself actually blushing the same way he did in that.
I just wish we saw her fight more 1v1, or in general.
But in general I'm having a great time with this show, not having any expectations, just being here for the ride and taking in everything the show chooses to give me.
I suppose we have to assume that Adar had knowledge of a secret plan Sauron had to dig tunnels and then open the dam to flood Mt Doom. Because if this was Adars plan then that means the sword key thing to open the dam was just a really fun mystical dam release mechanism that had no relation to setting off Mt Doom
"hey boss, what type of mechanism shuld we use for the dam release?"
"well...i have this cool ass blood sword"
I read a cool theory that the dam and sword were for ritual purpose under Sauron's rule. Sauron controlled the water supply, and would grant the Southlanders water in exchange for human sacrifice (the mural above the keyhole shows this sacrifice) - reinforcing his image as a God. If it was originally for Mount Doom, I feel like Sauron would already have built underground tunnels.
I liked the tragic irony in the end with everyone celebrating as the mountain explodes, but like many have pointed out the scale is just off.
If they had shown or at least implied other villages being attacked (or maybe a great column of refugees being attacked as they flee) it would feel less empty. (I know they say more villages have joined them but all the survivors fit into one tavern, so hardly all the southlands).
I feel this huge catastrophic event will also feel hollow by the next episode, since our main characters will probably survive (meaning the one village we got cannot be completely obliterated, lowering the stakes/impact further)
The thing I liked most is that this had what might be the first scene where Galadriel was genuinely nice to someone. Her talk with Isildur on the ship. She seemed very encouraging to him.
The most frustrating is the whole thing from the collapsing tower, to pulling out an arrow and recovering from it, to the tavern being like a fortified keep just 'cause we're calling it a keep. And the fact that they should all die in the end but I bet most of them will survive the unsurviveable...
Not sure if this answers the question, but right now, I don't yet feel invested in any of these characters shown in this episode... The only one I'm really interested in is Elendil (because it's the king in the LOTR intro!). And I guess to a lesser extent (and by association), Isildur...
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I see comments saying their favorite thing about this episode was Adar.
Well, I do like Uncle Benjen. 🤪 I mean, yes, I would say this is probably the best acted character in the show. I'm just... not sure how to say it... maybe I'm a bit apprehensive of the idea that... am I supposed to like this character or sympathize with him and the orcs? Idk. I'm not sure.
I find Adar & the orcs really intriguing, it's cool to see a leader who has a close relationship to them aside from just being pawns to an evil plan.
I agree about them leaving the tower and heading to the village, but I did enjoy watching how they defended the village. I don't like how the Numenoreans managed to get there basically overnight, it killed a lot of tension and makes the world feel small. If I compare it to RotK where you see the Rohirrim having to camp up on their way (even with warning), it allowed you to feel the pressure of the impending doom on Gondor and if they'll make it in time before the city is taken.
I kinda like the show but yeah, I think they should probably have cut some of the Numenor Scenes, which were among the weakest so far, a bit short to have them one episode on the travel and the race to reach the tower, especially since it would have allowed for more interactions between the important characters here, having a bit more for Elendil, Isildur and his friends, but more importantly Galadriel and Halbrandt to interact. Like, I kinda like Galadriels and Miriels interactions just because I kinda feel like they display a sense of elvish arrogance and entitlement that we never got to see in the trilogy because all had to get along, but I think her scenes with Halbrandt are probably the best for her character because she's more authentic with him.
I really like that they are showing Galadriel being so angry, so determined, that it is a big problem. For the first 5 episodes she was completely unlikeable, and I was afraid they were just doing the "Badass Female has to be a jerk" trope.
I really liked that with that moment with Adar and Galadriel, when she's going off, Adar calls her out on not being the only one changed by darkness.
Finally an episode of Rings of Power with actual pacing. Shame it took them until the third to last episode to figure it out.
funny how a 2000 years old elf has less self control than a child of 8
They couldnt leave over the mountains because they were out of food and the land is barren (so they can't scavenge on foot).
So before formulating a plan to fight, it was either stay in the fort or try to flee (were they would either die from fatigue or caught by the orcs).
I mean, they might have been out of food, but they had plenty of freshwater. They could make it a few days distance before needing to really look for more food, by which time it'd be a different area?
~ Tim
@@twothefuture Hadn't they already been basically starving for days though? One cart full of food doesn't seem likely to feed an entire village very much per person for very long. Not to mention low-morale can really bring the pace people can keep down, too. There was also the fact that they mentioned not wanting to leave their homes / not wanting to surrender their homes to the orcs(Didn't they?). Sometimes people do choose to take a stand on principle, as much or more than necessity, even when it might/will be a life-or-death kinda stand. 🤔🤷♀️🤷♀️😅
(That being said, though-I, too, thought it was a little weird at first that they really-really talked up just how much they couldn't leave their specific location... only to promptly leave it? .. what ? Like ..did the area they meant they couldn't leave actually encompass a much larger area than I had originally initially thought it was referring to, or something?? 👀 🤔 Lol I don't have any idea. But, at some point, I guess I kinda just decided it didn't really matter too much because at least the episode was holding my interest / entertaining me-most shows aren't super detailed about completely everything anyhow; even if this one is based on Tolkien's world, which - as I understand it - actually is.^-^😅😅🙃😁)
@@twothefuture I'm sick of diversity in film/ series like this. Let it die. Please review The Woman King or some aspects of its sanitized reality (most of it isn't real but I love it). It is the perfect way to make fantasy epics for people of color without feeling forced like Black Panther or RRR.
I agree with you. So far most of the major developments have lacked any kind of emotional punch for me which is quite an impressive feat as I usually get sucked into any epic fantasy story easily. Aside from Elrond and Durin they just haven't given the characters enough space, I just feel like I've just been watching plot devices furthering the plot.
This series has demonstrated an issue with pacing… walking that fine line between keeping the plot moving and keeping things interesting while actually letting there be enough time for us to care, and also to have an accurate sense of the passage of time within the narrative.
It’s like things are slow in some places but rushed in others.
Addar is the best part of this episode. He is an anomaly in this show, proving that the writers are talented (or he is a fluke). The rest of it was the same as before. I think it felt better because it focused on one storyline rather than 10.
Ajay Kumar, I agree! I truly like Adar! We discussed elsewhere that there might be a team of writers who have different tasks, and the writers who are responsible for developing Adar are clearly better than the rest. They have done a good job.
It's not at all unusual to employ a team of writers with divided responsibilities for a big show.
@@sabineb.5616 It’s a writers room. Of course there’s a team behind it but you may have noticed that this is the first episode that credited four writers. And it was better than previous episodes. The showrunners are rather green but there are some pretty experienced writers in that room.
Thank you for the great insight you've been bringing to the analysis of Rings of Power. Its refreshing to get away from some of the hysterics on both sides of the argument. I really liked the stunning visuals of Mount Doom erupting and watching the southlands being turned into Mordor as we know it.
I feel like the delivery of this was un-realistic and flat. It appears the writers turned this mysterious sword into nothing more than a MacGuffin. They could have used the blade to show the corruption of some humans to darkness. it could even have set up Theo to eventually turn to darkness?
You hit the nail on the head when you questioned why the sword was needed to break the dam. There could have been a million other ways to accomplish this feat. Also, with the villagers and Numenorians still in the village when the volcano erupts, its unrealistic to believe any of them would survive that kind of explosion.
Personally I think it would have been more impactful to have Arondir distract the orcs in the tower long enough for the villagers to escape to a pass out of the southlands. In doing his tower stunt, the tower breaks the dam which eventually leads to Mount Doom's eruption as the southlander's watch their homeland destroyed from the mountains above, making Arondir unwittingly assist in Adar's plans. This would also set up for the southlanders to meet with the Numernorians to the west and not require to Numernorians to have ridden through the night without knowing a battle was going on.
I mean... _hasn't_ it still set Theo up to potentially turn eventually toward darkness though? The old man, who was established to have had the hilt before Theo found it, clearly has-since that old man tried repeatedly to convince Theo to come with him when defecting to the orcs in the first place[ most likely hoping Theo would bring the hilt as well], then willingly joined the orcs, killed one of his own people without hesitation to prove his loyalty to them and quite happily did exactly as Adar asked when given the job of using the key even though tide-turning aid was clearly on its way. And the conversation with Arondir and Theo, just before they discovered the hilt was switched with a hatchet and had not actually been recovered at all when Adar was captured, sort of implied pretty strongly that it may hold some kind of influence over Theo possibly similar to what The One Ring does to its bearers later on or something. And that's just scratching the surface really of all the possible hints of it still being something even more than just that dam's key.
But I do agree that exactly why it was a key to break the dam wasn't built up well enough. Like, yes, we understand why the orcs would want that to happen in that present day battle(and it is possible the orcs' tunnels diverted it from functioning precisely however it might have been intended to function originally)-but why exactly was it wanted/needed/created/used/whatever as a key to that dam specifically back whenever the dam & etc. were *_originally_** constructed* ?? And having it be something really corporeal like that which it was the key for did feel somehow super anticlimactic.
...I just don't know if this is the last we've seen of it, or of its corrupting influences, so I think it might still possibly be both that key and even more; I guess, we'll see, though.
It's true. The show doesn't seem to have a particularly strong grasp or measure on time or distance. Or, if it does, it certainly doesn't communicate that grasp or measure especially clearly to audiences....since occasional cuts to the map of the world alone don't really accomplish that. It comes off seeming like they're all Pompeii close to that volcano, but there's no way they could survive it unless it was actually even further away than that initially seemed. And how quickly or how slowly people travel from one place to another seems to change based more on what the script demands than on what the geography or other conditions actually explain. But I guess maybe we're supposed to believe that Halbrand just guessed really lucky, or has even more insider information than we are currently aware, and that perhaps Galadriel was just spurring everyone on with her own reckless urgency having waited so long to have even this little direction even without much external provocation? It is a little thin though, that's for sure.
It’s not that Galadriel threatened to kill all of the orcs. It’s that she was threatening to do it because she knew Adar cared about them. It was the “I’ll save you for last and make you watch” vibe that doesn’t sit well with me.
It’s easy: she’s a villain.
In The Fellowship of the Ring film she basically said she would become the female version of Sauron if she truly had all the power. Galadriel is a problem, and is on a psychological journey of sorts, as the first episode, including the scenes with her brother, establishes.
Super happy they’re making her an evil Xena the warrior princess lol
@@thomasb331 I think people just want her to act like a pretty girl instead of a WAR COMMANDER 😂 of course as someone who’s seen war she’s gonna have a hardened personality
@@thomasb331 this is a miss reading of the Ring. It is actually evil. It is not the power that corrupts but the actual evil forged into its very existence. It's is part of Saurons soul and the only thing keeping him alive and in the world after the fall of Numenor.
Galadriel threatening genocide works for me. This is because, from what I can tell, all the other elves have moved on and welcome a second age of peace. In the first age, elves were quite violent, to say the least. Galadriel is stuck in the first age. My opinion at least.
Yeah I personally felt it was the natural direction for her character.
~ Tim
Galadriel spent the whole of the first age repenting for the violence of the Kingslaying in Doriath, and in the Second Age she refused violence entirely.
@@killgriffinnow This exactly. Its goes completely against her character.
And to be fair that was quite literally her task.
Didn't she do nothing but chill out in Doriath?
First, I have to say that was so pleasing to watch your review. Everybody is weird about this show! There are two types of review: the haters that look for things to criticise, and the people are (or pretend) blind to all the problems in the writing that you mention (and you were kind to the show), and act like that's the best show ever. I don't know how to react to the craziness of this two types of the review and I'm thinking I'm going mad myself !
Well, I am a Tolkien fan, but I'm watching the show for what it is, and forgetting the books. But, the writing is so convenient, things happen just because they need to happen to move characters to one place to another. So many hours and we don't have conflict, we don't have much characters development, we don't have interesting dialogue or action. People are calling "slow burn", but in slow burn the plot moves slow, bur it moves, and the scenes have a reason to exist. LotR look like filler most of the time. And not a fun one (except for the dwarves).
And I not a hater, I was prepared to love this show.
First off, I agree with pretty much everything you've said and get where you're coming from.
In regards to Ostirith, I believe the stone carvings depicting the sword and sacrifice at the tower in previous episodes were meant to imply that the tower and dam were a pre-existing structure, re-purposed by the watching elves.
The seemingly lack of tactical knowhow bothered me, but not nearly as much as the villagers new found teleportation abilities. That path was the fastest and easiest way down. The women with infants could not have gone down another way in the time it took the Uruks to hike up that path.
My favorite part of the episode was seeing the plan of the uruk come to fruition. As soon as I saw where the water was going I said, "Awww yeah. So that's how they're gonna do it."
Looking forward to the autopsy video!
"Why did the sword break the dam?" - "dark secrets only the sith knew."
The multiple timelines is incredibly confusing. They were in sync in episode one with the meteor. Yet the distances travelled by Galadriel from that sync point logically should have taken far longer than what has been told from Arondir’s perspective. Either the Numenorean ships have engines or the writers haven’t communicated the number of days Arondir spent as a prisoner properly. This isn’t the only time issue either. Timelines are an important part of planning a story and it doesn’t feel like this story has a timeline.
I thought it was easily the best episode so far. I loved the fight with the big ol' orc just oozing blood everywhere. I was kind of bugged by the Numenorians somehow knowing exactly where to go, though I chalked that up to Galadriel's OP elf eyes.
EDIT: Actually, scratch the oozy orc part. My favorite bit was the realization of what Adar's plan was, and what all those tunnels were for. Actually said "holy crap, that's clever" out loud.
The problem is for that to be the plan, the tower had to have been purpose built to be a dam with massive spillways that you can open with a magic blood-activated sword-key-thing. And also.... that's now how magma chambers work.
@@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t It's pretty close on how that water can cause the mountain to erupt like that. Also, these were lands and people that served morgoth, that could have been exactly why the tower was designed for.
@@husman2007 It's really not. Under the circumstances depicted, once the rate of water flow into the chamber reduces, the steam would escape through the same hole the water came through.
@@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t It didn't have to be to set the volcano off. That clearly relied on the tunnels the orc dug. But it certainly could have been designed to flood the valley.
I literally fall asleep anytime village people are talking
I got the idea that the tower was like a former sauron monument thing, based off the statue with the sword, and the elves just moved in. Literally only explanation I can come up with for the sword key
I still thought it was genuinely not a ‘good’ episode, but yes, it was better than some of the others so far this season.
1. A series of ropes and metal straps are what kept the tower from collapsing for all these years?
2. Three ships of that size can hold a few hundred men AND a few hundred horses AND make good speed?
3. Galadriel is now seen as a commander who also intimidates the likes of Isildur, despite her being relatively hated and even locked in a Numenorean jail cell not a few days prior.
4. Having this version of Galadriel lecture anyone about humility is hilariously disingenuous, yet she does just this to Isildur.
5. The people of the Southlands go back to their vulnerable village when they should be on the run and hiding. They also choose to hide the vulnerable (elderly, women and children) in the tavern which has very little security.
6. Arondir fights a huge orc and for whatever reason, this orc came to battle without a weapon? The huge orc can also apparently continue fighting without issues after a splintered wooden shaft is buried deep in his eye/skull?
7. Bronwyn reacts to being hit with 2 arrows, but amazingly she only has 1 arrow/wound to deal with they get her on a table inside the tavern.
8. Galadriel beheading an orc while hanging upside down from her horse is fairly cheesy, but they’re clearly doubling down on the “Legolas did cheesy shit so it’s okay” route.
9. Hallbrand and Galadriel are chasing Adar by horse, Hallbrand in the rear, yet somehow in a manner of seconds he ends up way out in front of Adar, charging at him from the opposite direction?! What?
10. Galadriel proudly tells Adar that she will kill him last, so that Adar can see that all the orcs he created are dead. Adar's rebuttal upsets Galadriel so greatly that she puts a knife to his throat and is about to kill him seconds later! A great irony being that only a few moments earlier, Galadriel had to stop Hallbrand from killing Adar. Now.…Hallbrand is preventing her from killing Adar.
11. No one thinks to check the contents of the wrapped up cloth that they apprehended from Adar until Theo, near the end up the episode…...who discovers they have been deceived.
12. The water from the open dam is flowing through tunnels dug by the orcs and slaves. Yet when the water is shown flowing into Mount Doom, it appears to be entering the volcano through the vent hole at the peak of the mountain?! How? How is it that water can flow uphill several thousand feet in elevation like that? I would expect it to spread out on the lowlands instead.
13. Galadriel stands there with a stupidly blank face and accepts what should be apparent death by immolation/burning/suffocation as the volcano erupts. But, as we all know, she’ll miraculously be okay next episode.
Some of these qualms are admittedly minor, others are completely immersion breaking. The biggest issue is that, despite WANTING to like this show, I’m now several hours in and completely indifferent to its characters and either annoyed or dismissive of its plot.
Ehhhh I think a lot of these are nitpicking stuff that is pretty easily explained or just really do not matter. The only one that really bothered me was not checking the weapon.
~ Tim
I agree with most of your points but have some rebuttals for a few.
3. Isildur is the son of one of the Faithful, and the rest of the men on those ships volunteered to follow Galadriel and Tar-Míriel to the Southlands. All of them would represent the half of Numenor that still respected the Elves.
10. I think this irony was totally intentional, and as Tim mentions in the video, these sorts of internal tensions are part of character writing.Putting your character in a situation where they logically proclaim one action but are emotionally driven to another is a potent event and part of why I like that scene.
11. Arondir only told Galadriel that Adar could not be allowed to escape with the content of the cloth, she couldn't know what she was looking for when she captured him. Granted, a modest axe isn't the sort of thing she would expect but she had no reason to doubt his insistence. She only gives the very important item to Arondir after interrogating Adar, though, which is at least poor judgement.
12. While I agree I would expect the magma chamber to be much higher in the volcano than ground level, I don't think there is a vent hole, but the forced entrance of a tunnel dug very close to the interior wall. For Orodruin to explode as it did, there would need to be a massive build in pressure and a vent hole wouldn't allow that.
@@twothefuture Some of it, yes, but when internal logic consistently breaks down in the show, would you not argue that it slowly saps investment and immersion? You are right, however, that the main issue was not checking the weapon.
How on middle earth did three people handle that package and not notice that it wasn't a sword hilt that ruined what would have been a great episode for me I just can't get over that seeming hours passed before they noticed
When I saw that scene I thought Arondir had intentionally given Theo the hammer instead of the hilt, almost as a test to see if he would just get rid of it or give in to temptation and open the package. It felt like a comedic beat - Arondir solemnly hands him the package, tells him to get rid of it, Theo immediately opens it.
Then when I saw the next scene I was very confused
@@carlosls166 Firstly, Galadriel has no idea about the hilt nor what it would feel like. Secondly, it was wrapped up in a heavy cloth, and Arondir had no reason to suspect foul play considering they captured the orcs and Adar.
There is no way that Galadriel would have handed Arondir the package over without questioning what it was, and why it was so important to Adar, before she went to interrogate Adar. Because knowing what this important object was would give her valuable intel for her questioning him. That´s rule Nr 1 for interrogations, get as much intel as possible before it.
So it was wrapped in heavy cloth, so what? The cloth only hides the shape of the object, not it´s form you feel when touching it nor its mass. The moment Arondig took the package he would have felt that neither the shape, nor the wieght were like he remembered it, so he would have checked it.
Galadiel : And not just the men ,
But the women and the children too ,
I WILL KILL THEM ,
I WILL KILL THEM ALL ! ! !
Stranger : Sit down young starwalker .
the stuff adar was talking about sauron trying to heal middle earth adn tried to fix his mistakes makes sense. tolkien wrote about that in his letters, and he turned to domination because he liked the control over middle earth.
im thinking that the show is going to make a more personal reason for why halbrand/sauron turns to evil, on top of the whole domination motive
Yes, I agree. What we are seeing in the first season is likely material that will be expanded upon in all sorts of ways over the five seasons. I think the question of whether Halbrand = Sauron won't be the most relevant one (I think he likely is, but there are other possibilities). Rather I think the question of what Sauron is and what is means to have power will be the bigger questions. I think the "Rings of Power" will be an apt metaphor for what the show will be about-- power and what it does to people. That would be the most Tolkien thing the show could focus on.
@@thomasb331 no. Because it isn't power that corrupts but evil that corrupts power. The ring isn't evil because it is powerful. It is powerful because it is evil.
What I dislike is just why Adar and the orcs needed the sword to open the dam, and why they couldn't have just destroyed it. Seems a bit weird to me, a lack luster finish to the build up around the sword, to open a dam they could've broken open.
a really nice review, a lot of accurate points were mentioned which other bloggers omitted
Moments where slight changes could've made them better: Galadriel doesn't handle her men quitting the quest like a Commander, the Halffoots don't sing while gathered, Halbred steals yet wins fight in a slow one-one brawl, Galadriel jumps to the sea way too late, the Stranger just doesn't cause any real problems to the caravan, and the dwarves mildly react to things instead of having big emotions.
Their biggest problem is the time compression which is causing them to make lower changes. As well as character changes that fill Unearned
I feel like people are missing that Galadriel just stood in the face of a PYROCLASIC FLOW. Which, if you don’t know what that is… think POMPEII. You breathe in this molten ash and it burns your lungs and turns into this cement type thick liquid and BURNS you from the inside out as you’re deep fried from the outside. By the third “breath,” you are absolutely not taking another one. Even if she survived because she’s an elf, everyone else should be cremated and buried in ash.
I love Tolkien and fantasy. I can suspend disbelief off a 200 story building. But that… oooh. As a lifelong learner type, I just really hate that they CHOSE to have them that close and she just… stands there and survives!
Some of the moments you mention as flat where so flat for me that I didn't even realize they where supposed to be big moments until you mentioned it
The entire volcano scene halfway convinced me the show was trying to troll me.
Like, I'm no geologist, but having the big evil plan to pour water into a volcano to make it active is a bit hard to swallow.
the Shadow Of games don't make the Orcs good, but they do make them uniquely evil in ways that make encountering them again and again engaging, in fact the games almost accidently portrays forcing 'Goodness' onto them as the Ultimate corruption and villainy.
I have the feeling that they wrote this episode first and then work their way backwards to all the moments they wanted to have, that is why so many things feel clumsy or disconnected from what came before.
I kept thinking, why don't the villagers just leave? That connection to home isn't there. And Halbrand as the new king feels weak? The king of this tiny village that they're abandoning? Why should we care? This isn't the homecoming it's trying to be.
Can't wait for the Pitch Meeting
I loved the conversations with Adar, he is by far the best character in this series. I found it quite frustrating how Numenor was such a Deus ex machina. They made HUUUUGE progress. Last episode they couldn't even leave the port.
Dude u like the boring cartoonish villain and think the heroes saving the day was a bad part. You should watch game of thrones 😂
@@saraeissa4954 I'm sorry, what was your most and least favourite part?
I think the idea with the sword hilt/key is that neither Adar nor the orcs (sorry, uruk!) actually knew what the plan is. They probably had no idea that the tunnels they were digging were to cause an eruption, but probably just following an old plan by Morgoth or Sauron that had those instructions - dig tunnels towards Orodruin, use sword to activate the system. Also it's likely that the dam was protected for centuries by elves and the risk of an open attack on the dam was too high. If the elves realized what Adar is trying to do they would've foiled the plan altogether.
Everyone seems to forget that Bronwyn's town isn't the only village in the Southlands. That or none of you actually paid attention, at all.
Arondir literally found the tunnels in another village. Like, we saw that happen on the screen. It's not like they only mentioned or he happened to appear in one from our perspective. But speaking of mentioning, they did talk about the other towns in the area having to evacuate or having the blight or whatever spread through.
Also, if the tower was Elven, why would they have a mural dedicated to the sword and Sauron or Morgoth?
The good news is that everyone in the Numenorean/Beforedor storyline died in a volcanic eruption.
This episode spent almost all of its' run time reminding the audience of a better film. The remainder, it spent turning Galadriel into a war criminal (or are we to assume she's never tortured orcs before in the last few centuries?)
The villagers left the village because it was indefensible, then returned to it because it 'gave a tactical advantage'.
It was a bit of a catastrophe before the pyroclastic flow.
I asked my non-Tolkien-reading friend what he thought of the episode, and he said he thought it was the best yet. But he thought it could've used more sword fighting, which is, in his words, "the reason why Lord of the Rings is so good." It was a good reminder to me that the general audience doesn't really care about the poetry of Tolkien, or the themes that are shown through character development. He said the best part of the episode was Galadriel decapitating that orc, and he wished the show had more of that.
I can applaud the show-writers for at least trying and having some restraint, with that new knowledge. Though, to be perfectly fair, the films were full of gratuitous violence that people would have clung to rather than the heartfelt moments.
@@TheSuperRatt (Which is kinda why Tolkien's son absolutely hated the movies, and may have left the Tolkien estate charged with guaranteeing that approach was never taken in a Tolkien adaptation ever again. ...considering the people working on the RoP tv series were supposedly prevented by legal reasons from showing the episode scripts to Peter Jackson, despite having initially approached him to offer/ask if he would look at them.)
Moriondor actually means Black Children, if I am not mistaken. Mor 'black' + ion(do) 'son' and the -r is a plural ending for the nominative in Quenya
I felt like Galadriel's "I will kill all of them" bit was much more of an anger or frustration driven statement than one to be taken literally, and that her thanking Halbrand was in large part a "hey thanks for physically removing me from that situation, I kind of lost myself to rage" as opposed to just being about her not having killed Adar. She hasn't seen any of the beings who directly orchestrated/ were directly involved in the War of Wrath since its end, so it makes sense to me that when she inevitably does all the rage and hatred would come flooding back.
Could be a little bit of both, or possibly even deliberately left open to various interpretation(s).
There has kinda been this question posed ever since episode one whether or not Galadriel has become too much like her enemies[ like the other Elves feared] or is simply misunderstood whilst pursuing an actually just and valid cause that everyone else simply finds more comfortable to disbelieve than to consider a genuine issue.
It was pure cringe, stop trying to rationalise insane writing
She never saw Adar because he doesnt exist, she never went to Mordor, she was never a hateful character because she was wiser than that. This aint Galadriel.
@@aesir1ases64 The line "[...] any of the beings who [...] were directly involved in the War of Wrath [...]" includes in my mind orcs, dark elves, dragons, and balrogs generally, not just the named figures we know of from the war. This would include Adar.
I don't know a lot about the lore, but with this episode...the part when Galadriel threatened the evil elf Adar with torture and genocide was over the top. Galadriel's character is so full of anger that she comes off as a more evil person than the orcs.
My gripe: how long were those horses galloping?! They would be dead by the time they arrive!
My assumption would be that the Numenorean force sent scouts out. We weren’t shown that - because of course we weren’t - but I think that’s probably how they know where to go
Oh and I hate this "Galadriel" with the absolute lack of empathy and wisdom and anything other than anger.
It's hard to believe that she will eventually go to prison and find Eru in the church sessions and find peace and wisdom in her mistakes.
Not because it can't happen but because in Mordor I don't see them having Bible study sessions
I loved Adar and his unique perspective towards the Uruks despite being inherently evil and thus not knowing how to find land without conquest. I was frustrated by the lack of scale of the southlands / Numenor
One of my pet peeves is bad MacGuffins. When the sword hilt was introduced it seemed like a precursor to the rings of power, so I thought it was interesting and I was excited to see what they were going to do with it… then they used it as a literal key.
Yeah as they were walking with their little torches I thought "those literally look like people"
This episode, and series in general, is a good example of a story that looks good on paper but has 1: horrendous execution and 2: not enough buildup. For example: the story of a rag tag group of underdogs banding together to protect their village is a good story. However, the writers messed it up and wrote the specifics of how it happens to make no sense once all is said and done.
Loved the scene between Bronwyn and Theo, didn't love the horses being sped up in post production. And the timeline being.. ignored? Did the Numenoreans land at midnight and ride through the night? Did the battle in village occur during an eclipse? Who told them to hurry? It was night then day and all during one scene
Admittedly copy-pasting from another comment I made, but I did struggle with this a bit as well before I pulled all the time references I could.
The timeline is..yeah, confusing. I had to build a rough timeline to try and get things to line up. Most notable points were assuming the meteor came at the same time Galadrie dove off, and her and Halbrand are on the raft about a day. Between various time references mentioned, and Waldreg, after Arondir and Theo return, saying the “sign” was “a few weeks back,” so the Southlanders have been in that tower a few weeks, which leaves about…2-3 weeks for Numenor to travel? If I calculated right? So Numenor timeframe is technically behind Southlands
@@davidbeer5015 But that would mean Arondir has been a captive for weeks, which is impossible since the trench litterally doesn't change the whole time.
@@davidbeer5015 It was already clear that the timeline wasn't adding up when we had Elrond travel back and forth between the Elves and Dwarves. Just think about the time that takes, and then remember that also happens after Galadriel leaves.
logicssesss? you want logicisesss, my preaciousss? there are no nasty stinky logicsesss!
@Doragon that is one element, yeah, but that’s an element proposed within the show itself. We don’t know how long Arondir was checking out the tunnel before being grabbed, but when we went in, it was the same day the meteor fell, if not the next day. And then the line we hear after he brings Theo back was that was a few weeks back. So yeah, that’s the sense I’m getting. They needed time to make the plan to get out.
Though I think that one is easier for me to suspend disbelief personally for than Numenor sailing within a day or two. Like, I don’t see it as off, but still, not as weird.
Disclaimer, I've only read the hobbit, but it was mentioned that when the baddies were defeated, sauron decided to heal the world (or something along those lines), maybe thats when the sword/dam contraption could've been conceived, or maybe it was done much earlier so his "subjects" could actually live on land. It is very badly explained.
Also I believe the southlands were "evil" territory b4, so I'm guessing the tower is very much not elvish, but a fortification they captured during the war.
Ostirith was made by Morgoth's followers, the contraption is made by Sauron, similar to his machinery that connected his tower with Mount Doom
The Numenorians knew where it was, and they had haste because of the warnings of Hallbrand and Galadriel
My main grip is that where did the horses came from, the ships were RAR documents
Lol this is funny af. Literally compressed
Abandoning the tower could have used a discussion, but it made sense. The reason they hadn’t fled was because the orcs move faster and could catch them at night, but one day was enough to get to the town. They could sacrifice the tower and kill a lot of orcs by trapping them inside, but they couldn’t do as much damage by sacrificing the town. So the best option was to do as they did. The other option, holding the tower as long as possible, would have been a more temporary solution. Without food, the orcs would eventually get in and get the sword. It makes even more sense when you remember that, for Arondir, keeping the sword safe was the most important goal. There was no safe place to hide the sword in the tower. The town offered a better chance to hide it or even maybe run away with it if need be.
Again, a lot of that could have been said in a scene that could have given us real character development.
I think the eruption of Mt Doom is probably the best beat of the show. It's such a wonderful encapsulation of Tolkien's anti-industrialization sentiments; the moment beautifully captured the way that he saw rampant ambition and advancement destroyed both nature and lives. And it adds to the greater whole of Middle-Earth in my opinion. We can look back at LotR and what Mordor becomes, what it made into, and feel both the loss of what it was and the hope of what it could become after being reclaimed from Sauron after the war of the ring.
The watch tower is the same place that becomes Minas Morgul later on. It has a path going up the mountain side, through the tower yard and then enters Mordor, going downhill into the wide open land with Orodruin (Mt Doom) that becomes Mordor. I guess the orcs with Adara arrive from the west and the villages ran east (and south), which is where the village was, close to the volcano.
You're right, it did feel like the numenorean army did the toggle_fow total war command line entry to learn about that siege
“ I’ve seen smaller armies face bigger foes “ - dude that has spent his whole life farming and at a watch tower and hasn’t seen a single full scale battle in his life .
The very small scale of everything is so weird. The southlands is like 20 people. Numenor has all the naval power of a small fishing village. Galadriel leading the northern army of her and like 5 other elves.
Great video! Articulated, expanding and clear.
My favourite thing from the episode is also my greatest annoyance with it: the Galadriel-Adar horse chase scene. Warning: long bit of text.
Let’s start with the good stuff.
The cinematography was great! I loved the sense of speed it gave me. Much like a high-speed car chase scene, but with horses. It was intimate and engaging enough to make me really appreciate the craft that went into it.
Now the bad stuff.
From the writer’s perspective it was a reference to the Nazgul chase scene from Fellowship… a blatantly obvious one. The “noro lim”, the dramatic music, a precious (intended) and potentially powerful artifact.
Let’s compare the two scenes to see if the reference holds up.
Fellowship chase scene:
Everyone knows the Ring is a very powerful thing (Frodo, Aragorn, Arwen, the Hobbits, the viewer), the One in fact. All the prologue, the Gandalf-research and the bloody title of the trilogy reference it.
We haven’t seen all Nazgul together up until the chase, which makes it all the more horrifying when all of the Nine appear. Especially with the added score (chills everytime). These creatures will never stop hunting, so the stakes are very high.
We see the magic of the Elves in Arwen and their connection to horses (“noro lim”) which introduces us to the iconic race (another pun) of the Elves.
Finally (again magic and horses) the viewer is treated to the Bruinen river scene… an amazing pay-off.
Now for the RoP chase…
Galadriel learns everything she knows about her prey Adar in a brief exchange with Arondir: he the boss, he got thingy he can’t have. Nobody (Arondir, Galadriel, viewer) knows what the thing actually is or why it’s important. The bad guy wants it, but we have no idea why. So we don’t know the stakes. It’s just a chase to bring the leader in.
So the immense score doesn’t in the slightest hold the gravitas the one in Fellowship did.
The series wants us to feel the high stakes in its chase scene, but it hasn’t earned them. The pay-off is Halbrand knocking and capturing Adar…
It was a blatant attempt at servicing fans with an “Omg I recognize this!”-moment. In doing so they failed to recognize why Fellowship’s chase earned its stakes and interest and theirs didn’t. And that annoyed me :).
13:10 basically my same feeling. The way I put it is that nothing has been earned. There's so many moments that I think are supposed to feel impactful but just don't because none of it is earned.