Now up on Prime video

2 more episodes left after this week

Holy shit! They went all out on this one in terms of action, violence, and gore. I love the "terraforming" angle, as well.

Also, I guess Halbrand is starting to lean into possibly being Sauron (or the very least Witch King of Angmar) at this point. There was some key dialogue between Galadriel and Adar. Adar mentions that he cut the person Galadriel calls "Sauron" in half. Makes sense that Halbrand wanted to kill Adar with extreme prejudice before he was stopped. Halbrand even asked Adar if he remembered him and Adar replied with "no." Then Adar asks Halbrand how he wromged him - was it by killing a woman or child dear to him? Halbrand does not answer. I mean how would he answer that? "Yeah, you wronged me when you cleaved me in half, remember?!" Those are my thoughts on that.

Oh, and I was right about Adar being a first age orc of Morgoth. Before they segued into the more monstrous ones. The Atmos was exquisite, especially with how it ended.

I thought the eruption might be the season cliffhanger, but here we are! I didn't really buy the passage of time from them making landfall to coming to the rescue - just some fundamental filmmaking things like that I'd wish they'd do better on. And another episode without the Harfoots is a good thing.

Liked the episode, lots of action, but the key thing could have been written better. It's an old trope that Adar didn't have the key and sent someone else with it. Of course no one bothered to look at it to see if they actually had it until it was too late. Despite my grievances, I'm very much enjoying this series. Any new Lord of the Rings content is much appreciated, even the bad stuff.

My thoughts re: Arondir handing the key to Theo and telling him to give it to the Numenorians:

[Arondir hands it over] You're just going to give this to the kid who admitted it held power over him and walk away? Are you stupid?

[Theo opens it an it's a normal hatchet] Ha! Arondir was smarter than that, but Theo caught him trying to pull a fast one! I wonder what Arondir did with the original?

[Key used to rain catastophe on all] You mean NO ONE actually CHECKED to make sure they had the actual artifact? AAAAAUUUUUGH!

That was awesome 😲 And a real shame that most people watched it on tv's with tv speakers.

I though there were a couple of lines that pretty much spelled out that the "stranger" from the sky was Sauron (episode 4 I think). Maybe I'm mis-remembering it.

This show and Andor show why location shooting is so important to how "big" a movie/series feels. Wife and I have been enjoying this (and she could never get into GoT) quite a bit. We have watched and enjoyed the LoTR trilogy and tolerate the Hobbit, and have never read any of the books (I tried but it felt like work so I gave up on them).

I'm really enjoying this show for the most part, but I agree with a couple of thing others have said in the various episode threads:

• The show has one too many parallel plot threads and it bogs things down. With this episode, it looks like a couple of them are being woven together into one so that will hopefully help.
• The sense of scale is just not really there for me yet. I get that the men of the Southlands have been king-less and I probably have forgotten some important exposition from earlier episodes, but in the Southlands they've basically shown a couple of decimated towns plus the small town of Bronwyn's that we've been following. The epic battle in this episode (and it was very cool) was a group of people that can fit in a tavern against a relatively unimpressive squadron of Adar's minions. Galadriel and the Numenorians (including their queen regent!) traveled across the sea in all their glory to swoop in and defend...a few villagers? It just felt a little incongruous.

Despite the above, the show has kept my interest and I am into it. I just think it could be quite a bit better.

I really enjoyed this one

thankfully, the Harfoot’s weren’t involved.

It was just a skirmish. All the Southlands seem to be are patches of land here and there populated by villagers barely getting by, not an actual kingdom. Now that it will turn into Mordor, it will be a Kingdom going forward for Sauron and his forces. The Southlanders are screwed, though, unless they are taken in and assimilated into Numenor. Gondor doesn't exist yet, unless this fragmented population forms the beginnings of Gondor.

Good episode. Not great, but good. The battle scenes were fine, but as mentioned above everything seems so small. I think the creative team is having a very difficult time showcasing the scale of this world. It feels boxy and limited in a way that other shows like Game of Thrones, The Witcher, even Wheel of Time were more able to successfully convey.

Bronwyn continues to be insufferable. Of COURSE she had to rescue Arondir in a last minute save, because reasons.

Galadriel came off as much more of a leader, and her encroaching darkness has made her a far more interesting character than three dozen of those ridiculous "training fights" from the previous episode could ever do.

I missed Durin and Elrond, but no one misses the Harfoots. The former carry the most interesting subplot in the show, the latter... do not.

Killer ending though. Piqued my interest to look forward to next week, which is the first time I've said that all season.

DIS.A.GREE!
Wheel of Time felt like someone putting on a small show in their backyard.
The Witcher season 2 was even more limited than 1. Apparently there's a bog, a tavern and Kaer Morhen.

Wheel of Time had a host of problems that hardly abide the telling, but their big epic moments felt sufficiently big and epic (obvious CGI was obvious, but that applies to RoP as well).
Agree to entirely disagree about Witcher.

This continues to be good stuff. They are tying together all the different pieces and it’s making for some great story stuff.

The volcano creation was epic and it could have been a season finale but there’s still some interesting things to go.

And I’m still betting on the Stranger is Sauron.

This is finally pickup up some momentum. I really don't see where the Harfoot story is going, though. I have a feeling everything will finally fall into place about ten minutes before the last episode ends.

I will probably skip threads until the final reveal but my theory



There are also people who think Halbrand will end up being the head of the Nazgul.