The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime

This is what I’m struggling with the most, otherwise I’m enjoying it and that last episode was definitely the best since the opener.

I remember a scene where Arondir sees the stone wall and realizes that it must be something really bad. No idea if he knew anything about it in particular.

And tbf, the only people who decided it was too dangerous were Arondir, Bronwyn (who trusts him implicitly) and the son. Galadriel only goes after the guy after she's told that he was holding something dangerous (and being told by the only elf around those parts, she should be more willing to trust him). The other people in the tavern didn't know where it was, or perhaps even that Adar was looking for it, so they had no choice but to get killed.

This still begs the question of who even made that in the first place.



(on the other hand, it's possible that the remaining two episodes will focus on Elrond and the Stranger, while the season will just end with this cliffhanger, so it might be a while before we know)

Just to be sure, this series doesn't have anything to do with the LOTR and Hobbit movies, right?

Aside from obviously borrowing the aesthetics because that's what people have come to expect, I guess they are free to do their own thing.

That could explain why Adar Or why none of the dwarves resemble the hot boy band members from Thorin's pals, not even the young ones.

I'm a bit 'rousing pre-battle speech'-ed out after that.

Uruk is just black speech for Orc, so he could just be being a traditionalist for the most part. Uruk-hai are a specific breed of Orc by Saruman. The movie LotR explicitly states that Orcs were created from Elves, but this isn’t something directly from the books (originally they were carved from stone, but then later it’s hinted at a different origin, in that they’re called a “mockery” of Elves. That said, there is some mention of Elves being kidnapped and changed while Tolkien was still toying with the idea of Eru being the only power able to create life, contradicting the stone origin, but then wrote an essay contradicting that too saying Orcs were always around) so that’s a pretty strong movie connection, even though Rings of Power is standalone.

tl;dr, origins of Orcs are never really clarified in the Legendarium, and in typical Tolkien fashion can be argued either way depending on what footnote you interpret.

Well, yeah, otherwise they’d have legal disclaimers and credits abound. From an IP perspective they have the rights to the main books and appendices from Lord of the Rings, which I get puts them in an awkward place narratively (nothing from Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales, History or Middle Earth etc), but they’ve definitely leant in to the movie interpretation of a lot of things.

You mean , right? Or did I miss something? (entirely possible)

There’s a speech and a bit where they fight some orcs and some people on horses and some neat civil engineering and a big volcano that goes KABLAM. And Galadriel looks really cross all the time but she does rescue an axe.

Why were the Numenoreans in the Southlands? I must have missed that part.

All 5,000 of them left on three boats at the end of the last episode. And apparently did a lot of training on the journey.

Turns out Tolkien was embellishing a bit and the Southlands are just one backwater village.

The whole scale of the world is off. Or rather, there isn't any.

Which reminds me of another issue. It's a really minor thing, but the intro is dull as fuck. I'm not saying it should copy of GoT but surely that would be a really good opportunity to fly over a map of Middle Earth to really show how big the world is and how the locations connect?

I moan. I'll keep watching and looking forward to it.

They should get the Eagles to fly over the map, get near Mordor, and turn to one another, and have a chat about how they cannot venture there, say if you had a ring that you needed to urgently get rid of.

Tried watching this week’s episode, but fell asleep each time. Suffering with a chesty cold, and sleep is more important.

I didn't think that was the creation of of Mt Doom until it was confirmed on various sites.

The destruction of the Southlands and the creation of Mordor should be a disaster for the continent but lacked impact due to the absence of people and villages in the region. Add in the Numenorian fast travel and the entire map starts to feel very small.

I really wish they had allocated a few minutes to world building in this region.

Again, this is suffering from the same thing the Star Wars films do, where some things are best left to your imagination. Explaining how Mount Doom came about through some weird Crystal Skull style landscape mechanics is a bit shit compared to the idea and feelings you have in your imagination about that place without having it spelled out.