The hobbit girl is in this trailer. What a shame.

 

On the upside, I think it is just supposed be the two hobbit girls and Wizard Guy for the forseeable seasons. The rest of the Harfoot tribe characters don't seem to be returning for S2.

 

Well shit. I spoke too soon. There is apparently a whole new Hobbit centric plotline. Harfoots encountering the Stoors.

 

In season 3 Harfoots and Stoors come across Moors. In season 4, they cross paths with Boors. In season 5, they happen upon Hroors.

 

It does basically guarantee that they're gonna do the Fallohides at some point. And then they'll all tottle off to the west together.

And my main issue with that is just a big ol "Why?"

Like, I thought the Nori/Poppy/Stranger dynamic was pretty decent. Just focus on that and have them go off on an adventure. I really don't need to see the founding of the Shire with the secondary character hobbits that nobody cares about.

 

But without that plot thread there's gonna be one less moment of the viewer going



Memberberries are a big part of media now.

 

Wasn't smeagol a stoor and didn't they live by the anduin?

Anyway, I simply care less and less about the show. Didn't even managed to finish the first season. Maybe the second will look interesting enough to get me back into it.

And there is a new collection of Tolkiens Poems in the works with several unpublished ones. I am more exited for that book to be honest.

 

The assumption is that the show is detailing the hobbit clans post War of Wrath and pre-settlement of the Anduin / Gladden Fields. It's one of the reasons I'm hoping they don't do a founding of the Shire plot, or at least save it for after the highly necessary post-Akallabeth timeskip, because it's not supposed to happen until mid Third Age.

 

I assume you meant mid Second Age, here?

 

Nope. Hobbit settlement of Eriador begins in Second Age, but Founding the Shire is 1600 TA. Long after the division of Arnor.

If they include an arc like that at all it'll have to be a lone group of Hobbits traveling west, discovering the land, then returning East to tell their people about it. Best case scenario, if Nori and Poppy are still alive in S5 and the Stranger ends up being Big G, they'll travel west to the Grey Havens with him before he goes back to Valinor and passing through the Shire like "hey this is a nice place, maybe we can live here one day."

 

Gandalf even says that there may be more hobbits outside the shire than within.

Bree land has a decent population, but there would need to be several other settlements to match populations. Down by Tharbard and lingering around Anduin perhaps.

 

Official trailer. Looks like we're really getting some good manipulative Sauron. This is what I wanted out of S1.



Bear McCreary also released another season 2 track today (guessing a credit song for the Tom Bombadil episode), and I'm fairly obsessed with it.

https://music.amazon.co.uk/albums/B0DCT14GPK

 

Well, say what you will about the show, they do sure know how to make a trailer. For all the middling to mediocre storytelling and the... questionable costumes, the set pieces are beautiful and, not being trained to notice good and bad cgi, the city shots and similar I find gorgeous. I did like the small bit that we saw of the tree in Lindon sprouting back to life after Gil-galad put Vilya on, and I just love the way the show depicts magic in general. It's not the awesome yet mostly subtle depiction from the LotR movies, but as this is an age in which magic is much more present, it isn't too out of place. Also, there's a Saruman-coded Sauron wizard/priest in the trailer, which is interesting. One of the Blue Wizards who fell and joined the Enemy?

 

It's Hinds' new Istari character, who the Meteor Man and the hobbits will encounter in Rhun. The most likely scenario: he's a Blue, leading his own magic cult. It is far too early for Saruman to be a baddie.

Meteor Man in that scenario is likely then also a Blue, meeting the other Blue. Or he's Gandalf (as wandering Olorin) meeting a Blue.

 

Jokes aside I just binged the first 3 episodes and thoroughly enjoyed them, was a bit confused on some parts, mainly the aftermath of the burning of the Southlands and it's people and it took a while before I remembered some of it but a rewatch of season 1 might have been in order before I started on season 2 but I was completely blindsided by the premiere and decided I can do a rewatch before Season 3.

Spoiler

The main story is moving a bit faster than I anticipated, especially in comparison to the stranger, and I can't recall how many seasons they had planned but we're 3 episodes in and already crafting the remaining rings and Ar-Pharazon has usurped the throne (Eärien you gullible bitch). Then again we're almost halfway through the season so maybe it's a good pace, impossible to answer until we have the rest of the season or the entire series.

Nice to see spooky albino witch is back, her character was really cool and I'm hoping she'll continue to be creepy af.
Her boss looks promising (corrupted Blue Istar?), had some subtle menace going for him and hopefully he'll be a good foil for maybe-Gandalf
Annatar's coming out party was really fucking cool, immediately rewinded and watched it again, I can understand why Celebrimbor is simping so hard.
Yay for hobbit-reunion, Poppy brings much joy to their adventure, might've been too boring with just a duo.
Ar-Pharazon went to Vegas and bet it all on black, damn that was a ballsy move that could have ended with him torn to shreds but instead got it all in one move, check mate Míriel.
Galadriel continues to see nothing but her revenge and is still using everyone and everything to achieve it, I had hoped the finale in season 1 would have humbled her but I guess she's gonna need one more lesson, which will be Sauron successfully decieveing them all again and forging the corrupted rings and Galadriel's reaction is what will be the spark that destroys the trust between the elves and the dwarves.

 

First 3 eps are good to great. Pacing is much tighter than S1. Dialogue feels more natural.

Some quick takeaways:

Spoiler

Vickers is a shockingly good Sauron unveiled. I like how they're using digital effects and dynamic shadows to make his face look like a mask at times. Also, that Annatar emergence scene in episode 2 was downright glorious. Having him appear in Eregion as Halbrand and just manipulating the fuck out of everyone from the word go was pretty good writing.

Loved Cirdan. Continue to love Elrond. Full stop great portrayals by both actors.

No explanation for Poppy joining Nori/Stranger is a big miss after the S1 parting. Fairly obvious course correction (because literally no one was enthused by another Harfoot centric stroyline), and it could have been made less obvious with a single line of dialogue to handwave it.

Still very unhappy with the rapid fading seemingly being legit and mithril being imbued with the light of a Silmaril, thus negating Maedhros' fate. There was a missed opportunity to resolve the canonicity of the whole fading shebang by having Goo!Sauron fall into a river, with bits of him trickling out to sea to eventually corrupt the tree in Lindon. A line of dialogue from revived Sauron to a passing elf could have triggered Gil-galad's "mithrilmaril solution", and would have given some credence to the idea that mithril is not actually silmaril powered and just a material that Sauron knows to be critically important in crafting objects with powers over the unseen world.


Playing the meeting of Sauron and Galadriel at sea as a true act of chance (i.e. divine fate because chance does not exist in Tolkien's world), also continues to not sit well with me. The will of Eru is a lazy way to explain away convenience after convenience. Based on the audience blowback, I really hope the writers learned their lesson going forward about using it so blatantly, or at least have learned to be more subtle about it.

Pharazon's usurpation was pretty awful. It's going to get memed on heavily. Making me actively disengage with the Numenor plot and characters feels downright criminal.

Taking Bronwyn out of the equation has vastly improved Theo and Arondir for me. There's actually a compelling story to be told now, especially if Theo falls to the shadow and becomes a Nazgul.

Ep 1 - 8/10

Ep 2 - 9/10

Ep 3 - 7/10