Okay, I'll continue to go with only mild spoilers (I’ll acknowledge thematic moves here, which story lines we’re following, etc.) while still holding truly spoilery stuff for the comments, just so as not to bother anybody. I don’t know if I’ll do this for every single episode of this series, but I like talking about these things and at least a few of you seem interested also, so I’ll keep at it for now.
I was delighted to finally get to Numenor this week, and I have to say, the #JamesAndTheSecondAge reading I’d done in advance of the show added some value for me. One person I talked with about this episode commented that all the statues in Numenor seemed laughably over-the-top to them, but to me, that’s EXACTLY the excess we need in a society that is so obsessive about the fear of death and the individual desire to somehow live forever that it literally ruins itself. A city teetering under the weight of its own memorial statuary is an intentional move, to me – I’ll save comments about the individual choices and comments of Numenoreans for the spoilery comments, but the look and feel of the society sure worked for me. (Well, and I hope it’s not a spoiler to say that my glee at seeing a Numenorean librarian in action, however briefly, was unbridled.)
I liked that we kept getting insight into characters this time around – particularly unpacking a little bit about isolated characters that helps explain their isolation/connection to others. I think there’s been a lot of intention around the idea of having meaningful character arcs: Tolkien’s so obsessive about many things in his writing, but I think this is a piece he tended to underdo (most of the members of the Fellowship have very subtle arcs – arcs worth noting and ones that I think are powerful in their way, but I wish I could add more detail to more than half of them). So while I think some people are fussing about how important/named characters from the legendarium aren’t being depicted “right” right now, I think it’s clear that they’re being set up to become the people we will later remember them as. To pick someone not in this series (to avoid spoilers), I think it would be easy to introduce Glorfindel as just a cool elf lord with a lot of bravery and skill – I sure think of him that way! But if they’d actually added him to the series, he’d need to be more than that, since otherwise he wouldn’t be a super interesting character to build a scene around – he’d need internal or external conflict, he’d need faults and gaps as well as virtues and strengths. And that wouldn’t be “spoiling” Glorfindel. It would be making him a person I could meet, and not just an avenging angel on the road from Weathertop (which he’s great at – but again, Tolkien never writes him an arc as a result).
I think this episode is unlikely to be a favorite of many folks as compared with others, since a lot of it is devoted to the flaws in societies we really want to see as beautiful. But I think that’s so true to Tolkien, who made all his societies flawed – Lothlorien a secretive and separatist Elf colony so isolated they nearly turn aside the Ringbearer. Rohan an occupation of a land inhabited by at least two previous settlements of people who have clearly not been well treated by the house of Eorl (however much you and I may like the particular members of the house of Eorl, Theoden and Eomer and Eowyn, in the events of the War of the Ring). Even the Shire – yes, that bucolic paradise – if you actually sit and read what Tolkien wrote about it, is a place full of strife and conflict and harm. Ted Sandyman would cross the street to spit in your face, and the Sackville-Bagginses are so grasping they basically enable the rise of fascism in Hobbiton, and even the gentler types in the Shire like Old Noakes and Daddy Twofoot are gossips and cranks who, left to their own devices, would have kept the wool over their own eyes and everyone else’s until Sauron covered all the lands in a second darkness. And I’m saying all this, not to say these are horrible places full of horrible people, but to say that, Tolkien believed in a real world. He believed that a society full of people with free will would find the dangers that free will carries with it. He believed that any kind of power – even the petty power of a Shirriff or a Bounder in the Shire – endangered the wielder, because of power’s intoxicating effects. And I can see all that in play in this episode, over and over, as those with power misuse it even as they think themselves wise and good and prudent. Much of what Tolkien wrote was tragedy, not comedy (or melodrama). The Second Age is, largely, tragedy. I think this episode is reminding me pretty early on that that’s where we’re headed.
Lastly, I do want to note, since I do think the episode slightly underplayed its hand here – the episode is named “Adar”. For those unfamiliar with Sindarin, the language of the Silvan Elves, Adar means father (in Quenya, or High-elven, the word is the closely related Atar). And I think the showrunners are really intentional here in playing with the idea of fatherhood – what it means to be a father, what it means to relate to a father. What it’s like when a father is missing or fading. As well as something more ominous about fatherhood, but for that, let’s take it to the comments, I think. I hope if you saw the episode you liked it, and that if you haven’t watched it yet, you’ll give it a spin – I think it’s my least favorite of the three so far, but also it had multiple moments that took my breath away, and I definitely enjoyed both my viewings of it.
Comments:
SPOILERS as always, I hope you’ve seen the episode already before diving deep here. Okay, so, I’m stoked at how much lore they packed into the Numenor sequences, and honestly I’m afraid it’s a little too dense for those who don’t know the legendarium. Like, I know all about the history of factions in Numenor, or the (correct!) fact that it’s Miriel’s grandfather’s great-grandfather who basically drew the line with the Noldor that kept the Elves away, or the fact that Elros’s brother (whom Galadriel was closer with) is Elrond, which the show’s counting on you recognizing him from the tapestry? But yikes that’s a lot to load on! Not complaining, though – I think they can make this all work, and they’ve certainly created a beautiful world in Numenor to invest ourselves in. I’m honestly surprised they’ve made Miriel so openly on the King’s Men side of the fight here in Numenor – and that even Elendil is at most a quiet sympathizer with that side of things. But as noted above, I feel like we’re being set up for a certain amount of character development. I have to admit, when initially the conversation about Elendil was that he had “a son” and all we saw was Isildur and Earien, I was pretty bummed – I was looking forward to Anarion and suddenly it seemed like they’d written him out (or replaced him with a daughter). So it was a shock and a welcome one to have him mentioned in the family conversation – the black sheep of the family, no less? Maybe he’ll be our outspoken Elf-friend, which honestly I love for him, since Elendil and Isildur already have big splashy roles to play in the story, and this might help Anarion be less of an afterthought. The dynamics of that family are already a lot of fun to watch in action – I’m not sure where it’s going yet, with Earien in particular, but I look forward to more scrapping around the dinner table. I REALLY want to meet Miriel’s father, Tar-Palantir, and get a better handle on what he’s up to, and why she says what she does to him at the end of the episode. There’s a lot about her I feel is obscure right now, and I know we’ll get it eventually. I’m just impatient to get there. How did Numenor strike you all?
SPOILERS even though I don’t know a lot more than I did before about Meteor Man. I have to say, if he’s Sauron, they’re not writing him properly, so I think he’s clearly at least a semi-benevolent figure. As he gains ability to communicate and emote, he’s seeming bonded with Nori…which again makes me worried that he’s proto-Gandalf, but I don’t know, if I grow to like him enough, will I mind the idea that he’s Olorin the Maia spirit, here on a mission for the Valar that will anticipate his mission as Gandalf in the Third Age? I’m not sure. It was interesting to have Sadoc comment that he’s heard of someone becoming a star – that’s a wonderfully Easter eggy way to reference Earendil. I can’t imagine that Meteor Man IS Earendil, but I wonder if he’ll be connected with him somehow? (Ignoring my impish suggestion a while back that he was Earendil’s cabin boy and just fell out of Vingilot by mistake.) I still feel like the stars mean he’s headed east, whoever he is – they won’t be able to use the Blue Wizards’ names from any of the HoME stuff, but I’m hoping that’s where we’re going (his eyes are blue, I noticed this week). One odd thing, of course, is that the name Gandalf wouldn’t have had any meaning to Olorin in the Second Age, that I can think of, and so they may just get away with giving him a novel name, and let us wonder which of the wizards he is for a while.
SPOILERS since we probably need to talk about two evil characters – well, one is evil, and I’m still worried about the other. The evil one is this Adar – I think he’s clearly going to be set up too early to be Sauron, but I am still as intrigued as Arondir is at the thought that the orcs are calling their leader “Dad” in Elvish. That’s messed up. So who is Adar – some Avari elf who was ensnared by Sauron or Morgoth along the way? Or an orc who’s dressed up in Elvish trappings? Or could he really be Sauron in one of his many guises? I find that hard to believe but I sure don’t know.
The “probably going to be evil” character for me is Halbrand – there’s just no room here that I can think of for him as a hero, since we’re already going to get to the Last Alliance with, at a minimum, Galadriel, Elrond, Gil-galad, Elendil, and Isildur all alive and ready to square off with the Big Bad. Sure, he may die heroically, but I think it’s FAR more likely that he’ll turn out to be at best a turncoat, and at worst the Witch-King of Angmar himself (I mean, this is a tragedy). One really interesting idea, though, is that he could be the King of the Mountains – the one who, late in the Second Age, swears an oath to Isildur at the Stone of Erech that he and his men will raise their banners and help defend Gondor if Sauron attacks…only to abandon their oath, and find themselves an accursed collection of undead warriors, dwelling within the Dwimorberg and waiting thousands of years for Aragorn, Isildur’s heir, to come and demand of them the fulfillment of their oath. That is definitely canonical stuff that the series could (and probably should) develop…and if it’s not Halbrand, it’ll end up being someone we don’t know as well. Interesting, then, that we’re being set up to look at him and Galadriel, as opposed to writing this so that he and Isildur are developing a trust relationship…maybe, of course, the hunch is wrong. Or maybe we’ll see that development later, since we have years to go here? I don’t know – he’s interesting. I don’t want to see an Aragorn arc for Halbrand, anyway, since we’ve already got that and I would rather see them follow a king in exile from his haunted bloodline down a different path. I’m curious what other folks think, though!
And of course post your own SPOILERY thoughts and opinions and questions and comments in here, as much as you like!