Fifth Avenue Forum

It was a weird season. I'd watch these forever for the visuals alone. The switcheroo reveal was about as dumb as trying to make a thing out of who was who all season. It all felt unnecessary and like they were doing it so people would talk week to week. It honestly feels like they were like, well if we keep this a mystery week to week, who cares about anything else, let's keep the horrendous dialogue going. Did I really need to watch 8 hours of this to get where we are? Halbrand being Sauron is just straight up stupid. What was up with him just disappearing and then popping up overlooking mt Doom with evil laughter. They have made some very questionable edits along the way. My wife said in the 2nd episode that this show is so dumb, here is who everyone is and what will happen and I'm not watching anymore and she was 100%correct. With that all said, I still had fun with the show and look forward to more seasons and I'm disappointed we'll have to wait a couple years for more

We discussed ITT that it would be cool if we explored the corruption and fall of a good character to the influence of the Dark Lord to ultimately become the Lord of the Nazgûl. We already know some of Sauron's backstory, that he had multiple aliases through the SA and early TA, that he was a deceiver, etc, so I don't really get wanting to dramatize that story so much. But JRRT was pretty much completely silent as to who The Nine were, I don't even think he states the most basic bits of where their realms were before they were claimed by the Ring. They can still do that with Theo, and that would make for a compelling arc. That's why I thought it was important for Bronwyn to not survive (and also because there are a grand total of three Elf-Human unions known in the history of Middle-earth. 'Arondir <3 Guns Out' wasn't one of them, and I'm not sure inventing this pairing really helps this story, unless it provides a backdrop for the melancholy of immortality and the foundation for the corruption of a good young man through the passing of his mother. ('Death' is the main theme of LOTR, after all) So hopefully there's some there there.

Isildur is still lost and unaccounted for where the Shadows lie. So what's up with that.

Disa - one of my favorite newly invented characters - proved to be something more than we bargained for initially; does her ambition wake Durin's Bane? Is "Durin's Bane" even still the Balrog, or will is be a euphemism for a social climbing wife now?

I want to see more of Númenor, particularly the west. To that bit about the melancholy of immortality, we're starting to see the foundations of that lament in Ar-Pharazôn with the passing of the king. Pharazôn ended up being a pretty decent character in all this, and we know that his ultimate ambition literally sinks the island kingdom, so I think they did a good job setting this up.

Adar ended up being a lot better and more interesting than I gave it credit for ahead of his reveal. I saw one theory that somehow Adar was Sauron all along, and that during the eruption of Orodruin he killed Halbrand and assumed his identity. (Sauron was a shapeshifter of sorts) It's a neat idea, but ultimately not one I'd like to see play out. Halbrand was the Big Bad all along, you fooled us, showrunners.