"If Sauron has indeed returned, the Southlands are but the beginning."
Hello everyone!
So I said initially I wasn't going to do this.
I changed my mind. I'm allowed!
And also, a few of my friends have said they'd really love to keep on reading these weekly dissertations of mine which are no more and no less than me just spinning yarn about my thoughts, really.
Which means here we are, and here we will stay until the season ends.
Last week may have been an introduction that blew hot and cold, but this week brought us something a little more tight in terms of writing, and some answers to the mysteries we're being introduced to.
Hopefully Prime continues in this vein, because we're headed to the halfway point of the season, so some answers are welcome!
The Rings of Power episode, Adar, at the very least gives us some of them.
The third episode pares down on plotlines and focuses on a slightly narrower window which gives its narration a much more cohesive feel instead of jumping all over the place. However, it also doesn't give us the dude right from the end of episode two. Remember him? The guy in the cape who picks Galadriel and Halbrand out of the sea? Yeah he's nowhere to be found.
Neither is the Stranger whom Nori continues helping, but the Harfoot plotline is at the very least moving now, pretty much literally, as the little hairy foots are about to start their migration. Nori's still super keen on helping the Stranger, so she nicks the page from the elder's book which shows the constellation they're searching for.
Only, the Stranger is a total git with zero knowledge of anything and nearly sets himself, the page, and the entire Harfoot clan on fire, exposing himself in the process.
Nori argues with the rest of them about it, completely oblivious to the fact she did, actually, expose them and thus endanger them, whether she likes it or not, and their cart is relegated to the very back of the caravan, where they're in big, big trouble of falling behind and being left behind, since the Harfoots are the proud kind of idiots who don't stop to help the people in need.
Unless you're Nori's friend, the orphan Poppy, who does just that. Nori also gets the Stranger to help with the cart so I suppose there's some use for the big man.
Meanwhile, Arondir - you know, the Elf down in the Souhtlands - wakes up in an Orc prison camp and is put to work digging a trench. He also falls in with a group of other Elves, which begs the question, how or why did no one up in Lindon realize they're losing soldiers?
Normally the process is the soldiers report to their commander, and the commander keeps HQ appraised (very simplified, but let's roll with it for now). Here, it looks like the High King doesn't give a rat's ass about the people down at his southernmost outposts, which paints Gil-Galad in an even MORE unfavourable light. I swear, Prime is doing its level best to make him out an idiot.
He was never an idiot!!!
ANYWAY, the Elves hatch a plan to try and escape at high noon because the Orcs can't abide the sun - the plan kinda works? I mean, it works to the point of rebellion, some fighting, them actually breaking their chains, fighting off a hyena-looking Warg, but forgetting that there MAY just be some guards posted outside the actual trench, which is how the plan falls apart completely (makes you wonder though ... Orcs or Elves?).
Again, you would THINK soldiers - or at least Arondir - would be smarter, but alas! However, the silver lining in this one is that we're finally getting to meet the leader who's making the Orcs dig, looking for something (my guess is that sword hilt, but as you do), and making them call him Adar.
For those less-versed in Tolkien, Adar is the Elvish word for father. It's not an unusual practice, as the Orcs that Saruman bred in Isengard also called him something similar, if I remember.
We don't actually get to SEE Adar yet, but bets are in that he's presenting himself as an Elf, and will probably give Arondir a nice spiel about how Gil-Galad's wronging them all by making them do their duty, he'll somehow guess Arondir has a forbidden love and blablablablabla. You get the idea.
On to the main portion of the episode, which happens nowhere else but in Númenor.
Galadriel and Halbrand have been fished out of the sea by Elendil, who if you know LOTR you know he's an important guy. So is Isildur, though he seems to be a little lost and without a spine, but at least he's there!
Also, at this point the island kingdom has both forbidden Elven ships from coming to visit, and hasn't really sailed anywhere in Middle-Earth either, because their arrogance is at its height. So technically Elendil breaks a couple of laws bringing Galadriel before the queen.
Míriel is an interesting figure as far as I'm concerned, because I'm convinced she's playing her counselor Pharazôn for all she's worth. In the Legendarium, she was the last queen, supplanted by the Usurper, while she remained Faithful (because that was coincidentally her bloodline, too). In this one, she plays the haughty HBIC perfectly, orders Galadriel be made "guest" in the palace, then promotes Elendil to watch over the Elf while she's at it.
Here's why I think she may be double-crossing her counselor, who's the usual slimy politician a la Littlefinger: she has a private audience with Elendil, correctly translating his name as that of 'one who is friend with the Elves', and pushing him towards Galadriel may be part of a grander plan she could have, especially given we see her visiting her jailed father at the end, saying the moment they've feared has arrived.
Now, we know from Elendil explaining later that the old king IS loyal to the Elves and the Old West, so this is a pretty big clue that all isn't as it seems with Míriel, which would make sense based on some snippets from the trailer which shows the two women working together, rather than trading insults down the length of their noses.
Galadriel, naturally, tries to escape, but Elendil reads her like he reads his kids, so he takes her to the Hall of Lore, which is basically just a huge ass library Elros built back when he established his kingdom, and where Galadriel figures out she's been reading that mysterious symbol all wrong, as it isn't a symbol off a banner, but it's a map of the Southlands, meaning that she was actually right all along (but wrong in terms of location).
Here's where there's a bit of a ? though: Elendil explains that the piece of rag they have was lifted off a human prisoner they got out of an enemy dungeon, but this makes very little sense UNLESS the rag dates all the way back to when Morgoth fell. Because after that, Elros and the men with him would have been busy establishing their kingdom, and the Elves were responsible for running down the remnants of Morgoth's forces, and even further after that, Númenor seals its borders, so how on Earth did they even get that?
It's a mystery, just like Anárion, who's name-dropped in this episode during a terse exchange between Elendil and his two children (showing us not all is well in the future royal house of Gondor). Elendil's past is revealed a little bit more in that he didn't follow the straight and narrow quite as diligently as he does now to protect his family and toe the line; and Anárion was apparently interested in the Western shores, where their family's originally from, and where those loyal to the Elves may still be.
But also, there's no more of Anárion, you know, the guy who founds the ruling branch of Gondor, and Elendil also continuously talks as if he only has two kids.
Now there's two options: one, that Anárion is dead, which is a MASSIVE divergence from canon (wouldn't surprise me, honestly) and Prime will be shoving his sister down our throats, making her marry Halbrand (KING ahoy) and somehow making that a logical choice for the King of Gondor, forgetting that the Númenoreans didn't mix with the people in Middle-Earth until much, much later,
or, two: he's somewhere on the Western shores, but Elendil's disowned him for fear of retribution from the Crown.
There's a lot of questions that have opened up with these first three episodes now, and we can see Elendil is worried about the Southlands just as much as Galadriel; but the plotholes keep on coming, though I will say I liked this episode more than the first two.
It might have been Númenor. There's callbacks to Gondor and Middle-Earth if you look at the people and the architecture, especially, and we've never seen it on screen before. It might have also been Elendil who's instantly likeable as a character, and who finally manages to take Galadriel down a notch (no small feat!).
And it might have been the tighter storytelling. The dialogue still needs work, but either way I'm apparently now along for the ride, so tune in next week for a review of episode four!
xx
*images and video not mine
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