Episode 4: The Great Wave
This episode is a little better, but it does have its problems, so let’s dive right in.
This time we’ll start with Numenor. Tar-Miriel has a dream of Numenor being destroyed by a wall of water, after which Galadriel and Elendil request an audience to ask her to send an expeditionary force to the mainland. She refuses, at which point Galadriel loses her temper, goes on a massive rant, and asks to speak to the king. In a departure from cliché, she is then thrown in jail, right next to Halbrand.
The next part is really interesting. Halbrand does a bit of analysis and tells Galadriel to play on Miriel’s greatest fear, which, based on the fact that she didn’t order Galadriel jailed until she demanded to see her father, is that someone might see her father. So Galadriel breaks out when the guards come to take her to a ship that is going to the mainland and infiltrates the tower…and finds out that actually there’s a good reason for Tar-Palantir’s not having been seen in years—he’s almost senile. Tar-Miriel is also there, and explains that he was deposed when he tried to renew relations with the Elves, and she was installed in his place. They have both had visions of Numenor’s downfall, and Tar-Miriel believes that helping Galadriel will cause this. Galadriel actually sort of accepts this, but in the morning, when she is about to be sent off to Middle-Earth, the petals of the White Tree begin to fall, and Tar-Miriel, seeing a sign in this, decides that Numenor should intervene.
Meanwhile, in an utterly inexplicable subplot, Isildur, Elendil’s son, who is a cadet in the Numenorean Sea Guard, allows himself to be distracted by what appear to be whispers from the West, which results in him letting a line slip and getting him and his two friends kicked out. This subplot, by the way, adds nothing to the show.
Now over to the Southlands, where Arondir is taken to see the leader of the Orcs, Adar, who was apparently one of the original Orcs, shaped from a captured Elf by Morgoth. He lets Arondir go with a message to the Southlanders holed up in the watchtower, which is that they can swear fealty or die. Meanwhile, none of the refugees going to the watchtower apparently bothered to pack any food, since it’s been less than two days since they all had to evacuate their villages and they’re already out. So Theo and his friend Rowan go to retrieve some from the village. Rowan makes it back, barely, but Theo is trapped.
When he tries to escape, he is discovered, but is rescued by Arondir, who for some reason is passing through the village crawling with orcs in order to deliver his message rather than avoiding it, and the two escape into the woods, where somehow they find Bronwyn, and they escape the orcs due to sunrise. When they reach the tower, Waldreg buttonholes Theo, reveals that he serves Sauron, and mentions that a broken sword Theo found earlier is important.
As to the Elrond storyline, the Elves and Dwarves are building the new forge in Eregion. Celebrimbor sends Elrond back to Khazad-Dum in the belief that the Dwarves are hiding something. Elrond discovers that they are, and Durin swears him to secrecy before telling him that they’ve found a very light and very strong metal that Elrond ends up calling “mithril.” Unfortunately, the shaft they’ve found is unstable, and it collapses. The miners survive, but Durin’s father, also named Durin (which is part of the lore), shuts the mining down. The younger Durin is upset, but, after Elrond talks to him, he goes to older Durin, who, after hearing him out, sends him off to find out what the Elves want.
As I said, this episode is a little better than the last one, but mostly because of how it sets things up for later. In your standard fantasy epic, in both the Elrond and Numenor storylines, our protagonists would be portrayed as being in the right. Halbrand’s advice to Galadriel would have been totally fine and gotten her what she wanted, and Durin’s determination to see the mining continue would result in his vindication. Instead, however, Halbrand’s advice only serves as foreshadowing for him being Sauron, because in Tolkienian morality you don’t play on people’s fears to manipulate them, and Galadriel does not get what she wants because she is persuasive; rather, she gets what she wants because of events that are not in her control at all. Durin’s determination, in the meantime…well, we know what lies at the bottom of the mithril-shaft. The Southlands storyline, however, is still a bit of a mess, with characters doing things they should know better than to do and serious timeline issues.
In other words, while this episode improved my opinion of the show, it didn’t do so by much.
Episode Five: Partings
We’ll start with the Harfoots. First, we do a traveling montage set to Poppy singing, which is fine. Then the Brandyfoots are attacked by wolves and saved by WAKIG doing magic, which injures him. Then, in the process of healing himself, he accidentally hurts Nori, who understandably freaks out and runs away from him. This storyline follows the stereotypical beats with such depressing exactness that I am beginning to understand why movie critics are so desperate for novelty. However, a new wrinkle occurs: three women, one of them extremely androgynous, arrive at WAKIG’s impact site.
The Southlands storyline continues apace. Arondir and Bronwyn thankfully break from cliché and tell their fellows about Adar’s offer. They want to fight on; Waldreg wants to take the deal, and takes half the villagers with him—not including Theo, but including Rowan. When they arrive at the village, which has been taken over by Adar and his Orcs, he swears fealty to him, and is then told to kill Rowan to prove his loyalty. He does so. Theo, meanwhile, shows Arondir the broken sword.
Meanwhile, in Numenor, the entirely unnecessary Isildur subplot continues, as Elendil does the right thing and refuses to use his status as commander of the expedition to get him a slot. Meanwhile, Galadriel plans to make Halbrand king of the Southlands, and he demurs. We then get a fun moment where Galadriel gets to show off her warrior chops, as she provides some training in how to kill Orcs to some of the Numenorian recruits, then takes on five of them in a practice bout where the prize is that if one of them manages to touch her they’ll get a promotion. In a departure from cliché, Isildur hears about this, and then does not try and rush in, land a hit, and thereby get on the expedition, but instead only watches and sees his friend who got kicked out of the Sea Guard because of him land the hit, after a fight sequence that is honestly a little goofy, especially a moment when all five of the humans land a strike simultaneously. Anyway, Ar-Pharazon’s son Kemen tries to convince him to stop the expedition, but Ar-Pharazon wants to expand and colonize the mainland, so he wants it go forward.
Later, Kemen attempts to burn the ships, but in a remarkable coincidence happens to pick the one that Isildur stowed away on. Isildur sort of foils the plot and Kemen is only able to destroy two ships. The two then wash up on the docks, and Isildur, for reasons that are never explained, does not rat out Kemen. Instead, he goes to his friends who got on the expedition, and after a bit of not-so-friendly punching gets on the expedition as a stablehand. Galadriel apologizes to Halbrand, and Halbrand acquiesces to her plan.
Then we have the Elrond and Durin storyline. Both of them return to Eregion, where Gil-galad informs Elrond about why he sent him to Durin—because of the mithril, which he thinks is necessary to keep the Elves in Middle-Earth. Elrond then finds himself caught between his oath to his king and his oath to his friend, but in a departure from cliché resolves it via convincing Durin to reveal the secret himself.
Again, this episode has a lot of highs, but also some serious lows. Galadriel and Halbrand’s interactions are fantastic in this episode, especially when you realize who Halbrand actually is. How much of what he says is reverse psychology? Meanwhile, the Elrond and Durin storyline continues to not disappoint, with people trying to find alternatives to “which loyalty is the greater” rather than spending their time angsting over it. The Southland storyline also gets some nice touches, particularly when Adar reminisces about how he used to enjoy the feeling of the sun on his skin when he was still an elf. Also, the “Isildur joins the expedition” subplot is handled without resorting to the usual methods, but instead by him realizing that he’s been kind of an idiot, which is nice.
Unfortunately, said subplot also has no reason to exist besides creating conflict. No character besides Isildur experiences development, and his decision not to rat out Kemen makes no sense in terms of personal character motivation—if someone was trying to sabotage an enterprise my father was going on, I would most certainly tell him about it. Furthermore, the WAKIG/Harfoot storyline is playing the tropes for the kind of story it is painfully straight.
My opinion of this show plateaued in this episode.
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