TRoP: Callbacks and beasts
Oct. 19th, 2024 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe Rings of Power - 1.3 The Eagle and the Sceptre
Suddenly the humans were back! At least Numenor is better lit. This episode featured weird pacing and lots of callbacks to LOTR (spiders! Bodies in pools! Eagles! A horse and his future king!) I realised I’d forgotten some things – what was with Elendil’s daughter, mainly. It turned out Bronwyn had been poisoned too badly (I checked, and the last we saw of her, she was healing promisingly! Did they just want rid of the character for male angst?) Although there were some other parent-child dynamics, it was still mainly about fathers and sons (and I don’t blame the Orc for wondering why Daddy Adar was willing to deal with a Troll who’d beheaded one of his other children.) Boring!
So the stupid brave horse does not abandon Isildur, unlike his father strand was a bit daft, and the spider fighting felt like diminishing returns. Maybe ‘the Black Forest’ is canonical, but mainly it threw me out of a moment that I was barely in to think about Germany and gateaux. Isildur met cute with a southland survivor, Estrid – very broad strokes, with her stabbing him in the thigh, so a very particular kind of meet cute then. They became travelling companions, bonded over losing their mothers and survivors’ guilt and were a little attracted to each other despite him being a Numenorian and her having a fiancé. The reveal that Estrid wanted to burn off her mark of Adar made her more interesting.
Despite his idiocy, they met the goodie survivors (having been saved by Arondir. Bless, he isn’t going to be farming any time soon.) That he was out rescuing just before Bronwyn’s funeral felt weird. Anyway, Theo was all ‘You are not my stepfather!’ I was all ‘Kid, you are only tolerable around Galadriel, and I don’t think she’ll be coming your way soon.’ Theo the brat (he makes Isildur look mature) offered Isildur a chance to rescue his horse, then appeared to be willing to turn to Adar’s side in the baddie southlander’s camp. Whatever, kid.
And then, oh good grief, there were Ents. I sincerely hope they are not even attempting the Entwives. I’m all for bringing in more female characters, but let that one rest. Let them be Ents! (Does the geography work for that, though?)
Meanwhile, Durin and Disa paid Celebrimbor a visit, and were adorable in their sitcommy Mr and Mrs way. She’s right that he’s stubbornly stupid about his father, but his suspicion of what these Elves were up to and what the rings they were offering could mean was also right. (And it felt a bit more justified than Elrond’s attitude, even if it tied Durin to Elrond.) But Disa was representing the dwarves’ desperation, and so Durin passed on the message, made up with his father and then shared his suspicions, but Durin Senior went for it anyway, because they really were rather desperate.
For most of this, I was still a bit disbelieving that Charlie Vickers was playing Annatar, but then there were one or two slips in his near-perfect impersonation of how the actors playing Elves have been playing Elves (i.e. the Mancunian slipped out.) I wonder how they (especially Morfydd Clarke, as he was acting opposite her the most in the previous season) feel about his performance as Annatar. I really liked some of his choices at the end of scenes, given that he’s playing the big bad, but not twirling the moustache. The corruption of Celebrimbor continued. Dude, he was lampshading how you’re turning against your high king, and you fell right into it! Only Durin thought Annatar was a bit off, and then we got to see Annatar!Sauron interfere with the dwarven rings.
(And Durin and Disa’s attitude towards King Durin is also TREASON, but they’re family, so I guess it’s okay in this monarchic text?)
Meanwhile, back in Numenor, hot dad and loyal captain Elendil was sad about his son. Miriel recognised her people’s grief about the fallen on Middle Earth (thus proving she is a good queen, even though some call it weak), was still blind and in a power struggle with Chancellor Pharazon, now that the King was dead and the throne vacated. She had some gorgeous looks and I am shipping Elendil/Miriel (whereas I was rather cold about Arondir’s grief over Bronwyn), even though, objectively speaking, Elendil has not been the greatest father if he abandoned one child and the other is picking the wrong side. More puzzlingly, it feels like the Eagle was picking the wrong side. Did Chancellor Fabulous Hair put on some Eagle-attracting cologne or something? (I looked back, and the now dead kind was a bit more ambivalent about Miriel than I remembered.)
There were some scenes where I could have done with a lot more, and others that felt too thin.
(I have gone back and corrected every time I got Arondir’s name wrong in posts about the first season.)
Suddenly the humans were back! At least Numenor is better lit. This episode featured weird pacing and lots of callbacks to LOTR (spiders! Bodies in pools! Eagles! A horse and his future king!) I realised I’d forgotten some things – what was with Elendil’s daughter, mainly. It turned out Bronwyn had been poisoned too badly (I checked, and the last we saw of her, she was healing promisingly! Did they just want rid of the character for male angst?) Although there were some other parent-child dynamics, it was still mainly about fathers and sons (and I don’t blame the Orc for wondering why Daddy Adar was willing to deal with a Troll who’d beheaded one of his other children.) Boring!
So the stupid brave horse does not abandon Isildur, unlike his father strand was a bit daft, and the spider fighting felt like diminishing returns. Maybe ‘the Black Forest’ is canonical, but mainly it threw me out of a moment that I was barely in to think about Germany and gateaux. Isildur met cute with a southland survivor, Estrid – very broad strokes, with her stabbing him in the thigh, so a very particular kind of meet cute then. They became travelling companions, bonded over losing their mothers and survivors’ guilt and were a little attracted to each other despite him being a Numenorian and her having a fiancé. The reveal that Estrid wanted to burn off her mark of Adar made her more interesting.
Despite his idiocy, they met the goodie survivors (having been saved by Arondir. Bless, he isn’t going to be farming any time soon.) That he was out rescuing just before Bronwyn’s funeral felt weird. Anyway, Theo was all ‘You are not my stepfather!’ I was all ‘Kid, you are only tolerable around Galadriel, and I don’t think she’ll be coming your way soon.’ Theo the brat (he makes Isildur look mature) offered Isildur a chance to rescue his horse, then appeared to be willing to turn to Adar’s side in the baddie southlander’s camp. Whatever, kid.
And then, oh good grief, there were Ents. I sincerely hope they are not even attempting the Entwives. I’m all for bringing in more female characters, but let that one rest. Let them be Ents! (Does the geography work for that, though?)
Meanwhile, Durin and Disa paid Celebrimbor a visit, and were adorable in their sitcommy Mr and Mrs way. She’s right that he’s stubbornly stupid about his father, but his suspicion of what these Elves were up to and what the rings they were offering could mean was also right. (And it felt a bit more justified than Elrond’s attitude, even if it tied Durin to Elrond.) But Disa was representing the dwarves’ desperation, and so Durin passed on the message, made up with his father and then shared his suspicions, but Durin Senior went for it anyway, because they really were rather desperate.
For most of this, I was still a bit disbelieving that Charlie Vickers was playing Annatar, but then there were one or two slips in his near-perfect impersonation of how the actors playing Elves have been playing Elves (i.e. the Mancunian slipped out.) I wonder how they (especially Morfydd Clarke, as he was acting opposite her the most in the previous season) feel about his performance as Annatar. I really liked some of his choices at the end of scenes, given that he’s playing the big bad, but not twirling the moustache. The corruption of Celebrimbor continued. Dude, he was lampshading how you’re turning against your high king, and you fell right into it! Only Durin thought Annatar was a bit off, and then we got to see Annatar!Sauron interfere with the dwarven rings.
(And Durin and Disa’s attitude towards King Durin is also TREASON, but they’re family, so I guess it’s okay in this monarchic text?)
Meanwhile, back in Numenor, hot dad and loyal captain Elendil was sad about his son. Miriel recognised her people’s grief about the fallen on Middle Earth (thus proving she is a good queen, even though some call it weak), was still blind and in a power struggle with Chancellor Pharazon, now that the King was dead and the throne vacated. She had some gorgeous looks and I am shipping Elendil/Miriel (whereas I was rather cold about Arondir’s grief over Bronwyn), even though, objectively speaking, Elendil has not been the greatest father if he abandoned one child and the other is picking the wrong side. More puzzlingly, it feels like the Eagle was picking the wrong side. Did Chancellor Fabulous Hair put on some Eagle-attracting cologne or something? (I looked back, and the now dead kind was a bit more ambivalent about Miriel than I remembered.)
There were some scenes where I could have done with a lot more, and others that felt too thin.
(I have gone back and corrected every time I got Arondir’s name wrong in posts about the first season.)
