Before watching the season finale, three clouds kept hanging in my mind whenever I thought about this show.
Firstly, I promised myself if they are going to cook up some romance between Galadriel and Halbrand, I'm going to give this show a 1/10 and never watch anything made by Amazon again. King or not, no human will every be worthy of Galadriel.
Secondly, anyone familiar with Tolkien's works would know that Sauron cooperated with elves in the second age under friendly disguise, and secretly made his own ring. By the end of last episode, I was wondering how they are going to deal with that, with Galadriel so crazy about hunting down Sauron? Or are they cooking up something completely new that has nothing to do with Tolkien's works?
Thirdly, why the hell are there so many Hobbits in this show??? They are cute, but they really don't matter in the history of middle earth before a certain Bilbo Baggins unfortunately joined a dwarf's adventure.
And really, really surprisingly, the season finale answered all my questions. Halbrand turns out to be Sauron, and did manage to learn something about ring-forging from Celebrimbor. The stranger, whom I always presumed to be Sauron, turns out to be Gandalf! Yes it's still different from Tolkien's story, but after all exploring some history between Gandalf and the Hobbits is not as grave a crime as imposing romance between Galadriel and some random guy.
If this were an original story, this episode would have been a perfect conclusion to a very epic season. Alas, it's not. And one good finale is not enough to appease all the outrage that the previous episodes have incurred.
Right now I only have two wished for the future of middle earth. In the following seasons of Rings of Power, I hope that they can stick to Tolkien's story. Just as House of the Dragon has proven, when the source material is so fantastic all you need to make a good TV adaptation is simply sticking to the script. And if they are ever going to adapt Silmarillion itself into a TV series, I just hope that they can learn from the devastating lesson of Rings of Power, and don't make the same mistake again by presuming that they can change Tolkien's story into something better.
Firstly, I promised myself if they are going to cook up some romance between Galadriel and Halbrand, I'm going to give this show a 1/10 and never watch anything made by Amazon again. King or not, no human will every be worthy of Galadriel.
Secondly, anyone familiar with Tolkien's works would know that Sauron cooperated with elves in the second age under friendly disguise, and secretly made his own ring. By the end of last episode, I was wondering how they are going to deal with that, with Galadriel so crazy about hunting down Sauron? Or are they cooking up something completely new that has nothing to do with Tolkien's works?
Thirdly, why the hell are there so many Hobbits in this show??? They are cute, but they really don't matter in the history of middle earth before a certain Bilbo Baggins unfortunately joined a dwarf's adventure.
And really, really surprisingly, the season finale answered all my questions. Halbrand turns out to be Sauron, and did manage to learn something about ring-forging from Celebrimbor. The stranger, whom I always presumed to be Sauron, turns out to be Gandalf! Yes it's still different from Tolkien's story, but after all exploring some history between Gandalf and the Hobbits is not as grave a crime as imposing romance between Galadriel and some random guy.
If this were an original story, this episode would have been a perfect conclusion to a very epic season. Alas, it's not. And one good finale is not enough to appease all the outrage that the previous episodes have incurred.
Right now I only have two wished for the future of middle earth. In the following seasons of Rings of Power, I hope that they can stick to Tolkien's story. Just as House of the Dragon has proven, when the source material is so fantastic all you need to make a good TV adaptation is simply sticking to the script. And if they are ever going to adapt Silmarillion itself into a TV series, I just hope that they can learn from the devastating lesson of Rings of Power, and don't make the same mistake again by presuming that they can change Tolkien's story into something better.