SPOILER LotR - The Rings of Power

The meteor man isn't Gandalf. I at least highly doubt that, because it doesn't add up with the current lore. Yes, they can always change the canon though...

The first two episodes were great. I would rate the first a 9/10 and the second a 8/10.

 

I really enjoyed what I've seen so far. The Elrond/Durin stuff was fantastic in the 2nd episode. I'm not sure I've ever seen a TV series with better production values. Everything looks gorgeous. I'm not a slave to lore for a story like this since they have to move stuff around to make it work. I assume it's Gandalf even if that doesn't fit lore either, but why not? Hobbits aren't really part of this age of Middle Earth either but they're part of the story.

After the 2nd episode I'm all in.

 

Well, Harfoots are just the ancestors of the Hobbits But I get what you mean.

Btw Hobbits- in the Tolkien lore there is a Hobbit poem of "the man in the moon who came down too soon". I think the meteor man is a refference to that very poem. Another interesting fact is the character poster of that guy:

He's holding an apple. We all know what an apple means in the bible... hmm!

This show is intriguing!!

 

@Angelman Thanks for starting this....yeah I am a HUGE Tolkien nerd. Maybe as much, or *more* than Star Wars???(Say it isn't so!!)

Anyway....my thoughts. The series so far is OUTSTANDING. I was drawn into the story and on the edge of my seat for several scenes. Other scenes I had to stop and go back and watch again because my jaw was on the floor just looking at these places I had always read about, and now seeing on screen for the first time. Eregion, Lindon, a glimpse of Valinor. And when Celebrimbor was introduced I leaned over to my wife and said "oh yeah now this story gets going".....And how about that dialog? Well-done by Amazon, no anachronisms, and much of it sounding like could have been penned by Tolkien himself.

The meteor man is a mystery. What lines up most perfectly is he being one of the two Blue Wizards, Allatar or Pallando, who according to the History of Middle Earth arrived in the 2nd Age around the time of the forging of the rings. BUT, here is what rights Amazon has ---

So what did Amazon buy? “We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.”

So - no rights to HOME.....so.....I am really confused.

Is he Sauron himself? But Sauron was hidden in ME after the end of the First Age and started becoming active around SA 1000 , started building Barad Dur in Mordor, etc, Around SA 1500 he became the fair-looking "Annatar" and befriended the Elf smiths in Eregion including Celebrimbor (i have a feeling we will see this story line on TROP).....anyway.....arriving as "meteor man" is kind of strange...

The biggest giveaway for me is when the fireflies all died.....

 

I also thought about the blue wizard. Correct me if I'm wrongy but wasn't the blue wizard only briefly mentioned by Tolkien in TLOTR? And that was it? So Amazon kinda has the rights to use him?

 

I have cringed at all of the online haters who've been blasting the production --- BEFORE a single episode was released for crying out loud!

I've LOVED Tolkien ever since I read The Hobbit at 11 and LOTR at 14 -- and Peter Jackson's trilogy at 52, but we should all have realized going in that this story was never going to be a line-by-line adaptation of the Silmarillion, especially given the rights issues.

But nevertheless, this series has put us all back into Middle Earth. With the absolutely amazing production values we've already seen, isn't that a good thing all by itself? What a feast for the eyes! I've only seen the first episode to date but IMHO that one alone is already better than the CGI crappola we got in The Hobbit.

As far as the story goes, you Tolkien purists should relax and view it all as an 'ancient legend' that may or may not have any grounding in reality. Frankly, it's not hard for me to imagine Tolkien himself taking that view given we're talking about his distant Second Age.

 

@Darth Derringer Yes you are so right! Never thought I would see The Grey Havens or Eregion in all their glory.

Cannot wait for "Akallabeth" or otherwise known as the story of the "Fall of Numenor". To see Numenor in its glory will be quite the treat.

I have been scouring this timeline of the Second Age and I know they are going to compress time significantly, which is not a problem and I understand the need to do this for a TV series....look at some of these storylines, wow, this will be an amazing series if they keep to these core stories....

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Second_Age

 

So re: the rights... Yes, there are five wizards are mentioned in TTT, I think? but definitely somewhere in LOTR. (It's from other places we learn that the extra two are "blue," and that they failed in their purpose.)

I would assume that if Amazon has the rights the LOTR appendices, then they have all the time lines and histories there. Appendix B has a sizeable listing for the second age, and they can run with that. They can just fill in as they like, I would assume.

(FYI I haven't watched any of this, don't have Prime...just not interested right now. I kind of have fan drama fatigue these days. Probably someday down the road...)

 

Yes there are 5 wizards mentioned in the Appendices, and there it is said they all arrive together in ME around the year 1000 of the 3rd AGE.

However in Christopher Tolkien's "History of Middle Earth" there is contradictory information presented, stating that the 2 Blue Wizards, Allatar and Pallando, actually arrived in ME in the 2nd Age, around the time of the forging of the rings.....arrriving in the South ME

I sincerely hope this is a Blue Wizard.....I will be disappointed if this is Gandalf.....but the fireflies dying has me perplexed....

 

if it turns out to be one (or all) of the five (we saw multiple fireballs), I'm intrigued we could be seeing the coming of the Istari. I hadn't expected it -- but if it is, that should be fun.

 

Well the darkness is creeping in, orcs the leaf etc…fireflies may just be a symptom of the darkness coming and not associated with the Wizard.

It is def a Wizard imo, the shadowing when the stranger chants is a lot like Gandalfs chanting in Bilbo’s tree, the talking to fireflies, the floating rocks in the crater. All similar to magic we see from the Wizards.

 

I watched the first episode with my friend and I liked it!

 

Not sure how they square this with the appendices that state they arrive in ME at year 1000 of the 3rd Age. Any by the way, they enter ME by ship, arriving at the Grey Havens. That is where Cirdan gives Gandalf his ring, Narya. Also by the way, this ring is one of the original 3 of the Elves.

 

Let's summarize the key points here:

1. Meteor man's journey across the sky starts when the "gateway" to Valinor was opened
2. Gil-galad sees it, then notices a leaf falling, he turns it over and the side that was up is now blackened
3. He attempts to draw symbols in the ground, on one FB group I am in one guy swears he draws the "G" rune like Gandalf did on Bilbo's door
4. The fire around him is cold
5. He "speaks" to the fireflies and a short time later they all seem to die
6. Some people online say that him sitting in the crater of fire looks like the eye of Sauron

Am I missing anything?

 

Originally, I thought viewers were witnessing multiple meteors streaking across the sky. But on second viewing, I now believe we simply got different camera shots of one. If it turns out to be Gandalf, it would be a wonderfully prophetic retelling of his backstory since his first contact with Middle Earth is with a Harfoot, the ancient ancestors of Hobbits.

 

Right?

It's so funny seeing these people lashed to the idea that this series is some massive failure. Even if it's not 100% your cup of tea, there's no denying that it's well made. It's just so weird to see them being so overly fragile about this, all because they made hating this series part of their identity before we even got a trailer for it.


Anyway...

like many of the rest of us, I too am intrigued by the meteor man.

I think we're supposed to think it's Gandalf. But also, that just feels so obvious. Obviously not everything has to be a mystery, but the show is definitely presenting this guy as a mystery, and Gandalf just seems like too easy of an answer for what they're posing.

The Blue Wizards could be an answer too, but once again, you kinda have to metagame the question. Would that be a satisfying answer to this mystery? Likely not, not except for diehard fans of the lore. And besides, I tend to think of them as a pair- since we only have one meteor guy, I'm not sold he's Pallando or Allatar.

Radagast? Meh. Teasing Gandalf and instead giving Radagast is like WandaVision teasing Quicksilver and giving us Ralph Boener. It'd come off more as a gag than a reveal- and we got Radagast in the Hobbit movies anyway, so it wouldn't even have a sense of novelty.

Now, I think Saruman is an interesting answer. We could see an earlier version of this character, and possibly an even "good" version- yet even so, his reveal would at least seem sinister, to those who know of him from LORT.

Someone mentioned Sauron in this thread. That's an interesting idea, too! Not sure how or why he would have revealed himself again in this fashion, but I'd be excited to see it.

He's almost certainly not Tom Bombadil. But he should be.

 

I'm going with the easiest answer. Sauron doesn't really make sense since he's alive. Sauron doesn't lose his physical body until the downfall of Númenor so he wouldn't appear as an old man, but he's described to be beautiful in appearance. This series has to shove things together so Númenor and Gondor may exist at the same time? Maybe there will be a time jump after Númenor? So for there to be a good payoff who could the man be? Gandalf seems like the best choice. I guess they could always say Saruman, but Gandalf's relationship with Hobbits makes sense in this context.

I would have loved it if this stranger was Glorfindel, but his appearance doesn't really support that.