Rings of Power Season 2, Episode 4 BREAKDOWN

Welcome back everyone to Nerd of the Rings, we’re  ready to dive into season 2, epsiode 4 of The   rings of power - the episode, entitled Eldest  features a LOT of cameos and references for us   to break down, including the live action  debut of a huge fan favorite character. But first we should start at the beginning  of the episode - real quick though,   Don’t forget to hit that subscribe  button so you don’t miss these   breakdowns and my weekly dives  into the lore of Middle-earth! We’re back at the Grey Havens where  we see some elven soldiers marching   in a shot that was in the latest trailer  before the season got underway and we jump   right into a conversation between Elrond and  Galadriel. Elrond says he trusts Galadriel   can recommend an archer and a couple swordsmen  and Galadriel shoots back about whether Elrond   is sure he can trust her and Elrond is  like, fine stay here if you’d rather. Galadriel ends up caving and  has a few people to recommend Next up we get something that I’ve felt was sorely  missing in Season 1 - something to help avoid the   feeling of fast travel. We get a few shots of the  elf company travelling through various landscapes,   followed by a nice little map transition showing  the company coming to a bridge. We can see this   river on the map which is, at this time, known as  the Baranduin meaning “golden-brown river”. Fans   of the books and films will more commonly  know this river by the name Brandywine. The Lake pictured toward the top of the  image is Lake Evendim. In the books,   this is actually where Galadriel and her husband  Celeborn live for many years in the early Second   Age before moving to Eregion in the year 750 SA.  Ok, typical me going way too deep on the maps for   a moment…As for the bridge, I tried to pinpoint  it by overlapping the map released early early   on when Rings of Power was announced and it  doesn’t exactly line up - partially because   of the skewed angle here, but it seems this  bridge falls within the Old Forest. I don’t   think it’s the same location as the Brandywine,  which is on a part of the river where it crosses   directly East-West. This one is pointed more  northeast because of the angle of the river,   which makes me think it’s further south.  They do mention going south for the route   they end up taking, but judging by the map, I was  thinking these might be the barrow-downs here,   which is actually to the north of the bridge  being shown, so I’m kind of lost on this one. Geography nerdery aside, Elrond  and Galadriel come to the bridge,   which has been destroyed by lightning,  which Galadriel points out must have   been the work of Sauron. Elrond calls up  the cartographer of the group, Camnir,   who gives the travel options. Galadriel gets a  vision of the soon to be seen barrow-wights and   says there is evil that dwells in those hills.  Still, Elrond says they’re going south and again   we see him put Galadriel in her place as her  superior officer once again. Definitely some   testiness between these two going on. Elrond drops  the work “Meno” which is “Go” in neo-Sindarin. Real quick, on the wide shot of  the broken bridge here, I was like,   holy crap, this is a crazy huge ravine so  close to an area we know quite well. However,   I wonder if the water level for some  of these rivers could actually change   at a key point in a future season. I  won’t spoil it for people unfamiliar,   but I’ll just say…water displacement definitely  has an impact on Middle-earth in the Second Age. Elrond and Galadriel continue their sass contest,  Elrond saying they won’t take counsel from her   “trinket”, meaning her ring Nenya, and Galadriel  says she stays on the trip because she doesn’t   want anyone to get killed, including Elrond.  Real quick, I mentioned this about the trailer,   but I like Galadriel’s hairstyle here. It’s a  bit of a nod to the quote saying Galadriel “was   then of Amazon disposition and bound up her hair  as a crown when taking part in athletic feats”. Real quick, looking at the map again,  we can see how far they’ve gone so far,   with the Grey Havens labeled here as its Sindarin  elvish name: Mithlond. Elrond says earlier that   Eregion is just under 150 leagues from the Grey  Havens, which is somewhere in the neighborhood   of 450 miles. And yes, I did go consult  Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth   and confirmed this is pretty dead-on with  the measurements there, which is cool. I don’t know if its the angle of this map or  what, but it seems really condensed to me on   the Eastern half especially. Eregion doesn’t  seem as wide as it should be and the Brandywine,   Bruinen, and Misty Mountains all seem  closer to each other than they should be. Anyway, second geography nerd tangent  aside, we next catch up with the Stranger,   who discovers a goat which leads  him to the debut of fan favorite   book character Tom Bombadil! Now I’ve  got some thoughts on Jolly Tom so far,   but I’ll save those til a bit later in the episode  after we talk a bit more about his appearances. We hear him murmuring his Jolly Tom song  and showing a bit of his irreverence in his   answers to the stranger - saying there’s stars  above most hills when the wizard mentions looking   for the stars above Tom’s. They’re interrupted  as the Stranger’s star chart blows away,   getting hooked on a tree. He sees a nice  branch and thinks it would make a nice staff   and gets sucked in by the tree like the  hobbits with Old Man Willow in the books. Aaaand next we are with the Harfoots, who did  not die in the sand-twister in episode 2. They   come across another hobbit, this one of the  Stoor variety. He says his name is Merimac.   In the books there is a Merimac Brandybuck who  is Merry’s uncle. And while all the hobbit breeds   would intermingle, the Brandybucks were  known to have stoorish characteristics. 80s hair band guy and Poppy make googly eyes  and they’re all off to meet the Stoors. And   the harfoots Nori and Poppy are blown  away by the Stoors living in holes,   so presumably this is where this iconic  characteristic of the hobbits will come   from in the show. Quick note - in the  books, it’s actually the Harfoots who   originated the practice of living in  holes they called smials. S-M-I-A-L-S. The Stoor leader is called Gundabel, and  like Gollum’s grandmother for the Stoors   of the Gladden Fields many centuries later, she  is the matriarch of their people. She hears of   their Stranger friend being a wizard and kind of  freaks out because they know of the dark wizard,   who we then go to visit. Real quick, last  week I forgot to mention the name of the   Dark Wizard’s dwelling - Caras Gaer -  which means City of Dread, though gaer   could also be read as Sea. Since we don’t  see the Sea of Helcar or any other body of   water - and given he is known as Dark Wizard,  I’m guessing Dread is the smart bet here. Helmet guy is reporting back to the dark wizard  that the other wizard is heading toward the   hermit and the hobbits won’t escape them for  long. The wizard refers to him as Gaudrim,   which likely translates from Sindarin  to “machine people” or “device people”   Perhaps this is a reference to their  helmets they don’t seem to ever remove,   which make them look less human. The  dark wizard tells him to concentrate   his search on the harfoots and that  he will see to the Istar himself. Back with said nameless istar, he’s still stick  in the tree until Tom comes along, and we get some   iconic Bombadil book lines where Tom rescues the  stranger, telling the tree he shouldn’t be waking   and to eat earth, dig deep, and drink water. This  is lifted straight from the page where Tom rescues   the hobbits from Old Man Willow in the Old Forest.  This will likely feel familiar even to non book   readers as it was also repurposed in the Peter  Jackson films. In the extended edition of the Two   Towers, Treebeard get’s Tom’s lines when Merry and  Pippin are sucked in by a tree in Fangorn Forest. The Stranger finally asks Tom who he  is and Tom references the Withywindle,   the river that flows through the old forest where  Tom and Goldberry live. Super minor tweak here,   but Tom says his name of what people  call him back IN the Withywindle,   which sounds a bit odd given it is the name  of the river and not the forest itself. Also,   this is super random but how my brain works  sometimes, I chuckled a bit given Rory   Kinnear is in the recent James Bond movies and he  introduces himself as “Bombadil, Tom Bombadil.” The stranger then gets a bath in Bombadil’s house  and we hear Goldberry singing along with Tom.   Now this was a really odd thing that I didn’t  understand - the stranger asks about Goldberry   being there and Tom acts like it’s odd he would  ask and that they’re actually alone. Given we just   heard Tom telling Goldberry not to be bashful,  I really didn’t know what to make of this. That aside, I really liked Tom’s reaction to  the Stranger asking him if someone was there   with him. Tom’s “you’re here. I think  you are. Aren’t you?” And the strangers   subsequent confusion was a pretty great moment  of Tom’s levity and wit. Next they chat a bit by   the fire and Tom talks about the stars being  newcomers and how one minute it was all dark   and the next the stars were there. He also refers  to himself as Eldest, as he is referred to in the   books. In fact, his elvish name is Iarwain  Ben-adar, meaning oldest and fatherless. To give some context as to how old  Tom is talking about being here,   the stars are created by the Vala Varda far  back in ancient days before the awakening of   the elves so that they would not awaken in a  world of darkness. Tom’s next several lines   are pulled directly from an exchange he has  with Frodo, asking who Frodo is and giving us   a glimpse of how old he is - though this version  cuts out references to things like barrow-wights,   the Kings of Arnor, the big people, the  great migration of the elves, and Morgoth. Tom then refers to the tree as Old Man Ironwood  - again, clearly a riff on Old Man Willow from   the Old Forest in the books. Again, Tom’s  bit about each thing belonging to itself is   also pulled from those early chapters of  Fellowship of the Ring, and I gotta say,   it is fun to hear these lines play out in  an adaptation. Tom then makes an illusion   to names belonging to people, which strikes a  cord because Stranger doesn’t know his name,   and this is kind of the moment where my hopes  for him being a blue wizard took its biggest   hit yet. There’s been enough references thus  far this season to his guy’s name that I can’t   help but feel they’re working toward some big (and  likely drawn out) reveal that his name is Gandalf. Last week, I totally missed Nori’s calling  the staff in his dreams a “Gand” which is   derived from the old norse word “Gandr”  meaning “wand or staff”. The name Gandalf,   which is given to him by the men of  Arnor, translates in world to “wand-elf”,   so I’m kind of expecting that’s the way this  name is going to play out. We’ll see how it goes,   but I’ve kind of made it clear where I  stand on the blue wizard vs Gandalf thing,   so we’ll let that bridge be struck  by lightning when we come to it. We hear some horses approaching and Tom gives  us the low down on the Dark Wizard and man,   I’m starting to wish these guys could just have  proper names already. People just ominously   saying “the dark wizard” for a character  we’ve seen multiple times and “stranger”   for a character we’ve spend a season and a  half with just feels like it’s robbing some   of these moments of some luster. Even if they  are names which casual fans won’t recognize,   labeling them as something other than  good wizard and bad wizard would be   nice to feel some attachment to the  characters, I think. At this point,   I kind of feel my hand is forced and I’m just  going to start calling the dark wizard Aberforth Tom and Stranger talk about the danger of  Sauron and Aberforth joining forces. Tom   reveals to the stranger, yep, your task is to  face the big bad guys, so buckle up buttercup! We then return to Elrond’s company as they come  to the barrow-downs. Now, much has been made of   the existence of barrow-wights here in the  second age, which predates their origin in   the books by the work of the Witch-king. The  barrow-downs themselves however, do predate even   the beginning of the Second Age. We are told  in the books that the ancestors of the Edain   built these burial mounds prior to migrating to  Beleriand in the late First Age. This could also   explain the more Eastern-inspired design of the  barrow-wights we see here, as they are meant to   be the bodies of fallen men who had recently  migrated from the far east of Middle-earth. Presumably, what the show is going with here is  that Sauron came by the barrow-downs and awakened   the creatures known as the barrow-wights. It’s a  little nebulous on whether he simply reawakened   them or created them at this time. Galadriel seems  to immediately recognize them as barrow-wights   when the others ask what they are - which either  implies she has come across these somewhere else,   or they knew these creatures existed in this  location. Presumably if it were the latter,   the topic would have come up sooner  than when they are attacked though. We hear some really creepy whispers, which are  saying the incantation sung by the barrow-wights   who trapped the hobbits in the books. I believe  we can make out “Cold be hand and heart and bone,   and cold be sleep under stone”. Again,  this might be familiar to movie fans,   as they used the opening line and one from the  middle, albeit modified, for Gollum’s poem he   recites in the two towers. “Cold be heard and  hand and bone. Cold be travelers far from home.” Elrond discovers the bodies of  the messengers Gil-galad sent,   which we saw dragged by chains in a previous  episode. I was kind of surprised that the   letter was there with the bodies as it was  notably left behind as the camera zoomed   in on it last we saw them. I’m curious - do  you all think this is a continuity error? Or   are we meant to think the wights retrieved  the letter after dragging away the bodies? Next up a small thing, but something I  appreciate is the tinkling we can hear of   small bits of metal, which goes with the books  where they are described as having gold-rings   rattling on their bony fingers. As expected, we  get the elfvengers assemble shot, and they soon   discover their weapons don’t harm the wights.  Elrond ends up grabbing weapons out of the   barrow - he learned from lore that only the blades  they are buried with will return them to death. I do appreciate the idea that Elrond  probably learned this from reading   books of lore - way to nerd out, Elrond. This  likely explains how Galadriel knew about them   as well - at this point it definitely seems  barrow-wights are a more widespread concept   in this adaptation rather than unique to the  barrow-downs of Eriador. As for the sword lore,   that is something original to the show.  There is some minor inspiration from the   books here though, as it is the barrow blades  that the hobbits take on their adventures.   These blades were made by the Arnorians when  they fought wars against the Witch-king, and   it is one of these blades Merry uses to stab him  in the leg before Eowyn lands her killing blow. As I said throughout the marketing for season 2, i  love the look of the barrow-wights. They’re creepy   as heck and the glowing eyes looks fantastic.  Honestly my biggest complaint about this scene   is how short it is. It feels much more like a  cameo for the barrow-wights than them being a big   feature in this episode. The flying chains felt a  bit odd to me, just because I feel like I’ve seen   it in other films and it felt less like the  enchantment and freezing touch that causes the   hobbits to lose consciousness. —------  Before we move on from the barrow-wights, I  gotta point out some nerdy etymology element   here. The elves refer to the place they must  travel as Tyrn Gorthad. I couldn't help but   chuckle a bit at the elves being surprised by  the barrow-wights while using this name for the   barrow-downs - an elvish phrase translating  to burial mound of wraiths or spirit of the   dead. I feel like they maybe should’ve seen  this coming. It would kinda be like going   to place called danger wood and being like  “holy crap…there’s danger in this woods!” Next, we catch up with Isildur and Arondir,  who find the attacked camp with weapons and   flower petals left behind. Arondir then  finds the gruesome remains of people   attacked and killed by the Ents. Estrid tells  Arondir they should check the forests north   because “trust me bro” and they resolve  to head out, but Arondir is suspicious.   And after Isildur gets in another humble  brag about the indoor plumbing in Numenor,   Arondir confronts Estrid, revealing  that she has a concealed Adar brand. Her possible treachery revealed, the  two heroes take Estrid with them in   hand shackles to lead them north through a  swampy land. After Isildur falls in the mud,   Arondir and he are about to  die in the swamp of sadness,   but Estrid does the good guy thing and puts a  stick in trying to save them. Turns out there’s   a big ol bug worm thing that’s about to take  out Estrid when Arondir stabs and kills it. Arondir says there are nameless  things in the deep places of the   world. Apparently this one ventured to  more shallow places. The nameless things   are mentioned by Gandalf in the lord of the  rings after he returns as Gandalf the White: “Far, far below the deepest  delving of the Dwarves,   the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even  Sauron knows them not. They are older than he.   Now I have walked there, but I will bring  no report to darken the light of day. “ We even see that the balrog is freaked out  by the nameless things deep below Moria,   as he is in quite a hurry to leave. One likely  example of such a creature is the Watcher in   the Water the Fellowship encounters outside the  Doors of Durin - it’s just not exactly nameless.   We don’t really know how varied these creatures  were or any details about them - they are just   very chilling reminders of the horrors  that lie in the depths of Middle-earth. Back in Stoorville, the hobbits bond over  their heartless treatment of their own   kind. But when the matriarch discovers  their leader’s last name was Burrows,   she shows Sadoc’s ancestor’s mood board  describing his vision of a place with   rolling hills where they could dig holes  and live in them in less than a month. This   ancestor of Sadoc who presumably founded  the Harfoots called this place the Sûzat,   which is a pretty deep cut reference, but this  is the actual Westron name for “The Shire.” I   can’t help but think this is the show telling  us exactly where the entire hobbit storyline   is going over the next 3 seasons - they’re going  to end up founding the Shire. Whether that will   have the Arnor connection in the books, it’s  hard to say at this point, but if I had to bet,   I think they’ll probably skip over that and just  have the hobbits come to Eriador for some reason. Also - I totally missed this at first, but  when they’re talking about their wizard friend,   they compare him to a giant and an elf,  the Gund calls him a “Grand-elf”...so yeah,   what it feels like we have here is another  situation where we are going to talk around   a thing before landing on the thing. Nori using  the phrase Gand, now calling him a “Grand-elf”,   it’s starting to feel like when in season  1 they were like “oh we need a magic object   thats circular, oh we’ll do a crown, oh, now  we will make 2 and they’ll be smaller, oh we’ll   do 3 and they’ll be rings” except this one is  shaping up to take place over an entire season. This ancestor was called Rorimas, which  seems to be a bit of a mixture of hobbit   naming conventions, but the closest would be  Rorimac Brandybuck - the father of the previously   mentioned Merimac. Rorimac is actually the first  person who adopts Frodo after his parents’ deaths,   it's only after a number of years that  he goes to live with Bilbo in Bag End. Goldenface shows up and smacks the matriarch  around before threatening them to turn in   the Harfoots, but the Gund keeps them secret.  Fun fact - I don’t think this is related - but   its still kind of fun, Gundu in dwarvish means  “underground hall” - and is possibly an element of   the name Gundabad. Now, there’s no reason hobbits  would understand dwarvish, or for this to be an   actual connection, but a chance to nerd out on  Khuzdul and other languages is always good fun. Next we are on to Galadriel and Elrond talking  about the ring - Elrond still isn’t sold on the   whole rings thing and Galadriel feels it may be  their only way to win against Sauron. I’m very   curious to see how this all plays out - they  seem to kind of be talking around the rings,   almost being the lesser of two evils, and them  being the only hope of defeating Sauron. I’ll   be very curious to see what happens when  Sauron creates the One, and the elves are   no longer able to use their rings anymore. Will  this rob them of what Galadriel thinks is their   greatest…I guess…weapon? Or will it become a  ring vs ring kind of thing. The former would   certainly be the more true to the books version.  Personally I hope they don’t go too far down the   track of the rings being offensive weapons  in the way the One is sometimes seen as. Galadriel gets another foresight vision, first  we see an image of Sauron’s crown - likely from   a duel with Sauron that was teased in the  last trailer. We then see Elrond banged   up and bloodied with a knife held to his throat  by orcs. We then get a super quick shot of orcs   pulling down the statue of Feanor in Eregion as  they ransack the town square type area. This has   kind of a cool lead in to Celebrimbor falling in  the same direction, making a parallel between his   grandfather’s statue falling, and the elven smith  himself. The final shot is of Halbrand-ish looking   Sauron looking down toward someone with blond  hair. I thought this might be Galadriel, but   unless they are on a slope she seems a lot shorter  - perhaps this could be another vision that Sauron   will make Galadriel experience where she is  briefly her younger self we saw in season 1. Galadriel snaps out of the vision and  asks Elrond to promise that he will   put defeating Sauron above all else  - including her own life. Elrond is   like - I’m not making promises coming from  that dang ring…but yes, I’ll totally take   down Sauron and let you die if it comes to  it. Really sweet best friend stuff. They’re   interrupted by map man because they’ve heard  drums and we cut back to Arondir and Isildur. Isildur lets Estrid loose from her manicles  and he’s like…maybe it’s smoochy kiss time,   but Estrid draws a sword, and Arondir draws  his bow. Isildur gets over his total failure   of putting the moves on - and promises  Estrid he won’t allow the people to cast   her out. All of a sudden, a flowery entwife  shows up and barkslaps Estrid into a boulder. Arondir intervenes and says he is of the  Green-wood. Now, I think he’s referring   to Ossiriand here rather than Greenwood the  Great in Rhovanion - which we later know as   Mirkwood. In season 1 Arondir said he was from  Beleriand, and we do find elves in the lands   of Ossiriand who come to be known as green-elves  because their clothing was the color of leaves. The entwife responds by asking if he has  ever touched axe to wood in his life,   which is a pretty steep prerequisite for  not dying, I have to say. Now, in the books,   we find the Ents are created to protect the  forests - they are the shepherds of the trees. I   think this particular ent has a bit of PTSD going  on. She obviously seems a bit intense and doesn’t   seem to acknowledge that living beings - even  elves - need wood to create things like their   houses. This much is said in the Silmarillion  when Yavanna and Aule - the creators of the trees   and dwarves respectively - make the points that  living beings need wood, but living beings also   pose a threat for wanton destruction. The ents are  made in order to protect against such abuse of the   trees - this is why the treachery of Saruman to  Treebeard and the ents is so great - it is beyond   what he would need to simply feed the fires of  Orthanc for warmth or other practical needs. We then see a male ent join the party,  who talk about an army of orcs marching   and murdering - Adar’s orcs marching toward  Eregion. I really like this next moment though   between Arondir and the entwife - the moment of  his sorrow at destroying a great tree in season   1 coming back to mind as he asks forgiveness of  an ent wife here. It think it’s a nice moment.   The ent wife does say “forgiveness takes an age”  so good think Arondir is an elf I guess. Sorry   if you ever cut down a tree Isildur - you ain’t  getting forgiven before you keel over my guy. The ents refer to tending this forest since  before the mountains rose up to divide it,   which, like Tom Bombadil, gives us a hint  of just how ancient these beings are. The   mountains are created by Morgoth during  the Years of the Trees in an effort to   hinder the vala Orome as he would hunt the evil  creatures of the world. In these ancient days,   they were even taller than we see them now  - and when the elves would make their Great   Journey westward, it would lead  some to abandon the migration. Arondir reunites with Theo and they give  each other a hug, which is nice. I’m glad   they’re seemingly back on good terms. We’ll  see if it lasts or if this will be a recurring   issue between them. Isildur goes to Estrid who  wakes up to be reunited with her betrothed and   as soon as the dude from the wild men camp came  up I was like “Seriously? That guy?” And like,   I know they’ve known each other for what like 12  hours maybe? But I gotta say I’m kinda rooting   for Isildur to win the girl so to speak here. I  don’t know, I think the Isildur we’ve seen seems   like the kinda guy that leaps with his heart and  comes across as a genuine good dude, so why not Arondir says he’s got to go track down the  orcs heading north and says Theo can go as   well. Theo says he has his own promises to  keep and I wonder if this is him being the   healer of the people of Pelargir, or if he made  some promises to the wild men. I know a popular   theory is that Theo will become a Nazgul, and  I could’ve seen him growing close to Arondir,   then perhaps Arondir dying being a huge  push toward him turning to evil having   essentially lost two parents. So I’m really  curious where that story will go from here. A quick geography note, we know the orcs are  heading north, and we know Arondir and Isildur   are somewhere north of Pelargir. It didn’t feel  to me that they were traveling all that far,   however, based on the upcoming map shot, it’s  clear Adar and company are indeed traveling the   lands that will one day be Rohan, on the east  side of the White Mountains, not on the West. So in all likelihood, Isildur and Arondir  could very well be in what will later be   known as the Druedan forest. We can see in  the map shot that there’s much more woods   connected to Fangorn forest here, with forest  stretching all across Rohan. Fangorn itself is   even listed on the map. Toward the beginning  of the shot, we can also see the Eymn Muil,   where Sam and Frodo meet Gollum, and the lake  Nen Hithoel, where the Gondorians will one   day build the Argonath - the great statues of  Isildur and (in the books) his brother Anarion. Now at the tail end of this shot, we see the  orc trail arrive in Eregion, so they are getting   really close to Celebrimbor’s realm. And as we  see Elrond, Galadriel and team encounter the orcs,   we can safely assume they’ve also entered the  realm of Eregion. The question is how far are   they from the actual capital city Ost-in-Edhil.  We haven’t seen it called such in the show yet,   but there is clearly a distinction between  the realm and the city as evidenced by the   map. Elrond says word has to get back to  Gil-galad before their host sets sail for   Mordor because there won’t be anyone there for  them to attack, which would be pretty not great. Some orcs shoot at a horse, which they miss  completely, but they manage to hit cartographer   elf in the stomach. And here we get what was  undoubtedly the moment in this episode that   made me just stop and say “whaaat?” Galadriel  has unlocked her jedi force healing apparently   as holding the hand on the wound makes the arrow  fall out and the dude is completely right as rain   instantly. It’s like, man, Elrond was really  slacking when he heals Frodo of the Morgul   knife wound. It took the hobbit a full day to wake  up and he wasn’t even fully healed! YMMV on this,   but for me this just really took me out of  the moment as it felt like it went beyond   the bounds of increasing an elf’s abilities and  went into the realm of granting god-like powers. Galadriel gives Nenya to Elrond, telling him to  go back to Lindon to warn Gil-galad. She then   goes on to take on the orcs single-handedly with  some sweet looking throwing daggers and does the   cool trailer move where she swipes arrows through  a falling torch and then shoots them at the orcs.   And I know some folks will complain about how  the arrows kind of explode, but stuff like that   doesn’t bother me - it’s cool fighting stuff that  looks cool. Game on. And I actually think this   scene does better than a LOT of films and tv in  that it actually shows Galadriel doing some things   that would make the orcs pause and not immediately  overwhelm her after she gets on the horse and is   stationary for a few moments. It’s kind of  a prevalent thing for bad guys to take turns   fighting heroes and she’s at least swinging around  this chain thing that would give orcs pause. Back with Elrond and team, one elf says  that Galadriel sacrificed herself to save   them all and Elrond responds no, she did  it to save the ring. Which to be fair,   it can be two things. The next thing that really  jumped out at me is Galadriel yelling to the orcs:   go back to the shadow. In all likelihood, this is  a different context than what Gandalf is referring   to when he says these exact words to the balrog.  I suppose it also works here as its own phrase,   telling them to go back to Mordor, but this  moment really just serves to remind me of   the original source of the line, which has  a much deeper meaning than a mere location. Adar grabs Galadriel’s arrow as she is  about to fire it and says “Elen síla lúmenn   omentielvo” this phrase and it’s translation  actually comes from Fellowship of the Ring,   as Frodo says it to Gildor, showing the  elves he knows some of their language. And with that, Galadriel is presumably captured  by Adar and the orcs and we are officially half   way through the season. I gotta say, I definitely  feel this is the weakest of the episodes of season   2 thus far. Now this is just my two cents, so  your mileage may vary, and that’s totally cool.   I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode  and the season so far in the comments. For me,   Episodes 1-3 felt like an obvious improvement  over season 1 and I found myself getting more   invested in certain parts. Episode 4 I  think is more reminiscent of season 1’s   shortcomings - it feels like there are too many  stories happening and you really feel the absence   of the Khazâd-dûm and Annatar storylines in  particular, which are easily my favorites so far. It was really cool to see  Tom Bombadil in live action,   and I didn’t expect him to be just like the  books. They’re throwing him in a new area,   with a made up wizard story, and have  said he’s 10% more interventionist in   this tale. I’m good with that. It makes  sense to tweak for the medium a bit. That being said, I think this guy needs his  jolly level turned up by like a good 50%. Him   kinda sorta murmuring the songs and seeming ever  so slightly quirky, but kind of wizard like just   isn’t hitting the way I’d like Tom to hit. It sure  seems he will be in more episodes this season,   so we will see how things go, but I’m definitely  looking for more of Jolly Tom than moderately   content Tom. I think you can definitely see the  potential in Kinnear’s performance - the warmth,   the irreverence, they’re there, its just not been  allowed to shine so far in a way that feels like   this character can only be Tom Bombadil. Right now  it feels as though they’re scared to let him be Next, apologies to those who love the hobbits in  this show, but I just can’t for the life of me   care about these characters. And I’m curious to  see how it goes on from here, but I wonder if   the payoff at the end of season 5 will be them  founding the Shire - will that feel worth the   journey and the screentime they’ve been given  over five seasons. Or will we be looking back   thinking how much better that runtime would’ve  been spent on the other stories being told. I’m sure it’s partly the absence of the two  strongest storylines, but this is an episode   that just did not resonate with me. We’ll see  how the back half of season 2 starts of with   episode 5 next week. Hopefully we will get back  to Annatar, get things feeling back on track,   and shake this one off. We’ll find  out next week. But in the meantime,   let me know your thoughts. Comment below what you  thought of this episode - did you feel as I did,   do you think I’m off my rocker in not caring  for this episode? Let me know in the comments.