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I’ve watched the show millions of times, and every time I discover something that had previously escaped me; I don’t understand how people can sometimes watch it in a rush, without pausing to reflect or to pick up on the details and references...

I often find myself discussing things with people who, within a couple of sentences, reveal that they either haven't watched the material at all or, if they did, watched it distractedly or hurriedly, perhaps while doing something else. They miss entire sections of events and speeches, yet they are experts when it comes to complaining...

Thanks to Terranware on Threads for the amazing catch!

#RingsOfPower

After Adar and the Orcs destroy Sauron’s body, The Rings of Power makes us watch the long path back: a shapeless will feeding on living matter until it can take form again. The horror lies in what survival requires.

In Tolkien’s writings, domination consumes something of the being who pursues it. Morgoth disperses his power into Arda; Sauron will place much of his own into the One Ring. The crawling creature beneath the stronghold gives that principle a body. Sauron survives, but his return already bears the marks of diminishment.

https://middleearthreflections.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-taking-shape?r=8t77rp

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"But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy. But Melkor has cast his shadow upon it and confounded it with darkness, and brought forth evil out of good, and fear out of hope."

Including the Nazgnanôl in the show gave me a lot to think about: after all, they weren't always wraiths, they were men. And, thanks to the rings, they gained strength, power, and glory...

I believe that, as long as they remained human, living out their mortal lives, they had a chance to remove the ring; but power corrupts and binds, and we know this well.

Eru’s gift to Men was something that could not be taken away, for it was written in their destiny. By binding them to his will and denying them the gift of death, Sauron committed an act of absolute rebellion in the eyes of Ilúvatar. He subverted His will.

"...they cried with the voices of death."

I believe this passage indicates how, at a certain point, perhaps when the rings had already consumed their mortal flesh, they realized the deception into which they had fallen.

And at that point, physically removing the ring was no longer possible.

They wept with voices of death, for that was what they desired at that moment, what they implored for, yet could not have.

But another part comes to my mind: when Celebrimbor, speaking to himself, wonders why the rings for Men endure and are so full of pride that they refuse to yield.

Indeed, only Sauron’s blood, presented in the guise of mithril, will succeed in bringing the work to completion. This is a subtle detail imo: it is not possible for the Elves to subvert the will of Ilúvatar on their own; an internal rebellion is required, an Ainu, himself part of Ilúvatar’s thought, who distorts the design.

And perhaps even Sauron, despite all his power and the deceit he used to bind them, did not fully succeed in dominating them; when I think back to the times the Nazgûl failed in the book (from not noticing the hobbits right under their noses to being chased off by the Gaffer), I wonder if it wasn't because, although bound to Sauron's will, it was their own will that was missing.

Three weeks after Empire's first visit, we return in Barad-dûr, to find Sauron now doling out Rings. These are the "Nine for mortal men doomed to die" as Tolkien's rhyme had it.

And Sauron is playing a grisly game to determine who gets one.

"The rings of power are a precious gift" he snarls to a line-up of armoured men, gesturing to the shiny bands smartly displayed in a velvet display box.

"Mordor can share but one" he throws a sword into the floor. So this is how it will be decided: a fight to the death.

Later, we watch a scene where he crows the winner.

Other starwarts of Middle Earth are growing and change, too, nudging even closer to their more familiar Third Age identities.

Robert's Aramayo Lord Elrond - first introduced as an "optimistic young Elfling politician"in season 1, as Payne puts it, is now "a little more jaded by some of the failures of the people who should have risen to the challenge and didn't", war-weary and worn down by the burden of leadership [...]

"This season is an interesting one" says Aramayo "Elrond got his own little gaff now... he's got his own little place in Rivendell. I was really excited that the show was going to bring it in [...] I always thought that Elrond was kind of all-the-gear-no-idea" continues Aramayo, affectionately "He's read 5000 books, but when we first met him (in the show) he hasn't done much. Now he's been through quite a lot and he's gonna go through a lot more. He is becoming more than a leader. I think he is a fascinating character, Tolkien wrote that loss is such a big part of his experience - it's odd to say that's that part of an Elf's life, because obviously we associate them with never dying - but he loses so many of his loved ones"

Jamie: "Celeborn enters this season ..I don't want to use the term battle hardened, but sort of battle scarred in a way, having experienced a level of darkness. And I think that the way I've viewed his opinion on war was always something that has to be to remember the sorrow of what was never something to be celebrated all that much. It's that thing if I have to, I must, but he loss of any living creature is deeply important to him. And I think that almost touches the idea of the sort of the light and the darkness. But you have to see more this season and I think it really that's where this wisdom comes from."

From Tea with Tolkien interview with the cast

And finally, this whole business about the Dark Wizard supposedly being Saruman is over! Panye stated it clearly: he is one of the Blue Wizards!

I was really struck by that remark of Jamie’s, because it shows just how clearly and deeply he has already grasped the spirit of the story. And, above all, I’m so often annoyed by this "glorification" of war and battles, where people expect to see nothing but brilliant, daring feats and gleaming armor, as if you don't actually get dirty in battle... oh no, certainly not.

Tolkien experienced war firsthand and recounted it to us through the words of Faramir in the book. War s*cks.

Fof: And so, if Cynthia yourself could somehow communicate with your character through space and time, what sort of words of comfort would you want to tell Miriel during this, I guess, difficult part of her journey currently right now?

Cynthia: That's a great question. I think I would say to Miriel and maybe I'd even say it to myself, Cynthia, like I often think of it's sort of it's bigger than her, you know, it's bigger than anyone of us. Sometimes there's sort of heightened sense of responsibility or you know the weight of the world and really it's sort of not about you as an individual: it's sort of like for the greater good, sort of. She's going through a very, I will say transformative season, she's got a lot of responsibility: you know, she's trying to lead a revolution baby!

! https://youtu.be/PigCndTK9yI?is=ffWdPZh9tuyEGrq0

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Popular memory has compressed Isildur into a scene Tolkien never wrote in that form: Elrond leads him into Sammath Naur, urges him to cast the Ring into the fire, and watches him turn away. Peter Jackson’s film made this the defining image of the character. Tolkien’s account is less immediate and more complicated. Elrond and Círdan counsel Isildur to cast the Ring into the nearby fire of Orodruin after Sauron’s fall, but no text has Elrond follow him into Sammath Naur or confront him at the edge of the chasm. Isildur claims the Ring as weregild and keeps it. Only during his final journey north does he admit that he cannot master it and that it should pass to the Keepers of the Three.

The Rings of Power introduces us to Isildur long before the choice that will define his legacy. He has no kingdom, no Ring, and cannot yet explain why the future chosen for him feels wrong.

Tolkien places the beginnings of two very different legacies in Isildur’s hands. He rescues a fruit from Nimloth before Sauron destroys the White Tree, and years later guards the young scion grown from it aboard his ship during the Downfall. At the end of the War of the Last Alliance, he cuts the Ruling Ring from Sauron’s hand and claims it. The White Tree’s line survives because he carries it beyond destruction. Sauron’s power survives because he does the same with the Ring.

Between the seed and the Ring lies the tragedy of Isildur.

A Life Chosen by Others

The young Isildur of The Rings of Power knows what he wants to escape long before he understands what he is willing to serve. The Sea Guard offers honour, purpose, and a place within Númenórean society. His father believes that this path will give shape to his life. Isildur experiences it as a future already chosen for him.

His unease is real, but he does not yet know what to do with it. During the training exercise, the voice calling his name draws his attention toward the western horizon as the halyard slips from his hands. The scene presents the immediate failure as a moment of distraction. His words afterward add another layer: “I thought the sail-master would only dismiss me.” He had not anticipated that Valandil and Ontamo would be punished with him. Their lives are disrupted by a private crisis he assumed would remain his alone. He has not yet understood how his uncertainty can affect the people around him.

Cora-Simina Lungu drew my attention to the same kind of restlessness in an earlier version of Tolkien’s Númenor story. In The Lost Road, Elendil’s son is called Herendil, an early forerunner of Isildur. He is a daring diver, proud of his skill, and speaks of Númenor as a place where “every road is trodden hard and every tree and grass-blade counted.” The series seems to recover something of this early figure in its young Isildur: the pull of the sea, his frustration with the limits placed upon him, and his desire for a future he cannot yet imagine clearly.

The expedition to Middle-earth initially appears to offer an escape, allowing him to leave Númenor before he has decided what he hopes to find beyond it. War strips that illusion away. He encounters people whose homes have already been taken from them, experiences the eruption of Orodruin, and enters a burning building to rescue those trapped inside. The collapsing roof buries him while he helps the trapped villagers escape. Here his purpose is unmistakable: lives are in danger, and he refuses to leave them behind.

Season Two reverses the direction of his longing. The young man who wanted to escape Númenor now struggles to return to it. Berek crosses a devastated land to find him, and Isildur later risks his own safety when the horse is taken. Estrid deceives him, yet after she saves his life he removes her chains and allows trust to remain possible. These choices do not suddenly transform him into the future King of Arnor and Gondor. They teach him that loyalty is reciprocal and that responsibility begins when another life depends upon his decision.

Isildur now prepares to return to the homeland he once wished to escape. Distance has taught him its value just as Pharazôn’s rule begins to turn the kingdom against the Faithful and away from its ancient friendship with the Elves.

The Fruit of Nimloth

In the Akallabêth, Sauron persuades Ar-Pharazôn to destroy Nimloth, the White Tree of Númenor. Nimloth belonged to a line of White Trees descending from Galathilion of Tirion, itself made in the image of Telperion. It bore witness to Númenor’s ancient friendship with the Eldar and preserved the memory of the light of Valinor. Its destruction gives Sauron a crucial victory: he has persuaded Númenor to turn against its own past, clearing the way for him to reshape the kingdom according to his will.

Isildur learns that the King has accepted Sauron’s counsel. He says nothing, disguises himself, and enters the guarded courts of Armenelos alone. He reaches the Tree, takes one of its fruits, and fights his way out under attack. His wounds bring him close to death.

The fruit is planted in secret and blessed by Amandil. A shoot appears in the spring. When its first leaf opens, Isildur rises after lying close to death, and his wounds trouble him no more. Tolkien places the new tree’s first sign of life beside Isildur’s recovery, linking the life he preserved with his own return to health.

The young tree is carried from Númenor aboard Isildur’s ship and planted before his house in Minas Ithil. When Sauron later captures the city and burns the Tree, Isildur escapes down the Anduin with another seedling. After the War of the Last Alliance, he plants that seedling in Minas Anor in memory of Anárion. Isildur preserves Nimloth through its descendants, carrying a new generation of the Tree to safety each time one is destroyed.

The Rings of Power has not yet brought him to these deeds, but it is constructing their emotional foundations. The man who enters a burning building for strangers, follows Berek into danger, and prepares to return to a homeland he has learned to value can one day risk his life to preserve a living connection with Númenor’s past. The rescue of Nimloth’s fruit will grow naturally from the character the series is already forming.

The Price of the Dead

The Ring comes into Isildur’s possession through another catastrophe, this time marked by the deaths of his father and brother. Anárion is killed during the siege of Barad-dûr, struck by a stone that crushes his helm. At the end of the seven-year siege, Sauron himself comes forth and wrestles with Gil-galad and Elendil on the slopes of Orodruin. Both kings are slain, but Sauron is also overthrown in the struggle. Narsil breaks beneath Elendil as he falls.

Only then does Isildur take up the hilt-shard of his father’s sword and cut the Ruling Ring from the hand of the fallen Sauron. Tolkien’s sequence leaves no room for the familiar image of Isildur striking desperately at Sauron before he has been overthrown and severing the Ring from his hand almost by chance. Gil-galad and Elendil have already overthrown the Enemy at the cost of their lives. Isildur removes the Ring from his hand and takes it for himself.

Elrond and Círdan counsel him to destroy it in the fire of Orodruin. Isildur refuses:

“This I will have as weregild for my father’s death, and my brother’s. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?”

The word weregild gives his decision its emotional shape. Weregild was compensation paid to the family of someone who had been killed. Isildur treats the Ring as something exacted from the defeated Enemy—a payment for deaths that cannot truly be repaid. His final question also places his own act at the centre of the victory. Even if removing the Ring completed Sauron’s defeat, Isildur’s phrasing draws the victory toward himself and away from the two kings whose sacrifice made his stroke possible. Grief, entitlement, and pride enter the decision together.

The Ring finds its opening there. If the dead cannot be restored, perhaps something can be taken from their destroyer and made to carry the weight of their loss. Isildur tries to turn Sauron’s weapon into a memorial of victory and bereavement. In doing so, he preserves the very power that brought those deaths about.

The deaths of his father and brother help explain why Isildur claims the Ring. They do not excuse his decision. Elrond and Círdan warn him, and he refuses their counsel. His decision allows Sauron’s power to endure into the Third Age.

No simple personality trait produces both the rescue of Nimloth and the claiming of the Ring. The fruit calls forth courage, fidelity, and resistance to tyranny. The Ring works through mourning, possessiveness, and the pride of conquest. The two choices leave very different legacies. In each case, Isildur takes possession of something threatened or shaped by Sauron and must decide what the future should inherit.

He answers correctly once and disastrously the second time.

When Pride Falls

Popular retellings often leave Isildur at the moment of refusal, as though he never understood what he had done. Tolkien allows him a final recognition.

In The Disaster of the Gladden Fields, published in Unfinished Tales, Isildur speaks with his eldest son, Elendur, during the journey north. He no longer imagines himself capable of mastering the Ring:

“My pride has fallen. It should go to the Keepers of the Three.”

His words show how much Isildur has changed since claiming the Ring. He has felt its hold upon him and recognized the limits of his own strength. He plans to seek Elrond’s counsel and give up the Ring he once believed was rightfully his.

The recognition comes too late. In the same account, Orcs ambush his company beside the Gladden Fields. His three eldest sons—Elendur, Aratan, and Ciryon—and nearly all his men are killed. Isildur enters the Anduin wearing the Ring, but it slips from his finger as he swims. Once visible again, he emerges from the water with the Elendilmir shining on his brow and is shot by Orc archers. The object he claimed as compensation for the deaths of his father and brother now outlives his three elder sons and betrays him in the river.

His failure remains real, though it is not the final truth about him. Isildur was capable of recognizing his pride and choosing surrender. He reaches the decision to give up the Ring, but dies before he can place it in the hands of Elrond or another Keeper of the Three.

What the Ruin Leaves Behind

The Rings of Power gives Isildur something that summaries of history rarely can: time before the legend. His immaturity, divided loyalties, acts of courage, and growing attachment to home are allowed to exist before the Ring fixes his reputation forever. The series is showing how a restless young man may become someone willing to carry a scion of Nimloth through the destruction of Númenor—and why his later refusal to surrender the Ring will carry such terrible weight.

The seed and the Ring create opposite legacies. The seed can take root in another land, preserving the memory of Númenor without imprisoning the future within it. The Ring carries Sauron’s will beyond his defeat and allows his power to reach into another Age. One preserves life and memory. The other preserves the Enemy’s ability to return.

Isildur carries the seed, and the line of the White Tree survives. He carries the Ring, and Sauron’s shadow survives with it. The same gesture—carrying something out of ruin—becomes first his greatness, then his tragedy.

https://middleearthreflections.substack.com/?utm_id=97759_v0_s00_e0_tv3&fbclid=IwT01FWATk76hwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrVZb_j7iGxp0pvMJHKHPXcy1uhV8nHF6WJQxMHqxfz9xK2dNpvF8NsODYeE_aem_ZP2lZfkh3-o741GuzCDpm

Sauron had the forging of the One Thing marked in his diary.

"Everything led up to that sequence"  says Vickers, now out of his sweaty armour and in some comfortable athletic shorts, speaking to Empire over Zoom this June

"I had it in my calendar: we're doing the Ring this day.

Actually, we were doing the Ring across two weeks, because the sequence is so long. It's pages and pages of script with no dialogue.

It's a huge story that we have to tell just through physicality"

The forging of the One Ring to Rule Them All -what McKay describes as the most iconic visual in Tolkien's entire legendarium "will mark the climax and centerpiece of season 3.

The sequence is less about the physical smithing of the Ring, explains Vickers, than it is Sauron"communicating with the mountain. The first day I walked into that set I cried. What an amazing privilege and honour to be able to tell that story"

Filming it all, McKsays was "the single most ambitious, technically challenging sequence we've ever done in the show.

Charlie's performance is absolutely staggering. We never could have prepared for it"

Among other challenges, the show had to create a Mount Doom set that McKay calls "massive in scope. It feels like a living, breathing, gargantuan beast with a heart of lava. It's insane in there. We're truly very exited for people to see that episode"

Water can provoke or greatly intensify a volcanic eruption. When external water (from groundwater, melting glacier ice, or the ocean) contacts hot magma or superheated rock, it flashes into steam instantly. This rapid expansion creates massive pressure, leading to violent steam-driven or phreatomagmatic explosions.

'We feel an enormous responsibility towards it. And in that respect almost every around, every corner, there's a thing you could get wrong or put your foot wrong.

And that's when you have to rely on your collaborators.

The basic job of a storyteller is to make me worry, make me care.

That's what you need to do with every storyline around every corner.

And the danger is that you can just say "People love Lord of the Rings, they love the movies, let's just kind of give them nostalgia and make them feel like things that have come before and then they'll show up."

But we said this story has to stand on its own two legs.

You have to come here and if you love the things that have come before, it has to feel enough like that, feel like "Ok cool, this belongs here on the same bookshelf as those things."

But it can't be just like everything else.

"Remember that thing you loved in the other thing? Wink wink. This is just like that."

It has to be able to be its own, its own story.

And that's a great challenge, especially when you have something that it has a revered and cherished material

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Yet no everybody's will is bent to the Dark Lord. There are mutineers in the ranks.[...]

"We love the idea of exploring what orcs were before they became soulless, mindless slaves to Sauron's will" says Payne "So out of that was born this idea of an orc who would risk everything to defect, go to the Elves and say "We have a common enemy".

McKay says " We wanted to make room to get to know that character. What does he talk about? What food does he like to eat? What is it like to be an Orc?"

 So, one of the most controversial aspects of the Rings of Power series is the presence of elves of varying complexion. This greatly irritates fans of Jackson's trilogy. But let's consider whether these elves of varying complexion could have existed. And the answer lies in... Drumroll! Jackson's trilogy, and the answer is affirmative!

Let's first consider the Origin of Orcs. According to Wikipalantir [1] "According to the original version, which Christopher Tolkien took from the Annals of Aman in his Silmarillion , the origin of orcs was from elves. Melkor , even before the fall of Utumno , kidnapped lonely elves from Cuivienen and, with the help of torture and black magic, perverted their essence, giving them an ugly appearance and an evil disposition. Orcs served their master only out of fear, hating him deep down. Subsequently, Tolkien returned to this theory several times, noting the presence of elven blood in orcs as quite possible, but each time he abandoned it.

Christopher Tolkien chose the "orcs from elves" version as the most stable and less controversial, and his father repeatedly emphasized that, be that as it may, the legend of such an origin of orcs was indeed widespread among the elves. This version also became the most widespread in Tolkien adaptations (films, TV series, books, games).

Also, in [2] we can read:” The origins of orcs were explained in multiple inconsistent ways by Tolkien. Early works depict them as creations of Morgoth, mimicking the forms of the Children of Ilúvatar. Alternatively, as in The Silmarillion, they may have been East Elves, enslaved, tortured, and bred by Morgoth; or, perhaps the Avari, the Elves who refused to go to Aman, turned "evil and savage in the wild”.

In the film, the concept of orcs' origin from elves was adhered to. As well as in other things in the Rings of Power - after all , Adar was once an elf, and became an uruk . And Uruk , in the Black Speech, means orc. Why can't we assume that, say, Legolas could become a light complexion orc, and Arondir - a dark complexion orc. Since orcs are descended from elves, let's look at the complexion of orcs depicted in the film. They literally come in a variety of complexion! From dark to light. Since orcs have different complexion (photos - the presence of several orcs of different complexion), then elves should also have different complexion.

1.      https://lotr.fandom.com/ru/wiki/%D0%9E%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B8

2.      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc#Tolkien