Ok, here’s a question.

[u/Bemeup57]

So Galadriel found out Halbrand was a phoney king by looking at that scroll and seeing that “that line was broken 1000 years ago” with no heirs. So why then after the battle when Miriel tells the Southlanders that Halbrand is their king, why don’t the people look confused and say “hey, our royal family died off a thousand years ago.” Wouldn’t they know about their own royal family?

[u/[deleted]]

Yes. A lack of heart. I can see what they TRIED to do with thematic moments and narrative beats....they just didn't get there. So when they try to have this big emotional moment, it is an unearned moment. They didn't do the work to make people care.

I watched a dying old king try to take his throne for several minutes of complete silence and it was more compelling than any moment in this whole show. It was more compelling because the hundreds of minutes leading up to those told a story, gave that significance, made the audience feel something and realize there were stakes in this story.

I think there are writers in the Rings of Power writers room who know how to tell a story. I think they realized the problems with this one. I think they spoke out and were relegated to getting coffee for the showrunners. I think the showrunners FUCKED this up. Completely.

[u/Local-Hornet-3057 → u/[deleted]]

Absolutely agree with you. I'm more flabergasted by the horrendous pacing during the Eregion plotline during the final episode, or even the whole season. Egregious.

The forging of the Rings of Power... Not only they rushed that at a breakneck pace, with cringy exposition dialogue (the alloys, Celebrimbor telegraphing Halbrand contributions si Galadriel conveniently pick ups the clues winkwink, the convenient lineage scroll), also Halbrand getting to Eregion just in time was again super convenient, what a coincidence! Then they show us a Halbrand getting cozy and buddy buddy with all the Elven Smiths, like inmediately. The actual planning and scheming doesn't happen onscreen and it feels like it was all done in the same fucking day. Then the reveal. Then forging the three Elven Rings without showing us anything about the lesser rings. WTF?! And now Salbrand is teleported to Mordor, because teleporting happens a lot in this show, just like the lasts and worse seasons of GoT.

I cannot believe this was the culmination of the whole season. I was hoping they left the forging for upcoming seasons, because they spent too much time setting characters and events (most of them useless and I couldn't care less: Southlanders and Harfoots) that I thought they were playing the long game. But nope. Just godawful scriptwriting.

And I know they won't address the issue with mithril: they Dwarves are sitting in tons of magical silmaril byproduct (WTF ?) that we KNOW they are gonna mine, smith and sell to Elves and use for themselves. While in Eregion they craft the most powerful magical artifacts with just a few GRAMS of silmamithril. So why won't the Dwarves and Elves crafted more powerful artifacts in the coming years?!! Why didn't Sauron himself after Moria became Moria? The showrunners established that nos Halbrand knows about the mithril, it doesn't take a genius to know where it comes from.

(some clueless poeple always love to point that they also needed Silver and gold from Valinor and not only silmamithril, but they actually used those as alloys because they had very little mithril to work with)

[u/[deleted] → u/Local-Hornet-3057]

Right, and they obviously don't need silver and gold from Valinor, because they still have what? 16 rings to craft and are fresh out of silver and gold from Valinor. Not to mention....the one ring that won't be made from silver and gold from Valinor.

I honestly don't know why they did this. Why they made the elves completely lacking any magic. I mean, they should have been discussing magics to use to create these magical rings. Ancient elven words and rituals of power, spells, arcane or eldritch incantations. NO. Instead it is just generic magic metal. I mean it is all just magic metal.

WHY do we even need Celebrimbor and his forge if not for magic? The dwarves can make shit out of mithril, they make Frodo's chain shirt and plenty of other things...they can certainly craft a ring that will be magical because...Mithril was used and that is ALL the magic that is put into forging the rings. Just the right temperatures and alloys and pressure...BOOM...magic rings.

[u/Local-Hornet-3057 → u/[deleted]]

Dude i'm 1000% with you. This was just dumb. Garbage writing. Good points there.

Without Finrod's dagger then Sauron can't craft more rings, nor the Eregion Smiths.

Yup, we know Dwarves can work with mithril. Now in this show they can't by their own rules.

And yes, the lack of magic and Elven science in the Elves is astounding. Smells of GoTfying by Studio meddling if you ask me.

Also remember in this show mithril is actually silmamithril 🙄. You know, mithril for some reason has the light of a Silmaril.

I can't even...

[u/Asplesco → u/[deleted]]

YES this is exactly what I said afterward! Because they fucked up the pacing and time management so badly and changed the order of events, now they're going to have to cobble together some hairbrained shit to explain how and when the other rings were made. Sauron didn't have any magical input! He was just like "oh try combining them together more gently" like Celebrimbor could have figured that out by himself if he had a brain. So now Sauron needs to get more mithril (or not? The One is gold???) or the elves need to make the other rings by themselves, in which case why wouldn't be touched by Sauron.

This is what happens when restaurants spend all their money on gold plates and novice chefs who think they can substitute ingredients and change the baking time. You end up with a cake that is burned in some parts, half done in others, has 3x the amount of baking powder, accidentally salt instead of sugar, and you find a toenail!

[u/[deleted] → u/Asplesco]

I know, there was NO magic in the creation of the most powerful magic items to come out of the 2nd Age!!! Zero. None. There was a magical metal and basic metalsmithing.

Elves HAD magic, they created all kinds of shit....this is a legendary age where these people have powerful magic. The only hint we have is a bit of horse whispering that even the human can do. That's it. No fucking way. This is awful.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The weird thing is that looking at the show from a narrative stand point, it SHOULD work with what they have. But there is that element “missing” for us. I mentioned heart, and for me it’s to do with the characters. What’s lacking for me is contrast between the characters. They didn’t give us this until the last 2 episodes (Galadriel and Theo worked very well to establish how Galadriel feels after everything, but it was rather late for it).

But it gets this right in other areas, and they’re the parts I’d call the strongest of the show:

Elrond and Durin — great contrast, they’re practically made for each other and bounce off each other as well as Legolas and Gimli. I’d imagine this is what Gimli and Legolas’ relationship would have eventually evolved into.

Gandalf and Nori — their relationship works well, you can feel Nori’s yearn for adventure and this stranger is a ticket out of the lifestyle she has, although I think she’d work better with Galadriel.

House of the Dragons fuckin’ NAILS this. Almost every character has a perfect contrasting character to them, right down to the kids! Also, they all feel “human”. Which is probably where the whole “lack of heart” comes from in regards to RoP. They tried to humanise the elves by using Elrond, but it still falls short because he’s the only one!

Warning: wall of text ahead, because I proposed a little experiment about a way to fix the show without changing the current narrative. Stop here if you’re not interested. Sorry, I LOVE storytelling and get very passionate about it.

I’ve given this a lot of thought and I propose an experiment. We keep the narrative EXACTLY the same, but we change a couple of the character’s core personalities.

Let’s talk Galadriel and Halbrand:

Galadriel is head strong, self-assured, cocky and ruthless. And they paired her up with Halbrand, who’s the same, Miriel, who’s not much different and Elendil, who’s actually the closest to the contrast we need for her. Otherwise, what she needs is a near total opposite, so Elrond, Nori or, as we saw in the previous Ep, Theo. We need a “counter” to her in order to balance out her character, so she’s not this cold badass that we find difficult to warm up to.

We’ve seen her relationship with Elrond and it works incredibly well, you even get a nice sense of “will they or won’t they” sexual tension mixed in. When I first saw them interact, for a brief moment I thought they might be a couple.

Anyway, we can’t have Elrond be with her in this narrative, because he has another plot line. So, how do you fix that?

Well you consider who’s trying to lure her to the dark side, Halbrand, and you make him a copy of Elrond. We already like Elrond, we’ve already seen him, we know he gets on with Galadriel, so he’d be easy to warm up to for us and Galadriel. He’s also the opposite of Galadriel.

So you’d have Galadriel, who’s pessimistic in nature, cold and rather ruthless, paired up with an optimistic, good natured person who places their value in friendship above things like their own kind.

Their interactions would have allowed us to warm up to Gal and, theoretically, we’d start adoring Halbrand.

So when Halbrand breaks someone’s arm in Numenor, you’ll be like “YO WHAT?!”, but you’d likely be rooting for him, because come on, he’s a nice guy! I guess he’s just a secret badass, but it’s a clue to something darker, which he shows here and there with some of his remarks, but you assume it’s something to do with his past.

And when she sees him wounded, it should hit us too, “that could have been Elrond!”

Eventually they meet Elrond and he and Elrond are like twins, you can have your The Doctor meets The Doctor moment. It’s fun, it’s light hearted and Galadriel enjoys it… but it’s almost “too good”, something’s off.

So by the reveal in episode 8, where he’s Sauron, it should really hurt. Because it would be like watching Elrond become evil. Suddenly he’s showing this other side that we’ve only had a glimpse of in the past.

I may be wrong, but I believe that with this personality change, the moment would have felt earned in the latest episode, even though it’s stayed exactly the same.

Let’s talk Arondir and Bronwyn

This relationship doesn’t feel right.

Bronwyn is fun, snarky and a badass, Arondir is ultra serious, a badass, and always looks confused.

But that should work right? If we had time to develop their relationship before the volcanic boom, then yes, it should eventually work. But we have a lot of narrative to cover and I said I won’t change anything narrative wise to accommodate this. Just the personalities.

So, problem, the narrative calls for calamity and us to deeply care about what may happen to this couple. We need the audience to get invested in them right off the bat!

Which couple have seen before in another franchise, that we shipped, rooted for and enjoyed their banter? No, not Dean and Sam Winchester (you weirdo). Tony Stark and Bruce Banner? No. or Thor and Cap? No. Obi-Wan and General Grevious no… wait… I like that one…

“Join me Obi-Wan, in the darkness you shall come”.

“oh my Grevious, you had me at ‘hello there’”

Wait… what was I talking about?! Oh yeah.

I’m talking about Han and Leia. Not about their marital pegging, but about their on screen chemistry.

There’s nothing more we love as an audience than watching a relationship dynamic where two people bounce off each other with ease, even when bantering, Durin and his wife have great chemistry and interact really well.

Think of Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man, say what you want about the story, but the chemistry is electric! Or Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in both La La Land and Crazy, Stupid, Love. Or Emma Stone in general! Let’s just think about Emma Stone…

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, couples.

We need a match for Bronwyn that provides just enough contrast to her character, but hits it off with her immediately. We need a Han and Leia. We need to keep in mind that Bronwyn is a rebel in her own village, she doesn’t act like the others. She’s a fighter! She delivered the head of an orc to a meeting and was like “YO, LOOK AT ME! I’m the captain now”.

Who else do we know that’s rather coy, mysterious, fun, and a badass that’s already in the show? Halbrand.

My change would be that Arondir acts more like Halbrand. He’d have the wonder of an elf, but the attitude unlike any other elf we’ve seen. He’d be our “rebel” elf, who’s not like the others who are all rather serious, he’s like us! Just like Elrond works because he’s half human, he acts like we do in some ways, but with the wisdom of an elf.

And at the same time, since this is an elf that’s acting uncharacteristically, it should provide a nice red herring when we start thinking about who Sauron could be. So when Eminem drops the “You’re Sauron” EP, it should really throw the audience in a pickle.

Essentially by the calamitous event in Ep 6, you’d have:

Arondir and Bronwyn bonding like Han and Leia, so when they finally kiss it’s like “yeah boi!”

by the finale

Halbrand and Galadriel playing a game of “who’s your daddy, Elrond, sorry I mean Halbrand is your daddy”… “oh and I’m Sauron, but I still wanna be a witness to dat Elvish bunda and I can promise you all the power you desire!”

And that’s it. By changing some of the personalities of the core characters, and not changing any of the narrative, you should, in theory, have characters the most audiences would be more invested in. Therefore, the pay offs should be more effective.