Rings of Power: Tolkien's Shambling Skinsuit

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Chris

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What? Not following you and I don't see how there is a problem with Orc culture. Its just primitive and tribal. They are not necessarily all that dumb either.

Back to the episodes: So who the fuck is the eastern wizard guy? I thought it would be Saruman but he is calling out the stranger as an Istar and wants him taken out. I think this rules out Saruman.

I GUESS it could be one of the blue wizards who 'founded magical cults in the east' and does not want another Istar showing up and spoiling the show he is trying to run?
I think what he means is that in LotR the bad guys are just forcibly spawning orcs and the movies show Saruman growing adult sized half orcs.

Now orcs just want to be free, have relationships and babies. I can see something interesting with Adar, caring for his children but they can't help but be evil they are so corrupted, but having that throughout orc culture doesn't work.

Eastern wizard is The Witch King I assume. It's too early for any Istari (including Gandalf) and they need to introduce men who get rings.
 
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Burns

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Uh didn't they introduce Gandalf in s1? Show was so bad I don't remember
From what I remember, they didn't have the rights to Gandalf because something by Tolkien said he appeared in the third age. So he is instead named Not-Gandalf.

They may have negotiated for more rights before season 2.
 

Drinsic

privileged excrementlord
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No they haven’t named him. But there are multiple wizards in the Tolkien world so it could be one of them.
Didn't he say "when in doubt, follow your nose?" at the end of S1? That's about as blatant of a "this is Gandalf" type statement without literally calling him Gandalf, for whatever legal reasons there may be.
 
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Chris

Potato del Grande
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Didn't he say "when in doubt, follow your nose?" at the end of S1? That's about as blatant of a "this is Gandalf" type statement without literally calling him Gandalf, for whatever legal reasons there may be.
Yeah but every character is quoting Lord of the Rings.

Unless they want to subvert out expections, it's Gandalf obviously, I just meant that in the lore the Istari didn't show up until the 3rd age, so speculating if the evil wizard is a corrupted blue wizard is pointless.

Gonna guess that "Gandalf" goes to Valinor at the end to recruit more Maiar to prepare for Sauron coming back again, then the existing story still happens.
 

Nester

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Ep 1 was a bit better than i expected (low expectations) i liked the Sauron and Adar parts. - will try and keep an open mind for the rest.
 
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pysek

It Didn't Happen, It Should've, and It Will.
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Ngapa Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 
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zignor 4

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Yeah but every character is quoting Lord of the Rings.

Unless they want to subvert out expections, it's Gandalf obviously, I just meant that in the lore the Istari didn't show up until the 3rd age, so speculating if the evil wizard is a corrupted blue wizard is pointless.

Gonna guess that "Gandalf" goes to Valinor at the end to recruit more Maiar to prepare for Sauron coming back again, then the existing story still happens.
They literally call not-Gandalf "Istari". There's no need to get twisted up over what can't be true within the timeline when the show's clearly played insanely loose with it. In the books, Sauron/Annatar spends hundreds of years in Eregion with the Elven smiths. The three rings don't get forged until decades after he's left, and not before all of the other rings as in the show. Isildur is ~2000 years away from being born while all of this is happening. They're clearly having Durin's Bane going ham in Moria this season, and that doesn't happen until well into the third age. They can't even keep their own invented timeline internally consistent given that they retconned the season 1 prologue with the orc mutiny.
 
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Locnar

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Well evil wiz guy refers to Stranger as an Istar so either they are moving up the timeline when the Istari show up, or its some "scout" early Istar. Slim Shady from S1 was the servant of east evil wiz right?

I can't say I'm please at how "weak" Sauron is. At this time he can change his shape at will and is more spirt than physical. They got him at apprentice mage level.

I suppose the ENTIRE "evil elf turns on Sauron" thing is totally made up. I don't remember anything even alluding to that.

Orcs being rebellious and wanting to be on their own is canon though.

edit: that reminds me, how could they fuck up the forging of the rings so badly? The 3 get made first and its a whole "resist the evil rings" struggle??? wtf, Nothing evil about the rings and no controversy about them in the books. I dunno, this truly is just fan fic set in a 'from the makers of LOTRs' flavor verse.
 
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Attog

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Makes me think of Monty Python. "Help, Help, we're being repressed!" Poor fucking orcs, held down by the white power.

monty python lol GIF
 
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Rajaah

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Isn't this the show that pretty much directly emulated scenes from Schindler's List, with Galadriel as Ralph Fiennes' nazi commander?

...the fuck.
 

Kajiimagi

<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
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Well we almost got to the end of ep2 when we looked at each other and decided it made no sense and we had zero idea wtf was going on. Hard pass.
 
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Runnen

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Leave it up to a bunch of postmodern faggots to try and deconstruct Tolkien and his idea of "Good & Evil."

To be fair, Tolkien flip-flopped a lot throughout his writing career about the existence of unredeemable evil or not. Morgoth himself, the embodiment of malice, envy and an evil so terrible it literally permeates Middle-Earth millenia after his imprisonment, was locked away because Eru was against his execution, thinking he could be redeemed one day. That's also why Sauron was brought to Valinor for trial and was given multiple chances to redeem himself over the ages.

The Orcs are corrupted Elves, so it is possible some are more decidedly wicked and evil than others, though none of them are "good" either. After all, not all Elves are good, we have seen them show arrogance, pride, cruely even. We have seen them antagonize or imprison innocents, so it makes sense that if some members of the good races can be imperfect and almost considered evil in some ways (at least from an outsider's perspective, like the dwarves imprisoned in Mirkwood by Thranduil), then it is possible some orcs would be less evil than others. Some just want to survive where most are actually bloodthirsty psychopaths.

As for seeing an orc baby, well we know the orcs reproduce sexually, so babies are bound to happen. The question of orc females and reproduction is not really developped in any of the Tolkien content, he wasn't writing about sex much in general, and people assumed the females were basically parked in rape camps like Darkspawn in Dragon Age, but there's no real answer from Tolkien himself as far as I remember.

This show has decided to show the orcs in a favorable victimized light when the focused protagonist is Adar, for obvious reasons since he considers the Orcs his descendants. In all other scenes with Men or Elves, the orcs are seen as cruel and wicked creatures.
 
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