House of R - ‘Rings of Power’ Episodes 1 and 2 Deep Dive

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Joanna and Mal journey to Middle-earth to break down ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ episodes 1 and 2. They start by giving their overall impressions of the show (8:09) before discussing each story line in the first two episodes (29:16). Later, they speculate on what is to come and talk about some of their theories about the identity of The Stranger (2:00:16). They finish by having a book-spoiler discussion about some of the events of the episode (2:12:24). If you would like to email Mal and Joanna about the show, you can reach them at [e-mail] Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Social: Jomi Adeniran Addition Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my name is Dave Gonzalez, and I haven't read any of the books in George R. Martin's The Song of Bison Fire. I'm Joanna Robinson. I've read every book in George R. Martins, a song of ice and fire. And I'm Neil Miller, and I have also read all of those books. We are headed back to Westeros to cover the Game of Thrones spin-off series, House of the Dragon. We'll be answering your question, so send us a raven at Trialby Content at gmail.com. Take some bread and salt and join us Thursdays on the Trial by Content feed, and don't worry, you're safe. The reins of Castamere hasn't even been written yet. With adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

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And welcome into the Ringiverse, your Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. Joining me today to talk about the first two episodes of The Rings of Power, now that she has finished singing beautifully to the rocks. It's my house of our co-host, Mallory Rubin. Hello, Mallory. How are you? Joanna, it has said the wine of victory is sweetest for those in whose bitter trials it is fermented. That's what I'm going to say to you again when we finish our podcast run for this fall.

And we get to toast down some booze. In the wise words of Elrods, let's with those ringing our ears, let's get started. I'm so, so, so excited to talk to you about rings of power. You know how excited I am for this. Welcome to the Ring or Versa House of R if you've never been here before. Welcome in. Let me tell you a few things that are coming up on this great massive feed that we have going on right now. Mallory and I are in the thick of it when it comes to House of the Dragon.

So we're going to be doing Rings of Power and House of Dragon every week. That's really exciting for us. So on Fridays you'll get rings of power from us. on Sunday, on Talk the Thrones with Chris Ryan, you'll get House of the Dragon with us. And then on Tuesday, you'll get a House of the Dragon deep dive with us. So that's what we're up to. The Midnight Boys, peep-few, as is their want, are up to whatever they like to be. Up to.

And you can hear them on Wednesdays. And Mallory, I thought I was sort of potted out on House of the Dragon pods. And then I sat down and listened to Van and Charles and Jomey and Steve talk about it. Delightful. Absolutely delightful. House the Dragon and She-Hulk on The Midnight Boys This week.

Great stuff. Speaking of She-Hulk, if you want to like a little bit more of a dive on that show, Ben Lindbergh, Daniel Chin, have an episode up that dropped yesterday

on Thursday here in the feed. So that's, I mean, what more could you ask for until Andor gets here? We got all the bases covered. Did I miss anything, Mal?

It's a bounty. How can everyone, how can folks follow all of that? Mallory, Rubin. Oh, so glad you asked Joe. Follow along. By following the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And also, follow the ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing.

We're everywhere. We're on Twitter. We're on Instagram. Jomi would like us to remind you to follow along on Instagram. The ringerverse is on TikTok. Seek us out. Like a kernel of methril in the mountain, we await you. They come in pints.

they come in colonels? Um, okay. What if folks want to reach you and me directly, Mallory Rubin? Um, via email. They can do just that because you,

Joanna Robinson, first of your name, have crafted a custom inbox for this current rings of power, House of the Dragon stretch. The email address is, Hobbits and Dragons at gmail. com. That's hoppits and dragons at gmail.com.

And last but not least, if you're at sea in this like content deluge that we find ourselves in the middle of and you want a little port in the storm, perhaps a handsome man named Halberin on a raft to pull you up out of the water, may I please introduce to you, the ringer streaming guide, a brand new portal that we have on the ringer.com. What a great website. that Mallory and I both contribute to to sort of collect and collate and advise on what you might find that's fun on streaming platforms. And there's a little like test you can take to find out what you should be watching. It's really fun. So if you just Google ringer streaming guide,

streaming guide.stream guide dot the ringer.com, whatever you prefer, you'll find it. It's great stuff. So check all of that out. Now we come to the heart of it. This is the conflict in the heart of your beloved podcasters. Beloved is presumptuous, but I'm going to go and say it. How do we talk about a Lord of the Rings prequel series that is based on some appendices and other supplementary material written by a professor many, many decades ago? We asked Twitter. Twitter was unhelpful. It was a 50-50 deadlock heat.

Remarkable. Remarkable poll result right there. Really bad. Okay, so here's what we've decided to do. Best of all possible worlds. We're going to give you three tiers of spoilers on every episode of this podcast. Three rings, if you will. All right.

So, ring one. Mallory and I, every year, we have a tradition. We've talked about this numerous times. We rewatch the Peter Jackson trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. We're not here to pretend to you that we have not seen the Peter Jackson trilogy, the Lord of Rings. Correct. So in this first ring of discussion,

which is the bulk of the discussion in the show, we're going to be talking about this new show with that information in mind. So we've seen, we know about Frodo, we know about Sauron, we know about all of that. We're not going to pretend we don't.

Okay, this is a prequel to that story. So we've met Galadro before. We know who Elrond is. Like, all of that's happening. Okay. Ring two. speculation time. This is my

time to shine, I think, speculation bill. You love a theory. And that's because the showrunners in this show have cleverly

set up a bunch of mysteries that even book readers, even the most detail-oriented assiduous book readers could not definitively give you an answer to.

Who is that guy? Who is that guy? We don't know. We're going to take our best guesses. We're going to use some book knowledge to inform that. But we genuinely

don't know the answer. So that's ring two speculation time. Yes. Last but not least, ring three. Spoilers a hoi. Everything is on the table. Anything Tolkien ever wrote in a letter on a Post-it note. It's all, it's all for the taking. So those are your three rings of power for our coverage of rings of power. Anything you want to add to that, Mel? I think he did a beautiful job of summing that up. I can't wait to talk about the story with you. I'm so delighted to be here with you today. All right. Part one of Ring One. And I have, because I've decided to be extremely extra about this whole experience, because I'm so excited we're here, I've named every section after a chapter from Lord of the Rings. So, Part One, Ring One, a long expected party. This is our opening snapshot.

This is something Mallory and I do every time to talk about what's going to on. So like, let's just talk about first and foremost, we're recording this before the episodes drop on Amazon Prime. So we don't know what the, we don't know what the, who, how many people watch it and what the common folk, the average Joe's like you and me thought of it. We do know what some critics thought of it, right? So, um, mostly positive, a little mixed, but mostly positive. Anything that stuck out to you in terms of like the reviews that came in mouth? I don't know if anything. really stood out. I guess, you know, it was cool to see how many people came in with some version of I was skeptical, I was dubious, and I was won over immediately, lost, drowning in the

sundering sea of joy watching these two episodes. That was really cool. And obviously, there's not universal praise for anything. But I was I was really just genuinely as a fan of Lord of the Rings, a fan of the story. And, you know, we've been, we've been anticipating the show for so long. I was hyped to see how many people did seem to really enjoy this. Because one of the things that we, you know, love and cherish so much about living in this genre space and television shows particularly that air week after week is the way that they, you know, they allow like a community to spring up around them and for people to share that story and travel that road together. Travel across that map together, the mountain range, into the mines.

They call it a mine. So I want to do that. I want to do that with rings of power. And I hope that that's, I hope that that's the way this goes. What about you? Anything, anything stand out in particular to you about the critical response? I think mostly, and we're going to talk about this right now, is just sort of like, no one can deny the visual power of this show and how much it feels like you are back in a world that feels familiar to you. I mean, I don't know about no one. I'm sure some people can, but for the most part, the reviews that I read, everyone was like blown away by how this, you know, this is an extraordinarily expensive show and I think it looks extraordinarily expensive. So we're going to talk about some of like our overall impressions of like the score,

the Bear McCreery score, incredible. They're putting out, much like the Mandalorian did over on Disney Plus, they're putting out a soundtrack for every episode. So week by week, you will get to dive into the Bear McCrary score for every episode of Brinks of Power. Just like get some dwarven chanting and some elvish to like just inject some wonder into your week. Sounds so fun to me.

Anything you want to say about the score in particular mouth? bears one of my favorite composers. Anytime I see his name pop up in the opening credits, I just immediately feel the pull for a Battlestar Galactica rewatch. It's like reflexive. I genuinely can't control the urge. I think that this score is sensational. And the entire show is so gripping and immersive.

And there are a lot of different reasons for that. The script, the language, the visuals, as you already noted, all of which we'll talk about more. The score is a huge, huge part of that and is really ever present in a way that it made me feel just after the first episode and certainly by the end of two full installments that the score is a character in the story. And that is definitely how I think about the musical accompaniment in the original trilogy, in the Jackson films. You can hear the surge and the ethereal notes when you're thinking about a certain plot point or a certain line of dialogue that accompaniment is ingrained. in your experience as a Tolkien fan. And I just thought that this was amazing how quickly you could say, I hear this cue, I know

where we are. I know which set of characters we're about to spend time with. It's just a real achievement. It's just lovely. I can't wait to keep listening to it. I want to talk also about the costumes. So they got Oscar, Oscar winner Nila Dixon, who won her Oscar for making the costumes for Lord of the Rings.

She won for Return of the King, but she worked on all three films. something that we talked about a wheel of time is that we couldn't quite put a finger on the design of that show. I'm not here to bury Wheel of Time, but there's just something that felt like just slightly off to me

when it came to that fantastical world. I feel like the costumes here are so sumptuous, so beautiful. They designed all of this from scratch. They didn't just like, they didn't bring up the costumes from the old, you know, Peter Jackson Warehouse or anything like that.

They did all of this from scratch. I think it's freaking incredible work. And I'm absolutely obsessed. And I cannot wait. Speaking of that like fellowship that you talked about, I completely agree. I have gotten to, over the last like year and a half gotten to know some of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, you know, professors, podcasters, bloggers and stuff like that. But I would like to know them so much more the way that we are, we know most of the Thrones folks. I would love to get to know the Tolkien folks more. And I really cannot wait to see the cosplayers get their hands on some of the. looks. It's just going to be extraordinary.

I think you want to say about the costumes, Valerie Rubin. Incredible. Now I'm thinking about what cosplay we should break out for our next Zoom session. If you had to pick one right now after the first two episodes, what are you going on us? Not to steal your thunder because you texted me last night asking me if you should try Norris hairstyle out, the hardfoot Nori. But I kind of like Norris shirt that just got like a shit ton of blackberry juice stained on. down the front, that seems like something I could maybe accomplish.

How about you, Mallory? I really loved the elven armor in the Southlands. So I'm not saying I'm ready to take up post with the watchwarden at the watchtower, but it almost reminded me of the faces carved into Warewoods in Westrose. I thought that was just so cool. So I think that's my pick. But I do love the very plush velvets. that we get to enjoy in Lyndon.

So that's a, that's a tight race. Love a velvet. We're going to talk more about the sets and the performances. And I hope someone is busy right now carving a tree breastplate for Mallory to wear in our next Zoom. But I want to take a moment with the language. This is, I think, one of the trickiest things for our showrunners here, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay and their talented. writers to nail because Tolkien's link you know, Tolkien himself was a philologist, a professor of

languages, like the Tolkien language and especially the way that it's like, I mean, created a whole whole other languages in addition to the English language that we see on the page, right? But also the way in which like those various languages are broken out in meters and rhymes and all that sort of stuff. And when I, I got a chance to interview Jady and Patrick like a year ago, to talk about the show and the thing the thing that they said that made my eyes light up was the fact that they had given different races of Middle Earth inhabitants, different metrics, different rhythms, poetic rhythms for their speech. So the Harford speak in this way and, you know, blah, blah. And they take that from Tolkien himself because there's a character of Tom Bobadil who speaks only in trokies. And like if you if you aren't reading it out loud, you don't necessarily know that's the case.

But in addition to the regional accents that we'll hear on this show, also just subtly baked in is the fact that different races speak at different rhythms. And so that they had to create like poetic rhythms for all of their different characters is wild and amazing to me. How did the language hit you, Mel? Oh, I just adored it. I think that this is one of the great achievements. You know, I've only seen the first two episodes, but within honestly two scenes, I felt like I had seen enough to know that they had nailed this part of it.

And it was probably, for my mind, at least the most essential thing. Because if you're searching for the quality, and I can only speak for myself, I think this is a feeling that we share as Lord of the Rings fans. And, you know, other fans might be looking for something else on their wish list. But feeling like the Rings of Power showrunners captured the essence and the spirit. of Tolkien's writing. And the sound of Middle Earth, the sound of Numenor, the sound of Valenor,

the sound of this world, the flow of it, the rhythm of it. And that manifests visually as well, I think, but the language is, that's our silum real here. These are our two trees.

Like, it's the light that we look to to know that we're in safe hands. And I think that the writing of this show is gorgeous. absolutely gorgeous. And the performances are exemplary as well. And I guess it's probably clear from the things that we're saying. But just to just to state it, for the record, I loved these first two episodes. I thought that they were sensational and sublime and absolutely stunning,

visually, just utterly arresting, like mesmerizing. I had the privilege of seeing them on the big screen at first. And, you know, you. have also enjoyed them since in the comfort of my own home on a much smaller screen. I think that the visuals translate really any way that you're watching, which is a hard thing to pull off. All of those aspects of the score of the costume design that you already mentioned that make the world just feel so full and fully realized. But the language is the beating heart of it.

It's the thing that they couldn't miss. When you think of the Jackson films, when you think of holding the books in your hands for the first time as a kid, so much of it is the way that you hear the language and the lines from any given character and the rhythm of it is just elemental to the experience. So this is like, to me, this is the thing that makes me feel most assured that we're going to have a great season of TV here and hopefully many great seasons of TV in the years to come. Oh, I'm so excited. So we're here to talk about episode one, shout of the past and episode two. I don't know the title of that episode. It's not listed anywhere that I could find. So written by

J.D. Pain and Patrick McKay and Jennifer Hutchinson, who's enormously talented, wrote episode two. and directed by Jay Bayona. Part 2, Ring 1, Part 2. Many meetings. Free recap. I'm not going to go beat by beat because we're going to get into everything that happened this episode.

We're just going to break down some big picture stuff just in case you need an extra reorienting in the world. So the main people that we're following here, dwarves, you know them,

you recognize them, Gimley from Lord of the Rings. They're in Kazadun and Moria. That's another location from Lord of the Rings. That's probably one of the more familiar, like, anchors for this episode. Men.

They're dirty and kind of racist, and they live in the Southlands. Those are the men we met so far. But there's some good ins too, and we'll get to know them as well. Harfoots, these are the proto-Hobbits. These are, they will become hobbits. Their culture is very different, and we'll get into how. And then, of course, elves, who are the real star of this age and of this show. So it's really notable that there's an elf in every storyline except for the Harfoot storyline so far.

So Galadriel, Elron, and Arndir are in different corners of the map, but we've got elf representation all over the place. So that is really interesting to me. When does this take place thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit? So we're in the second age, a whole era of Middle Earth history. but rather than tell us a story taking place over thousands of years, which would cause, like, which would make JD and Patrick have to, like, skip hundreds of years at a time

and not give us consistent characters care about, they've decided to smush that timeline down into the span of basically, I don't know how many years, but we can talk about that actually a little bit more next week. We meet some other characters. But basically, we're going to, the characters we meet here are going to be the characters that we care with us, even the mortal ones.

So that has got a few purists riled up, but I think that from a TV storytelling point of view, I would much rather spend five seasons with a consistent cast of characters than get attached and lose and get attached and lose and get attached and lose as we zoom through time.

Right. And we do get the effective snapshot of a passage of time before the window in which this series will be taking place when we spend time in the prologue of the first episode because we hear that there were centuries of war and then we're shown very briefly and quickly that there were centuries of hunting that followed the war.

So we have a sense as we exit and leave the land of Valenor and the light of the two trees and these relics of the first age and the time of Morgoth and we move into the second age where we're spending our story, we have a sense of the,

vast stretch of time for a character like Galadriel that we're already accounting for and is clearly ever present and fueling the journey that she's on now and that we hear her mention many times and allude too many times whether she's speaking to Elrond or Halbron so i thought that that was pretty deftly done you know to give us that that distilled snapshot of what occurred and why it matters and then like anchoring us in a specific moment because, you know, we're really big fans. Would we watch a story that covered 3,000 years of the second age? We would. Would everybody?

I'm not sure Amazon wanted to find out. Okay. Then the last question is, why are we here? Like, what are we talking about here? And this is just sort of like the big, again, this is informed by having seen the Peter Jackson films and chiefly, having paid attention. when Kate Blanchett told us what happened in the prologue of Fellowship of the Ring. But we're here to talk about the forging of the rings of power.

That's the title of the show. So what we need to be looking out for is the seduction of Sauron, how Sauron took the various, like, frailties and vulnerabilities and ambitions and whatever of men and elves and dwarves. but not you Harfoots, you're pure, to, you know, do some bad stuff. And that's what we're on the lookout is sort of like, what are they setting up here that Sauron might eventually take advantage of? That's a really interesting thing to think about. There's this thing that Patrick McKay, one of the showrunners, told me just overall about like what's in the mix, what's in the suit for Tolkien in terms of this story that he's

telling that I just thought I'd read out here. Patrick McKay said, he, Tolkien, is not commenting on. the era, the era being like World War II, not commenting on the era, but things that were so important to him, like his faith, he's Catholic and his love of language and the history of British poetry and what he'd experience, I would argue, when World War I, are all in the book. And I think those are things that we respond to. So we'll be on the lookout for some of that, like the Tolkien, a devout Catholic. This is, I think, partially why Stephen Colbert is just super fan of Lord of the Rings, because Colbert is also famously Catholic. Not quite on the level of his

friend C.S. Lewis who's like, what if the lion is Jesus, right? So like, yeah. But some, but some of those themes are there and you don't have to be Catholic to resonate with them, but like I as an atheist love Lord of the Rings. But I think it's interesting to think about the way in which his faith, the fact that he fought in World War I, like, worked in the peace time and then saw his son go off to World War II. All of that is sort of in the mix of what we're talking about here. I love anything else you want to talk about. sort of like big picture, Mal. Can I share with you a quote that I stumbled upon from the man himself,

from Tolkien himself when I was thumbing through one of my additions last night? This is from the forward to the second edition. This is the one I had downloaded many moods ago on Kindle so that I could quickly look for quotes when we were potting. And then notice last night that Amazon had updated the cover to be the show art. You're using an Amazon device, so it goes, I guess. But I thought that this quote was so illuminating in terms of his broader mission and intent, but also connects to the question you were asking earlier about the critical response and the range of opinions.

I thought this was just like a nice thing to keep in mind as we track that over the course of the season. I will now read it aloud. Quote, The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print. And I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide, I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving.

And for many, the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book or at any rate have reviewed it. This is iconic. Have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible. And I have no cause to complain since I have similar opinions of their works or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story, there is much that fails to please. And it is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points. For I find from the letters that I have received that the passages

or chapters that are, to some, a blemish, are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all myself now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others. The book is too short, end quote. Unbelievable. Incredible content. Incredible content. I just loved everything about that so much.

I think another Tolkien, I won't read out, but another Tolkien quote to keep in mind as we delve into this world where JD and Patrick have taken a sort of skeletal structure of a story and put a lot of extra flesh on it is this idea that Tolkien put forth in one of his collected letters about the idea that he welcomed collaborators into this world, that he wanted. wanted to create this universe of Middle Earth, you know, and certainly his own family has taken him up on it. There's tons of books that were written by Christopher, Tolkien, et cetera. Like, you know, his family and other anointed people have been playing in the world of Middle Earth. These are two super fans, JD and Patrick, who are also playing in this world. We have characters that we're familiar with and characters who are created whole cloth, mixing and mingling here. I think no matter what their watchword was to never contradict anything that's in the text. I think that was a very strong motive for them. But for people to say

this is just fan fiction or whatever, I would just say Tolkien would have dug fan fiction. Like, he was into that. He's like, please, please, I've like meticulously crafted a mythology, languages, you know, a system of gods, like all this stuff come play in my world. And that's what we get to do. We get to come play in the world of Middle Earth. What greater feeling could there be than creating a world, crafting it in full, and seeing that other people wanted to live in it and play in it? Delightful. Christopher Tolkien, his son, not as fond of that, but that's, that's, that's, he's very,

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Part three. Ring one, part three. Helms deep, deep dive into the episodes one and two. Here we go. All right. So we start with this pro-loyal. log, right? And you will have heard at the top of this episode. You'll have heard lovely Kate Blanche's voice as Galadriel intoning a prologue at the beginning of fellowship with the ring, Peter Jackson's film. We get another Galadriel prologue. We start in Valenor before the prologue. We start with Galadriel as a young girl.

We meet her brother Finnrod. But I think it was really smart to start there, not just because Galadriel is a familiar character to even like casual. film watchers. But B, I would think ostensibly our main character in this show. It's an ensemble show, but Galadryl is our main character. And so, Mali, what did you think about starting in Valour? Essentially, for all the tons of purposes, Valinor, think of it as heaven. Paradise.

Valinor is Paradise. This is where we begin our tale. What did you think of this opening here? I fucking loved it. Mark the time! Loved it. When we did one of our trailer breakdowns, and we've done a few, I recall selecting the image of the two trees, seeing the two trees of Valenor as my favorite image of the trailer, even though we knew based on when the show was set and Morgoth's destruction of the trees that it's not like the entire show was going to be set in the shadow of the golden. Silver Tree, but it was so thrilling to see them. And I loved that feeling in this opening note,

the line from Galadriel, nothing is evil in the beginning. It's, you know, it's the first thing we hear. And it's the perfect starting point because so much of this show and the stories in this world at large are about the conflict between good and evil. And the journey across time, you noted how present the elves are across the storylines. And I think that that will be. a through line of our discussion not only today, but across the season, because those long lives and long memories, and that that bears fruit immediately not only with Galadriel and the pain and the grief and the intention, the fierce intention that she is carrying, but in a sequence with Elrond and Duren, for example. So I thought that opening way back when in this time of peace and

plenty and light with Galadriel and her brother was a really brilliant point to then move beyond. And I particularly loved the conversation between Galadriel and Finrod, who I will now be calling Finn moving forward, about the ship and the stone and light and darkness, which is one of the mission statements for this character and the story that we're about to. see. And I generally don't like when inside of one movie or inside of one episode of TV, we flash back to something that took place in the same installment. I was putty in their hands when we came back to that moment and that exchange at the end as Glouadryl is deciding whether to exit the ship and cease her journey to the undying lands and dive into the sundering sea,

looking down at Finneran's blade, thinking about light and dark. And we hear the thing that we didn't get to hear at the beginning, didn't get to hear in those opening moments. What did he whisper to her? Sometimes we cannot know until we have touched the darkness. Like, you can live your entire life and never approach a line that good. I just thought it was incredible. We pause now to take a brief moment to talk about short hair on.

elves. This has been a controversy among the fandoms. And Galadryl's brother Finrod, I think, is the chief criminal here with his Insta ready hair. I don't care. I have no

I don't care. I have no objection. He just has like a particular like piquy blinders look to him with the long on top, short on the sides. But this is a thing that some people are a little stressed about. The fact that the elves, some of the elves have short hair.

Not everybody's feeling the silver lake fade. I love it. It reminds me of Thor shifting from his iconic long hair flowing locks to the short dew in Ragnarok. And my take remains that they should have stuck with that haircut because it was great. 100% should have stuck with that haircut, especially like the shaved-in size where it's like, oh, no. Anyway, okay, we're not here to talk about Thor. She says, we had no word for death where we thought our joys would be an ending. We thought our light would never dim.

This idea is as basic as it might seem, but it's done so well. I think the idea of light and dark is something to really, really track. Of course, this darkness inside of you. You have to like touch it, to know it to reject it is, I think, going to be key for Galadriel's story. Not, I think, I know. I mean. Yeah, I feel sensitive. elemental. That question that she voices to her brother, but sometimes the lights shine just as

brightly reflected in the water as they do in the sky. It's hard to say which way is up and which way it's down. That feels so central too because, you know, and we chatted about this with the wonderful brilliant Brian Cogman on our preview pod, our top Lord of the Rings moments pod, this idea that on the one hand, the good versus evil, dark versus light is, is this quintessential aspect of Tolkien lore, but also that we should never make the mistake of oversimplifying the morality inside of the world and the darkness that can in fact,

and often is, in fact, encroaching, creeping, that shadow that can blight the leaf or the fire that can fall out of the sky. And to hear Galadriel put voice to that idea, Well, what if you can't tell? That, I think, is important not only to hear as an idea right in the opening moments of the show, but to hear from her in particular. I thought that was a really effective starting point.

Especially, like, when you think about my favorite part of the Kate Blanchet, Galadriel Prologue and Fellowship of the Ring is when she goes, but they were all of them deceived. Right? So we're thinking about seduction and deception and, like, what, what is, sour on offering that might look like the light that might actually be the dark, you know? And in terms of Galadryl's relationship with that, I think, is important to go to this next part. We get a, we get a prolog.

We get a lot of rapid images. But one that was in the trailers that a lot of people found very striking was we see Finrod and a bunch of other elven soldiers bring their swords out and look like they're swearing something. I just want to take a brief lore detour to talk about Feanor. Feanor is not a character that the show has decided to lean too heavily on him, though Calibranda will talk about him later. But he's super important for this era in that he was an Elven King created the Simmerrilles, which are these three beautiful jewels that took the light of those two trees of Valenor. And Moore Goth, who was essentially Sauron's boss, was so covetous of these Simmerills that he destroyed the tree.

of Alinar, so the darkness that takes the trees that we see in the prologue, that happens, steals the cimerales. Feanor who created them so pissed, right? Because, like, people coveting jewelry. It's classic. It goes and comes and goes in Tolkien's world. He's so pissed that he has his sons swear an oath. Now, Finrod being there is a diversion from the text, but we could just put that aside

for a second. Swear the oath of Feanor. And this is the thing that gets them kicked out of paradise, essentially. he's like, we got to get these stones back no matter what. I don't care who we kill, dwarves, men, other elves, and that was the chief sin, was the kin slaying elves on elf. Crime, it has only happened three times in history. It was all about the simerals.

This was bad news. But the reason I just want to bring up Fanor here, even though the show decided to like, opt-skip over, which is fine, is that of all the people, Galadro was the most able to see. see-through Feanor's bullshit. And she was like, I'm not, I'm not with you. You know, I'm not, I'm not fighting with you. I will not swear this oath to you. I am not with you. And so she like migrated with him essentially. The reason in the books, the reason that Galadriel left Valanor from Middle Earth was because, and there's this great quote, she says, the only woman to stand tall

that day and valiant among the contending princes on the ship to Middle Earth was a Galadriel, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there at a realm at her own will. So it's like ambition is part of why, and curiosity is part of why Galadriel leaves Valinora Paradise. And I think that's really important because I think that idea of her ambition, again, if you think it's always going to be key to come back to that moment in the Peter Jackson films when, you know, Cape Lanchin goes photo negative and talks about being a queen, you know, like, that's

in Galadryl, is that like desire to rule is sort of in her. So I think that that's, that's really important. Something that Cogman told us to be on the lookout for, which I thought was interesting, was this idea of environmentalism. Like, what do you think about when you think about environmentalism and Tolkien? Oh, spending page upon page with our beautiful ent pals. But, you know, I think whether it's, it's from the books or from the films,

you know, one of the opening notes of our, of our fellowship, the movie experience is Bilbo helping us acclimate to life in the shire and to what it means to be a hobbit and to hear about the peace and comfort

and that good-tilled earth, the plenty, you know, even the trouble makers, the mischief makers like Marion Pip, how are they making their mischief? Sure, sometimes it's setting off fireworks, but often it's stealing vegetables. They just want those carrots from farmer maggots crop. It's hard for me to save farmer maggot. Always a tough name, but particularly tough after our time with the maggots in House of the Dragon. And I think even more broadly beyond the Lord of the Rings canon, environmentalism is often centralism. to fantasy or science fiction storytelling pursuits.

And obviously we've already talked about this today and we'll repeatedly return to the idea that Tolkien, you know, rejected the idea that his books were overly allegorical for current events of the time. And yet I think that the environmental care and pursuit and the question of corruption and blight and the nature of a seeping shadow

that destroys the very heart of the thing that would give you light in life is a core proposition and interest of his and something that then becomes archetypal across the genre. So I'm always fascinated to track that, you know, on a rereader or rewatch

and I think that that was very, very present in these opening episodes. I think the idea, again, Tolkien is like, I'm not doing a World War I allegory, but when you think about the ways in which the trench warfare across Europe just decimated these beautiful countryside is something that's on his mind. And then also, this is something I only learned about recently, but like, so Tolkien grew up in Warwickshire and he lived in like this idyllic countryside area, Warwickshire. And then he moved to Birmingham. in Birmingham was like the height of industry. So like the steelworks and the blast furnaces and all that sort of stuff.

So he named Mordor, black land is what Mordor is in the language of Sondaran. And the county where he grew up, that area was called the black country because of all the smog and pollution. So essentially he's like, he went from the farmlands to the smog choked like city industry city and was like, yep, this is hell on earth. immortalize it in my book. Mordor is, you know, is where the industry is. So environmentalism, just the love of the land and the connection to the land.

And we will see that, as you say, that seeping rot and decay is such a heavy theme of these first couple episodes here. I'm just going to blow through sort of the rest of this prologue we get here. We see like Finrod is fighting in the battle of a sudden flame. And then we get Finrod's death. And he's got a cool detail I thought was that, I mean, rest in peace to the Silver Lake Fade Prince, but he got, he has these massive tears on his flesh as he's laying out on the table there. And in the books, he dies fighting a wear. He kills a werewolf with his bare hands because Sauron is tormenting him and his fellow men.

But he dies in the dungeons in the dark. But he went out fighting. And here we get, I think our first spot of. of this sigil that we're going to see again and again and again. Burned into his flesh. That's aren't as branded him with. Tell me, do you want to tell me your sigil thoughts and feelings, Valerie Rubin? I mean, I'm expecting some big things from you across the season on the theory corner front here with this sigil, but I loved the way that this manifested repeatedly across the episode in a way that, and I mean this actually as a compliment, not as a slight, was not

not subtle. Like this is something that is marring the flesh of a loved one. We see it on the stone slab at the final fractured moments of this grand pursuit. It is, for Galadryl, a sign, a vindication that she is right, that she is on the right path, that just as that was a map to lead others, it should be a map to lead her and her fellows. And when we see it recur on the hilt of the broken blade that Theo finds in the Southlands, for example,

and we get these glimpses in from Galadriel to Theo in the character's minds of the wreathed flames of fire around this image, this is just the good shit right here. This is something that we love. When you are watching the trilogy and we spend a moment with a palanthier, what we expect but are still thrilled and shocked every time we see the eye of Sauron. And for this sigil to become this show's version of that is really cool and fun.

And even just inside of this opening prologue, because again we move across so much time so quickly, you take the boat moment, the little ship, sailing the ship, and the way that young Galadriel is presented to us, established right away as an outsider, even among her kin, even among her fellows, somebody who is hell-bent on maintaining the perspective that she believes to be true. And there's a curiosity that is fueling that,

but also a stubbornness. And then as we are scaling that ice, mountain. It was like being back with Tormond and Eret and John and Arell again scaling the wall. The climb. The climb is all there is. To see

how corrosive that insistence could become was also like an important note to establish in the first basically 10 minutes of this story. That sigil can be your constellation, your star,

though maybe we shouldn't use those terms because stars and constellations are going to become key points to track in other aspects of the story. They can also lead you perhaps astray. And that's something I'm looking forward to discussing over the course of this season two. When is that purpose and that mission, this pure and holy and sacred thing that you and only you can see the wisdom of? And when does that scale and balanced tip and shift into a version of the hubris that can lead so many other characters astray when they are unwilling to relent. And a lot of that, I think, is going to pop up every time that sigil surfaces anew. What about you? What are your sigil thoughts? Have you gotten a tattoo yet?

I was born with a birth mark, actually. So mark from birth. Here's the thing I love about that sigil. I'm going to introduce a little theory corner here because I don't think it has anything to do with book lore. It's maplore. Immediately. your first thought when you see that sigil, especially when we see it flaming in certain situations, is the eye of Sauron, right? Yeah. And it looks, it looks eye-esque. I-ish. Yeah. It's like the thicker two prongs and then a central, skinnier prong that could look like at the slit of an eye. But I have seen invested fans overlay that sigil over the map of Mordor. And if you turn it on its side, it looks like the mountain range that ringed.

you know, the western part of Mordor, and then the middle part is lays over Mount Doom. And so this idea that it's not an eye, but rather a map, blows my mind. I guess we're really excited. I don't know if it's true, but I love that idea. I love it. Saron, big cartography guy. Big map guy. Big map energy off of Saran.

So you mentioned the Farwood Way. There's not much. I think you encapsulate of all the themes. It happens there beautifully. There's not much else I want to say. That was kind of my least favorite thing that happened in these episodes. Actually, it looked a little video gamey to me, some of the stuff. And so when I was first watching it, I was a little like, oh, no.

And then we moved on and I was like, okay, it's not all looking like that. So anything else you want to say about the Faradwyth and the mutiny of Colladryl's people? Bondier, tough hang. It's not the kind of guy I want on my team. Now, yeah, you need a count. ability. You need an open exchange of ideas and a team meeting. That's important. But tough energy from him really questioning Galadriel at every step. Yeah, a real underminer. Yeah. Pour one out for that wonderful snow troll who was just minding,

mining his business going about life. Didn't want to be disturbed. What? Okay. Blade to the brain. And for what? We should say that that that that, that and many others that we will meet. First of all, my friend and yours, Paula Fairfield, who I've mentioned a couple times on Our House of the Dragon, is also doing the critter noises for this show. So Paula is booked and busy doing all of these noises. I have not gotten her Ice Troll backstory.

I'm afraid to tell you. But the troll was designed by John Howe, who is maybe the most famed Tolkien conceptual artist illustrator, and he worked on all the Jackson film. So a lot of the designs, of the creatures and stuff like that come from the same person behind the Jackson films. And this is why through costume, through character like critter design, they're trying to make something that looks new yet familiar to those of us who are fans of

the Jackson films. I love it. All right. Let's go to Lyndon. And Mallory and I, this is where I want to retire. Maybe because we know Rob Arameo from Game of Thrones who played young Ned Stark on Game of Thrones. or maybe just because Elron is a guy after our own heart, meaning stuck up a tree reading,

like working on some stuff and not wanting to be bothered. We are immediately in love with the elf lord Elron. I know Mallory texted me about this last night, so I know this to be true. Big, big Elron fans at the House of R. What did you think of this intro, Mallory? Boy, Harold Elron. I'm smitten.

I believe I texted you. I would like Elron to read me a bedtime story. perfectly normal thing for a 35-year-old adult. Absolutely fine. To be craving. This is an amazing performance. This is sensational. And as you said, already a big fan, you know, Tower Joy,

seminal throne stretch, very important part of my life as a fan and yours is a fan. I am so interested in learning more about Elrond and Galadriel both at this earlier point in the timeline because we know so much about them and about the choices that they make and about the realities of their lives in the trilogy. What shaped that? How did they get there? And right away, there are so many interesting dynamics at play for each of them individually, but also very compellingly with each other. And this tenderness, first of all, the hanging in the tree, just perseverating over the perfect, word choice in the speech that he's going to give to the high king for the ceremony and then stand

there and mouth every word to as it is recited. iconic. Elron, do you have a standing invite to come on House of Arr, whatever you would like? You're clearly ready to prep for and record a podcast. This is a like Sam Seabor and West Wing Energy. I loved it. And I just loved the little saltiness when he's initially like, yes, it's almost as if I didn't wish to be found.

With a tiny, with a tiny clench of his, like, perfect jaw. Yeah. Remarkable. But we do learn a key thing in that moment, which is that he is not invited to this council. Elf, lords only. Elron, tough shit. You can't join.

And that sense of inferiority and resentment that he is carrying, that's also going to be a key thing for us to keep in mind with the character. And so this is of a piece. with the entire premiere, we learn these crucial things right away in this very elegant, organic fashion about the current state of affairs for these characters' lives.

And one of those with Elrond is the relationship that he has with Galadriel. He is so animated, instantly animated and overjoyed when he hears that she is there. The way that he closed his eyes and just nestled his head into her hand when she was cupping his cheek

was the sweetest thing. I have ever seen. It was absolutely precious. And Lyndon, more broadly, I just thought was stunning. Again, the whole show looks incredible. I mean, it is just, it is visually astounding. Lyndon. We mentioned, yeah, we mentioned like Casa Dunn is a location we're familiar with,

but Lyndon very significantly is, you know, beautiful elf kingdom at the height of its power. We have never seen this on screen before. So this is like a really exciting thing to see. This golden splendor. It's beautiful. Yeah. I want to, the Elf Lord thing is really interesting because I think a lot of people don't know that Elron is like half Elvin, only part Elvin.

And there's this really interesting backstory. And that should help you think, you know, a little bit more about his conversations with Arwen in the Lord of the Rings or the Jackson trilogy, specifically. This idea, if you are half elvin, you basically get to choose. Do I want to live a mortal life, as Arwen says, among the men. I choose a mortal life. Or do you want to be counted as elven any mortal? And like a fun fact about Elron is that he has a twin brother, Elros, well, creative twin names there, who chooses to live among the men and founded the kingdom of Numenor,

which we will talk about later. But like, so Elron makes the choice to make his life among the elves. He chose the elves, and they are rejecting him. Because I believe that elf lords only is not you half elven. I don't think that he's not rich or noble enough. I think it's that his blood is not pure enough. And that fees into some of the ambition that we see here. Galadro, when she sees him, after who knows how long, right, says, could be centuries,

says, calls him a politician. With disdain. Look at it. Look at what you've become. He's trying to sell her on something, which is, you know, King Gilgalad is giving you this tremendous gift. Put up your sword. Go back to paradise.

Enjoy yourself. You're done. She's not into that at all. But the question that you and I have, and we maybe slightly disagree on this, is how much is Elrond working her on behalf of the king here? and how much is this genuine advice that he believes in? Because, you know, they meet a couple times in this Lyndon storyline. Where are you standing right now with that, Mallory?

Okay. So, first of all, let me just say that the put up your sword line, which we had seen prominently featured in the trailer, sometimes you hear a line in the trailer and then it doesn't land in the actual thing. Not so. Lovely. Wonderful. Lovely.

This is after Galadriel has very reluctantly accepted this reward setting off, Elrond says she's moved beyond his sight, and he voices to Gilgallad that she was so certain, so certain of her pursuit, so certain she was right. And Gilgallat says, we foresaw that if it had, if her quest had succeeded, she might have inadvertently kept alive the very evil she saw,

she sought to defeat. For the same wind that seeks to blow out of fire may also cause its spread. Another incredible line. So good. To which Elron replies, Then the shadow she sought, you believe it does exist. Set your mind at peace about it. Gilgalad replies, what you did was right for Galadriel and for Middle Earth,

to which Alron gives us the Amen. Master Amens, the love is the death of duty-esque. It's hard to see what is right when friendship and duty are mingled. So I think very, very ready to be wrong. But my read on this because of the, then the shadow she saw it, you believe it does exist question, is that he did not know the full truth of the High King's sense of affairs and his supposition of the moment,

his belief his certainty, his level of certainty. I think it is true or fair to deduce that he was still acting on the High King's orders to get her out of town. Yeah, Gilgela, that's like, get her out of here. Get her on the boat. I don't care what you do. Get her on the boat. Yes. But I just think that if he had known that they also thought Sauron was, in fact, out there active,

rebuilding his strength that Elron would have said, let me help you because he makes that promise to her. That if any word of the enemy reaches him, he will act on her behalf. And that would be a level of deception that I'm not prepared to accept from our guy Elrod quite yet. What do you think? Am I too charitable of spirit? No, I think you're right. I just still think there's somewhat of a betrayal kicked in there, right? It's sort of, you know, because right after he says when friendship and duty are intermingled,

Gilgolad says, such is the burden of those who lead and those who would seek to. So it's sort of like Gilgola, the implication is Gilgolad's like, hey, man, if you want a promotion, Exactly. You want to come to the Elkhorn meeting. Yeah, let me tell you about your new promotion. Here are your action items. Get Galadryl on the boat, okay? Before all of that happens, I think one of the most fascinating exchanges between the two of them is him saying,

the war is over. It's done. Gil Galad has said so. It's done. And Morphid Clark, by the way, is Galadryl is just freaking incredible. So, so good. And she says, like, how can it be gone if I still feel it in me with, like, anger and tears in her voice? And it's like a fear of, like, the evil still has to be out there.

If it's not, then it's just in me. And that's intolerable to me. That means I'm forever tainted by loss and war and all this. And in that, she says to him, this has also been in the trailer, right? She says, like, when you've seen what I've seen, he said, I've seen plenty. And she said, you have not seen what I have seen. That is a reminder to Elron that she is much older than he is. Seems like a tiny half-elven dig there, teeny tiny.

But I love all of this in her because, you know, as established by their greeting, they are fond, fond friends. They are dear to each other. Should they be romantically involved? Book readers are screaming at me, no. but listen, Caliborne is pretty boring, Galadriel's husband, so I'm just saying. But I think this is just such a great indicator that, like, why is this darkness still in me? And that's a great indicator of what's where we're going with Galadryal, a character who's always marked by darkness and temptation, culminating in her rejection of the ring of power in fellowship. But her being uncertain even in that moment, whether or not she will be able to reject the ring when Fredo offers.

refers it to her. Exactly. Yeah. I loved this too. Part of why. And this is one of the really fun ways that our sense of certain key moments, certain key reveals can be enhanced as we learn more about the history for these characters. When we hear, I pass the test. Or when we read, I pass the test, I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel to know that this was a doubt and a terror that plagued her. And in that exchange, you know, Elrond is talking about, and we hear this idea of this song, this song. And for him, it's intoxicating. It's this intoxicating vision of a future life.

And for her, it's a memory. It is an actual frame of reference and point of context for the thing that was lost. And that she has to try to work to protect and ensure. And I loved the where song would mock the cries of battle in my ears line. You say I have won victory over all the horrors. of Middle Earth, yet you would leave them alive in me. That was just, that was really a sad, sad thing. And this is a character who she has all this history with.

In many ways, despite the divide between her and many other members of the elves, a shared purpose, shared goals, play that against her meeting a guy like Halpert for the first time ever. And that incredible moment where she said, says to him, it would take longer than your lifetime even to speak the names of those they've taken from me. Like, this is a life defined by greatness and achievement, but also unimaginable. Like, unimaginable loss and pain and suffering. And for that to be the one consistent thing in your life, the one thing that you carry with you, that pain and that morning and the fear of what

it will do to you because you've seen what it has done to others, what a terrible burden to feel like you have to carry alone. And what Elron says to her in that moment, if she says, you know, if I put up my sword, what am I? And he says, we've always been my friend. It sounds facile. But the idea of friendship is so, so important to Lord of the Rings, this idea of a fellowship, this idea of how we come together, you know, again, if you think back to Tolkien as someone

who fought and survived in World War I, this idea of like, what? what it means to be allies, what it means for different countries to come together and form common cause against an enemy, and what those friendships formed in war, whether it's Legolas and Gimley or, you know, whatever else. Sam and Frodo is one of my favorites because it's not really outlined exactly this way in the Jackson films. So the idea is that, like, Frodo is like a hobbit lord, essentially, you know, he's a rich kid. And Sam is the son of his gardener. And there's no way these two would have been friends were not for the great equalizer of war. And that was true of World War I where, you know, the rich kids were in the trenches with their gardeners and came back pals in a way that cut through class divides in England that would not otherwise be able to transcend. So that's this idea of friendship across cultures, across ideologies, across all of this is such an important key part of. Tolkien and Lord of the Rings.

Just a few more things before we move out of Linda. Number one, we meet Calibran Bor. We'll talk about it more in a bit, so we can hold off on that. El Ron Calibran Borne, Caliborne, Gilgallad, see a red meteor that goes across the sky. That cuts across all of our storylines, so that's a big deal. And then Galadriel gets on the boat. can't give up, does not want to give up her brother's dagger, does not want to go back to Valanor.

Let me just really quickly in case people are confused, because I was confused for a long time about like the distinction of like what is what is Valanor, etc. Valanor like this is a place that the elves get to go where they get to live near the gods of this world. Very, very few non-elves get to go there like Frodo got to go there. like Frodo got to go there because he's a ring bear, right? Valinor is not the same as the Great heavens. Grey Havens are basically the port on the way to Valinor.

So where you set sail from the Grey Heavens to Valenor, and then the undying lands, you might have heard of those in Tolkien. That's the larger area that Valenor is like a place inside the undying land. So that's the taxonomy of the Elven afterlife. So she was born there. She was kicked out of there because of all of that bullshit that Feanor was doing. Basically, the kinslaying is what got them banned from there. In the books, they get unbanded and she's like, uh-uh.

No, fuck you in your band. I'm not going back. Here it's more duty pulls her. The words of her brother echoing in her ear. I have to touch the darkness before I can recognize it for exactly it is. pulls her back, and then a blighted leaf lands in London and Gilglad picks it up to bring us back to our environmentalism. What do you want to say about Galadriel's jump here and everything that happens? Remarkable stamina.

Just swimming into the next day and into episode two. Excellent form, excellent form. Like Olympic caliber form. on the stroke there, really something. This sequence was absolutely mesmerizing. And again, it's not necessarily subtle when you see the visuals matching the language so closely, this curtain that is opening and parting to welcome them to this great honor, these chosen few,

as it is closing, the light is leaving too. And so you get this light dark, the reflection on the water, looking up, looking down all of the aspects of the exchange between Galadriel and Finrod, which we're cutting back too. But it still really worked for me.

And when we hear that, sometimes we cannot know until we have touched the darkness and she makes her choice and she dives into those depths into that dark for her journey. And you look back up and you see, see this wall shutting, this moment of brief possibility closing. And of course, we know where we will find her when we're journeying with Frodo and Sam and Aragorn, etc. But there was still something shocking, even though it was inevitable, about seeing her make that choice because we know that

the consequences are so extreme and will play out over such a long stretch of time, a long stretch of even her life, even an elven life. And to see the the seeping of the orange into this wall of mist and cloud, the birds, that song, gone, this golden light and promise of this heavenly tomorrow, gone. And what do you have? You have a slit in the middle wreathed in orange. And it almost looks like Sauron's eye. And it's this visual rendering of the darkness that she has chosen.

to move toward. And I just thought that was, that was so cool. And again, as you noted, like cutting between that and the meteor, this incredible mystery in these two episodes. It's really kind of like delicious

to speculate about and parse. What an incredible opening episode. I thought that the first episode, I loved both of them, and I've loved the second one. Really, I've found my love for growing over repeat viewings. I thought the first episode was just surreal. of how good it was.

This is a perfect end note. Love it. As you may have noted, we are not going exactly chronologically. We're going sort of like storyline chunk by storyline chunk. So let's now do Bronwyn and Arondir in the Southlands. This is a big departure from that familiarity of Elrond and Galadriel, two characters we know really well, to Arondir and Bronwyn, two characters entirely made up for the show and the settings of Tier Harad, which is where Bronwyn lives, the Tower of Austerith,

and the other town that they go to Horder. These are all made up place, not made up, but like, yeah, made up places. It's all made up, as George R. Martin recently said in an interview. Made up, made up places on the map. But to orient us, we should say that where this is on the map, the Southlands, is essentially where Mordor is. Whether or not like TIR Harad is literally where Mordor

will be or just south of it, like it's, it might as well be. And I saw one fan call it before door and it made me really laugh. That's amazing. Essentially that's where we are. Proto Mordor before door. What do you want to say?

What do you want to say about Bronwyn and R. Endear? I'm excited to talk about Theo and his asshole friend, the piece of shit from the bar who was trash-talking Arandier in a few minutes. But I

really liked these scenes for a couple different reasons. There's a quietness to them even though they house some of the bigger action moments with the emergence of the orc from under the floorboards and Arunda's crawling through the tunnels

to discover what awaits, etc. but there is such a charge you've mentioned many times this the anti-elfth sentiment in certain corners of the realm or the anti-half elf sentiment inside of a place like linden and we'll talk shortly about the dynamic between the elves and the dwarves and we feel here among the elves this really deeply entrenched. prejudice against the realms of men and this belief, this certainty for certain characters that this is fixed, permanent, not a thing that can change. And so you have this, well, they or won't they, courtship and attraction between Bronwyn and Or Undier, but then you hear a conversation between him and his watch warden where they're talking about how much the Southlands have changed. She's been there 70. years we learn.

And what does the watchwarden say in response to it has changed much, watchwarden? But the men who live here have not. The blood of those who stood with Morgoth still darkens their veins. And then he says a few moments later, for 79 years you have kept watch over the men and women, not because of what their ancestors once did, but because of who they still are. And I thought that this was one of the more insidious aspects of the story. story that so many different groups feel this way about whoever is standing across from them. And one of the things that we latch on to and cherish so deeply about Tolkien's stories is that

unlikely fellowship that you were talking about so beautifully a few moments ago that can emerge when you never, not only where you never thought it could or would, but precisely because you never thought it could could there. And we are in the state of, before that happens. We are in a stage of hatred and deeply rooted mistrust and to see how these characters will be able to overcome that

and find common cause and belief in each other and when they will be right and when they will be proven wrong in a trust that they try to build and then how that will lead to this kind of exponential quality. Okay, well,

I had decided to trust one person. I was betrayed. I was misled. I placed my trust falsely. Now I can't give that to anyone else. And that that's like a really tragic thing. So I love that aspect of the storyline because it's, it's, it's something that is stretching its way across most aspects of the story other than our beloved Harfoots who

are just pure and joyful and want to eat blackberries. And snails. I just think it's, I think it's an interesting other side of the coin of like, I've lived so long that I can remember things that generations of you have forgotten, is this like, and then my idea of you is not going to move. Because I, you know, generationally, you know, there's this exchange where he says, where, you know, what are you people going to let the pass go, says one of the Tehrer audience. And then Arrondere says the pass is with us all.

So this idea of like, he strikes us as wise and compassionate, but there is just something there that it's like. and he's obviously willing, you know, in his affection for Bronwyn, is obviously willing to see good in men in a way that maybe some of his elven compatriots aren't. I love, if you go back to that Galadriel prologue from Fellowship of the Ring, what I love is that Galadriel cult, she's like, the elves, immortal, wises, and fairest of all beings. And what does she say about men, the race of men, who above all else desire power? And like, whether or not that's true is she's just like,

The dwarves are great craftsmen, the elves fucking rule. The men just want power. Like, what the hell? And so, yeah, we get this resentful, grubby, trying to rebuild after the war embittered people under, you know, elf racists under the pointy boots. Knifeeers is another elf slur we hear. I want to talk about something that I love is that Bronwyn's sort of like, she feels like. Our own dear's love language is seeds. And she's right.

And it's very sweet. And it goes back again to that environmentalism theme, that love of the land. Like, here's a beautiful gift. It's a seed from your home. Like, I had to trade some things for it. And we learn in his conversation with the warden that before the war, he was a grower. And so this would be a precious thing. And even though he is a character defined now by this new reality, he has, we can glean.

a real tenderness in his heart and a real, places real value in what our beloved hobbits would value, what our Harfoots value, that good tilled earth and the ability to see something spring to life and grow in front of you in bloom and blossom. And, you know, even, even Theo's jerk of a friend, the asshole in the bar who says knife ears and is talking about, you know, when are you going to let the pass go? One of the things he says, is one day, our true king will return and pry us right out from under your pointy boot. And so there's this looking into the future and this sense of waiting for some savior to come, which was another, not a surprise to see that in a storyline about the realms of men,

certainly, that they are awaiting the return of their king. Well, I think also that echo, the return of the king. the return to the king echo there. And then also, I've heard some people say, like, when they found out that there was a, you know, a forbidden-ish romance, I wouldn't even call this a romance. This is like a yearning between Bronwyn and Arndere here, right? That they're just doing Aragorn and Arwen again. And I'm like, sure, on the one hand.

But on the other hand, Tolkien himself was very, very invested in this sort of, like, human elf romance. He thought it was, like, a very interesting theme. Barron and Luthian is like, Arondere, when he's talking not to his watchwarden, but to his like watch buddy is like they're talking about the doomed loves of Elf and men and how there's only ever been to an existence, blah, blah, ended tragically. Baron and Luthian, I just want to say because it hurts my heart every time I think about it. Tolkien and his wife have a shared gravestone in where they're buried. And the names like Baron and Luthian are under their names. And it's sort of like, he was like, here's this great beautiful romance and this is my romance with my wife. So beautiful.

Honestly, it makes me really emotional to think about that. Incredibly sweet. Let's talk about Theo. Yeah. I don't want to start a big campaign against this kid because I learned my lesson with Allie on Game of Thrones. I don't like bless this kid actor. It's not about him. I'm not really loving this kid as a person to root for so far.

It's pretty angry and shitty, and I am hopeful that that changes soon. We are, though, in deep archetype territory. He's got a father. He doesn't know where his father is. He's found a magical blade. What do you want to say about this magical blade, Mallory? So there are a few things. He takes the kid from the bar.

who has another Instagram ready haircut, I should say, the racist, Delph racist kid from the bar. And it's fascinating because presumably if you're taking somebody with you to view your treasure yield that you have unearthed beneath the wonky floorboards in this barn, the King's bounty,

this is the real bounty. This would be a real pal on someone who you trusted and cherished. And this guy's just like being a dick to him the entire time, about how he doesn't know what happened to his father or where his father went, then what happened to him? You don't even know, do you?

Real checkoffs missing dad stuff here? It feels like a lock. We're going to talk about that in another ring, I promise. Yeah, it feels like a lock that that is going to become important at some point. And so when Theo first takes out this blade and it is, you know, we can glean. We don't know. whose barn this is? We hear like a salty rascal and he.

Which character was keeping this? Is it secret? Is it safe? We don't know. We will presumably find out. I will say like when I was watching the first time and not paying enough attention, I thought it was like his dad's sword that was on the floorboards. But no, this is like someone else's barn that they are sneaking into.

And Mallory and I have poured over these screeners that do not have captions on them, I should say. And they do not say whose bar that is. So they call them a salty rascal though. So salty rascal, though. So salty rascal is what we're going with. But presumably, it's a member of the village and the company that they then set out with at the end of episode two. They are all leaving, finally heating Bronwyn's warning after she places the severed orc head on the table of the bar. Great flex from her there. So excited to learn.

who that is and see what happens there. But when Theo opens this, this was so compelling for a few different reasons right away. One, as we already noted, this sigil that Galadriel has seen on her brother's flesh on the slab, that she is obsessing over

and chasing and pursuing is on this blade, this fractured blade. We get that mental flash to the fire, the glowing version of this sign of this mark. There's a cut right away. The other kid slices it up.

Careful. Later, in a separate sequence when Theo is looking at it, a bit of a instant, my precious kind of relationship to the blade, just staring into it. As he has previously just been staring into the flames of the fire in their keep, he has a cut on his arm, and the blade pulls like a magnet, this drop of blood from his wound into itself,

and then the flame takes shape and it begins to grow. So there's a quality of this blade being alive, being imbued with some sort of thirsting for blood, magic and power and evil, thirsting for blood. Totally cool. It had a real corollary to the way that, the ring, the one ring, ensnars people in its grasp. And so I am eager to learn more about that.

And it doesn't seem like it's going to go well for anybody near that thing. It's just going to say that we should safely assume that that is evil. What do you think, Joe? Yeah, that's got to be an evil sword. I think also what I love is that it's like, I mean, it's a sword that seems like it's going to grow the more blood. It gets great stuff. But also it recalls when we see a broken sword, we think of the narcel blade, right? Renewed shall be the blade that was broken.

The crownless again shall be king. Like, so we're looking at a broken sword, a missing king, a missing dad, what's going on? Yeah. So basically these are all, these people are all like, they voted. for Trump and they're like, we're never voting for Trump again. Everyone's like, thank you might. I also, I also found myself thinking of the way that people's life, like a life force can become bound to an object, tied to an object, like bringing a person's blood into the blade. And who knows if that's how it's working here. But that would certainly

be a parallel with other aspects of the story and something that we could expect. And there are even other parts of these first two episodes like the tie between the fireflies and the stranger where we are reminded of the way that you can establish quickly this magical life force tie. So perhaps something like that is a foot here. And also then if we remember back to in the opening prologue, the ascent up into that great evil fortress, that former lair, when they find that orc kind of melted into the stone and there was that exchange about these orcs are meddling with the powers of the unseen world, some dark sorcery of old, but what was their purpose?

Lander says, surely it is lost to the ages now. But when you see a blade like that, it's a reminder that none of this evil rests for long. Nothing is lost to the ages for long. It's out there just waiting to be discovered. One of the things that we always like to mention is like that idea that the ring wants to be found. And the evil lying in wait, it's lying in wait for discovery.

I think that's all I want to say about that section. Other than just to say, I think, and we saw this from like trailers and photos, but I think the orc design is fantastic. The orcs are terrifying, gross tongues and everything. It's just the nails. Everything coming off of The Hobbit where I was very dismayed by the CG rendering of the orcs. I am delighted to see, you know, guys in suits. I love to see guys and suits and makeup.

prosthetics. So that's where we are. What do you think of Theo hiding in the little, the little puppy hole and then his mom to see him and he's like, go get help. I'm going to stay in here and then closes the door. Admittedly, yes, I concede that he then emerges to help with the fight, but that was so funny. I really need more from my guy, Theo. I need, I need, I need to care. All right, let's talk about Elrond. In episode two, Elrond goes to Eregion and Kazadun, right? Oregian is the land of the Elven Smith. And part of his promotion for getting his longtime dear friend Galadriel on a boat to somewhere she doesn't want to go,

he gets to work for Calibrimbor, the famed Elvin Smith, Calibrimbor. And Calibranbor, also real precious energy coming off of this guy right away, who's like, Bay andor made the Simmerals, what have I ever done that's going to measure up? I got, you know, so when we're talking about vulnerabilities, we've talked about Elron's ambition and Galadryl's ambition and, you know, those like Elfracist men have their vulnerabilities for sure. Calabrimor's wearing his right on his sleeve. He's like, what work has mine ever accomplished? You know, like, he's just, he wants, he wants the glory.

However he can get it is the vibe immediately coming off of Kellebram Bore. Yeah, I loved, you chatted about Féanor earlier. I loved that we got to see this hammer and hear them talk about what that crafted in the Silmarils, Morgoth, and get that lore download there. That was amazing. But with with Kellebrambor, I mean, we have this, this duality of, intention ever present in everything he says in a way that I thought was really gripping for the character right away. Like when they're heading to Casa Doom, Elrond saying, I didn't,

I didn't know that you were, you were so into the dwarves. You were so eager to meet them and learn about them. And he says, I admire all who can see into the mystery of things, who can divine from the plainness of what is the beauty of what could be. Amazing. Previously he had said to Elron, I want to fill them with beauty. Lovely, great. I'm there for it. I'm hanging with this guy. I'm a big fan of his platform so far.

But we're always only half a sentence away from him saying to grow beyond petty works of jewelcraft and defy something of real power or true creation requires sacrifice. And our red flags go up, our alarm bells go off because so much beauty. so much pain. That's what Calibrate for. Yeah, and let us take that idea and then seek to build a tower that will house a forge that will allow us to create things hitherto

unimaginable and impossible. Well, I like the hustle. I like the ambition. Yeah, I got to admire a guy with goals. He's got action items. Oh, my God. I'm eager to say. spend more time with him. Very intriguing first couple episodes.

To pull all this off. They're going to need some help. And Elron's like, I got a great idea. And here's what I love. They go over to Kazadune. This is an entrance that we are familiar with. I believe, please, if you're listening to this, hobbits and dragons and gmail.com, I've poured over maps of Moria. I believe this is the same entrance that, again, often the fellowship enter through. But if I am wrong, I think this is the Westgate. And I think there's only one Westgate. But if I'm wrong. Please let me know. I love that Kilbramore's like, what's that?

What's going on in there? Can I see? The door's so cool. And Elron's like, go away, dude. You have your art. This is mine diplomacy. Let me do my craft. An alliance of the dwarfs would be the diplomatic feat of the age,

Calabram Borough says. And Elron makes his way in and just works the angles. No salted pork or ramshorns like he was. expecting though. Did you enjoy him saying his friend Elrond? So we got to speak friend. Speak friend and enter moment.

Yeah. I did. I loved it. Mal. Yeah. I loved that. And he's like fondling the gate the way that Gandalf does the same. But like he goes in.

He's like, I invoke the right of SIGIN Turok. Who knows how that's spelled? I don't. We didn't have captions. So I'll never know. But they go into this rock breaking contest, which is very like, like a Lawson Gimley contest-esque, you know. My question for you, Mallory, is do you feel like Prince Duren?

Amazing entrance from Prince Duren, by the way. Do you believe that that Prince Duren won that contest or do you believe Elrond threw it to make Duren feel good about himself? Oh. First of all, let me say two things. One, I, I love podcasts. with you. I love the things that occur to you. And the, you know, I could try to use my best Dario,

Naharis one voice, a suspicious mind. It's often founded when we're assessing these decks. I also feel compelled to say, before we break down the character motives here, that I have some questions about the rules. Who is picking the various boulders? be weighing them for each round to ensure that they are exactly equal in mass and density. I don't know exactly how rock formations work, but I don't know.

It didn't look like they were always dealing with exactly the same thing there. I also just, like you said, the entrance was amazing. The chanting. I'm pretty sure they're chanting Casa Dune, right? Aren't they just? Doom. Dude. It was tremendous.

I absolutely loved it. The Dwarv and test of endurance. And the way that Dern is saying, the elf, even about someone who, as we learned, is like a former dear friend. I think, I've been chewing on this. I've been noodling on this. Elrond looked to me genuinely fatigued by the end. It looked like he was working harder than Dern was working to smash his rocks. However, I love the read that, and again, another question, he breaks the hammer and then gets another one. It's like, didn't he already lose at that point? But then he forfeits by putting it down. I need like the full playbook in the rule book for the Dwarven test of endurance. Let's get, let's get Jady and Patrick on the podcast and ask him about the rules of the singing tarak. Please, thank you. I think that because he then immediately says, hey, will you escort me out? And he, the thing that he is seeking,

which is one-on-one-time, an audience, so that he can try to then work his way into the next stage. And there are these layers and layers of the conversation. First, I will get inside the mind. And it was just incredible, by the way, to see Kazadoum at its heights like this, like brimming and teeming with life, the light reflecting off of the various mirrors, the moss and the grass. I mean, we'll talk about the sapling in their private chambers in a few minutes

because that was incredible for multiple reasons. But this was just a real treat and a real delight. And so Elron knows that he needs to make his way further to delve deeper into Dern's life so that he can achieve his end. And so I think that this is part of because of that set up with Kelleburn and Borr outside. You know, let me do my thing. diplomacy, politics, chatting, tactics. Yeah. I think he wanted Dern to feel like hot shit.

A big guy. Yeah. Like he had the upper hand. Exactly. Because that's a more effective starting point then for the rest of their exchange. So the reason for the Frosstiness between Prince Dern and Elrond

is in a note you put in our dock last night Elrond kind of forgot In the mortal words, David Benioff about his friend for 20 years. 20 years past, what is 20 years to an elf? Blake and I, again, this is another, and this is something we talked about

Brian Cogman, what is this show going to do to really show us? that the difference between elves and men or elves and dwarves or whatever. And so this idea of the long memory of elves, which we've hit with our own deer and with Galadriel, but also like how the passage of time means different things to different people. And so, you know, it's a blink of an eye to an elf 20 years, but you miss the wedding and you miss the kids being born.

And there's a resentment here. To have Elrond say has it been only 20? Yeah. And then immediately, He's just turning on the charm and it's just immediately like, I'm sorry. Congratulations on your wife and your kids. And like I'd like to say, just worming his way deeper and deeper gets to Disa, who I love Duren's wife. And she is like a boo to Elron's cause because she's like, we're having dinner.

Come on. Are you kidding me? Like, let's put this all aside. We're having dinner. I love this family dinner. I love their meat, cute. I love all of this, this real family vibe. And it reminds me of something that our pal Brian Cogman would always say about the Thrones premiere, the pilot of Game of Thrones, which is that it's just a story of one old friend coming to another old friend's house for dinner.

One of them just happens to be the king. King Robert Barathean goes to have dinner with the Stark family. And so here it is. just Elron's going to have dinner with Prince Duren and his wife. And it's just a beautiful way for us to understand the dynamics of these characters and who they are. For us to see Duren not as just this like, you know, wounded Dorff Prince who's mad that his best friend left him for 20 years or whatever. But as the loving father and doting husband, like it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous sequence. I loved this so much.

And in general, the sequences in Casa Dume were among the more like boisterous and lively and energetic of the two episodes. But there were these real somber, emotionally resonant notes. You know, just to go back to that lift ride in that 20 years for a second, I thought that when Duren said, I've lived an entire life in that time, a life you missed. that was just like devastatingly sad. And it's particularly interesting on a rewatch of these two episodes because we'll talk about this in a minute, but we get this exchange between father and son near the very end of episode two.

And we learn that Duren is also withholding and also has an agenda of his own, right? It's not like he is putting everything out there for Elrond to receive. There are secrets everywhere, secret motives and secret ambitions. Because when you're watching the first time, you're like, okay, Elron's saying to him, I'm not here for the king. I'm here on my own accord, which is true. But also he is there to ask something of his friend. And will that be the opportunity that he presents it as?

Sure. But also, he is politicking. That was the boost that he made. You know, let me do my thing when he set in. Let me do my thing. And so there are always these layers of motivation and intention for all of the characters that we as the viewer get to witness and see. And they don't have that full awareness for each other. And I just thought that was an interesting opening note for establishing Durran, for us.

Because, you know, initially we're inclined to say this is like a wounded guy who has a very sweet soul and is genuinely. hurt that his pal forgot about him for two decades, formative, formative years of his life. And that is true, but it is also true that he is keeping a great secret from him. And I think that that kind of entanglement and these various motivations driving the characters are really interesting. And then like everything with the tree and even, you know, the learning about resonating in the mountain. Singing to the rocks. Yeah, beautiful.

I loved that. That was like so great. I haven't seen it, but I know from an interview that the showrunners gave that we will see singing to the rocks. And what I've been told by the showrunners is there's going to be a lot like Tolkien loves his songs and his poems. There's going to be a lot more songs in this. There were only a few.

in the Jackson films, it's like the best part of the Hobbit is the dwarves singing far over the Misty Mountains. But like Aragorn's singing gets cut from the theatrical release of the trilogy, which is just a travesty. So give us

more songs, is what I have to say. I'm here for the songs. And I love that her explanation of this tradition and this practice, as is so often the case inside of a great Tolkien tale, contains a warning and a portent, right? Because she says, when she's explaining this, showing you what might be hidden, where to mine, where to tunnel, like the promise of what you

could discover, the promise of the quest, the promise of the adventure, but then what's the last thing she says? And where to leave the mountain untouched? Well, we know what you can unearth when you delve too greedily and too deep. And so that was really cool to have that present there, especially in the context of the conversation of the tree, because she asks now that Elrond's there, you know, what sort of tree is it? And we have, it's so cute to hear like, you know, Elron's like, oh, hey, this little, this seedling, this sapling that it gave you, you planted it, huh? And to hear Desus say, planted it, raised it up, tends it like it's our third child.

That's how even at the end when you learn about what he is withholding, you still really feel fully that his affection for Elrond is sincere and so deeply felt. And, you know, he says, after Elrond explains it's the very symbol of our people's strength and vitality, and we're like, shit, we saw the end of episode one. Blighted leaf. That seems like a problem. This is the symbol of our people's strength and vitality.

And Deisa says some people called him a fool for believing it would grow in such darkness, where there is love, Elrond replies, it is never truly dark. How could it not grow in a home like yours? And, you know, it made me think of like Sam and his, even, even this darkness must-pass speech to Frodo and looking to find ways to nurture and maintain the light even when others tell you that you can't. It's like a core mission, I think, of the story. And I love that this is the second gift, you know, the seeds. from Bronwyn to O'Rondier and the sapling from Elrond to Duran to Duran. Mallory, please look for the bonsai tree that I sent to in the mail.

I will expect you to tend to it even in darkness or else we're not really friends. All right. So King Duren, King Duren is played by one of my all-time favorite actors, Peter Mullen. Unrecognizable under the prosthetics. And I just want to shout out my Pals Over the Empire podcast because years ago, they mentioned that when they go a karaoke or something like that. They sing the Proclaimer song, 500 miles, but instead of, they go Peter Mullen, and I always sing it that way now, too.

So Peter Mullen is here. Miler, you can only choose one. What is your favorite dwarf saying? Is it you've always had sandstone in your granite when it comes to elves? Is it the long end of the hammer? Or is it there could be no trust being hammer and rock? Eventually, one or the other must surely break. which one is your favorite?

Easy. Easy for me. There could be no trust between Hammer and Rock, eventually one or the other most surely break was one of my probably three favorite lines of across both episodes. I mean, it's gorgeous, but it also really encapsulates this key theme and idea

of the way that this mistrust and this prejudice and these instincts and impulses to guard your secrets and your ambitions and how real the costs of that can be and how rare the fellowship that allows you to share your true self with someone is in this world.

I mean, it was just a banger. We're like, King Durant, he's got bars, but it also summed up so many of these key ideas. I loved it. What about you? I'm going to try to work in. You got sandstone and your granite in future when you're, like, talking about adorable creatures

that show up in fantasy shows. I'll be like, well, Mallory, and you always had some sandstone in your granite for dire wolves. Okay. There's a thing. They don't say what it is. They are jealously guarding it. has to be me thrill.

Like there's no way they're not talk about me thrill here. But this is the thing they delve too greedily and too deep for. So, you know,

this is the height of Casa Dune. As you mentioned, we see it in the Vellas of the Ring as a ruin. Here it is a dwarf city at its height, much like Lyndon,

as we discussed before. This is something that Tolkien excels at having characters walk through the ruins of something that once was. Or you think about like, the trolls that it turned into stone by Bilbo showing up in Lord of the Rain.

You know what I mean? Like this idea of crumbled history all around us all the time. Really interesting to me. Okay, speaking of journeys. We come now to my favorite storyline, which is the Harfoots. Okay, so I've seen these first, as you mentioned, I've seen these first two episodes. the first time I saw them, I think I told you this. I found my nose. They're from December 2021 is when I first saw these first two episodes. And I couldn't tell you for certain, but I actually

think, because we get to the Harfoots really quickly in this episode, I think they came later the first time I saw them. And I think they moved them up wisely because what I told them at the time, Amazon, not saying they did it because I said this, but what I told them was it didn't feel fully like Middle Earth to me until we got to the Harfoots. Now they come right away in this up in the first episode, which makes me think, like, were you that impatient, Joanna, or did they move it? Anyway, here we go. Norie and Poppy, who are very much like a Frodo and Sam meets Mary and Pippen sort of vibe, are our pair of young Harfoots.

We meet the whole crew, Norie's mom and dad. We meet a Harfoot elder, played by the great Lenny Henry, one of my favorite character actors as well. A whole society, we need to get a dead. download of this whole society, their ethos, their philosophy. What's really important and challenging about the Harfoots is that Patrick and J.D. put the Harfoots in here, even though they're not part of the historical record at this time in Middle Earth.

So to meet that challenge, they sort of invented this idea that the Harfuts hide at all time from the big folk. And so this is why they would not have shown up in the historical record. Jaddy and Patrick agreed. They're like, it doesn't really feel like Middle Earth if we don't have a Hobbit like characters in it, right? So we'll put these hardfoots in here, but they got to hide all the time

because if they do anything of note or are seen by anyone, then why wouldn't they be in the books? So we'll keep them off the beaten path. But I love, I love the heartfoots. I'm so thrilled. Mallory, how soon can I expect you to show up to a Zoom with acorns in your hair?

I'll try to cover my face in Blackberry residue and put egggorns in my hair as soon as next week. I also am just instantly won over by our dear Nori and Poppy and the entire hardfoot stretch of this story. So charming, so winning, so charismatic and compelling. The way that they're initially hiding and then they start to bring out these different aspects of their life, opening their books, setting their tables. Nori in particular, of course, feels like this archetypal figure, the one who is seeking and pursuing this unlikely adventure.

And, you know, I loved the exchange between Nori and Marigold, where Nori is saying, haven't you ever wondered what else is out there? How far the river flows or where the sparrows learn the news songs they sing in spring? I can't help but feel there's wonders in this world beyond our wandering. And that to me, if you had to pick one idea, one single thing that I look for across all of the different stories that I love and that have become like a really meaningful part of my life, it's that. It's feeling called to something. and the absolute euphoria and exhilaration of getting to take that first step out the door, even if, as Bilbo would say, it's a scary thing. And Norie just so beautifully captures that energy and that pursuit that is such a shared thing

for the Harfuts or the hobbits or the characters in a story who aren't the great wizards or the great elves or the ones who should or normally would be on the first. line. And that's the reason that it is so compelling when they do find themselves in the thick of it, whether that is Norrie with the Meteor Man in this premiere or whatever ends up unfolding in her journey from here. And like, I love, I love the relationship that she and Poppy have right away. That's Amphoto Energy, as you said, but also like the, Poppy's there for so much of it. But she's like, that's not who you are. I'm not doing this.

And there's this resistance and this reluctance, even among her best friend and her peer, which was really cute and charming. So I just loved this. And it was so taken right away. Entirely charmed. Yeah. So charmed.

All right. So you mentioned the meteor man, the stranger, this red meteor that falls across all storylines, results in this guy in the crater. the flame intriguingly is not hot to the touch. Guess what? We're going to talk about a lot of this in our speculation section. So we will get to.

But the straight, who is the stranger? Nobody knows the answer to this. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. So we will see what we can see. But Norie and Poppy take care of him. He seems like he's bewildered, like he's lost his memory. And then we finally get to this part where...

First of all, you mentioned the fireflies earlier. He does this thing with the fireflies. He whispers to them, very Gandalf-like with the boss, right? Absolutely. A hardcore, a hardcore getoff move. And he does this whole thing and he makes his constellation and Nori because I don't know if she could understand Firefly is like, well, I love that Poppy's like, I don't speak Firefly. Great Poppy, let. But Nori's like he, well, that's a constellation.

He wants us to take him to this constellation. I think I can know how to find it. presumably she's going to go to Sadak, who's the elder in their group. He's got this great big book. Yeah. Yeah, this huge book. And had previously said the skies are strange and is looking at them for signs. I love him.

Every line read is so fun from him. And he's doing all this stuff and he's in this feverish sort of a beautiful mind, you know, scrawling, scribbling in the dirt. And then he does this thing where his stick breaks and Norrie's father's ankle breaks at the exact same time. time. Coincidence or causality, we don't know. But like something is a foot here. Is it good? Is it evil? We don't know. But you're not supposed to help big folk. That's a big rule in the Hartfoot society. You're supposed to stay hidden. But Norrie is endlessly curious. And so that's not what she's going to do. There's also there's the whispers he does to the fireflies. And then of course the fireflies die. And that's pretty sad and ominous. But there's also these other whispers. around him as he's working that remind me most of all of the of the ring whispers that we hear

in the Jackson film like sounds evil to me to be honest with you so yeah and there's like a bending of the trees and a raising of the rocks and a creeping of the shadow amid these kind of sinister incantations so that was troubling other than that seemed like a sweet guy really loved the escargo big farm to table guy, you know, loves the local dining. Would you, would you eat,

give it to be raw and wriggling? Would you eat raw and juicy? Yeah, you know, I'm always, always down to try whatever the local favorite is. I probably would have followed Norie's lead a little more closely and taken that, that sweet and juicy inert.

Our guy, the stranger, Munch. down on shell and all, crunchy bite. Don't think he's going to feel great about that choice when it's coming out the other end.

That's what I'll say. You have to get your calcium somewhere, okay? And maybe it comes from a snail shell. All right. We're going to move on from the Harfoots. And like, we should say,

this two hour long massive world building episodes of television, hopefully we'll have time and future to delve a little bit more greedily and deep into detail. But we're doing our best.

We're doing our best. All right, Galadriel, let's see. This is the last storyline I want to talk about here. Would that we all could be dragged out of the sea by one Charlie Vickers? Here we go. Halbrin and Galadriel on the raft. This is a big moment. We get some more classic elf racism from these folks on the raft who are willing to help

Galadry until they find out she's an elf. She gets pushed overboard. She's expecting it. She tries to pull her hair over her ears. Yeah, hide her ears. Halbrand, I've heard a lot of people be like, oh, is this just another Aragorn? Cool. Would Ayrgyrne untie himself from his fellow man on the raft to get away from the worm and leave them?

No. So we know that we're dealing with someone who's a bit more morally complex than one Aragorn. In fellowship, when Frodo says in the book, I think one of his spies would well seem fairer and feel fowler if you understand. stand. And obviously there's a version of that in the movie. We're getting some foul behavior from our guy Hal Brand here. Happy to admit to it, too. He's like, who wants to be part of the larger target? I save myself. What else am I going to do? And I kind of feel like Galadriel did, too, not that she was going to be able to accomplish anything, but like he unties himself and she swims, does her Olympic breaststroke away, you know, like they push her overboard. So what is she

going to do, but like, it still felt like there's a kinship here between them. And that's when we get into this really fascinating exchange between them. He's got this very suspicious pouch and medallion around his neck, you know, which I got a lot of questions. If you have any thoughts or theories about that, want to email it to hobbits and dragons at Gmail.com. I'll just let you know I spend an hour on this medallion. And the closest I have to figure it out is the winged crown of Gondor.

which was based on a winged helm of Numenor. It looks to me in the famed sort of heraldry of Gondor, Gondor doesn't exist yet, by the way. But in the heraldry of Gondor, it's the tree with the crown, the winged crown above it. And this kind of looks like winged crown above something that could be a tree if you squint.

It could also be the pulled tab off a soda can. I don't know. So tell me what you think it is and we will go forward. While his morality may not lead to a clean Aragorn comp, This discussion about the neck pouches, pouch is where the Aragon corollary seemed to be more palpable because Eladriel, like us, noticed

this hanging thing as he's conspicuously, yeah, tucking it away. Freshing up with some sundering seawater. Around your neck is that the mark of your people's king? My people have no king. I mean, you know, we're meant to pay attention to lines like this,

especially when we have heard elsewhere in the episode, the Southlands, this idea of the promise of the king returning one day. And we know that the Southlands, that's where he hailed from. That's where the orcs attacked. So what his connection to that ultimately

is. That's what he says at least. Oh. That's what he says at least. Oh. I like it. Spicious minds. I like it. I like it. Oh, this is good stuff. You've got a theory for everything. It's going to be a fun season. I love it. Well, I just love that. She's talking about

her cause and she's framing it in this like very noble way. I, you know, I have a thing to pursue. I, it was duty that demanded that I return here, all this sort of stuff. And he's like, okay, but be honest with yourself. There's also some vengeance, you know, like, uh, you, if you want to murder the orcs and settle the score, don't dress it up as heroism. He says at last a little honesty from her. So I love this. That, like, you know, like, you. Like Galadriel, who was convinced herself of the pure nobility of her cause, and he's like, all right, I might have unshackled myself from this wrath, but you also swam away. We are not so different, you and I, is sort of what he's saying to her, you know?

Yeah, I love that moment, too, and he obviously is sensing something in a fairly astute fashion here. And then my competing instinct is, you know, Mr. I've got my own plans elf, like, doesn't and get to mansplained to colladriel about the inner heart for her intention. But that sequence was certainly compelling in terms of setting up their future relationship and whether they will be opposed, whether they will be aligned, whether they will be aligned, but with this kind of complex, oh no, I'm one of the few people who can see you clearly aspects of their relationship, which I think would be really interesting to watch. you know, you forge a bond quickly when you're trying to escape a sea worm out in the open sea.

In the sundering sea, he did get in her space in a way that you might be like a standback mansplater, but I was like, this is, I ship it entirely, make out on this raft. That'll be great. All right. I might come to regret that. We'll talk about that later. Okay, so, yeah, he says the orcs are in the Southland. He has his own plans.

They sail into the storm. they are rescued set upon by, wake up in the shadow of a mysterious sailor, based on what we know about this season. Mallor, what's your best guess who this sailor might be? My best guess, based on just the trailers for the whole show and the characters who we know we're going to be in it, is that this is Seildor or another sailor from Numenor

and that they will be heading to Numenor at the beginning of episode 3. What do you think? Feels like a numinorian. That's all, I think we could say. That's all we know about that. Okay. We're getting, we're almost to like, we did it.

We did the episode. Two whole episodes of television. The sprightly two hours. Okay. Flotsam and Jetsam. Believe it or not, a name, a chapter from Lord of the Rings. Flossum and Jetsam. This is our Easter eggs and references section.

Is there anything you want to shout out here, Mallory, in this section? I love seeing the ants among the folk looking up at Meteor Man shooting down from the sky. That was great. What about you? Because you can't say the name of a plant and not have me Google it when Arundere goes like, Alfred seeds. I've not seen these in a long time, essentially, right? Alfred is another name for Symbolmin, or Symbolmine, which is the flower that

grows over the graves of the Roherom. And Theodin says this thing in the books. And I can't remember if he says in the films either. But he says, Simple Mine ever has it grown on the tombs of my forebears. Now it shall cover the grave of my son. Alas that these evil days should be mine. So that's a very significant flower in the world of Middle Earth, which I love. It's great.

It bodes well for Arunbair one day saying, who am I? gambling. All right. So, I mean, I think we covered everything else sort of in the context of our discussion. So this is the end of Ring 1, which is one level of spoiler. You want to dig, dig greedily and deeper with us. You're going to be ready for Ring 2? Here we go. Ring 2, speculation. My favorite part, a conspiracy unmasked. That's the name of a chapter from one of the rings. This is our weekly, Who's That Guy, Best Guesses and Thoughts. We're going to start with my guy, Halbrand. Okay. Here's the thing that we were afraid to say in the first ring that we're going to say here. Famously in the books, Sauron comes to

people with a fair form. Does not come as a disembodied floating eye, flaming eye, nor does he even come in that terrifying witch king armor that we saw in the prologue and this thing. He comes in fair form. What that means is going to be up to Jady and Patrick to decide what fair form means. Something I love really briefly, I will just say. I was a I was listening to this great interview with John Howe, the aforementioned Tolkien conceptual artist, on the Tolkien Professor podcast. And he was talking about the way in which Tolkien writes and how he writes not hugely descriptively, but evocatively in that he won't say exactly what a ballerog will look like.

He will say what it feels like to look at a ballrog. Or he won't say what Frodo looks like. It's like he's a perky chap with a twinkling eye. Like in all the ways in which Tolkien writes, it's meant to invite your imagination to fill in the blanks. It's like when we were talking about that far green country idea that Brian Cogman brought up in our previous podcast, what does Paradise look like to you? A far green country. What does a far green country mean to you? And so what does fair form mean to you?

Does it mean a hot guy on a raft, a K. Halbrand? Let's discuss it. Is Halbran sorrow? I love this. My first and favorite theory of the rings of power. Here's the case for him being Sauron. Tolkien wrote, A commanding figure of great strength of body,

supremely royal demeanor and countenance upon that ship, which was cast the highest and stood dry upon a hill. There was a man or one in man shape, but greater than even of the race of Numenor and stature. And it seemed to men that Sauron was great, though they feared the light of his eyes. To many he appeared fair, to others terrible, but to some evil.

here's what he says when Galadry When Galadry gets on the raft he says looks can be deceiving is something that he says to Galadryl right away

blaring sirens line Like if he's not Sauron they want us to wonder if he's Sauron right? Okay And then the other thing that he says to her which I love the first line he says is the tides of fate

are flowing in or out and Galadriel in that very famous part in fellowship when she says, I shall diminish and go to the West in the Brian Cogman parlance. After that, she says, for now we have chosen, and the tides of fate are flowing. This idea of the tides of fate, and she's reminded, like,

I love to think that in that moment, she's reminded of that time she met Sauron when he was hot on a raft, and she's like, the tides of fate are flowing. And then the other thing that he says to her is he says, She met Sauron when he was hot on her raft. Incredible. And then the other thing he says to her is he says,

you don't have the look of someone to whom things happen by accident. So I like this idea that Sauron has contrived this meeting with her, contrived a meeting where, because we forgot to mention this in the early section, but he abandons those other people on his wrap. But when she falls overboard, does he cut her loose? No, he dives down to save her. Right.

Thus, winning her trust, I am sure. So anyway, where are you? Yay or nay for the case of Sauron? Oh, my God. It's a compelling case, Joe. There's a lot of evidence supporting it. And because of that, I will say no. I almost think it's like too compelling for this premiere.

And again, ready to be wrong, happy to be wrong. I'm going to say that we have not met Sauron's fair form yet. I do not think we have met Sauron in the first two episodes. What about you? Again, I agree. I feel like it's almost like too easy and so that I'm waiting for the other catch. Can I present a few other cases to you? Please.

Yeah. Theo's dad. Theo's missing dad. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Theo's missing dad feels good.

I mean, honestly, whether or not he's, even if he is Sauron, I still feel like he's Theo's dad. Okay. So, Theo's dad. Yeah. I like those. Alternatively, additionally, not just Theo's dad, but also the missing king. Right?

Yes. Okay. But take us to the end of this line of thinking if he's the missing king, because this is what I really like. Okay. Because the other mystery that haunts us in this story. is not who is Sauron, but also the mysterious identity of the Nazgul. The Naz ghoul that we meet in Lord of the Rings are black writers.

We learn are the nine kings. The ring wraiths. Who were seduced by Sauron. These are the ring wraiths. We don't know anything in Tolkien's text about who these kings were. And so J.D. and Patrick have the opportunity to give us nine men that we, like to love maybe. Maybe we won't like all of them,

but we will certainly enjoy some of them and watch them fall. I'm casting my formal vote for this. Okay, Nazgul or do you think he's all the way up to the witch king of Angmar? The head, you think he's, what do you think? I don't hate it. Okay. So let's say that Hallibrand is the witch king of Angmar. Just think about that.

If we like him, because I like him. Right? If we like him. And then later we are going to rewatch the films and we see A-O and square off against him. And we're like, fuck, that's Halberin, like corrupted and twisted underneath that helm. Anyway. Wonder if he's still wearing the pouch. I'm about to meet the business end of a morning star.

Okay. The stranger. This is a wild one. I love this. I'm excited to talk about this. The case for the stranger being Sauron. Okay. He falls in a career that looks a lot like a flaming eyeball.

I'm not going to lie to you. Try it. It's bad burning. Okay. Number two, intriguingly, when Noria, like, sort of falls into the crater and is surrounded by the flame, does not burn her. He's not giving off heat. And at the beginning of episode one, Galadriel says this thing when they're in the four-odwaith. She says, the flame.

So evil here, the flame does not give off heat. So evil flame, question mark, killing fireflies, question mark, napping in an eyeball question mark, is the stranger Sauron, Mallory Rubin. I say no only because of what I already said, which is I don't think we've met Sauron yet. But the other thing about the heat and the cool, it made me think of Gandalf handing the ring, taking the ring out of the fire and dropping it into Frodo's palm

and saying it's quite cool. And we know we know that the fire reveals the speech, the inscription, but it doesn't burn you. It doesn't burn your hand when you take it. And so on the one hand, that's more, you know, of a connection to the idea of Sauron. But it also then made me think of Gandalf. And that's where I ended up landing with the stranger. I think he's a wizard. All right.

So theory number two for the stranger. The case for him being a non-Gandolph, non-Saraman, non-Rattinger. Radigast wizard, aka the Astari, the blue wizards. So, if you don't know, five wizards. And the wizards are not really wizards. They're kind of angels. They were sent by the gods to combat Sauron. We know the name of three of them, Ganylton, Sauron.

Comet, via meteor. Comet? Yeah. Who's to say? We, you definitely know two of them, if you're familiar with the Jackson, Northern Rings, Gandalf and Sauramon. If you spend time with the Hobbit, you will have also met Radagast. He lets bird shit on his head.

That's who Radicast is. Troubling. Got to guess the brown. Get some shampoo. My guy. Get off the gray. Get off the gray. Saw him on the white.

The Astari, the Blue Wizards are a really fun duo in the books in that. Tolkien was constantly refining his work and constantly changing his ideas of who these guys would be. Some people have said that the stranger cannot be one of the blue wizards because it's too early. But again, compression of time. What is time? Okay. We don't know what time is in this. thing. And I think this could easily be that. Tolkien wrote, I really do not know anything clearly about

the other two wizards, since they do not concern the history of the north and the west. I think they went as emissaries to distant regions, east and south, far out of Newmanorian range, missionaries to any enemy occupied lands as it were. So I agree with you. I'm team blue wizard. I asked J.D. and Patrick. And I said, Gandalf Radigas Saramon, who is it? What is happening? And Patrick said, well, I would say those are not the only beings, those names in that class, meaning wizards. So maybe, but maybe not. And the mystery and the journey of it all is the fun, I would say. And I think there's a lot of mysteries and turns in the show. And we want people to go on the ride. There is no spoiler.

It's all right there. It's a relationship that's unclear where it's going to go. powers can be used for good or bad and Harfoot's have rules that you're not supposed to engage with big folk. Here we go. Yeah, I love it. It's pure speculation, but like it's so, it fits in so many ways. The magical elements that are just emanating off of him, the way that he can't seem to recall where he came from. Norie is asking like, where does he come from? But also, where are the rest of your people? So this idea that there are others like him would fit with being part of this order of wizards. the, like you already mentioned, the whispering to the fireflies makes us think of Gandalf, whispering to the moth.

Even just, like, reaching for the stick to scratch the symbols in the ground made me think of, like, a wizard reaching for a staff, you know? And this last thing, this is like a real, I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm not an expert in symbols and runes. But when you were scanning across the log where he's been scratching,

yeah. I can't claim to be able to translate those, but it just looked, one of them looked like almost a backwards F. Like it almost looked like if you flipped what Gandalf scratched on Bilbo's door to guide the Thorin's party there. Now again, plenty of people who know what they're talking about are probably going to be like, that's not what that is. You sound dumb.

But it's theory corner. Hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. Hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. Feels like a wizard. And also just him being in Norrie's life in that way then would just track with the parallel of Gandalf coming to Frodo in that fashion. Right? Yeah.

Or Bilbo. I love it. Yeah. Absolutely. It's the Firefly Whispering that really did it for me. Okay. So you're going Halibrand, Nasgul. Yes.

Stranger Blue Wizard. Yeah. I'm saying definitely NASGul, definitely ring ray, possibly Theo's dad. I'm like still 50. I like it. I'm into it. Someone is Theo's dad.

And then I'm confidently casting my vote for the stranger as a wizard. Okay. I'm Team Strangers the Wizard. I'm going to be looking about, I'm still going to be looking at Hallibrand for Sauron clues. We'll be back next week in this ring for that. Last but not least on this podcast, Ring 3. Yes. Anything goes in Ring 3, the forbidden pool, colon, a book reader spoiler section. Okay? Anything goes. Not production spoilers, but like release trailers and anything from the book, we're a lot to talk about here. Can I put forth to you, Brian Cogman told us, but he would not tell us what the passage is.

But he told us that Jady and Patrick read a passage to him that he was like, ah, yeah, that's probably the show. That makes sense. I'll do this. Do you remember Brian saying that? Okay. We still don't know what the passage is.

But the Redditors, L-O-T-R on Prime Reddit was like, I wonder what passage Cogman was talking about because they listened to our podcast. Thank you so much, Redditors. This is the one they came up with, and I really like it. Okay? Elron and his clear voice spoke of Sauron and the rings of power, and they're forging in the second age of the world long ago.

A part of his tale was known to some there, but the full tale to none. And many eyes returned to Elrond in fear and wonder, as he told of the Elven Smiths of Aregion and their friendship with Moria and their eagerness for knowledge by which Sauron ensnared them. For in that time, he was not yet evil to behold, and they received. received his aid and grew mighty in craft, whereas he learned all their secrets and betrayed them, and forged secretly in the mountain of fire the one ring to be their master. But Calabrimbor was aware of him and hid the three which he had made, and there was war,

and the land was laid waste, and the gate of Moria was shut. Of Numenor he spoke, its glory and its fall, and the return of the kings of men to Middle Earth, out of the deeps of the sea, borne upon the wings of storm. Then Ellen Deal, the tall and his mighty sons, Isseldor and Anarian, became great lords, and the north realm they made in Arnor and the south realm in Gondor, above the mouths of undoing. But Sauron of Mordor assailed them, and they made the last alliance of elves and men and the hosts of Gilgolad and Elindiel were mustered in Arnor. That's the show, it feels like. Yeah. Yeah.

But the chief... It does seem like it. But the chief line is a part of his tail was known to some there, but the full tail to none. So here we are. I love it. I love this. A few other things I want to talk about here.

Linden, the reason we don't go to Linden in Lord of the Rings is that it sinks into the sea. So we're watching Linden before. A lot of sinking into sea. It's going to happen. Sad we're never going to get to go visit and enjoy a little. A little vacation there. Stuff. Oh my God.

Can you imagine a hammock under those beautiful yellow leaf trees? Amazing. Bliss. Bliss. The question of mortality and elf resentment is going to, is, is, has been laid, the track is laid here, but is chiefly going to blossom in the Numenor story. Because this is this tension in Numenor is that initially, the fact that elves get to go to paradise is one gift, but the gift of, the gift of.

mortality to man, they were a favored, favored race of Aluvatar, loved men. And so he considered mortality, this idea that things are impermanent and finite, a gift. And when they die, they get to escape this world. Like Valinor is nice, but imagine just not having to be on earth at all and get to become sort of like one with a, like what happens after, who knows, but one with a cosmos sort of thing. Again, this feeds into, I think. Tolkien's Catholicism where he's like death and his idea of heaven and whatever, like that that is a gift. But what Sauron and other people will do is convince men, the Numenorian specifically, that this

is a curse and a disadvantage. And what they really want is the immortality of the elves. So that's going to be a really strong. And again, and then Numeron seems into the sea. So many sinking into the sea. From singing to explosion, I want to talk to you about Mount Doom. Okay. This is kind of a theory.

It's based on some shots in the trailer of Galadriel covered in what looks like volcanic ash. So the question is, do you think season one ends with the eruption of Mount Doom and the beginnings of the desolation that is Mordor? Great question. Yes. Great. This is not book. This is not book canonical. We should say Mount Doom already exists.

But I love this idea that, like, Sauron hasn't settled on Mordor yet. So there's these, like, sigil maps everywhere of Mordor. He's like, that's where I'm going to make my spot. Or let's all go there. Or does Galadriel cause the eruption of Mount Doom? Because to circle back to what Gilgalad said, the idea of in pursuit of this, she will cause it. And what I love about that is that it complicates this idea that Galadriel's right. We know she's right.

But in being right, is she also somehow inadvertently going to cause something to do with Sauron's rise to power here? And is that cause the eruption of a volcano and the, you know, founding of Mordor? Right. That's great. Yeah. I really like that a lot. And, you know, we see the state of Hordern. The blight, the ruins, the rot.

The rot. The poor cow, the poor cow with like black goop and its udders. Terrible. Straight too far east to graze. And so that feels right in terms of like an end point in season one because already this land in this part of the map is starting to fester and rot. And, yeah, Bronwyn has convinced everybody to leave this neighboring town now that the orcs have burrowed their way underneath. But that just means it's there for the taking then for the orc army.

So I love this. And that idea of sparking, playing a part and sparking the thing that you were seeking to prevent is, you know, so it's such a quintessential. The old self-ful prophecy. Fantasy staple. I would love to see that here. And to see Galazriel have to then wrestle with that as she moves forward beyond it. That would be great. Last and not least, I want to talk about ambition.

This is, like, sort of in conversation with the conversations we've been having about the reluctant leader over on House of the Dragon. Something that I think is really interesting is that Tolkien wasn't all that interested in the reluctant leader trope. It's something that's distinct to the Peter Jackson movies that Peter Jackson decide to make Erigorn this, like, reluctant king. That wasn't the case in the books. Eragorn was like, I mean, mainly he wanted to be king because Elrond's like, you, Arwen can only marry the king of Gontor. So, Errigorn's like, hmm, got it. You know, challenge accepted.

So Aragorn was constantly striving to be, like, believed he could be the king, was striving to be the king. And then Tolkien thought it was more interesting to, I mean, Jackson thought it was more interesting to make him a reluctant leader trope. But I think that is interesting as we talk about. So you're Tolkien? and I'm Peter Jackson in this. Correct.

Correct. And never the twain shall meet. And I think that's interesting as it pertains to Galadriel. Because Galadriel, her ambition dries her out of Valenor. She finds, like when she, the founding of Lothloreen is so she can have a place where she can rule. So she believes that she should be charged and be a ruler. And so the idea that ambition, though might lead you vulnerable, to corruption as many in many cases,

I love this idea that Galadryl is the only character that Tolkien never created for Middle Earth who has this desire for power to rule and never becomes corrupted. And I think that that's an interesting comment on this idea that, like, you don't, it's not just the reluctant leaders that can make good leaders.

You can be convinced of your own strength and power as Galadriel is and, you know. Absolutely. And she is, you know, again, I think part of what's interesting about our introduction to her is that she is so driven by that pursuit and so steadfast that she has lost the support of her own company. But she is hardly the only character defined by her ambition.

I mean, it is present in nearly every storyline. We talked about it with Elrond. We talked about it with Duren. We talked about it with Kalymbro. It's there for everyone challenging some sort of status quo or some sort of cap on their circumstance. So which characters can follow that ambition to an achievement in which are led astray? And then which characters do we not yet understand the true nature of their ambition or what is striving them? Like our guy, Hal, for example.

Oh, I love calling him Hal. That's great. I'm just going with nicknames for everyone. Hal, gal, Finn. Well, Norie is the nickname for Eleanor. Okay. That's a precious nickname. I love it.

Guess what? Mallory Routman. A sprightly two and a half hours for two episodes of television. I'm pretty impressed with us, to be honest with you. So we did it. We'll be back next week. Again, Hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. Please send us your theories, your thoughts, your passages.

from Tolkien that you love, like all that sort of stuff. I lap it up and we will be reading out your emails as part of the podcast next week. Again, follow us on social. Instagram to please our pal Jomey Twitter. Subscribe to

the feed for coverage of She-Hulk. House of the Dragon ever heard of it. Mallory and I will be back on Sunday when Talk the Thrones with Chris Ryan. We'll be back on Tuesday for our deep die, the midnight boys are doing what they do best. Poo-Poo! And we will all be here

for you on the Ring of Verse. Almost a show a day at this point. So that's just how we're handling this era. Thanks as always to the tremendous Arjuna and Gupaal for his production work on this episode and to the fabulous, the Lost King himself. Our producer, Carlos Cheruboga.

We'll be back next week. Bye. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us. We've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear.

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