House of R - ‘Rings of Power’ Season 2, Episode 4 Deep Dive | House of R

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

The unknown ahead gets even more clear! Jo and Mal are here to take you deep into the bowels of Middle-earth with their dive into the fourth episode of ‘Rings of Power.’ They begin their deep dive with a look at Galadriel and Elrond and some zombies (18:47), along with a lively introduction of the beloved Tom Bombadil (53:54). Later, they have an extensive Wig Watch and talk their best conspiracy theories (01:52:29). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producer: Steve Ahlman Video Editor: Stefano Sanchez Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal and T Cruz Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business to keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need Weather Tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner.

Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those WeatherTech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need WeatherTech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me who are you?

Alone, yourself, and nameless. But you are young. And I am old. Eldest. That's what I am. What do you mean eldest? Eldest. Aren't my words, friend.

Tom was there before the river and the trees. Tom remembers the first raindrop in the... the first acorn. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless. To House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me today, we've got some edts, we've got some Barrowwhites, we've got Tom Bombadil,

but most importantly of all, we've got Mallory Rubin. Hey Mallory, how you doing? Joanna, clean your hands, wash your face, and then come join me by the fire so we can pod. What you didn't see is that, Mallory then just like hucked a bar of soap at me. Thanks for the hospitality, Mal.

I really appreciate it. You bet. Yeah. We are here. I've done as such as I can with your, with your filthy robe. Yes. Well, you know me. All right.

So we are here today. Talk about season two, episode four already of the rings of power already. How are you feeling, Mal? I can't believe it's the halfway mark already. I just, I'm not quite ready to cope with being. halfway through season two. It feels like we just started because we did one week ago. I know.

It's disorienting. Very, my head is spinning, and I'm sad that we only have one more month of this, but we will gather the water lilies while we may. Okay. Beautiful. So we'll be doing that. We'll be covering rings of power in perpetuity for the future. And you should know that next week,

we are doing an added Rings of Power episode. We were doing a special like the music of Tolkien episode next week that we're very excited about. We're going to talk about obviously like there's a lot of music in this episode. We're going to talk about, you know, music in Tolkien in general. He loved a song. We went to go see the Lord of the Rings musical. We're going to talk about that. There is a Rufus Waywright song in this episode of the Rings of Powers.

We're going to talk about all about that next week on House of Our. over in the ring ofverse. Listen, Steve was giving me a little preview before we started recording. He and Jomey

are going to be covering Terminator Zero on Mint Edition this week. And here's the bottom line. Not as much Timothy Oliphon as you want.

Oh, no. Crushing. What? I know. Oh, my goodness. Exactly. Calamity. Oh, no.

Oh, no. I watched your hopes rise in real time. I know. And then just like crater back into the back to tank for me. Okay. So over on button mash. How many days since we've seen got back? It's a question I'm always asking myself.

Okay, listen, over on button mash, they're covering Astrobot, the Midnight Boys, Poo, Poo, are doing the whitest movies draft. And I cannot wait. Truly. Incredible. Going to be a great time. So that's what's going on around these here parts. And like pretty soon we're going to be in Agatha and Penguin and all of that's coming up really soon for us.

So Mallory Rubin, how can books do track of everything that's going on? Thanks for asking. Here are my recommendations. One, follow the pod. Follow House of VAR. Follow the Ring of Verse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the Ringiverse on YouTube. We have a channel new as of this summer.

You can find full view. video episodes of House of R, the podcast that you were listening to at this very moment, and the Midnight Boys on that Ring Reverse YouTube channel and on Spotify while you're at it. You're at your computer, your phone's in your hand, whatever the case may be. Follow the Ring of Reverse on the social media platform. If you're choosing, we are on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and then send us an email. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. Spoiler running today.

We're sort of back to the three rings of spoilers. Really only two rings this week. I didn't have anything for the, like, hardcore spoiler section. So we will be giving you warning sort of throughout. But listen, the first most of the deep dive is just us covering, hey, we're pretty sure you know the events of Lord of the Rings, the Peter Jackson films or the Tolkien books. And we're pretty sure you've watched up through episode four of season two of Rings

of Power. That's what we're here to talk about today. And then a little bit later, we'll have some like speculation stuff, maybe, you know, informed by some other things that will come in a later section. We'll just tell you all about it when we get there. Mallory and I, once again, are not watching ahead on screeners. So that's just something for you to know. Quick bit of business really quickly. I got some pushback on my back sheet recommendation.

The animated in our mail backups that we did earlier this week, we got a question from a listener about, you know, kid friends. friendly, young kid friendly, Lord of the Rings content. And I recommend the Ralph Bakshi movie. And then a bunch of people just like, excuse me, that is a very traumatizing and scary movie. And what I realize is that I am a child of the 80s and I grew up on like the dark crystal and return to Oz and all that kind of stuff, labyrinth. And so like spooky scary kid stuff is sort of in my wheelhouse. But what do you think, Mal? I don't trust myself to be a barometer for.

for what is scary to people or when people should read or watch something. I have no feel for this. I have none. Absolutely none. I don't even know what I'm ready for, let alone another person.

But as always, I, you know, admire your ability to engage with the public on how our consumption habits change over time. Mm-hmm. And, you know, maybe we'll, should we do a rewatch? together? It's been a minute since I've seen that. Maybe that would be really fun. There's actually some, a lot of music in the box sheet movies. Maybe I'll watch it before next week. Okay. There you go. Sounds like homework. A fun fact that we learned that we thought we would share with you is that the actor who plays Lord Belziger, my new favorite numinorian, Will Keene, who Mallory Rubin was like, when she brought up his name, she was like, he was in his dark materials. And so I was like, oh, let's remind myself like what he was like.

in his dark materials. So I was like looking him up and they were like father of Daphne Keene. Daphne keen. What? She of Deadpool Blue Green fame. She of accolade fame. She of his dark materials fame. Yeah. Lyra herself.

I had no idea. This is a shock to me. Will Keene is Daphne Keene's dad. And today we learned. So just keep that in mind as you join me in cheering on our new favorite Newmanorian. Okay. Routing for you. Rootin for Bells.

This is great. Bells and Bs, my entire brand. Okay. We also got a recommendation, I think I mentioned this last week, but a recommendation from a listener to check out the Bear McCreary website for a lot of additional sort of insight into the music used in the show. And that just might be something you want to check out before we do our music episode next week.

We certainly will be looking at it as we prepped for that. And then last one at least, Nicole asked very politely that we use our platform to encourage Amazon to be a little bit more mindful about where they insert their ad breaks. in the show that they so desperately want people to watch on their own platform. She says sometimes it happens in the middle of something important. So Nicole, there's me trying to help you with that. Okay. A long-expected party.

Let's do the opening snapshot. This episode is called Eldist, written by Glenys Mullins, Glennis Mullins, directed by Libby's Hooper and Sonahomri, two directors once again. We have a lot of questions about sort of what scenes have been moved around, episode to episode in the front half of the season. Molly Rubin, why is this episode called Eldist? Joanna, our good friend Tom Bombadil is on the screen. At last, he has made his way to a Rings adaptation.

And he is, as we heard, in the opening quote today, the opening clip, eldest. Eldest. Been around for a minute. Yeah. I'm so excited to talk to you about Tom. This is a big moment for Rings fans. I can't wait to catch up on what our pal Dave Gonzalez thinks now that Tom Bombadil has arrived at last. Yeah.

This is a big week. The world's number one Bombedill fan. I hope he enjoyed the yellow boots. Okay. Tom Bobadil is known as the eldest in Sindharn. His name is Yard Wayne Ben Adar. Might sound familiar to you. That's father.

He's eldest. fatherless. But A.R. Wayne, if I pronouncing that correctly, is also what he calls the little lamb in his desert cottage that we see in this episode. And I have a lot of thoughts about that. Why his lamb has the same

name that he has. Maloney, any lamb thoughts you want to share with the crowd? Too close to the fire. The inferno can spark at any point as we saw. And, you know, a nurturing cradle and cuddle, that was nice. But let's get that, darling.

lamb away from the open flame. Thank you. Well, you can only save one lamb. Is it the darling little white cuddly lamb by the fire in Tom Bombadillo's cottage? Or is it Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb on slow horses? As you know, I believe that Jackson Lamb is the most important character on television. I don't want you to actually get me to say out loud on a podcast that I want that sweet little lamb to like burn alive. I mean, listen, it's called a sacrificial lamb for a.

reason. Okay. Also old. Another character in Tolkien that's referred to as the oldest, not eldest, is Treebeard, the most famous Ent. And we've got Ents in this episode too. So this episode is like full of the sort of elder statesman of Middle Earth who are here to talk about what it was like before we came and ruined it. I, something I really love about this episode is the section of Fellowship of the Ring. And by the way, if you've never read the book, you spent an awful long time in and around the shire, you know, before we even get to, like, Rivendell, say. And Peter Jackson cut a lot of that out of his movies, and we will talk about that, like, how that affects the Tom Bombadil fans, et cetera, et cetera.

But in the book, in the section of Fellowship, where Tom Bombadil appears, is also the section with the Barrow whites and the Barrow Downs, which is what Galadryl and Argy Elron with his new beautiful hair and all the other elves are dealing with this week and the section where Sam first talks about like moving trees. That's to like lead us into this old man willow section that we'll talk about. But it's also sort of like an NT preview. So I love that like even though it's across multiple storylines, it kind of took a lot of the elements of this section of the book and spread it out across the episode. I thought that was really neat.

Absolutely. Same. Agreed. So Malarovin, did you like this episode of television? I did. Yeah, I had a interesting experience with this episode where watching it for the first time, I personally was quite charmed. I thought the spoiler, we're going to talk about it for a long time,

but I thought the Tom Bombadale introduction was exquisite. I have A note and you have A note and they're the same note, but we have one singular note. Yeah, broadly I thought it was like spectacular. and I was not only wrapped watching those scenes between Tom and the Stranger, but I was happy. I was just happy as a Lord of the Rings fan

to be seeing it. That was fantastic. I could do the entire pot today on El Ron's hair if you wanted to. I would be fine with that. There was a lot to love. And I think the themes, the connection to the past,

the deep rooted history and the way that we think about peace and promises and protection and nourishment and nurturing. I thought all of that was just lovely and felt like very core to me as a Rings fan. So I was charmed. There was a little voice in my head watching it. Two things. One, no doors. I wonder what, yes.

I wonder like if this is going to be for everyone. Not that it has to be, right? But I do imagine that there will be a contingent of the viewership that's like, okay, this episode actually collected a lot of the things that I'm less high on in maybe a Rings Tale. You know, the like, I don't want the N's crowd, which I am not a member of that crowd for what it's worth. But the other thing, of course, was the specific character sets present or absent from the episode. This episode did not feature. Sauron, Avionavionta van, one.

which is a bold choice at this point in the story. I think, you know, what Charlie Vickers is doing as Halbrand, as Saran, as Anatar is consistently successful. And so to, we're not like in, we're in week two, but we're not in week two, not really. It's the midway point of the season. So I was like, oh boy, no Sauron, okay, no Calibran-Rae, of course.

No Duran, no Disa. No Allendial, no Meryl, no Farazahn. Like we have a Sealedor, but we're not up in Numerador. So a lot of the key stakeholders and drivers of the story and places on the map were absent. What we got in instead, we have a concentration of a certain type of energy and like quirk and charm that I enjoy. Though candidly with that, I think a little more in the back half of the episode of the Theo Arandere part of the plot. Then I don't know that I would make that trade for some of the characters who were missing.

Correct. But then I rewatched. So I was thinking about all that after. And then I sat down to rewatch it. And I'm like, oh, he's missing character. And I was pretty charmed again, watching it again. So there's a lot here that I loved and a lot here that I'm really excited to talk to you about today.

Tom, obviously, high on the list. I await your Barrow White's thoughts. We get to hear about the Shire in this episode of Rings of Power. I mean, there's a lot to get to twice, which is exciting. Yeah, what about you? I kind of agree. I would just add this, that this is like a very spectacle heavy episode, right? We get like the ENS is like this massive CGI spectacle. The Barrow whites are a huge CGI spectacle.

We get a mudworm. You know, there's just like a lot going on. And, you know, like Galadryl gets two different like battle scenes. I thought her final fight with the orcs was a lot cooler than some of the Barrowite stuff. But, like, you know, so it's like, and I think I agree that Charlie Vickers is always successful as Sauron and we're locked and dialed in on our guy, Kelly Brambor this season. But I also think that like those scenes, which are often conversations in rooms or if you're dwarves conversation in caverns, might actually not be what like the Gen Pop wants and maybe they want giant talking trees and that sort of stuff. And I know that there was like a critique. I mean, if if the three.

Three episode of the beginning drop was because they were worried about the criticism of like, this show takes a while to get going. It's a little ponderous, which is some of the critiques of season one. They dropped that three episode chunk and then they give us this like really action-packed episode four. You know, that feels slightly calculated to me. Something that J.D. Payne, one of the showrunners said sort of leading up to the premiere was he was talking about all the critters this season, right? And he says, one of the things we felt we could do more after season one was critters. That was one of our earliest conversations.

We want to get something in every episode. So if we're counting at home, we've had giant spiders, giant eagles, barrel whites, the gowdrum, the ants, a sea worm, sour on goop, and a hill troll. So, yeah, this is, you know, Mallory always likes to say, like, don't be afraid to make your fantasy story a fantasy story. and this is, they're not afraid. And I still think it's a very, we got an email from listener that I didn't pull up, but they were like, my kid was out on Goop. Goop Sauron scared them too much and they were out.

And I was like, well, it gets a lot more. That kid's not a fan of the Vandum franchise we learned just now. Apparently not. No, yearning tendrils of goop for that kid. So this show still feels like, you know, the Barrowites are scary. So, you know, I just hope kids are still enjoying it. the show. I want this for them. Okay. Ring one. Helms deep. A deep dive into season two episode

four. Let's go. It's tempting to start with Tom Bombadil. Like I kind of want to. I love Rory Kinnear as Tom Balmadil. I'm really excited to talk about that. But we're going to talk, we're going to start with is Galadriel here. Colladryl, Elron, and some zombies, aka Barrowites. this is the envoy from Linden because again they do not send Ravens

and some messages went missing they're sending a more heavily armored envoy with two of their most famous elves from Linden

to Oregon to get the news to kill Brimbor that like hey I don't care how hard it's raining or how sexy his wounded back looks

do not invite how brand into your house because he is Sauron. So that's too late. It's a little too late. But they're making haste, right? They're running over hill, over Dale to try to get there. And to get to a Regian from Linden, if you look at the map, you essentially have to go through the shire, which is just really fun to think about these elves running through the shire through the undug, grassy knolls of the shire.

Yeah, I continue to love to this treatment of like pulling and porting us in and out of the map and the footage to like it very seamlessly show us exactly where we are, including right down to like incorporating an effect, like the effect of the bridge onto the map as we then find ourselves on the bridge. I think that's just a really cool. Obviously a lot of like work is going into executing that. But to us as viewers, it just feels it feels seamlessly entwined. And I'm really enjoying that. Committer Elron was like, guys, don't worry about it. It's only 150 leagues if we get across this one bridge. And oops, that bridge has been supernaturally destroyed. And that forces them to go on the same path that Sam, Frodo, Mary and Pippen take through the old forest

and through the barrow downs. And what's fun is if you reread that section of the book, the hobbits themselves were sort of supernaturally put upon paths in that section. The paths keep winding them back around in a certain direction and they keep getting sort of lost and turned around because the road wants them to go

a specific place. And in that case, it seems to be Tom Bombadil sort of guiding them to his front doorstep. In this case, it's Sauron being like stay out. I got a whole con seduction job going on in Regian and I can't

have you messing with my vibe. So, yeah. But I will leave that very distinctive scroll casing on the ground for everyone to discover. That's why you don't outsource the Barrow Whites. Don't do, like, you know, sometimes you got to do the job yourself. And I wouldn't. It's a great note. I wouldn't trust the Barrow Whites to do it for me.

So, yeah. I love the observation there about the hobbits and the road and the guiding hand, the forced hand. And obviously, this is like a recurrence across character sets. slices of the timeline in the story. We talked about this literally last deep dive, right? With Nori and Poppy and the stranger, I'd rather not like run out of water and then die going that way.

But okay, well, you have to. And of course, we talked about how that reminded us of Saraman and the fellowship and will you choose a more dangerous road? And like, so this is, we've found many a friend in this spot needing to decide to go in a direction that something, maybe someone literally in their party in this particular case in their company is saying out loud or something inside of them is gnawing at them, like I know danger awaits, but it feels like there's no other option. And then that connects, like, in a fun way to this larger thing we like to talk about in these stories, like, what is your choice? When is your hand forced? When is fate guiding you? So very, very, very fun way to begin here. It's also like a really fun theme in the in the Hobbit itself there and back again. They take, this is not their planned route. at all. They are often thrown off their planned route in that story, and they're often thrown

off their plan route into something that they needed along their way. So I love that. I do love that Galadryl's like any person who's freshly broken up with someone, she's like, my shitty ex-boyfriend did this. I know it. I know he burned this bridge. I know he called these zombies and told them to come attack us. I know it. I know it's him. I can smell it. No earthly force could do this. Only the force that looked at me from the raft with those eyes and that slightly open shirt. And yeah, it's just, this is an amazing thing to watch. There were so, I loved thinking about, okay, is Elrond familiar with Gendry's like sprint time in Game of Thrones?

And then just thinking about this with Kalachio right away at the beginning of this episode, there were so many little connections. Not the last time we'll be asking if El-Rae's. has watched a certain pop culture property that we're fond of. Very true. Very true. I do want to say we meet a new elf. We meet several new, four new elves in this episode and say go about a one right away.

But we meet a cartographer elf who's called Kamnear. He's played by Callum Lynch, who I really, really liked in season two of Bridgeton, but I sent a photo of him to Mallory immediately being like, I'm going to have to talk about this wig. Anyway, I love the way he describes his character. he says, quote, a bookish mapmaker elf. He's really not cut out for battle. Everyone else has got cool swords and I've got maps.

And I just, I'm like, oh, it's me. There we are. Wonderful. Wonderful. As you know, I'm very fond of collecting swords and other replica weaponry from various fantasy stories. And so I can't really claim that I would not want to have a sword in this company. But I can't agree with you that I would not be equipped. to wield one.

No. Better a map than a sword for me. Okay. Galadryl gets a sneaky peek of the whites, right, from Nenya. And she's like, I don't want to go that way. And Elron's like, tough. I'm not listening to your spooky ring that your shitty ex-boyfriend, like, convinced you to make. Okay.

Then we go to bear. I loved the opinion heard, like the curtness of opinion heard. It made me feel for a minute like they were in the kitchen. And the bear? And the kids? Oh. No, like it just was like, it was like they were like Carmy and like Richie like yelling at each other.

Like it was just, there was something about the very brisk nature of opinion heard that was like, I'm waiting for someone to shout hands right after like pass a dish forward. It was just delightful. Fire the fillets. Firing fillets. Okay. So the Barrow Downs. Yeah.

This was scary, Joanna. It's very scary. This is a very scary section of the book as well. And I just want to, I want to describe part of, I'm tempted to read the whole, but I won't. I won't read the whole passage. It's just all very good. But I will read this part of the description of the Barrow Downs and Fellowship. Very importantly, you know, basically these old kings slept under the hills for a very long time until a shadow came out of dark places far away and the bones were stirred in the middle.

mounds. Barrow whites walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers and gold chains and the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight. The hobbit shuddered, even in the shower of the room where the Barrow whites of the Barrow Downs beyond the forest had been heard, but it was not a tale. Any hobbit liked to listen to even by a comfortable fireside far away. Spooky, but I like this idea that like if you're close reading the text here and your JD and Patrick in the writer's room, you could be like, a shadow came out of a dark place is far away and the bones are stirring the mound. Like, we could, we could make an argument that Sauron is the one who, like, just woke the barrow whites up. Like, they were sleeping. And then he's

like, I'm going to need some mischief on the road from Lyndon to Oregon. So let's raise some dead kings and see what they can do with chains. Does that sound accurate to you? Yeah, this is fun too, because this was kind of one of the things we were wondering. about last week and like speculating, okay, what? Who were, who had the chains? Yeah. Who had the chains. But then also like more broadly that how that kind of sparked the question of what

reach does Saran have what level of awareness where we have things that make us believe he has awareness of what is unfolding, what level of control. And like it's interesting to me that we as viewers at home are thinking about that and asking that. And then of course, like you noted, in the scene for a character like Galadriel, it's, of course, this is him. Of course. Obviously. My ex did this.

How? He would. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It's great stuff. Great stuff. There's also the design of them read very Pirates of the Caribbean zombie pirates to me.

Yeah. But the description in the book, this is Frodo encountering them, right? Tremmily, he looked up in time to see a tall, dark figure like a shadow against the stars. It leaned over him. He thought there were two eyes very cold, though lit with a pale light that seemed to come from some remote distance. So they got the like, you know, the little lights in the eyes and all that sort of stuff like that and the clinking of the rings. And, you know, when Tom Bombadil makes easy work of the Barrow Whites, he just takes a bunch of treasure, certainly a brooch for Goldberry. So I think they needed to be kind of blinged out so that later.

Tom Bobadale could just like pick their pockets essentially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I thought like overall in terms of the, uh, the, the kind of unsettling effect of this scene, I thought the dark, the very dark far setting, the mist, obviously the, the, the whispers, um, that are coming from, you know, or it was almost like a song or the memory of a song. That description was like so spooky and creepy.

obviously what we're hearing the whites whisper, which we'll talk about in a second, the circling up, the prepare yourselves. All of that was like, like my heart was pumping, watching that. It was, it was scary.

And I will say, I thought the whites looked like not great. Like, I didn't, once they arrived, then it took me out of it a little bit because something felt, and I weirdly did, didn't feel that way seeing them in the trailer. It's usually the opposite. Like, usually you see

something out of context in the trailer and you're like, eh, and then you see it in the full flow of the episode. I think I bumped on, I bumped on how they were rendered a little bit. I think part of it is the action felt a little like weird and clumsy. I know it's not, because some of the cast members, you know, who play acolytes, et cetera are listed also as Barrow White. So they got like, you know, some of their, there are like people in, you know, mocap reference suits at least on these Barrow whites. I thought that action here was like a little funky, though. like, you know, maybe it would be against a skeleton that can reform itself, especially when compared to Galadriel versus the Oruk at the end of the episode, which is sick, you know. So that was part of it. The Barrow White incantation from the book is word for word lifted, right? Cold be hand and heart and bone and cold be sleep under stone. Never more to wake on stony bed, never till the sun fails and the mood.

He's dead. It's probably moon. I don't know why it says mood there. In the black wind, the stars shall die and still on gold here. Let them lie till the dark lord lifts his hand over Dead Sea and withered land. So they like Galadryl are thinking about Sauron all the time. So, you know, and like I should not. How could you not? You're either thinking about Sauron or you're thinking about, you know, what if the show had Netflix subtitles. And it's like the thrill of my life to tell you that when the first member of the company fell, you know, when we're watching on screeners, we don't have subtitles. So I did a little, you know, a little Netflix reference for one of our favorite bits. Flesh recedes wetly, not descending. It's receding at that point.

Then I checked on the actual subtitles after the episode dropped, crunching and squelching. You love to see it. Does it say crunching or crunching? Because I wrote crunching in my notes. You're very close with just your, yeah, your personal description of this. Daymore is the name of the elf that goes down and I will forever be mad that it's him and not Vorheel who was like dead men are no threat that guy is the one who should have gone down into a barrow

we hear this crunching sound and it's good that we hear the crunch because otherwise I'd have to go after him into the barrow because the hobbits survive going down into the barrow so like I was like they're not just going to leave him there and then you hear a crunch and I'm like okay it's over

It's a wrap curtains for Tamor okay we get this a very Avengers Battle of New York, spinny camera circle up moment that was in every trailer, that happens. And then what does our guy Elrond do?

Gladwell's in action, babe. What does Elrond do, Mallory Rubin? Joe. Elrond, this is a fascinating episode for our guy Elrond with the wonderful flowing locks and the beautiful curls. Are we ready to talk about us here yet? No, save it for later during the chat.

Okay, fine, if you insist. I would like to shout out that Elrond So they fetch the weapons from the tomb just in time, right? And he says, according to lore, this time after the Hall of Law fiasco of season one, I was prepared to identify, even though Elrond was not involved in that, the word lore. And I would just like to say, Elrond saying, according to law, and then continuing to explain a thing, only the blades with which they were buried will return such creatures to rest. I'd like to invite Elrond formally on House of R.

Oh, this is a real deep dive podcast. He's like, I'm prepared to like, cite from the text and tell you about the canon. I have some thoughts on the mythology. I just love this is Elrond, ready to pod. He says hold fast. And we both wrote in our notes, Perseus, because it was one of our favorite lines from Percy Jackson. There is some textual evidence for like, old. Only their own weapons will, if you squint, I believe Elron.

I will always believe Elron. I wanted to say that when Tom Bombadil saves the hobbits from the Barrow Whites, there is this very important passage that gives us a glimpse of that description of the undying lands that we love that we hear in the Peter Jackson films in the book, right? So Frodo is waiting for rescue, right? And then he hear, quote, sweet singing running in his mind, a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a gray rain curtain and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver until at last it was rolled back and a far green country open before him under a swift sunrise. Suddenly light streamed in, real light, the plain light of day. So obviously is like a couple things we love. We love talking about the far green country. We love a love a light coming in to banish the darkness, the shadows. And we love a song, and we'll come back to that. But I love that, like, it was a song in his mind and a thought of the undying lands,

and then real light comes in and rescues Frodo from certain death. Absolutely. Beautiful. Love that passage. Gorgeous. What did you make of, so we get this, like, little, a funeral for Damar's sword. Yep. The elves are standing.

in tableau around it, and then we get this galadro-Elron exchange. What did you make of this? This is where I was most struck by his hair. I actually think you should, you should, there's no limit. I'm not going to accolade limit you on this. You can talk about Elrone's hair as much as you want in this episode. Thank you. I think it's like it's adjacent enough to a passion of yours, wigwatch, that it feels permissible.

Yeah, in a way that acolyte. 800 times per pod, frankly. Didn't, though, you would think you a lover of musicals would have a, Would have had a high tolerance for that, too. Even I am my limits, I suppose. Yeah, okay. I'll take that under advisement, something I'll reflect on

before a musical episode next week. So this was one of the trailer lines. We get to see this scene play out. Galadriel goes over to Elrond. Elrond is not participating in the funeral. He's thinking about how he's going to get this mission going. He's surely standing there like, my hair's gotten really long.

A lot of time has passed. We've probably fucked this up already. But Galadriel says to him, I know you believe the ring is deceiving me, but I believe it is guiding me and that following it may be our only path to victory. You said earlier that the like this had to be sarah on had real like ex-boyfriend vibes. This reminded me of like defending your shitty boyfriend to your friends who hate him and don't trust him. Like that's like I know you think, but um and like I also thought that just this in general, we talked about this.

last week. Like, this connects to very, very palpably across characters, this Lord of the Rings tradition, putting aside anything about the future of Nenya or even the three elven rings, just this familiar note of, don't put your fears to rest. I'll use it for good. I'll make sure it's okay. I'll be able to navigate. I'm not like other girls.

Oh man. And Elron's basically because there's no point at which the cost of victory becomes too great. Now, at the end of the episode, these two are separated. I'm excited to talk about the parting shot that we hear from Elrond,

which I thought was a savage evisceration and it made me wonder about the state of their relationship moving forward. But like, you know, every exchange between them so far again halfway through the season is about, in essence, this thing. Either the threat of Sauron, the pull of the ring,

the risk of the ring, what it means to succumb to it. And so Galadriel saying, like, I've yet to reach that point. Like, that's not the dominant concern for me. And he's like, how does that not terrify you? Which I thought was really interesting. And her reply, of course, is because the suffering of the world ruled by Saran terrifies me more. So you're weighing evil at that point. You're weighing and assessing the comparative threat level of a given course.

And that is part of how you justify it. And speaking of justifying things to ourselves, that leads to what, Jo, to Elron talking about his father? Okay. Elron and his daddy issues are back again, back in the habit, you know? If we're not talking about Elron's dad, what are we even doing here? So, you know, his dad, who is, as you recall, was turned into a star because he was so great and wonderful. And Elron has to forever live underneath the shadow of his dad. dad who's a star and his mom is a bird and it's a lot. Okay. So in season one, Calabrimbor told Elrond,

quote, I was there, Elron the night your father set sail a mortal man who believed he could convince the very gods to come to war in our aid. I heard your mother pleading with him not to go, asking him, imploring him, why, why must it be him? And do you know what he said? Because he was the only one who could do it. And Elron here says, you know, My father once I would have Caliborneur's life in my hands. This idea of like, I'm the only one who could do it. I think Galadula believes that about herself. I think Elron believes that about himself in the context of this.

When the whole thrust of the story that we're watching is pushing towards fellowship, is pushing away from only I can do this. Right. What do you want to say about that? Yeah. And especially inside of that relationship where there's a history. and a closeness and promises made time and again to each other to see though. I think there are a few different pairings who have like a deeply rooted affection for each other

and who have like been put through some sort of test or trial together previously where you would feel the same effect. But they're a great choice for it because like the fact that they're not able to like the thing that they each believe so staunchly and firmly is true and right that like myopia an individual certainty is then the blocker to the fellowship between them, even just like, you know, the little kind of like, uh, lieutenant and like, again, like, you know, I heard you. And she's like, well, yeah, like, I guess I could get like the archer that you want.

But like, what if you listen to what I had to say about what's like way we should be going? It's just they're not in sync at all. And that's part of what makes the, the parting that's to come so damning because you have this like discussion about, again, like a promise, what will you do or won't you do? What am I asking you do or not do? Yeah. An oath. We know how Elrond feels about those. Also, we know how, um, I think, Stark felt about those. We should remind folks, because we did get an email from a listener, Matt, who was like, hey, did you know that Elron doesn't really care for oaths? And I was like, oh, yeah, we talked about that a lot last season, but maybe we need a little refresher, which is that

in the council of Elron seen in Fellowship of the Ring in the book, he, forbids anyone to take an oath regarding the quest to destroy the ring. So Elron at some point in his life is like oaths bad. Don't like them. I'm not for them. That's not the way. Here, I would say, he's like, I'm not swearing anything on that goddamn ring that trinket. I hate it. But I promise you, I will put Sauron first over you. I believe this is a very classic promise we're about to see broken in the next four episodes, like clearly. Yeah, it had real, like, I mean, of course, given the actor, it makes us think of Promise Me Ned, how could it not?

But, like, it had real, like, Gomorra and Peter Quill vibes to me, you know? 100%. Great call. Yeah. And, like, you promised. Yeah. You promised. Told you to go right. But, like, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, that's what I loved about that. moment because I agree it's like it's difficult for us to believe that Elrond will like stay

firm and like follow through on that and frankly it wouldn't be the first time in the span of this show that he's told Gladriel something and then not done it but there was something withering about the way he said like even though he's like I make no promise I will make no promise who's asking is born of the ring but I swear to you defeating Sauron will come first even before you. Like, it didn't, I think kind of is trying to be like, here's a comfort and all assuaged your anxiety and your worry.

But it just to me is like, kind of like hilariously awkward and weird. It's this like moment between these dear friends who are totally out of sink and off kilter with each other. And it's like, like, sure, I'll kill you. Like if it comes to it, sure I'll kill you. Like, no problem, Galadriel. I'm sure it'll come to that.

Okay. Galadryl, we should say she gets a ring vision. We get some ring powers in this episode, right? We'll talk about the other ring power unlocked that we get here. But, you know, we had a listener say like, hey, when are they going to show us specific ring powers? Here's some stuff, right? So Ring Vision, we get Morgoth's crown being grabbed by either Sauron or Adar, but some sleeve sleuthing points to Adar. Elron at sword point, Aragian in ruins, a filthy bloody Calibrimbor, hitting the

the ground, not having a good day. Brutal. Sauron, who is Anatar, but now looks suspiciously like Halbrin in evil prince drag, looking down at a blonde head of hair. Galadryl, Mirdania, tune in to find out. But that's what Galadio sees. Yeah, she's kind of pulled out of it by Elron saying her name, but because we're looking at Hal Brand, it feels like he's saying her name for a second.

So that was a little genius bit of editing. My only question about whether that's Adar is, I think we typically see him with like gloves or his hands covered. And those were beautifully manicured hands. Okay. I was looking at the hands to see if they were like pale and vainy enough. And I wasn't convinced. But then I think the detailing on the cuff matches the cuff of the armor that he's wearing.

It's not his usual armor, but the armor that he's wearing when he encounters glad he'll be on the end. episode. But I'm yeah it will you could easily convince me that that is Hal Brand's uh sleeve it just didn't seem to match the like dark prince uh costume that he's wearing anyway I am nothing I'll have to get a look at more parts of sleuth um on our body to see if like every inch of his skin looks like curdled milk or just his face well and I hope this is we'll wait more insight I hope this is an assignment that you will relish um so here we go drums not sounding in the deep But in the forest, it's an Uruk party, and the Uruks love a drum.

And they marched past Elrana Galadriel on their way to Oregian and a group of them attacking a horse, and Mallory gets pissed off because why are they trying to attack this poor horse? Discover the elves by accident when poor nerdy Kamnear, our map elf, who is not built for combat, is wounded, and we get a ring power unlocked because Galadriel heals Kamnear with. with Nenya. She just goes full Grogo here and force healing with grief cargassine. And it was wild. Incredible reaction by everybody because there's awe among members of the company.

How could there not be? Yeah. But then terror, certainly for Elrond. And like I like this idea of the skeptical members, Elrond or otherwise, witnessing the capability. of the ring and like how could you not then be tempted to use that for good? How could you not feel on some level what Galadriel is feeling? It brings this elf who we were definitely emotionally attached to because we literally just bet him in this episode, but it brings him back from seemingly certain death and what could

possibly go wrong? I mean, all Sauron wants to do is heal middle earth. So, you know, that's the healing power of Nenya. Galadryl gives the ring to Elran Says she'll hold off the orcs as long as she can And then Elron cuts in with what, Mallory So Whig guy

Kamner, map guy It's like she sacrificed herself to save us all Holy shit sick I'm gonna go back and tell everyone What Galadriel did This is like I can't wait to tweet about it Can't we talk about it? What a woman.

Incredible. Elron, coldly, brutally, but I think with real clarity. And excellent curls. And hair that looks flowing beautifully and looks great. Yeah. Said,

she says she did not do it to save us. She did it to save the ring. And this was the first time where I wondered if these two were going to be okay. And like we're going to be able to work through this because that is an indictment of something that feels deeper than don't be tempted. Don't allow yourself to be drawn in.

That's a you're already lost. That's a you think this is the only thing, the most important thing. And we're going to talk a lot this episode this season about sacrifice. But that's not at a certain point, that's not sacrifice if the thing that you're doing it to protect is something that has trumped the meaning of everything else for you, right, that has subsumed the kind of thing you would have protected before. And so like with the healing, like coming on, you know, on the heels of the

healing and witnessing that new power that it made me think also of like our conversation from the mailbag pot a couple days ago about control, right, and possession. Because like, yeah, there's something incredible about that and amazing and you would want to be able to heal and preserve natural but yes like this is just like

Sith stuff or at least it can be like if you think you can control life and death right have we lost you and this is clearly what's going through all around's mind here to zoom back really quickly to what you said which was like this new thing has trumped all other things that are important to

you something we forgot to shout out, though I think I did have it in the notes, but I forgot to say it, was that the Bling King himself, Gilgallet, has taken all other rings off his finger and he only wears his ring of power now. And when Galadryl, you know, is talking about it, there's just a shot of his hands and he folds the non-ring hand, like, over his ringed hand. So, like, we're calling attention to the fact that, like, Gilgallet has dropped all of his other rings. Just wearing that one ring, this is fine. Everything's fine, guys. It's totally fine. So Galadriel, whether she is protecting her fellow elves or the ring, does her very best impression of Gandalf staring down the ball rug when she tells them to go back to the shadow, which in this case is literally Mordor or under shadow.

And then she does some really sick, cool fight moves. I absolutely loved this. It was awesome. It made my lower back hurt so much. watching it. Like, I was, like, physically advanced. Just imagining trying to move like that in any respect for even a moment. And just like...

But the throwing of the lantern and the hitting it with the arrow and, like, all that stuff, I thought that was really cool. Then she gets yanked off her horse right into the clutches of who? Mallory's boyfriend. Here he is. Adar. I missed him. Yeah.

He looks great. He uses a very familiar elvish greeting, right? He says a star shines. on the hour of our meeting. It's something that Frodo says in the book. It's something that is so important to Tolkien fans and they get it tattooed on their bodies. And here's a letter.

And it's like so important to Tolkien that in this letter to his son in 1958, he says, perhaps jokingly, it's the whole reason why he wrote the books. He wrote to Christopher, nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable

to my person, aesthetic might seem real, but it is true. An inquirer, among many, asked what the Lord of the Rings was about, and whether it was an allegory. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be a star shines on the hour of our meeting, and that the phrase long antedited the book I had never heard anymore, but I enjoyed myself immensely and retired to bed really happy. So Tolkien's like, don't bring this allegory question to you. to me. And he hates the allegory question so much. It comes up in another letter in the outline today. He is forever saying, please don't say allegory to me. He's like, here's why I wrote the book.

I wrote it so my tortured poetic brain could just introduce beautiful, you know, musical, lyrical snatches of dialogue to people that they will then get tattooed on their bodies in the future. And that is what he is done. And so you can go to bed really happy. I mean, I enjoyed myself immensely and retired to bed really happy. This is just like, this is gold stuff. My goodness. The professor. I love that Adar says it here because like not every, I mean, there's a lot of lifted

dialogue from the books from other characters into other characters' mouths in this episode. And sometimes it can get too much. I don't think it like tipped all the way over the edge to me in this episode. But I really love Adar's use of it here because it really feels like, a very elegant and elvish way for Adar to greet Galadriel and just like a twist of the night to remind her that they have a shared ancestry. That she's like, you're a monster, you're an abomination, the Orux are monsters and all and stuff like that. He's like, we're not so different, you and I. Right.

I know, I know your poetic greetings. I speak it fluently. I mean, maiden mockery? like your kind was a mistake. Yeah. Even if it takes me all of this age, I've had to eradicate every last one of you. Like, they're going to have some stuff to work through these two.

But I'm excited. I'm glad they're back together. I thought they were electric in season one, even though it was a different actor, but still. Mallory, quick, important question for you from our listener, Chelsea. The email she wrote was just titled Daddy Addy, and she said a humble, epithetical offering for everyone's Mal's new crush, the OG father himself Adar.

Daddy Adi, are you into it? I like it. Great. Yeah, I'm into it. I might need to reassess hot daddy Allendial if we go with Daddy Adi, but I'm willing to do that. It feels like we can come up with something new for Allendial when we see him again. It's Papa D for King Doran.

It's Hot Daddy Allendial for Allendial and Daddy Adi for Adir. And that's the dad core from Mallory Rubin. Okay. Now we come, now we get to talk about Tom Bombadil. It's the stranger and it's only bloody Tom Bombadil. Let's start with the very basics, because we don't know who's listening to this podcast. Are they like absolute Tolkien cooked nerds like us or are they just sort of like, hey, I just like this fun show. And can you teach you some things?

Okay. Who is Tom Bombadale? Happy to answer that. Oops, it's very complicated. He's old. He's the eldest, in fact. He's quite old. Strange guy.

A wife guy. Loves Goldberry. If there's nothing else you know about Tom Bombadale, I need you to know that he loves his wife, the Fair River daughter. He lives in the Withie Wendell Valley in Lord of the Rings, saves Frodo and the Other Hobbits twice, not to mention the ponies in the span of two chapters. And this is what they say about the valley where Tom Bombadil lives.

It's, quote, said to be the queerest part of the whole wood, the center from which all the queerness comes, as it were. And a letter we'll come back to when we're discussing nameless things. We get to the Arandere mudworm thing. Tolkien once wrote, quote, even in a mythical age, there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bobadill is one. one. Tolkien's like, guess what? We don't know. Is he, as Tolkien once described him, a spirit of the vanishing Oxford and Berkshire countryside that he was always lamenting? Based on the things that Tom Bombinil himself says in that opening clip you heard, he predates

so many things that he is almost certainly one of the A.K. the Holy Ones, which are the Valor and the Meyer. He's probably a myr, which is the same class as Gandalf and Saur on just like an older one, one who was here first. There is a fun theory that Tom Bobadil is actually Eru Tolkien's number one top guy creator himself. In the book, when Frodo asks Tom's hot river daughter wife, Goldberry, who Tom is, she says he is. Yeah. Yeah. God in Exodus says to Moses, I am. So that's a reminder, Tolkien, Catholic.

Okay. Yes. Yeah. If Tom Bombadil is God. Yes. And we have more on that later. But if he's God, he's a rather indifferent God and doesn't have the fate of the world under mind.

He's more invested in gathering water lilies for his wife. So, do you have like a favorite theory about who Tom Bombadil is? So that, that, uh, quote that you just shared from our gal Goldberry heard warbling for just a moment in this episode and what a warble it was. It was quite a warble. What a warble it was. Can I read that whole passage? Because I think that's like such a, I love that passage. And it's a fun moment where like Frodo is as is often the case kind of our avatar like seeking to learn and understand and discover. So it's from fellowship and he says, fair lady said Frodo again after a while.

Tell me if my asking does not seem foolish. Who is Tom Bombadale? He is, said Goldberry. Staying her swift movements and smiling. Frodo looked at her questioningly. He is, as you have seen him, she said in answer to his look. He is the master of wood, water, and hill. Then all this strange land belongs to him?

No, indeed, she answered, and her smile faded. That would indeed be a burden, she added in a low voice as if to herself. The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Which Tom will say. Yeah, idea from Tom expressed in this episode, resuming. The quote, Tom Bombadil is the master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, waiting in the water, leaping on the hilltops under light and shadow. He has no fear.

Tom Bombadil is master. Like, yeah. Of course, people have spent decades speculating about whether he's God. I thought it was interesting that J.D. and Patrick, like, addressed this directly in some of the press that they're doing around this introduction. Because, again, like, genuinely, we're not overstating it at the top of the pod. Like, this is something that fans of these stories have been waiting to see on screen for so long. Because Tom Bombadale is such a little weirdo who sings all the time and hops around. Peter Jackson's like, not in my movies.

So he's cut for the movies. And I understand why. I do not think totally he would have matched. but the book fans have been waiting. And so, yeah, Jady and Patrick knew that this was like a big moment to use Tom Bompadale. So what did you want to say about that? Big Pete did a vibe check on Tom and sure. Like, yeah.

So in their interview with THR on this question of is he God, here's the quote, we would have no problem if that question was being asked, Payne says, because people say that about the character in the books. McKay adds. And I think people asked that of Tolkien himself. Tolkien chose to remain silent on it, and so shall we. So this gets to, like, the other side of something that we talked about with our conversation about, like, the power of the rings and how, like, a show like this does afford you

the opportunity to, like, define that maybe with more specificity. Some things you don't need to define. Some questions you don't need to answer. And that's part of not only the joy and intrigue, like never-ending intrigue for fans to be able to discuss and wonder about and think about and consider. But I sense in that, especially them, like, directly invoking Tolkien's stated stance, that there's something here that feels like sacred and untouchable. Totally.

And that there is like an honor, right? Of course, in bringing it to screen and adapting Tom. And I think something we... But a limit maybe to what you're going to actually then, like, spell out. Totally. And I think, again, we do have like one note on this depiction of Tom Baum, but our overall, like, absolutely delighted by it. But that is something that we get from J.D. and Patrick again and again is this sort of, like, reverence for Tolkien that I think, you know, a lot of people who maybe don't read their press or whatever sort of assumed in season one that these were a couple guys who didn't care, but they care very deeply about Tolkien.

Do you have time in your day, Mallory Rubin, for me to talk to you about the good word of Joseph Vennel. Campbell's the hero's journey. I'd be thrilled. Unsurprisingly, I was eager to talk about this as well. Let's do it. Hit me. Great. So in the fellowship and here, Tom Bobinald shows up right on the other side of the threshold into the wider world

in the helper slash trials and failures step of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. The middle of a heroic journey is filled with trials, allies, and enemies. The hero faces challenges that improve their skills, meets and befriends.

and strangers, the stranger capital S stranger, our guy, the stranger, is being tested from the second he steps foot on Tom's land. Though Tom would say he doesn't own the land, right? Okay. What's a good example of this kind of character and stories you know? Oh, maybe someone like Yoda ever heard of him. Avianavuam who, while sitting at the war in his swamp, has a lot in common with old Tom Bombinil. Don't want to take my word for it?

I got a quote from Dave Filoni for you. Okay, this is what our guy Dave Faloni said about Tom Bombadil and his influence on, like, his own creations in the Star Wars world, right? Floloni said, nature itself can be very strong in the forest. I took inspiration from those lessons as well as my love of Tolkien and characters like Tom Bombadil. Characters that are outside the primary story but will still influence the main characters. Who would a Tom Bombadil type character be in the Star Wars universe aside from Yoda? At one point, Bendu, and I'll let Mallory explain a little bit more for people who don't know, but Bendu was so big that I wanted the entire rebel bassist in his back.

So this character Bendoo that Dave Filoni creates is based on Tom, voiced by Tom Baker the best, based on Tom Bambudil. Mallory Rubin, what do you want to say about Bendu? Do you see that connection between Tom Bambadil and Bendu? Certainly, yeah. I think, you know, Bendo, if you're interested in learning more about Bendu, check out Star Wars Rebels. It's great. You'll love it.

You know, I think basically the key thing to understand here is that Bendu is a figure who connects in an incredibly meaningful way to the force and represents and reflects something about the force and the nature of connection to the force and is responsible for helping certain characters like Archai Canaan reshape or redefine or rediscover their purpose. And so not only in terms of this like difficult to define like a being, a figure who feels like they exist in the context of maybe the force or but not like any other parameter that you could wrap your arms around. there's something unknowable about Bendu. There's something unknowable about Tom Bombadale, and that's part of the point.

And then also a character who then, through that, unique and distinct connection to the nature of existence itself, something, someone who is above, not above like in a like, I'm loitering, like, lording over you,

but exists beyond and outside of the minute to minute machinations of any one consideration, there's tutelage and there is a mentorship and there is magic and a connection to the magic inside of you and how you are rooted in that meaning. So I definitely see this. I mean, one of the Bndu quotes that we like to talk about the most is like that object cannot make you good or evil, right? Like it's you. And that feels like we literally talked about Bendu when we were talking about the stranger in season one.

So this is like delightful now to think about while seeing the stranger with Tom. I love it. Yeah. And the way in which the stranger separated from his friends a la, you know, Luke and Empire, Luke goes to a swamp to learn the forest, right? You know, that's a Yoda code, not a Bendicode. I do think that Yoda, the way that we encounter Tom, just like on, you know, kneeling down, weeding his garden and just sort of like humming as he constantly is and tossing plants

just feels very Yoda in the swamp. coded to me. It reminded me of a lot of like 80s fantasy classic. I think the labyrinth specifically where oftentimes our hero will just encounter a new creature, a new person in the midst of their own sort of story, never you mind

about you're on a journey or whatever. But so to your point about like this idea of mentorship, leadership, it's possible that Tom Bombadale is also supposed to play this like mentor role. Because he ends his section here in the story.

with something of a call to action, which we can talk about when we get to it. This is like kind of our one note for Tom Bombadale. But like, you know, when talking about the hero's journey, the mentor call to action part usually comes before the trials and all of that. Yeah. And I think that feels like very, like it fits very nicely here because you have supernatural aid, you know, step three for Campbell. meeting with a mentor, step four for Vogler.

It's in the departure phase, right? Like you're saying, like you're saying. We're doing that right after the hero, like the guide, the helper is emerging after the hero commits to the quest. And like that's what the stranger did in the finale, commit to the quest. So that timing feels right to me. And then it's fun to think about how like, you know,

the figure who is so often in the supernatural aid mentor role is like, Gando. We would say as shorthand, like, a wizard. Yeah. Like, exactly. Yeah. We would use Gandolph as one of the, as one of the, the, the, the, the poster figures for this. And so the idea of, um, a wizard being the one who needs that from another who mentors the mentor.

A supernatural being. Yeah. Yeah. It's like really interesting and cool to me. I like that a lot. Another thing that makes Tom Bombadillo a really tricky character to adapt is if you, if you're reading his chapters, you, if you're, I don't know. For me, I always lull, he speaks in verse.

Like, he speaks in a meter. And once you, like, start to read him, you're just sort of like, and actually this last time that I was reading it, I kept hearing the like, da, da, da, da, da, da, like the tune of this song in my head against, like, the rhythm of his words. He's not speaking in iambic pentameter. He speaks in tracheic, and that's a falling rhythm versus a rising rhythm. It's hard to capture. They didn't really try to do it and that is okay.

But I do think that the fact that Rory Kineer is using the sort of like farmer regional U.K. accent, which is like the West Country English or it's an exaggerated version of a real accent. And so like if you're in the UK, a term that they use is mummer set, which is just like this is basically like an exaggerated version. But it's a very musical accent. And, you know, if you listen to Rory Keneer, we'll hear another class. but, you know, the way he draws out vowels, hits the hard ars, like, all of, all of that in the West Country English accent. A lot of people on my Twitter feed today were like, like, he sounds like Hagrid.

It literally didn't occur to me, but of course he does because Robbie Coltrane is also doing the West Country accent in Harry Potter. But this, it's an, and I love this choice of accent because, you know, if you're being shitty, you might use it as sort of like a, like a, it's almost like a, a, it's almost like a pick country bumpkin kind of accent a little bit sometimes in the UK. But it's like he's a humble guy. He's got a connection to the earth. He's, you know, he's a farmer.

Like I love this choice of accent here. I totally agree. It feels he is supposed to be in some respects, inaccessible and unknowable, but this is such an approachable, warm and welcoming. energy. Yeah. And like I love, you know, because of course one of the first descriptions of Tom in the books is like really detailed description of his face.

Apple cheeks. Yeah. And then like that look that we get like the way like turns. It like made it really made me emotional. And then the way that he's because he is like, you know, singing and whispering these little lines of song. But even when he's speaking, it's just so welcoming and lyrical and like the flow of the language. is I don't have the musical era knowledge that you do, but like it just you feel it,

even if you don't maybe like have the knowledge to like intellectually break it down. I thought it was such a great choice. Such a great choice. Yeah, like when he says something like, there's what you're searching for and there's what you find isn't there, my accent's terrible.

But like, you know, when he says that, there's just like something just very like musical about it. Then we get a sequence that is like ripped straight from fellowship in fellowship, Mary Pippin, classic Mary Pipp. Totally. Get swallowed up by Old Man Willow. A tree swells up, Mary and Pippin.

And Tom Bobadale comes and saves them. In this case, that's Old Man Willow. This is, or Old Man Ironwood. I guess there's, it's a franchise. I guess there's Old Man trees all around Middle Earth. I did like that there's a little

willow tree in his garden, though. But, and so they're just, it's just a recreation. of that moment when Tom, and to underline that beautiful Goldberry quote that you read about Tom Bombadil, he doesn't demand that the tree give over the stranger. He's coaxing. He's like wheedling, you know, he's soothing, he's shushing, you know, all of that. And using some of the exact words from the book, eat earth, dig deep, drink water, go to sleep, you know, like it's just really love, and not the only tree whisper in this episode, but it's just like a really lovely sequence.

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Colehauser Kelly Riley, Annette Benning, and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. I loved this. I loved it. I loved the whispering.

I loved the coaxing. You should not be waken. It's what we say to Halo when he's like, it's breakfast time. I'm like, it's 445, dude. You should not be waken.

Oh, Tom. Wow, that's so funny. I wrote, You Should Not Be Wicked because I did not watch it with the captions on. So thank you so much for translating that for me.

book Pierce may be asking themselves. Hey, I thought a defining characteristic of Tom Bobbidil is that he never leaves his valley. Not even when there's a major war and a scary ring and a dark lord. He's like, I'm happy here. I got my hot wife, Goldberry. We've got the water lilies to gather. That's what we're doing. What is he doing out in the desert of Rune?

And this is something that Patrick and J.D. explained in the very first look at Tom Bombadale in an interview with my old colleague Anthony Bresden at Vanity Fair. So there's a star map on the ceiling of Tom's cottage to imply that Tom Bombadale has, quote, been watching the constellations for signs and for the stranger's arrival

thereby connecting Tom to a larger story. The showrunners mentioned that they have given him a second home besides Underhill, which he uses a summer cottage. So Tom Bobbill has summers in ruin on the outskirts of the once green and beautiful Rune, which now is a dead wasteland. At the time of the show,

Bobbadole, quote, has gone out to Rune to see what's happened to the region in order to prevent the desolation from spreading westward. So, this is a, like, a minor stretch, but I'm willing to go with it because I find his inclusion in the story here so delightful.

Did you have any issues with Tom leaving his valley? I'm okay with it because even though it is a departure, the way that he spoke about Rune, both the Dark Wizard and the Honey at my like all the stuff we'll talk about more, but the way he talked about the passage

of time and the evolution of the place and what is happening? What is happening to the world? That felt true to the time that we know. I thought it was like heartbreaking, listening to some of the things that he said, you know, when the eldest, you know, mark my word friend,

Tom was there before the river and the trees. Tom remembers the first raindrop in the first acorn. He knew the dark under the scars when it was, stars when it was fearless. This whole place used to be green. Yeah. Like, that's a simple, beautiful, right? Like the simple language, this whole place used to be green.

You just feel the loss of something so keenly, something that Tom would consider precious. This had a very dune-like quality to me, as did other sequences. in Rune when we make our way into the store village. It's like we've wandered into a fremen's siege. There were a lot of, okay, what did this place used to look like? And what has it become?

And then what does that make the people who inhabit it? So that felt very fitting to Tom. And I was comfortable with him being here. I have some questions about a task that he sets and whether that's a thing Tom would do and whether that's what we want. But this part didn't really. I didn't bump on this. This idea of him like drawing, you know, the stranger's like, oh, I wasn't

meant to find, again, I was meant to find you. You know, and Tom gives him a look. And so it's this idea of him drawing the stranger to his doorstep, similar to the way, you know, the way he draws the hobbits to his doorstep. Like the hobbits who get a bath and like cozy slippers and a nice bed and a good meal in the house of Tom Bombadil, the stranger gets a bath. We get the Goldberry cameo, which I loved this goldberry cameo because like, Yeah, that's great.

Do I believe that Tom Bombadil has a summer home and ruined? Maybe. Do I believe he would ever summer and ruin without Goldberry? Absolutely, I don't. So if you're not going to do Goldberry, you at least need to, like, imply that she's there. And it leads to, like, genuinely one of my favorite sequences of the entire episodes. Steve, will you play this clip? Is somebody out there with you?

I thought I heard a woman singing. Woman? What woman? Is no one else here with you? Your ear? As I think, you are? Are you? Yes.

It just, like, perfectly encapsulates the, like, befuddling experience of encountering Tom Bobadil. Because you're, like, it's just, like, ghastly, gatekeep girl boss, Tom Bobadil. He's like, what woman? What are you talking about? This was great. This was great. I have a... Maybe I do have a second note.

I have some notes on like where... Exactly where he threw that pretty chunky bar so. Hope our guy the stranger's holding up okay. But this was great. This was great. Really great. We had a beautiful long email from Ruth that I'm not going to read in its entirety, but it was in response to our question about like the use of red wine in the first couple episodes

as it pertains to Sauron's transformation because we get when he transforms from goop to Halbrand, we get a dropped flask of wine on the, on like sort of the peddler's cart. And of course, RIP, Calibranbor's first age bottle of red when he transforms into Anatar. And so Ruth brought up sort of the idea of the Holy Communion. There's a reason I'm talking about this here. The Holy Communion, you know, the drinking of the wine for the blood of Christ and transubstantiation and all of that and how that is connected to this idea. So, like, I think that that is interesting, especially when we think about both Tolkien as a Catholic telling this story and, you know, J.D. Paine, we talked about, we talked about this in season one, but J.D. Payne is also, like, a religious person. I am not, but I think it is fair and just and wise to put sort of like Christian Catholic imagery in the story because that was important to Tolkien. So the fact that there is a little white lamb next to the fire here is, you know, and in Ruth's emo, which is, you know, and in Ruth's email, which is. she sent before she saw this episode,

she is also talking about the lamb and the symbolism of Jesus came and lived a sinless life. It became the quote, pure lamb, and therefore the permanent sacrifice that God allowed to happen in order to bring his creation back into communion with him. So, like, the idea of, you often see oil paintings of Jesus holding the, you know, a white lamb.

Like, it is very potent imagery that they popped in here. And the fact that the lamb also has his name is like Just something to think about, I guess Very interesting We already talked about a lot of this other stuff Sort of like Tom talking about how old he is All of that. Also this idea of control over nature That Tom is so like kind of affronted

With this idea when the stranger asks Well and we're concerned We're concerned too as viewers when we hear this right you wield power over trees over wind and fire, you wield it as if it belongs to you. And he's like saying that with longing. Well, I mean, I'm maybe a little alarmed, but I'm less alarmed if I think about it in the context of he lost control of a storm

and it blew his friends away. So he's like, how do I control that? There's like, because he, because we would agree the stranger needs to learn how to control his magic. But control your magic versus control the environs around you. And I think it's. tipping point. Right. It's certainly like a very important contrast to Sauron and that whole, you know, who might as well have like control tramp stamped on his body. Like that's his whole vibe this season. And especially like when we think about like even a guy we like Kierden using his ring to like make a fish jump out of the water and gasp upon the bank, you know, and that's like a sinister thing that we watched, a character that we like do with his ring of power. And so Tom, Bombabana would never exert that type of control or try to exert that type of control over nature.

So the trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Mal we learned a little staff lore. What do you want to say about the staff lore that we learned in this episode? This was a thrill and a joy and a delight. A very Mallory-coated moment, I think. Then might you teach me how to wield a staff? a wizard staff is like a name. It's yours to wield already

if you prove yourself worthy of it. So of course this makes us think of just last week when in the second episode, Norie and the stranger talked about names. No one can give you a name. It is yours already. How can it nod? Curious indeed how these things happen.

The wand chooses the wizard. This was so the wand chooses the wizard, quite literally the wand chooses the wizard, that it was very fun. think about I was also thinking you brought up Thor recently and I I Thor was also on my mind in this stretch because when Tom says you show today that you're not ready yet whether you can become so we shall soon discover and the stranger says like I wasn't I wasn't meant to find a staff under these stars I was meant to find you wasn't I like that had real Thor was that without his hammer needs to learn humility so that he could learn himself and like learn to appreciate humanity and then can we. wield his power. I was like, whosoever holds this gand, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Ian McEllan. It just felt all of it. That all felt like it was in the mix there. My mind was still stuck in the... My mind is still stuck in the swamp, and I was thinking about

Luke and Yoda, you know, in the exchange when Yoda, much aggrieved sighs to the general force ghost that is Obi-Wan and says he is not ready. And Luke's like, Yoda, I'm ready. Ben, I can be a Jedi. Ben, tell him I'm ready. And then Yoda says, ready are you? What know you of ready for 800 years have I trained Jedi, right? Tom Bobbino's like, you're not worthy yet. I've been here a long time. I still have some notes for Yoda on that. Now we handle all that. I eternally have notes for Yoda. Yeah, no, we have some notes. Then we get the Dark Wizard backstory, right?

That's like we get this idea that he, you know, the Dark Wizard came to Roon, like walked the same path that the stranger is walking, came to Roon, sat by the fire with Tom Bomedil. Atele ate a little honey, you know, I really think Tom Bommidil's top priorities are like number one, goldberry, number two, water lilies. Number three, honey, honey, actually, he really loves some honeycomb. So this is an important thing that they shared. Years ago, there was another The Dark Wizard. Once he sought to control magic like you, now he controls much of ruin, but he still hungers for more. And then he's like, he needs an ally, Sauron. If these two flames combined to one, there will be no end to burning till all Middle Earth is ashes.

And then the stranger's like, can you stop it? Can you make that not happen? And Tom Papadal says, old Tom's a wanderer, not a warrior. Great deeds are left to the hands they were placed in. Obviously, I'm thinking about Frodo and Gandalf in the moment. But anyway, Gandalf, this is classic Tom Papadil. He's like, not my prop, actually. I'll tell you what's going on.

It's not my problem. And there's this great moment in the Council of Elrond when, like, before they make the fellowship and we mentioned this last week when we were talking about Kierden. Kierden comes up, Galadry'll come up, they're thinking about all the most powerful people in Middle Earth, who can help us with this ring problem? And then a bunch of them are like, Tom Frikin Bombadil, the eldest.

And get else, like, let me tell you about Tom Bombadil. Okay, let me tell you. He says, quote, he would not have come. And then they're like, the ring has no power of him. He is his own master, but he cannot alter the ring itself, nor break its power over others. And now he is withdrawn into a little land within bounds that he is set, though none can see them,

waiting perhaps for a change of days, but he will not step beyond them. So non-interventionist is Tom Bombadil's philosophy. And, you know, show Tom says, I shall gather water lilies while I let grow, which is very gather ye rosebuds while you may. And I kind of, like, on the one hand, you're like, Tom, get involved, buddy. come on, you're going to send four hobbits off to do this? You can't do this?

But on the other hand, there's something I really love about this idea of the eldest creature in Middle Earth. Being this energetic, you know, they did not make Rory Kinnear hop and bound around, but like a bouncy, bounding, singing, jubilant, joyous kind of critter versus like the ancient, weary creatures that we meet in a lot of other fantasies. I think always of Morla in the never-ending story was just like, we've been here so long, right? Tom Balmattill is just like, guess what? I'm focused on my house and my home and you can come here, have a great meal. I will have the exact number of beds waiting for you as is in your party, and there will be honey by the fire for you.

It's fresh bread. And there's magic in the twinkling lights in the window, a nice bath, a cozy slipper. It's a wife you don't on. This is domestic bliss. This is enlightenment. And I just love that about Tom Bobadil. It's so good. Peace and joy in the things that you know matter and a desire to preserve and protect them and to prioritize them.

Wonderful. Wonderful. And then this is our last, this is our main note for Tom Palmadil, right? The stranger says, Harry, did you put your name into the goblet of fire? No, he says, is it my task? It's triggering still. The fire, is it my task to face Sauron? And Tom says, your task is to face both.

Dun, done, done, which is so direct for Tom Bombadil in a way that does not make any sense to me. But I'm willing to go for the ride. But it felt like a really odd moment. I really bumped on this too. And like in the flow of a little speech. that I was digging? Like, we're enjoying the glimpses of the constellations of the ceiling.

We get a wanderer line, very compelling, especially given our recent separation from our beloved Harfutts. There's another, like, warning in this about control. We get the, like, very explicit saran sarahmon coding

with like, you know, the idea of these two flames combining. The message about the deeds, great deeds are left to the hands they were placed in and made me think of one of my favorite passages from Felhammed. fellowship, then it's an Elrond quote. At least for a while, said Elrond, the road must be

tried, but it will be very hard and neither strength or wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the week with as much hope as the strong, yet such is off to the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world. Small hands do them because they must while the eyes of the greater elsewhere. That's like Lord of the Rings in miniature to me. So I was like, small hands do them just because they must because Tom Bobiddle is too busy with his two wife. Fucking busy with his honeycomb and his hot wife. And who can blame him, honestly?

Fair River daughter is Goldberry. Okay? So, like, all of that was wonderful. And then there were two, both sides of the, is it my task to stop the fire? Is it my task to face Sarah? And your task is to face them both. I bumped on both sides of that.

I bumped on the directness from Tom, which does not feel. me in line with how he behaves, as you've outlined. I'll read another passage to you. This is also from fellowship. At last Frodo spoke, did you hear me calling, Master? Or was it just chance that brought you at that moment?

Tom stirred like a man shaken out of a pleasant dream. And what? I said he. I got it. Just iconic. Did I hear you calling? Nay, I did not hear. I was busy singing. Just chance brought me then. If chance you call it, it was no plan of mine, though I was waiting for you. We heard news of you and learned that you were

wandering. We guess you'd calm, air long down to the water. All paths lead that way down to Withy Windle. Old gray willow man, he's a mighty singer, and it's hard for little folk to escape his cunning mazes, but Tom had an errand there that he dared not hinder. So like that feels like in a couch of everything we were just talking about. Like the idea of chance, which we track a lot, right? Ours was no chance meeting. There are things that Tom says there where he's like, okay, I had like a thing to do.

And like, no, I did not hear it. And I was busy singing and it wasn't a plan of mine. But then he's like, though I was waiting for you. And so at once you feel that he is going to take this attitude and this approach that is notably and uniquely his, unmistakably his, but also that he is, ever present and like just around you like

the air and like that feels different than this very explicit mission setting which like and then from the stranger side his like his desire and desperation to understand and to be guided that tracks. It tracks with where we are in his journey

but I think maybe I'm just like programmed in a ring story I want the Frodo like I will take it. I will take it. I will take the ring. I don't want someone to have to say to Frodo, like, your job is to take the ring, even though, like, of course, there's one leads to the other in a fashion. And so I'm open to that also being true still here. But in real time in the moment, I was like, wait, what? Yeah. I'm not surprised that we both had that response to it. I'm willing to consider that perhaps Tom Bobadil would

speak differently to an Astari than he would to a Hobbit. I'm also willing to consider that this was a long time ago, not really in the span of Tom Bobadale's life, but let's just stay tuned. But otherwise, genuinely delightful, I love the way they handled the singing, just have him sort of like mumbling and crooning around. I thought that was really great. We got a dark wizard check-in. There's really not much to say. The Gowdrum got to focus on the Harfuts. They called Tom Bombadale, the hermits.

They're aware of him. Obviously, he shared honey with him once. And that felt like a double, like a wordplay because like they're referring to him as a hermit, but also the hermit's hat is the constellation. Yeah. So like they're literally just describing where they are. Oh, I love that. Under the. Under the Hermit's bat.

That didn't occur to me. All right. Let's go to the windblown hardfoots and the dusty stores. Shall we? Please. I am obsessed with the way that Poppy landed in a bush, like in a bush. That is definitely probably what would happen to me. or I would lose all my hair ornaments like Norrie did.

Probably both is what would happen to me. A couple new characters here, Maramack, who is very clearly Poppy's love interest this season, and I'm for it. I am into it. Dude. The vibes were flying. Immediately. The chemistry was crackling.

Nory's little faces, she was like observing it. What the fuck? She was like, I'm Norrie. Hey. Oh, man. And then we meet Gundable, the leader of the stores. What's a store, you might ask? Great question.

Okay. When Norie and Poppy say Harfut's living in holes doesn't see natural, right? We're like, oh, it's so funny because hobbits live in Hobbit holes, right? But this is what Tolkien says about stores. Stores were broader, heavier, and build, their hands and feet were larger, and they preferred flatlands and riversides. They came west after the Harfoots love. the like plant like put a pin in that right um bigger ears in this world certainly they have bigger ears than uh the harfoot's do and then when describing uh smigel who is also gollum and smigel's pal

deagle uh Tolkien wrote quote a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people akin to the fathers of the fathers of the stores for they loved the river and is so sad the river comes up multiple times in the description of these stores so it's so sad that for river-loving folk to be out in the dusty and dried up east. This place once was green, says Tom Bombadil. And so perhaps they lived in a beautiful valley next to a river. But now they've got to steal some water from that bell well. And, you know, it's inhospitable to live out here for the stores.

Perhaps they will not be there for long. Seems like a safe bat. How do you feel about the line, great, big, grand, grand. elf from Gundable. You who are on Gandalf watch. You know how I feel about this now? Like it's just,

I never really left Gandalf Island, so I'm actually still enjoying it. But if it stops, if there comes a moment where he's not Gandalf, which I, then I'll just, it will have been too much. It will have been too much.

But because I still think that's where we're heading, I'm like, this is, yeah, okay. She's a true believer. Let's keep following our nose. What does the gun say? The gun says, Saddok Burroughs, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Long time.

No, this is what she says. Steve, will you play this clip? Oh, man. Story goes, in ancient days, there was a store. Wasn't like the rest of us. They say he dreamed one night of a place with endless streams of cold water. And rolling ill so soft, a family could dig an owl and live in it in less than a month. He called it

The Suzat Struck it One year with a caravan of followers to find it Promised, when he did He'd send someone back to gather the west of us But that was the last any of us ever heard Of Rory Mass, burrows Poppy's walking song

Or if it's have been here before Your kind to whom where you come from Does it look like this? Have you come back here to lead us all to the Soussat. I think Rory Mast never found the Sousat. And after a while, we just left to wander and have a home. It's a long clip, but a good one.

I don't think we spend enough time, frankly, calling out Markella Kavanaugh, who's so good as Nora. She's always great, and I don't know how often we, like, just underline it. But when she's talking here, we just tears streaming down her face about, the fact that they don't have a home is... And this from our wanderer, this from our girl who spent all last season being like, let's go adventuring.

And then she's like, how sad that we never found a permanent... That our culture is to always be seeking and searching and walking and hiding. Mallard Rubin. What does Suzat mean? Shire.

Back in. Baggins. Just shire. This was fun. Yeah. Tell me about it. This really got me. Man.

So, okay, I'm, let me just say on the, on the Poppy's walking song front, I'm the, I'm the Godfather three meme with this now. Oh, like just. Oh, just that I thought is how they pulled me back in. Like. The instrumental behind that clip was so beautiful. Gorgeous. And like, like, like as you called out last week, it was the, the, the, the, the scoring is just, I mean, of course, always from our guy, Bear,

sensational. But this felt different to me than what we got. Well, the worry I had last week, which that was the second episode, but last week for the pod, because they released three episodes at once, not sure if you're aware of that. Oh, okay. Did I write off, was that this like 40-page note doc for us last week? I don't know. This, like, deeply emotional and resonant thing.

I wanted it to remain that and not be like plot. Yeah. Right. But this doesn't feel like that. This feels there's a difference between plot and connection. And like and here. Yes.

Yeah. To like the connection across time, across places, but also then across these people because like this is a bridge then between the gund. And then Nori, this is a pathway to a map to, like a shared emotional truth and understanding to a shared longing, this desire for home.

I was like, you know, thumbing through the pages and coming across that line, the early descriptions of the Shire and were like establishing literally like time frames, like how time is marked in the story, like how time is marked among the hobbits. Like their own records began only after the settlement of the Shire and their most ancient legends, heart. looked back further than their wandering days and wandering days is capitalized. And it's like it just feels like this is then like a way to like honor that and tie everything together so beautifully. And then of course it connects to this we don't have a home like this theme we've been discussing that we talked about last last week like glimmer. This longing for home that glimmer. And like the stranger talking about that idea with Norrie at the beginning of the season and I love Nori as like a character who allows us to think about how those things aren't mutually exclusive, like a desire for home and like a place to settle and feel like rooted and feel like you belong, but also a desire to explore and live.

And like for each person, maybe the sequencing of that is distinct. And like the fact that it is different for the different characters of where they are in their lives, like feels really true to life to me. like, Nory wanting to go out and hear the sparrows sing and then also still wanting to have a place that felt like truly permanently hers and theirs, like all makes sense to me. So I really, I loved this. This is a very, like, it just hadn't occurred to me that they would try to do this, but I know that they're just like majorly condensing timelines. And so this is the first time it occurred to me that like, are we going to watch the founding of the Shire? You know, like, are they going to be able to resist that to have Norie and Poppy and these stores that they've met? and hopefully meet up with like Norrie's family and also Malva.

And these are the founders of the Shire. And we'll see sort of the first little hobbit holes. There was a hobbit that lived in a hole in a ground. Like that's the origin of the Hobbit for Tolkien. So yeah, the endless dreams of cold water and rolling hills so soft. A family could dig a hole. I mean, great. Listen, the Goudrems show up and they back.

The Gunda and I hated it. So I'm ready for those guys to die. Sounds great. Okay. Yeah. It was interesting just the like, do you know why we wear these masks, defy the Dark Wizard? And when we return with him, you will find out for yourselves. So this like seeming implication at least that the bargain that they're making now for the

Dark Wizard to like rid them of this blankness of. Yeah. Yeah. Their Exmo was like of his. Yeah. Which I mean like, you know, there's been a lot of talk about this idea. that Sauron himself is the one who blighted the tree in Linden, like, you know, the idea that like the vainy black goo

and the vainy black blight on the leaves of Linden. So, yeah, it's like, that's a classic move. Create the problem and then offer the solution in order to have power over people. So let's go to the Southlands for a little longer than you would prefer. Aseldor, Arandere, Estrid, Theo, and the ends. Yep. I love an end.

I laugh so hard. When Estrid and Isildor had their moment talking about Numenor, and all I could hear was you saying, tell me of your home world, Ussel. A classic Dune moment. Steve, you play this clip. Fancy you never want for water on your island. No, Numenor, we have water in most of our homes.

I'd like to see that. I wager you're betrothed with two. Silder's like, down, girl. you told me you were engaged, by the way. This is honestly, these two I'm loving, like flirting over having indoor plumbing. Aqueducts. What's not to love about an aqueduct? Also, when his face is just smeared in dirt and she's like, you missed a spot and then smudges his dirty face with her dirty thumb, it's pretty great.

However, we move from Dune to Game of Thrones Because Esther has exposed herself as a wild man Or a wild woman, a wildling, if you prefer And they clap her in irons And they're just toting it through the woods And it is classic John and Eagritt You know, walking around with Eagritt With their hands bound, right?

One key, absolutely one key difference Like Eagritt rubbing, you know, up against John and like, oh, like, oh, no, no, no one day you're all so miserable. A Silder would be like, yeah, I'd love to fuck. Thanks, I agree. Let's do it. We'd be warmer.

We get a muddy, quicksand mudworm thing that reminds me of the swamp of sadness or the Bogs of Eternal Stench or the ROUS and the lightning sand from the Princess Bride or Hercules v. the Hydra or something like that. It's very, very classic iconic fantasy stuff. And then Errondere, you know, so Esther, you know, proves her quality by saving them when she doesn't have to, right? Of course. And then Arondere covered in mud and goop when they're asking like, what was that thing, right? I've not read about it in the legendarium.

What is that thing, right? And he says, quote, they're older. This is what Gannel said. They're older and fowler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. and also quote, far, far below the deepest delving of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. So sort of smashing those two classics together, Arandere says there are nameless things in the deep places of this world.

And it's fascinating to have that here in the same episode and we're talking about, as you mentioned before, the stranger and naming and who Tom Bombadil, an old thing that may or may not have gnawed in the deep place of the world, but has been here a very long time. And this is what Tolkien said about nameless things, right? He says, quote, there is, of course, a clash between literary technique and the fascination of elaborating in detail and imaginary mythical age.

Parentheses, mythical, not allegorical. My mind does not work allegorically, end parence. As a story, I think that is good that there should be a lot. lot of things unexplained, especially if an explanation actually exists. And I have perhaps from this point of view erred in trying to explain too much and give too much past history. Many readers have, for instance, rather stuck at the Council of Elrond. And even in a mythical age, there must be some agnigmas.

As there always are, Tom Bombadale is one intentionally. And as is this mudworm, which is, I guess, just called supper. Sopper. Yeah. Got a nice, like, cut a nice. stake off, yeah, in mounting his escape there. You love a bit. How are you feeling about Tolkien's don't call it allegory bit as it continues?

I love that he's committed to a bit. It just, you know, it makes, I feel like we're really, we're enjoying a run of discovery here realizing what a great, what a great potter he'd be, what a great social media enthusiast he'd be. A bitchy critic. I love it. It's all this fits. It's fits.

Yeah. It all tracks. Don't call them wildlings. They're wild men, but they're stuck in the tree, tree prison with Theo. They call Theo a well-fed, which I just kind of love, right, as like a sort of title. And then the end center. And we've got two acting legends, Olivia Williams and Jim Broadbent, voicing winter bloom and snaggle root. Shout out the Etwives.

Guess what? Yes. They're still here. they've not left. And if you don't know, that's a big thing in Lord of the Rings, the answer like, we don't know where,

we misplaced our wives. We're not sure. Poor Treebeard. We're not sure where our wives went. Have you seen them? Oh, man. Treebeard can't say goodbye to anyone without asking. And where have our wives gone?

We don't know. Oh, boy. Then we get some classic tree whispering from our guy or Ron dear who loves a tree, He has loved a tree since the moment we met him has a tree sort of breastplate thing that he wears. It's his whole thing. It was a grower.

Yeah, he's a grower, not a shower. He loves it. Okay, so he calms the ants down, similar to Tom Bambadil. We are soothing. We are coaxing. We are calming. And then we get this absolutely beautiful moment

from the ants. Steve Lee plays a clip, please. Rain, washing clear the long memory of soil new bark covering old scars and in all that time I promise

we will see to it that the trees of this wood are left in peace I think they know what piece is which is what comes after the night storms when the door is silent and the birds awaken We have tended this forest since before the mountains rose up and divided it. See you.

The ball moment. The score swells. We are filled with joy thinking about the parallels between these elders and Tom Bombadil and the people who've been the guardians of the world and all of this. And then Sildor and Estrid seem like they're going to get something happening. happening and then here comes. I mean, we got a tuck of hair behind the year. I mean, going for it.

And then here comes our guy Hagan, who, as it turns out, is Esther, it's betrothed. You hate to see it. Disaster. Absolute calamity. Calamity. The Southland. Arondar seems to leave one plot line to join the Adar plot line. That's what it seems to me.

He's like, exit the Southland part of the outline. I'm headed up to the Adar or. part of the outline. Thank you very much. I mean, he made a promise that's going to take a lot of his life to fulfill an honor. So, yeah, time to get going. Time to get moving. Rondere calls Theo the Lord of Pilargar, and we got some questions about that in the spoiler section. Yeah.

He also gives this, like, beautiful Sundarin departure, which is a like a goodbye version of a well-known Sondarine greeting. And, you know, it's like kind of close-ish and Amari-ish is sort of like what he says to Theo here. And then this isn't, this wasn't the end of the episode. The end of the episode was actually Galadriel. But I just found, I loved the Rufus Wainwright song. I found the smash cut to the Rufus Wainwright song a bit jarring, given where we left

the episode. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't like, may it be? Like, it didn't come like sort of like oozing it. And it was just sort of like Rufus is here. But I, this song rules. I've been listening to it over and over again. I love it. They did it again.

Fantastic. No surprise. So we'll talk about that more in our music episode next week. I can't wait. I can't wait. Anything else you want to say about the ends? Winter bloom. Just like it was gorgeous, the clip we heard.

It felt like a lullaby to me. like it felt like something eternal that has passed down from like a parent to child and like friend to friend and generation to generation. It was just beautiful. It felt timeless. I adored it. I would have adored seeing A Seildor and Esther to actually get to kiss before Hagan showed up. But alas, I thought too, like that was this was probably my favorite, even though overall the balance of character sets in the episode, I, you know, might have gone. a different way.

Like this, seeing Arandir and Winterbloom kind of like come to common understanding and purpose was probably my favorite Arandier moment. Yes. The way the pet, like the pedal on his hand and you feel this, first of all, you feel the depth and length of his life, but just his sense of like appreciation for. I feel like the world that he is existing in and trying to like preserve. Not since he, like, apologized to that tree before cutting it down in season one, I think, have I, like, sort of...

Reference to here. His shame for having to fell that tree. Yeah. All right. So this was the ends up, I mean, wonderful. I thought it was really, I thought the end stuff was really good. I liked the design of them a lot. I know that they really wanted to make them look like more, like, trees than, like, humanoid trees.

And I think they did a really good job with that. I loved the way they moved. I thought it was all, like, very cool. Really good. That's the end of the main deep dive, and that brings us to a chunkier than usual wigwatch TM and earwatch TM with Gerana Robinson TM. Do you wear wigs? Okay, so as we teased in the mailbag episode, we got a couple emails about the elf ears this season. We have some questions, and it bleeds into wig watch, so we're going to address it here.

Rachel says the elf ears have been extra crazy this season. Sometimes they look like doughy baguettes are weird meaty croissants. See all of elves. Ron's ears. Other times they look like, they look great, like when Kierden is by the pool shaving his beard. And they seem to change from scene to scene. Watch Gilgallet is crazy. Galadryl has fared a bit better, but her hair covers her ears much of the time. Considering all this, I propose earwatch copyright with Mal and Joe for the runs and rings of power. I, for one, would feel much better knowing these ears are not slipping under the radar. Thank you, Rachel. This is an email we got

from Jean-Michel. He says, The High King's ears are chunky, thick boys. hashtag big old ear meat. So that's Earwatch TM with Joan Mellon. That feeds right into my one of many wigwatch points I have this week, which is the adventuring elves have sideburns now, whereas it was like a very like bold design choice that the elves in Linden do not have any. They're like shaved above their ears so the ears come out or whatever. And I don't know if it's like the better to hide their chunky ears or what.

But literally the first scene of this episode, Elron has no sideburns, as is the fashion in Lyndon. And then when we see him next on the bridge, he has burns. Are the sideburns meant to denote the passage of time? The rest of his hair certainly is, is dashing. They're lovely curls much longer. So they've been on the road for a while. Is that your impression of what's supposed to be happening here?

Yeah, I think so. You know, they're limited in their personal grooming right now. I wonder if we're just going to see Robert Arameo's hair like keep, you know, because, you know, Hugo weaving is Elron loves a flat iron. Like, you know, are we going to see long hair Elron before all this is done? Courtney writes in to say, I highly doubt it is actually a wig, but Robert Arameo's curls hubba, hubba. Pro tip for our listeners, if you write hubba, hubba in an email, I'm probably going to read it

because it delays me. There's a drooling face emoji too. I did miss the drooling face emoji. Great stuff. Okay, so Elron gets luscious curls and some burns. Galadriel gets a crown of braids

and I loved this because this is I remember when the first images came out for brings of power and everyone's like, oh, Galadriel's a warrior now

and then people who know the text a bit better had to like provide all these supporting quotes of like actually Galadriel is known for being athletic, right? And this is one of the quotes I remembered. Quote, she was then of Amazon disposition and bound up her hair as a crown when taking

part in athletic feats. Thus, her Sindara name Galadrio made in crowned with gleaming hair. So I love that they gave her a braided crown in this episode. Fantastic. Just two more bolt points to go and wig watch. I did knock Tom Bombadale for his great big bushy beard. Shout out Jim Robin. this episode, but he looks pretty identical to the John, the iconic John Howe painting of Tom Bombadale.

So, you know, you got to go after John Howe if you want to go after the beard. And I dare you to do that. So, um, not on my watch. Last and at least, we have to talk about the Harfoots in the stores. Norie has lost her hair accessories and her wig looks insane. This is terrible. I never really appreciated how much the acores were pulling the whole look together until they were gone. I mean, the color. combination of the sandstorm. The canonically established, established earth of water outside of a very loud well. And the now, the absence of the eggorns that I always briefly think are very large

martini glass olives before I remember their eggorns. It's our, our girl is working through it. She's working through it. Last but certainly not least. Poppy's new guy, Merrimack, is rocking what I'm. I'm calling the Uber Rufio. Just a beautiful explosion pair. Rain 2.

A conspiracy unmasked. Our weekly, who's that guy best guesses and thoughts? Yeah. Where are you on the Strangers Gandalf front? I'm back to 100%. Okay. 99 just for like the sake of self-preservation. If it doesn't happen, what about you?

Where are you? Increasingly on yourself. Gannos' relationship with Tom Bobadillo, I think, is an interesting thing to consider. When they destroy Sauron and the One Ring and all that sort of stuff, and everyone's like, let's party. He's like, I think I've got to talk to Tom. This is what he says, quote, he is a moss gatherer and I have been a stone doomed to rolling, but my rolling days are ending, and now we shall have much to say to one another. And they're like, how do you think Tom is? He's like, fine.

He doesn't give a shit about any of this. So, yeah. He might have a warm bath waiting for me. and some fresh bread and a and lied to me about his wife being there. I mean, sounds like a fun time. But yeah, like the fact that like, so if we didn't like it, but if Tom Bobadil sets Gann off this task

and he finally does it, Sauron's gone for good this time. Who would he want to talk to? But Tom Bobadil about that. So anyway. That would be satisfying. We got a long email from a listener, Chris, about on the blue wizard front.

And somewhat compelling. but not enough to sway me here. So thank you for that email, Chris. But I think I'm stuck in the Gandalf theory for right now. Pilargear, do you want to, I mean, we haven't, we didn't talk about this last week. Do you just want to say really quickly what Pilargear is? Well, we're heading toward Gondor, folks. Yeah, I do see that you have begun to refer to Lendale as Daddy Alendale in the doc, which I appreciate.

So, you know, Seelor didn't find his hot dad in the harbor, but everyone's going to be together here before long. Not everyone. Not everyone. So this is fun. Like, you know, the establishment of like this old Numenorian settlement when we see the map and Sealedor's description and then we go and aqueducts and the text.

So there's this like connection already to Numenor and it's, you know, in showland. It's like we'll understand why this is a place for kings. We've already got plumbing. So step one of the right direction. The person I fell instantly in love with wiped some dirt off of my face right here. This is where I will rule. I'm excited about this. So Pilargir is proto-gondor.

We got a potential sort of laying track for the Shire. the doors of Duren are on their way. So I like this contrast to the Lord of the Rings where our heroes are walking around the ruins of an older story. They are constantly walking past felled statues and crumbling ruins and stuff like that. And I love this, like, you know, obviously,

like, duh. It's, you know, it's a prequel. Okay, we're going to like get the, you know, and sometimes this can feel fan servicey, but I just kind of like this. You know, we're still in the ruins of Palargar, but it is the seed of something else. I love that.

Do you want to talk about this? Is this a YouTube comment that we got from a listener? Do you want to read this? Please. Yeah. You want me to read it? It's the first YouTube. It's the first comment on the episode 1 to 3, deep dive.

Please. You want to share this? Justin Dickinson said, talk about Barrick for 15 minutes and never directly mentioned that he's a horse. classic household. I can't believe we did that, but I also believe that we did that. That was my reaction.

I was like, wait, is that true? And I'm like, probably sure. We probably did that. It's just talking about Berwick. Is any other, like, human character? The reason this is here in the notes is I was wondering if, you know, if a sealeder is going to found Gondor here, does Barak found Rowan? That's not the lore.

I know. Don't email me. Okay. Dare to dream. Who's right about the Rings? This is a thing that the show is. kind of trying to keep a little mysterious, I think, though it's getting less mysterious by the day. But, like, El Ron's right about the rings. We didn't talk about that. Like, he's right.

We talked about this a bit in the mailbag. But we got this email from Heather that I thought in a connection that hadn't occurred to me. Heather says, Elron flying off the waterfall is a mirror of what his mother, Elwing did to protect the last similar rule from the sons of Feanor. Gill and, I think it's Gil and Gal. I was it. Gil Gall and Galadryl being in the sons of Phane or roll is a bad look for them. Elwing transformed into a bird as she went over the cliff and in honor of her Elron's costumes are often decorated in feather and wing motifs as well as stars for his father. So Elwing also a big Richard Kimball.

That's what I'm taking for us. It was a family favorite. They loved to watch the fugitive together. Yeah, yeah. I love thinking about that when like Doran is making fun of his feathery shirt in season one, but he's like wearing the feathers in honor of his bird mom. Very sweet. Last but not least, this is going to be our weekly segment is called Ring Raith Watch 2024.

We did this a bit in the mailback episode. We're just going to update it with anything new. We learned in episode four. We are looking for nine mortal men doomed to die. We know that three come from Numenor, but we have no new Numerarian data, so we're skipping over our Numenor. Any further Goudrim thoughts? And what do you think of this theory that's floating around that the Dark Wizard, played by Kieran Hines, is going to be the witch king of Angmar.

When we get this idea of, like, the flames coming together and all of Middle Earth burning, what do you think about that? Someone or many someone's are coming out of this ruin. We know. Plotline. We know for a fact that at least one of the Neskul comes from the East, if not a few. So, like, it's either one of the Goudrim or this guy or someone we have yet to meet. Okay, whatever.

Right. How do you think we might be in multiples here? I could see two coming out of the east, two of nine. Yeah. Because men are thin on the ground. Candidates are thin on the ground here. So I'm just like sort of scraping them together where I can. Here's my main one.

And yours. When a Rondier called Theo Lord of Pilar. That's one step closer to the kind of men we think of when we think of the NAS school. So it's a wrap. Yeah. It's a wrap on Theo. It's a wrap. Okay.

Also, Theo's like, I've made promises of my own. I mean, vengeance. Okay. And then we, I mean, last one at least, Esther's betrothed Hagen. We got to get rid of him somehow so she can marry Isildor, right? Yeah. I'm open to all sorts of ways that Hagan could die. Slap-a-rion.

Not cool him up. Okay. Sounds great. It's done. That has been our deep dive, wig watch, ring. you know, dips into the Rings of Power season two episode four. We'll be back next week with the promised music, Tolkien and Music episode.

Havasendragons at Gmail.com. We've already gotten some great, very informative sort of emails about Tolkien and music, which I am delighted to share with you all next week. Thank you to Steve Alman for his work on soundboard today. Thank you to our juna, Ramq, pal. his production work on everything. Also, it's NFL season. Pray for Arjuna. Thanks to Jomey and pray for Mallory Rubin. Is Jomey a dinner out on the social? It's Malir Rubin and Halo. Halo's here. If anyone's watching, you'll see that I'm constantly looking over because

he's begging for dinner. Adam, guess what? A rare day out of the house. Weird. Very weird. If you also, I am wondering if his meows might be audible. We'll find out. It's possible that he's a, he might make an appearance on Mike. A pod star. We'll see. He loves Lord of the Rings. He's an enthusiast. And a very special thanks to Stefano Sanchez, who's filling in on the video for us this week.

John Richter will be back next week. And we will see you all then. Bye.