Elliot Kessler

It’s finally over. Season one has finished, and I am glad it is. While there were some interesting episodes in this show, it was terrible. I had hope for it and was looking forward to seeing where it went. I saw its potential. It could have been good. But it failed miserably. It’s filled with dull, bland, amateur writing. If it feels like Amazon hired a bunch of people to play some “Dungeons and Dragons,” they turned their campaign into a multi-million dollar TV show. It does not work. Here’s why.

Halbrand being Sauron was probably one of the show’s worst choices. He had so much potential being Halbrand. I saw many speculating that he would play the Aragorn stand-in for the first two or three seasons, only for him to become corrupted by the Rings and become a Ringwraith. Another speculation broke the lore a bit more, but that hasn’t stopped Amazon yet. Some thought he would end up becoming the Witch King himself, and I would have loved to see that. That’s a new, exciting idea that hasn’t been done before in Middle-Earth, and I’m disappointed that it never came to fruition. It could have been a story similar to Anakin’s in the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy. That would have been great to watch.

But no. They had to make him Sauron for no good reason other than they had no one else to do it with. It’s almost like the writers created the characters, put them up on a dart board, and a volunteer blindfolded themselves and threw their dart. It feels so random, and Halbrand could have become much more than he is. His character potential is squandered, and that’s frustrating.

Also, simply meeting Sauron as a person is weird. It takes away from that mythical, larger-than-life feel that he had before. The only other character that could have been Sauron and retained that mythical feel was the Stranger since we didn’t get to know him to the personal extent that we got to know Halbrand. But that didn’t happen, and now Sauron doesn’t feel as powerful and godlike as he should be.

Elrond and Celebrimbor were fun to watch. The actors were fantastic, and their characters were interesting. Elrond still hasn’t grown into the character from “The Lord of the Rings” yet and still makes mistakes. Celebrimbor also isn’t perfect, but he still feels like the legendary figure from the books, and that’s great. They were fun to watch. But Elrond didn’t have much of a role to play. He was present, and that was it. He and Galadriel reunited, but after that, his character was useless, which was annoying because he was one of the better characters in the show. Although, I suppose that’s not saying much.

Galadriel did develop a tiny bit by the time we reached this episode, but she’s still annoying and overpowered. She reminds me of Rey, and that’s not a good thing. She’s perfect at everything, and her one character flaw is that she wants revenge for her brother’s death, but her not getting over her brother’s death after centuries of mourning doesn’t make much sense. The actor does a good job, but this portrayal of Galadriel is frustrating, and I don’t enjoy her.

As fun as the plot with Nori and the Stranger (or Gandalf) is, it can be cut entirely from the show, and it would have been the same. Their subplot does not affect Mordor, the orcs, the elves, the dwarves, Numenor, or anything else. They’re doing their own thing, and it feels very tacked on. I’m not sure if their story will have relevance in later seasons, but for anyone to care, they have to. Also, I know I said the Stranger being Gandalf would be dumb (and it is), but at this point, why not? Amazon’s getting by with whatever they want anyways. Might as well destroy the timeline.

As much as I don’t like Gandalf being in this show, the actor does a great job. By the end, he feels like a younger version of Ian McKellan, and I did enjoy his performance. He did a good job, and the way he quoted Gandalf’s “Follow your nose” line was perfect and hit harder than I expected.

If you want a big, sprawling fantasy with many characters and compelling stories, stick to the books. If you have free evenings and want to turn your brain off and look at something pretty, this show is for you. To answer Amazon’s question of whether you can throw an ungodly amount of money at a project and make it good, no, you can not. All you end up with is a beautiful-looking pile of garbage. I had hoped the finale would stick the landing, and it could have made this show pretty good. If they did this finale as well as they did the middle episodes of this show, I would have stuck around for season two. As it is, I don’t think I’ll be coming back. I was excited to be back in Middle-Earth, but it has left a bitter taste in my mouth. I’ll simply stick to the books and wait for the new Gollum game.

Also, who approved of the song “Where the shadows lie?” I laughed out loud at that song it was so bad and cringy. You would have to pay me money for me to listen to that again willingly. Sorry, I had to say something about it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this show more than I did. But if you didn’t, then I’m sorry. Hopefully, that Rohan movie ends up being good.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.