'Rings of Power’ Season 2 Finale Deep Dive + Show Runners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay | House of R
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Hello, welcome back to House of R.

I'm Joanna Robinson, and it is my absolute fondest, dearest pleasure to tell you that I'm here with Mallory Rubin to talk about the Rings of Power season two finale. Mallory Rubin, how are you feeling? Do you wish to heal me? Yeah.

The door is shut, motherfucker! Here we are. We're here to talk to you about this incredible episode. We loved, spoiler alert, we loved this episode of television. We had such a good time with it. There's a lot happening. We will get to it all. And we also, inside this very episode, you might have seen it in your podcatcher when you opened it up, we have an interview. Yeah. With Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, the showrunners and head writers of this very television series. Yes.

So we're going to do our breakdown. We're going to go sort of storyline by storyline. Then we'll have the interview and then we'll have our sort of forward looking speculations, call it a spoiler if you want section after the interview. So if you're avoiding that section, you can still listen to the interview. The interview contains no spoilers because JD and Patrick are very careful about that kind of stuff. Just some light teases. Yeah. Would you say about season three? Yeah. Some, some, some little, little treats for us.

So, yes, before we get to all of those goodies, I think I should talk about program reminders. Why not? And let people know that in addition to the Rings of Power finale this week, this is Joker Follier Dear Week, the cinematic event of the year.

And the midnight boys will have their instant reaction to this. Sure to be definitely getting rave reviews. Classic, uh, that they'll have that on Friday. Um, and also we'll have an Agatha episode, uh, at the end of this week. Yep. Uh, also mint edition is doing a, here comes the pitch villain movie edition, which is really exciting. Um,

And then very soon, mere weeks away, Mallory and I will be dipping our toe into penguin waters. We will be joining you in Gotham to see what is up with the corruption and the criminals happening in Gotham City. So that is all on the horizon. It's a lot of stuff. Not to mention Mallory Rubin's traveling around the country to do podcasts. I'm covering some stuff on Prestige. We've got a lot going on. Mallory, how can folks keep track of us and the pod? What should they be doing?

It's simple. Follow the pod. Follow the pod. Crushed it. Nailed it. On Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And after you have followed the House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, follow the Ringerverse YouTube channel. Hit that subscribe button because full episodes of the House of R and the Midnight Boys Pew Pew are available to watch. Not just listen, but watch on Spotify and the

the Ringerverse YouTube channel. While you're at it, follow the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing. The Ringerverse is on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and then keep typing. Send us an email. The inbox is open, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com.

Spoiler stuff I already mentioned. Thank you so much for mentioning all of that. Spoiler stuff I already mentioned, so I think that's all clear and you guys will be ready to go with that. You're ready to stop when you want to stop. But why would you stop? Listen to it all. We had the time of our lives with the interview. Yeah. Oh my God. The interview is great. And just a teasing interview, I will say this one's for Peachy. And if you want to know who Peachy is, you'll have to listen to our interview with J.D. and Patrick. Let's go now.

to our opening snapshot. Hello, season two, episode eight. Here we are. I actually don't know. Do you, do you know what the title of this episode is? I couldn't find it anywhere. We don't know. Uh,

No clue. It hasn't aired yet. We're recording this off screen or we have no idea what it's called. We don't know. It's written by J.D. and Patrick. I don't know why I decided it was a first name basis with them there. Directed by Charlotte Branstrom, who's directed a bunch of episodes this season. And we're going to just sort of give you, of course, our overview of what we think of the episode. But before that, I just want to...

Shout out the emailers for a second. And I just want to say that this is... I don't know what the final runtime on this podcast episode is going to be. We think it's going to be quite long. So I will just say off the top, we don't have a ton of emails that we're checking in with this week, but not because I'm not reading every single one of your emails. I love your emails so much. We just have... We have JD and Patrick's input, I suppose, this week in place of. But I just want to say a couple things. Like...

Hobbs and Dragons is where this email inbox all started. It started with Rings of Power season one. You guys have been sending absolutely phenomenal top tier stuff every week. And something I really cherish about this podcast that like,

Mallory has, I don't know, let me do, embrace with me, whatever, is that oftentimes because of your input, it feels less like us lecturing at you and more like a conversation that we're having with you. And I really, really cherish that part of our listenership, especially around this particular subject matter, because like Mallory and I aren't Tolkien experts. There are people who have been studying this stuff academically for decades. We are enthusiasts and

And we have a certain degree of expertise, but I'd love to hear from all of you your thoughts on all of this. And a couple things really quickly. I heard from several Welsh people that they wanted to give me some feedback on the way I was pronouncing the actor who plays now the new King Durin.

I was saying, oh wait, it's a wine. And we, I should have known that Mallory. We watch a lot of junket, rings of power press, junket moments where Sophie will call and say, oh wine, like she'll say his name. So I should have gotten that right. I'm so sorry. And then we got a bunch of emails from listeners who have been like weathering the hurricane Helene and talking about listening to the podcast as they sort of, you know, literally batten down the hatches and all the things that they're going through. So like, I just want to say, I hope everyone's safe, obviously. And I,

I don't know if this sounds, it just means a tremendous amount to me that you would ever turn to us in a moment of, you know, need that we could be helpful in any way is incredibly meaningful. So thank you for all of your emails about that. I hope everyone is okay. We love the bad babies. Yeah. The bad babies are the best. Molly Rubin. Yes, ma'am. What did you think of this episode of television?

I had a great time. I really had a wonderful time. I'm so excited to talk about everything that happened in this finale and where we're concluding season two, what it might mean for season three. I find myself...

Genuinely, like, you know, this has become a recurring bit on our pod. You know, you could get, like, maybe a third of the way through a season, a quarter of the way through the season, and I'll start weeping and sobbing, lamenting the end of something while we're still very much in the midst of enjoying it. But, you know, covering Rings of Power, these first two seasons...

And having a weekly, recurring, ongoing, building, budding, winding, the road winds ever on, conversation with you and with the bad babies about one of our favorite worlds, one of the universes that we take the most pleasure and find the most intellectual stimulation from visiting and inhabiting and considering has just once again for another season been amazing.

like a genuine source of joy every week. So I am really excited to talk about the finale, but also riddled with despair that the season is over and that, you know, I want everybody who is involved in making this show to take all the time they need to get season three to us. No rush, but every moment between now and season three

He'll be waiting. Yearning tendrils for us. Yeah, yeah. I just can't wait. Can't wait to be back in Middle Earth. What about you, Jo? You just made me really excited for the fact that The Last of Us is coming back. I know. That trailer. Holy fuck. I know. That Last of Us trailer gave me chills. Ugh.

I'm imagining you when this episode ended, I'm imagining you in the slight field position on a forest floor as an out of camera, out of focus camera hovers above you. Yeah, I really loved this episode more and more each time I watched it. And I think we both rewatched it several times, as is often the case with a JD and Patrick script. This is true of every episode, but I think particularly the ones that they write on are

Every word almost sends me down a rabbit hole or another of lore or reference or overarching theme or what have you. There's just not a single wasted syllable, it feels like. And so on the one hand, it could be a pain to create the notes for. On the other hand, it fills me with just absolute joy, the thought of getting to discuss it with you. And I think...

Yeah, one of the things that you had raised in our notes that I don't want to steal this from you, but this idea of trials past and failed, how that recurs in this episode. And then also the breaking of certain spells or illusions, I think, inside of this episode. We'll chat a bit later on who we think has done it once and for all and who is still in the middle of their ongoing journey because...

I don't think they've said for certain, for certain, for certain how many seasons they're going to be, but I believe the plan is roughly four, if not maybe five. Four is five. Four would make me nervous that we don't have enough time. I have heard fluctuating reports. Five would be a great length for this series, I think. Let's do five. Agree. I don't know if it's going to be like a budgetary. Anyway, whatever. I hope it's five.

It should be five. Either way, we are roughly in the middle. Like we're in the middle-ish of this story that we are enjoying. So that's an interesting thing to think about, like where these characters are in the middle of their journey. Or for some characters, we heard Celebrimbor and, you know, Papa Dee at the end of the journey. We had three major deaths in this episode. King Durin, Celebrimbor, and Adar. Three? Yeah.

Or maybe one tier below primary characters? Yes. And leaving the board open for some teasing of like introducing new characters, you know, which just, yeah, it's nice to sort of, anyway, we'll, we'll talk about all of this. We'll try not to cry. Oh, I think there will be tears most likely. No, don't you think? I mean, you mean when we talk about, I mean,

Do you mean when you talk about Adar turning around his full Elfie splendor? Is that? I'm not sure that tears. Tears will be. What overcomes me at that moment. Yeah. Some sexy stuff in this episode. Smooches. Galore. Not as many as I wanted there to be. But more than most. Okay. Let's go now to the deep dive.

It's up to my discretion which storyline we do in what order. Mallory lets me run the show in that regard on this particular property. But I could not possibly make her wait around to talk about Numenor. So we're going to start with her guy Elendil and some other people over on the island of Numenor to see what is going on there. So...

We open this image of Nimloth, the tree, intact, beautiful, glowing. What do you think of this as an image to kick off what unfolds in Numenor in this episode? Yeah, so we'll get to the falling, blowing petals and some of the callbacks to season one and other things on our mind when we see that. But in terms of the opening image, on the one hand, it is...

Teeming with life and vibrancy, like it almost evokes the series opening images of the two trees. But then because of the context of this episode, which opens with a frankly astonishing sequence in Casa Doom, that we could do a four-hour podcast on that alone. I think easily and gladly. And honestly, that'll end up happening inside of this podcast, who can say? But...

The orange, like the color palette of this shot filled me with dread. Yeah.

You had this vibrancy and this fullness, but the angle of the light hitting the tree and the way that it then evokes this kind of orange plume of doom that we're seeing with the Balrog, or even it cast this orangey-yellowy glow, so it made me think then of the blight on the tree in Linden. There were just as many associations with something fuller

fading or failing as there were something brimming with possibility. So I thought it was like a very effective opening visual for the Numenor sequence in that respect. Yeah, the light color choice there was very interesting to me.

I like your interpretation a lot. It also felt like a sunset color rather than like a sunrise color. And also, you know, we get inside of this episode the image of Elendil riding away from the city, which we already...

saw in a previous vision, but it, you know, in that shot, like, you know, it's a city on fire and that's something we thought would be coming further in the future, but it's already here. The fire is already here for Numenor. So Arianne, so the bells are ringing together, I guess the faithful to the throne room. Arianne pulls some levers to stop them. And I once again need to ask what her job description is. Yeah.

I don't understand the org chart in this administration. What do you think her official title is? Bell ringer? Sneerer? Extraordinaire? Extraordinaire?

Yeah, real jack of all trades, wearing a lot of hats in the Farazan administration. It's a small inner circle and she's got a lot to do. Bells, as far as we know, only, Bellsigar only like walks around with books and scrolls. That's his job. Yeah, his is a very like tactile paper-based pursuit. Yeah, paper-based role. They're like,

Well, and also, as we learned, the inner circle grows ever smaller because Kemen's off-world now. So a bunch of bewildered Numenorean faithful have gathered in the throne and Farazan and Beltsagar enter behind a regimented army stomping down the stairs in this very fascistic, militarized fashion. Numenor has had its sea guard from the start, but this is never how...

has entered a room. You know, this is a new administration. It's funny, I was... I didn't clock this at the time, but as I was sort of looking into Numenor, and we'll talk about Numenor a bit more in the look-ahead section, but I was... There was this moment where they talk about Farazan on a ship and how his...

a blood red sail unfurls and i was like oh i was like the association of red with pharazon is something that like thematically i already enjoy but i was like oh as like a seed planted i think that that's a really fun thing okay so right for numenor's future you know yeah what could be wrong what could be wrong with a blood red future for numenor nothing okay so pharazon builds

what I'm going to call a baffling case here against the queen of the sea, the sea queen herself, Miriel, where he talks about Sauron. He's like, she's got an ally. Her ally is Sauron. He doesn't say, I saw on a volunteer because that would not go over very well. Gotta keep that part quiet after the coup. After you did a coup. Yeah. So you've done a coup. And unfortunately, Miriel has survived her trial with the sea beast. Oh no. She wasn't even supposed to go in the water, but she survived. Yeah.

How do you besmirch the queen? It seems like you get Belsigar to draft some sort of document that says the word Sauron on it, which is enough to make your case. Do you have a better interpretation of what's happening here in Numenor?

So I've been thinking a lot about the fickle nature of the Numenorean public. Yeah. And that feels really key to me here. Like we've talked a lot about this just divide in Numenorean society where we have the kingsmen and we have the faithful. And obviously that's at play here too because this declaration is not just about Muriel. It's then about pursuing anybody who is allied with the faithful. Mm-hmm.

But, you know, if we think even of like, like I was laughing thinking back to the way you described the people in the crowd during the sea trial and like, you know, reluctant clap or not, like they sway with the times and the way that bells ring.

was able to spark and incite, through what we still think is a stolen omen, this rousing pharaohs-on chant that continued on for centuries.

days on end, as best we can tell, was still ringing through the skies and air of Numenor. And then as soon as... And obviously, these things that are happening carry heft and weight. Handing over a piece of paper does not feel like it should be as convincing as an eagle arriving at a coronation or passing the sea trial of the old... the valor. But...

even so they just strike me as a group that is willing to say like, where is power, right? Like we follow strength and we are ruled by fear and doubt, especially like as it relates to any sort of omen or something that has gone wrong before. But yeah, they, they, they, they switched it up quickly here. Well,

mean, and I think these faithful are not necessarily supposed to be like entirely swayed one way or another, but like the fact that, you know, they pick a particularly tall guy, which I love because I love a tall Numenorean, but he was just like, he was just like, Sauron? And I was just like, it's a word on a piece of paper. I would ask some follow-up questions. I have a few. How did you learn this?

How can you be sure? And then I guess that leads us to questions of our own, right? Like, is your interpretation that Farazan has misinterpreted what he saw in the Palantir and actually believes this or is conveniently using this glimpse to then mount his case? It's one more weapon. Or are these things are maybe not mutually exclusive because at the end of the day, the thing that matters is misinterpretation or not, right? We know Sauron is not in league with Miriel, so we know it is a misinterpretation.

He believes something about what he saw is true. Something Sauron is definitely, you know, and I hope that that's what's literally written on the piece of paper. But like, and definitely twisting it to...

to whatever his goals are. He mentions this idea that Sauron had bruised Numenor once before and looks to make them bleed. And you and I were sort of trying to figure out whether or not that meant, whether that means that he knows that Halbrann was Sauron and he's talking about

You know, the time that Halbron was there and snapped a guy's arm or, you know, just caused trouble generally on Numenor or could be blamed for the Numenoreans leaving to go fight the Battle of Middle-earth. Or is he mistakenly thinking that the fight in Beforador... Beforador? No, Mordor. No, Mordor.

That was led by Adar. Is he thinking that that was actually Sauron as everyone thought it was? But I will just reassure you listeners, if you found something else, hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com. I looked in depth to see what Sauron's pre-history with Numenor was before this era, and I couldn't find anything.

So he's not referring to in the time of Morgoth, Sauron did XYZ. There's no ancient grudge with Sauron. And he sees, the vision that he sees in the Palantir, which includes Mount Doom erupting, he's seeing hell branch. He's not glimpsing present-day Sauron in his Annatar form. So it makes sense then that he would be connecting these dots into this twisted sense of what actually unfolded in his mind. This guy was here.

this is what he looked like. It looked great. And here's how everything went to shit right after. Uh, his, his wig was incredible. Um, yeah, I, I, I have to think that if Farazan was to encounter the Hal brand form in the future, he knows that that's Sauron. I think that's what we're meant to take from this. Um,

Okay, so the faithful are named traitors. We get this ravaging of the faithful montage. I couldn't find any sort of like exactly comparable passage in the book for this, but there is this passage from the Silmarillion passage.

Where it says, still call themselves the faithful, their enemies name their rebels. Close enough. We're, you know, we're just tossing the joint to get rid of all of them. The petals of Nimloth are floating away on the wind as they did last season. Signs and portents, portents and signs. Portents and signs. Both in...

the actual sequence of the story of season one, right? This is like, seeing this is what triggers Marielle to finally decide to like align with Galadriel and actually send the Seaguard to Middle-earth. But also, of course,

The petals falling and blowing in, this is like the beginning of the vision that has haunted Muriel and made her sure that Numenor's doom awaits. We see the petals blow in.

This is back in the fourth episode of season one. And then we see the great wave. So this is so, and we hear her talk about it, right? The faithful believe that when the petals of the white tree fall, it is no idle thing. So like we're programmed to think that this is very bad.

Very bad. It's not great. Can I share with you a comment that I saw? I can't remember if I saw it last season or this season, but someone was like, when the petals are falling in season one and it inspires Muriel to be like, okay, I'll send my ships. Someone was like, do you think Halbran was just up in Nimloth shaking the tree to get the petals to blow down? He wanted to stay in Numenor as he keeps selling. He just wanted to be a smith. Okay. So,

Arianne goes to warn her father that we're about to round up all the faithful. And is your interpretation, like mine, that Elendil is now a tavern wench? Is that what we are meant to take from this sequence? He's like a barkeep? Yeah. And I know that when we see this, we are supposed to be overcome. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. My sense of injustice. Yeah.

That's not my response. I'm sorry. My response was like, daddy, pour me a drink. Wipe that table. Yeah.

I need the lost footage of Elendil's hours in the pub. I just can't believe we only got to glimpse this for a moment. I can't believe it. Okay. Well, hopefully there's some pubs on the western side of the island so he can rub down some more tables for you. Okay.

So he's headed west to the other side of the island. They talked about this a bit in season one. This is where sort of like the more radicalized faithful have made their home. And did you, a quick question for you. Did you, we've mostly been talking about this in like ring two, but we've, we've had a lot of like, Ooh, what's the future of Arian? Is she, you know, how, how evil might we be trending here? Like did her decision to go warn her father?

change anything for you about what you think awaits. I don't know because we... I mean, you would think that after she goes to the prison and brings Queen Muriel down to see him in the prison in a previous episode, she wouldn't go back to pulling levers on bells the way that she is in this episode. So, like, I think...

It's not a clean break when she's making these choices. And whether or not she will eventually arc towards good, we don't know. This is, to be clear, a show-invented character. Right. We have no idea. So we don't know what her future is. But I think she's dedicated to her father and Volondio because he was quite hot, but not to the larger...

They felt cause is what it seems like. But who knows what's going to happen when Isildur comes back? What is the return of Isildur going to do for Aria? That could have an impact. That's what Kevin's certainly worried about, seems like to me. But to your point, Elendil heading west, maybe there's no then pull on her back toward the light. And it's just like, guarantee time. But Isildur, presumably, I mean, Isildur's not headed west.

when he gets back to Numenor. I mean, he felt the pull of the... How long can it take? He was feeling the pull already. Speaking of the West, who's over there? It's Anarion, not to be confused with Arian. And this is Elendil's other son,

And we're going to talk a little bit more about Anarion in the sort of Ring 2 section. His story we do know versus Aeorian's story. But I will just say, because I think it's fair game, because it's in the freaking Peter Jackson movie, so I think it's fair game. When Aragorn, et cetera, are going down the Anduin and they see two large statues, the Argonath, that's Isildur and Anarion. So, you know, whatever he does, he's going to be statue worthy. But...

here's how he's mentioned in season one. Isildur is talking to Elendil about the Sea Guard, right? And he says, failing his trial, et cetera. And he says to his father, this is really so tragic. Anarion told me you deferred twice. And Elendil goes, Anarion, what's your brother have to do with this? Um...

I'll tell you what I told him. There is nothing for us in our Western shores. The past is dead. We either move forward or we die with it. And this is to be clear, end quote, typically this is back when Elendil was like, I'm not an elf friend. You can't, you can't pin that on me. And then he's like, actually, it's technically what my name means. Um,

So on a scale of 1 to 10, if Elendil does as he seems like he's going to do, go to the West, see his other son, Anarion, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much is Anarion going to rub this in his dad's face and say, I told you so? What do you think that's going to be like? I assume that he'll really relish that moment, as he should. I'd say in general, this family has a lot to work through.

The bulk of Isildur's season two arc was trying to kiss Estrin, which, spoiler, he did. Can't wait to talk about that later. I have some notes for Hagen. It's just wild stuff. Real tepid response from Hagen. Just like complete and total beta cuck stuff from Hagen. I'm sorry. I didn't know if you were going to say it on the pot. You wrote cuck in our notes, and I was like, wow. She dropped the C word, but here it is. Okay. The...

All of the moments this season about Isildur and this trauma with his mother that clearly, canonically, Elendil doesn't know about, they have not discussed. Like, I'm really, really, really, on the list of things I'm looking forward to the most in subsequent seasons, Elendil and his children working through their past together is genuinely high on the list of things that I'm looking forward to. Here's what I'll say about it. Here's my note for your boyfriend, Elendil. Yeah.

tremendous like vassal right-hand man yeah the the you know the the sort of like romantic version of a classic knight that you want you know pledging his troth to you mediocre dad mediocre at best dad yeah yeah those are nose for a lead deal yeah he could stand to improve as a parent okay so so speaking of uh the thing he is good at he's packing he's trying to get medial to go with him and

He has just series after series of banger lines, including what cowardice have I ever shown you to make you think I would even consider making safe my own skin at the peril of yours. Molly Rubin, I would like to now hand the microphone over to you so that you can talk about how all of this made you feel. So I'll start here before I completely lose it. I'll start with one calm measured observation and then I'm going to just go, I'm going to go nuts. Uh,

I did love the stars shall be your friends and make safe your steps line from Muriel because it takes it back to our first shared moment with them back in the third episode of season one when Muriel said, Elendil, an uncommon name from our western shores, is it not? It originates there. Pray tell, what does it mean? One who loves the stars. And then that builds toward the elf friend conversation and then the embrace of that eventually toward the end of the season that you just alluded to.

Lovely. A lot has changed between them. Consequential, substantial things about the nature of their bond have changed between them in ultimately a pretty short span of time because of this real draw that they feel to each other, this genuine connection, and also this shared life-altering experience and their devotion, their shared devotions to a certain type of future and the way that they think about the role of the faithful and the role of fate entwined with that. Beautiful. What a journey it's been. What a shared arc.

Let me say this. When he put the cloak around her. Rumbling like my whole team. Like a pedal on Nimloth's French. That cowardice line, like that was beautiful. And a lot of characters could say a thing like that, but Elendil is able to say it from a position of truth. And he has like walked and lived that devotion. Yeah.

And so then it is all the more heartbreaking when you realize that they will not be moving forward together. My place is here. You know it is. And where is mine if not with you? My heart just melted. Why can they not just kiss and be happy? And I just have to observe that this entire sequence transpired and took place and was staged and set in front of a bed.

I think that is cruel and unusual. If you're not going to let these two finally fuck. Now, not that they need a bed to do that, to be clear. But if one is right there, let's let them use it. Clear off the table in the tavern, you know? These must. Yes. My place is here, you know it is. And where is mine if not with you? And it reminded me a lot of like,

the Elrond Galadriel conversation at the beginning of season one, when he said like, put up your sword. And she says, and what am I without it? Right. It's just sort of like, this is all I know how I am. You know, Galadriel's like, I am a fighter. And Elendil's like, I am a soldier. I am your soldier. And what am I supposed to be if I'm not that? A dad? Forget it, but I don't want to be a dad. Who cares? So, so,

and then as if we could not love this more. Meryl gives him his sword and our seal, something that we have been looking out for man, since season one. Bear McCreary just goes off with the music here. And

I think it's time for weapons lore time. We love a named sword. Here we go, Narsil. We're going to hear a little audio clip. I smashed a little bit of Rings of Power with a little bit of Lord of the Rings. And is that illegal? Maybe, but I did it. So, Lloyd Owen, who plays Elendil.

I know that they try constantly to have plausible deniability when it comes to referencing the Peter Jackson films. I actually think this is the most overt reference we have gotten to the Peter Jackson films. And it is the way that Elendil handles the sword. And it is the identical motions to when Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn dies.

gets his sword, which is reforged from the shards of this sword. It's the hesitant hands. That could be anyone, sure. Hesitant hand, a mythical sword, hesitant hands. It's a flip of the sheath when it's still sheathed, you flip it over to further admire it. Again, I've never been given a mythical sword. Maybe that's just standard practices, but it just seems like all choreographed very similarly. And then I would say even Bear McCreary has also had sort of

plausible deniability when it comes to mimicking Howard Shore's score. I would say this is, to my ear, some of the closest stuff we heard. So let us hear the bequeathing of Narsil and then the way this sounds in the Peter Jackson films as well. Steve, will you play this? It is called Narsil. The white flame. You claim your lordship and with this sword, your destiny. Andure, the flame of the West, forged from the shards of Narsil.

Sauron will not have forgotten the soul of Elendil. I mean, sounds like they're literally in the same scene. The score is just like continuous. The blade might have been broken, but the score was not. My God. Gorgeous. I loved this. What do you want to say? You mentioned sort of this idea of fate and destiny. What do you want to say about Muriel or anything else you want to say about this moment? Muriel, is destiny here or anything else? So,

I mean, first, let me just say, you mentioned that the man knows how to handle a sword, and I'll just lament once more that we didn't get to see him handle another sword. A sword of a different sort. Only unsheathed one thing in this scene. Why? It's courtly love. Mallory, it's courtly. You know, there's a lot of peril as we're constantly hearing in Middle-earth. And I just, I think these two deserve...

A little tumble. That's all. I mean, did you feel similarly when you saw Muriel in the handcuffs later and you're like, why handcuffs now and not earlier? Is that how you felt? Man, great stuff. Yeah, I think that like...

I have really, and we chatted with JD and Patrick about this as well, in a couple different aspects of the story, but including Narsil and Elendil receiving Narsil at last. Just like loving, really loving thinking about the idea of fate and destiny, which we love and talk about all the time. Choice and destiny, free will, how do these things relate to each other?

Marielle and everything in Numenor has always been a fascinating area of this show to examine that because she engages with the idea so freely. When she asked Elendil what he saw and he didn't mention the wave, she then says, Farazan's kingship...

I don't want to challenge it because maybe that is a necessary step toward evading and avoiding this doomed future that has like haunted me. But then we have not just the idea of destiny inside of the story and how that guides the characters, but we have this idea of destiny that we bring to the show, right? Because there are parts of the story that,

that are known and there are parts that are fixed and said. And so something like Elendil receiving Narsil, like you mentioned, when we've seen swords in basically any shot in Numenor, like there was since season one, we're like, is that Narsil? Is that it? Oh my God. We knew this was going to happen. And so, I mean, I'm usually like,

in the bag for a prequel. I really like this stuff in general. Like, I wasn't like, hmm, I wonder if Anakin will become Darth Vader. It's like, you get to understand how that happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And so, like, I just, I am, I'm really riveted by that aspect of the story. And I think Elendil

And Isildur and Numenor are like a really rich, I mean, obviously this applies to Galadriel and a ton of other characters, but like a really, really, really rich part of the story because we know fixed plot patterns.

things, but there is so much that we are yet to understand and learn about the emotional truths, the shared experiences, the trauma, the mistakes, the desires that led them to these moments. And it's like an absolute thrill as people who love this world to get to fill in some of those blanks. Desires unfulfilled. So...

Let's do a little mini lore dump on Narsil, shall we? We're not going to get, you know, we're just going to bare bones things that we broad strokes know. Again, no one bare boned in this scene. And no one broad stroked either. I told them to lie! No bare boning, no broad stroking. I'm so sorry. Okay, so...

If you're like, okay, we know what happens. We know where Narsil goes in the future. Where did it come from? Right? Because he already knows it. The White Flame. He already knows it. It was forged by a dwarf named Telchar. Yeah.

one of the most renowned dwarven smiths uh he made narcel and also a knife called anguist which is the knife that was used to pry the simarils from the iron crown the iron crown of course has some things to do with this episode um yeah this is how aragorn describes uh the shards of narcel right he says in the two towers in the book he says in this elvish sheath

dwells the blade that was broken and has been made again. Tells her first rotted in the deeps of time. Death shall come to any man that draws Elendil's sword, save Elendil's heir. And reading that, I just like, I don't think I had ever, uh,

really process what it meant that Narsil was forged by a dwarf. Um, and Aragorn describes it inside this Elven sheath and he, a man will wield it. And so like inside all of that, this mythic sword, this mythic hero becomes its own little fellowship of dwarf and Elven, uh, mastery and, uh, and, and, and the man himself, Aragorn. Um, and,

In the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition, I believe it's only Extended Edition. It's been so long since either of us has seen the theatrical, it's hard to know. You put this in the doc and I was like, is that...

really only in extended because I only watch those so I don't even I don't know anymore that's how the scene was marked on YouTube so I'm gonna random YouTuber said this is from the extended edition so there's some things in the extended editions that I'm like yeah you know when Eowyn sings or something I'm like that's definitely extended only but something like this I'm like I can't even imagine the movie without it so this is Boromir picking up the shards of Narsil still sharp and it cuts him

almost as if like knowing that he's unworthy or since he is not um Elendil's heir or Sildo's heir like he can't pick it up and then he just says you know no more than a broken hilt and just drops it falls on the floor and Aragorn of course goes over and reverently picks it up puts it back on the altar that moment when Boromir like doesn't pick it up and put it back and looks over I just told you everything you need to know about both of them yeah perfect um also Aragorn's just like

reading in the shadows dreamily. Okay. What's a good reading chair? A chaise? A lounger? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Behind Boromir in that sequence, there's a mural of Isildur with the Narsil shard.

And then after that, maybe the Boromir thing is there, but maybe not the Arwen thing that follows. I don't know, because Arwen comes in as Aragorn's contemplating the shards of Narsil. And she, in the Peter Jackson film, says, why do you fear the past? You're a seal-door's heir, not a seal-door himself. You are not bound to his fate. And Aragorn says, the same blood flows in my veins, the same weakness flows

And I just love, to your point about expectations we have as fans of the books of the movies and watching this prequel. Yeah. We know the bare bones, broad strokes that Narsil is... The journey that Narsil is going to go on as a sword. But...

Aragorn being in the same story as Elendil here, that Samwise Gamgee concept of why do you think if it were in the same tale still it's going on? Don't the great tales never end? This is part of it. This through line of this sword. And I think it's really fun and interesting that we get this Narsil introduction one episode after

we got the introduction of Eglos, which is Gil-galad's spear. Because in the Silmarillion, there's this passage that says, Against Eglos, the spear of Gil-galad, none could stand, and the sword of Elendil filled orcs and men with fear, for it shone with the light of the sun and of the moon, and it was named Narsil. So to go back to that concept of Muriel talking about stars being your guide, this idea of the sword itself as this white flame, as this source of the...

you know, divine light, you know, makes you think of Galadriel talking about the light of Erendil, our most beloved star. May it be a light to you in your places when all their lights go out. Like, can Narsil, can this white flame of the sword, emblematic as it is of the faith that Muriel puts in him to grasp his destiny to become the leader that he, that she believes he's destined to be, will that be a solace for him? That, and the fact that he got it from her. So we have this like,

personal romantic connection of the sort, you know? Boy, do we. And, like, we talked about Love All That. We talked about this a little bit, like, anticipating this moment and Elendil receiving Narshal when he handed over his...

post-captain seaguard sword and what you felt in that moment, like to your, I love your framing earlier. He's a great right-hand man, pretty shitty dad. We have some notes. What the, you know, in addition to being a good right-hand man for someone like Mariel, what else is he? He's a leader that people follow when he handed over that sword.

Everyone cheered, right? Like following Valendel's lead and he's leading the salute to their captain. And you could just feel. Yeah, Valendel's like, Farah's on. Farah's on. The way that people, including one of the hosts of this podcast, are drawn to him. Oh. Okay. So then we get, you know, the shot of Muriel in the cuffs and then we get Alendil riding away from the smoking Capitol. Yes.

I only have one email that I'm going to read in like, and it's not even in full. Our listener Hannah wrote us an extraordinarily long email about Elendil and sort of this biblical idea of goodness. And so I just want to read, this is only part of it, but it's still a little long. So I'll say this. Okay. I think her email was titled like Elendil is my guy. So I was thinking about you a lot when I read this. Hannah, stay with me.

She says, I've been really struck by the themes of truth, integrity, wholeness versus deceit, hypocrisy, fracture.

The word integrity comes from the word integer, a whole number. Integrity is not just what many of us think of as keeping our word, but a wholeness, fullness, and health. Elendil sums this up beautifully when he says, quote, I would rather die with a heart that is whole than live with one broken by cowardice. For him to not stand for what he believes is true to the end is akin to shattering the core of who he is. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is asked which command is the greatest. And he says, quote, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.

and with all your soul and with all your mind. Again, this idea of wholeness, fullness. He then continues that the second greatest command is to love your neighbor as yourself. And essentially ends with saying, quote, if everyone did these two things, there would be whole, right?

Of course, historically, Christians have not done this perfectly and indeed done this very terribly at times, causing a lot of brokenness. But what is clear in the Gospels is that Jesus despises hypocrisy, double-mindedness, and deceit. And who is the source of the deceit? Who is the father of lies? Who in the Garden of Eden didn't outright say that God is a loser and you shouldn't listen to him, but instead slightly twisted God's words, mixing truth into lies and tempting Eve?

whose name means accuser. Sounds an awful lot like a guy with a wig who we know, a guy we also unfortunately kind of love.

So we have this clear battle throughout scripture between the one who is known as the truth and the father of lies. Obviously, it's not a new take that Sauron is devil coded. But what stood out to me is this idea that Elendil is going to be able to see through Annatar's deceit. Why? Because you only fight deceit with truth and you can only fight division with wholeness, a wholeness that might start within an inner fellowship, if you will. And Elendil proved his wholeheartedness, his belief in truth, no matter the cost, in a deeply powerful way. Hmm.

She had me with fellowship, the fellowship within. I just thought that was amazing. But I love this idea. Again, as an atheist stroke agnostic, these religious themes are really interesting to me on a thematic level, especially as we consider an author like Tolkien, whose Catholicism really infused everything he did. But just thinking about we don't know when it will happen.

But Elendil will at some point come across Sauron, be he in like Halbran form or Annatar form or whoever he decides. And like, what does that unstoppable force versus that immovable object look like versus what we've watched happen to Celebrimbor or Galadriel or Adar, et cetera. So. Brimbo. Brimbo. Yeah.

I can't believe I have to go two years before I see a Lendil again. What the fuck? Okay. To the dwarves. Dude, I'm excited to talk about a lot of stuff in this episode, but this is like...

One of the top two things. Top three. There's a top three, I think. This is one of the three. This is one of the most stunning things I've ever seen. And as we mentioned, we're recording this early. We've only seen this on screener. I cannot wait to watch this episode in like full highest def on my television with all the lights out, you know, and like curtains drawn. I think it's going to be amazing. So yeah, before we get to that visual, let's do the lead up. So

You know, Durin was called away at the end of the last episode. Your father... Doing a murder spree. There's blood everywhere. What's going on, right? So, Desus is the ring has King Durin. Mind and soul. What do you want to say about that language particularly there? Okay, so every single thing that we're about to talk about, this was top of mind for me when you said earlier, like, the script and the tending and care of craft in this episode, um...

It doesn't necessitate... This is one of the things I like about it, actually. If you don't want to watch and think about it this way, you don't have to and you can still enjoy it, but it invites and welcomes this level of consideration and that's kind of the perfect balance for us. We love that. Every single line in this scene we could talk about for an hour. This...

idea that we have returned to. We hear it from Sauron. We hear Adar pass this message along. It's a clue when you hear similar language of an identity that is waiting to be discovered. Power over flesh, right? This has been this beat that we return to time and again. And this framing, mind and soul, is so much more

sinister and so much more insidious. Like that is the real menace. That is how one of the rings of power would truly ensnare you by the essence of who you are, right? Mind, soul, heart. And then it makes us think back to like other moments where we've heard the

terms. And the really perilous place the characters are in when that's happened, the second episode of this season was the one most on my mind in that respect because this is the real active Galadriel challenge stretch. And Elrond says to her, like, Sauron looked inside you and plucked the very song of your soul. They're not talking about flesh, right? It's your soul. That was the thing that he was able to reach. I mean, yeah, why not?

Why not both? More plucking of the flesh, please. And then Galadriel saying to Gil-galad, he seeks to rule it not only through conquest, but by... Here's a great real-time moment. The quote is, bending the minds and wills of all its people to his own. But in my notes, I have written, I suppose a Freudian slip.

Bedding instead of bending. Bedding. There you go. And then Galadriel also saying to Gil, yes, he knows my mind and I know his, which is obviously very central to the text of their long-awaited reunion that we'll talk about later in this episode. So I just thought this was like a perfect way to establish what is really at risk here.

Your mind and your soul. I love that. Yeah. And I mean, my interpretation was always like not of the flesh, but over flesh, over flesh meant your mind and your soul. But to move the language out of that sort of. Yeah. What does it really mean to have control? Yeah.

Over the flesh. The flesh is the container, right? Speaking of fleshy realms. Yeah. Dern and Decent get to kiss. We get a smooch. Thank God. And I really wanted it to happen a couple episodes ago, but better late than never. So thanks so much. Love me later. Love me later. And they did. Okay. I mean, kissing is not how they got two kids, but we haven't seen those kids in a long time. Will the Wee-ins make their way back into the story?

So Durin threatens to take off his father. If he won't take off the ring, he's going to take off his whole hand. King Durin says, you're strong enough to wield an axe, but are you strong enough to use it against your father? And the Denethor Faramir comps here, which to King Durin's credit, do not extend through the whole scene, but at its nadir, at its worst, this relationship was giving me sort of...

Basically, he's calling his son weak here, right? And then he calls him strong. But he's calling him weak here and calling your son... If you call your son weak...

In Lord of the Rings, I have to think about Denethor. The baddest of dads, I would say. He's a tough one. He's a tough one. I love this. I mean, again, every frame and line carries weight here. Before that, I said take it off or I'll take off the whole hand. Like the way that we pan down just for a second into the depths of the mountain and we see this like little glowing ember waiting to explode and hear this guttural roar. It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous.

And that, I said, take it off. Like that initial challenge. I loved this because in the sixth episode of the season, Dern broke down and he said to Deesa, I can't do it. I can't do it, Deesa. I look at him in his eyes. I still see my father lost and far away. Yes, but he's still in there. And so even though Sonny D lowers his axe here,

Just that initial challenge, the strength that he had to muster to walk in there and say that thing, to try to stop his father at all.

is not insignificant like it's a monumental thing but i just love that also i love the response of like no like are you strong enough to do this and he's like no and lowers his axe right and and then takes this different track like talking about arm wrestling with his father there's nothing stronger than my father be strong enough take it off i beg you like i i

I got so upset watching this scene. I thought it was so incredible. But to your point about it took strength and mustering of courage for him to challenge in the first place. But I also just had such an emotional reaction to his immediate...

not because I felt like it was weak, but it just felt honest of just sort of like, no, that's not who I am. And I can't do this. Right. But like, can we figure this out anyway, somehow? And I thought that was such a beautiful, again, in so many storytelling beats, strength translate to literal strength, might is right. All that sort of stuff in stories we love and, you know, and in, in your Captain America sometimes stuff like that. But like,

The way in Tolkien it often translates to someone putting down a sword. You know, we're going to talk about this shield versus sword idea a couple times in this episode. But just like, you know, you think about in the Peter Jackson films, Frodo offering the ring to Aragorn and Aragorn just like folding his little hand back and sort of like pushing it back to him and just being like, I'm not strong enough.

to do this thing you're asking of me. And how that's like one of the most brave and heroic things, you know, a moment that never fails to make me cry. So I think watching, you know, a strong, burly guy like Duren with his axe just be like, no, I can't do it is tremendously important to me. I really felt that too. And I think in particular because

If we think of the, you know, multiple, like, harrowing moments that we've witnessed between these characters, between father and son, a lot of the substance of it has been...

why don't, why don't, why won't you let me be me? Right. Why do you want me to just be the next version of you? Like in the seventh episode, I was returning a lot to their scenes in the seventh episode of season one, which, you know, we found very rich at the time, but now in hindsight are like even more delicious. And when, when Sonny D said to his father, like you suffocated me, any ambition, any desire, any thought that does not originate in you. Like, I love, I love the positioning that you're striking here. Like that doesn't in,

in any ambition, any desire, like, does that have to necessarily mean strength or might? Like, maybe it means being in touch with your heart and the relationships, like the way that he will ask about Elrond later in this episode is just like, so the fact that those- Elrond? Oh my God. Elrond? It's just heart-wrenching. And then the other side of it, in terms of not only what

Prince Durin is able to acknowledge and reveal about himself, but the way that he was appealing to his father I found incredibly striking in a number of respects. First of all, it's a very distinct approach from the one he took last season, again, in the seventh episode. He's not seeking to win here by diminishing his father.

by saying, I know better than you, you're wrong, let me tell you why you need to get with the times and be more progressive and learn to see things a different way. All of that is still true, by the way, but that's not the tactic he takes here, right? You're stronger than this. Right, he's reminding him of his might and his stature and what he means not only to Durin, but to the people of Khazad-dûm. There was a long stretch for these two where Prince Durin had to flout that statement

standing. And now it's the thing that he is appealing to, to try to reach his father. And that arm wrestling stretch, do you remember when I was a wee lad? And then he starts to tell this tale on the way he says, be strong again, father, take it off, I beg you. I could not have loved this more. The fact that Sonny D is seeking to combat the pull of the ring with

Like, it does not work, right? Which we have to acknowledge. It does not work. Balrog is ultimately what leads King Durin to pull off the ring, not what Prince Durin says here. Yeah. But...

The thing that is important is not whether it worked, it's whether it was Prince Durin's impulse to try. You know, the stories of connection and family and shared experience and love for Prince Durin to be a character, for us to see in this moment that he is a character who knows that those are the things that the shadow and the darkness can't touch and can't subsume. And so then inherent in that observation is the flip side. They can become the things that pierce the shadow.

if you continue to embrace them, just feels very connected to this season-long idea of fellowship as a shield, right? Holding onto that idea. And then there's just this very Kate Bush running up that hill to pull Max out of Vecna's grasp aspect of this. It's very Patronus-coded, right? The strength and might and power of connection and happy memories as the thing that can fend off this dark force of Dementor. Otherwise, I just...

Again, it didn't work, but I love the Prince Durant drive. Good effort. Good effort. No, I love all of that. You're so good. Good job. Good effort. I love talking to you. You're so brilliant. I think also, as you were talking, I was thinking a lot about what we've discussed in terms of the ring's influence in making you forget yourself and in a sensory way. Yes. We were talking about...

you know, that idea we'll come back to the idea of like the color of the world, just turning to gray after your exposure, exposure to Sauron. Um, we talked about Frodo not being able to remember the feel or the smells or whatever of the Shire. And so this idea that the ring has taken King Durin so far away from himself and that his son's best hope of reaching him again, doesn't work. Um,

Is remember, remember, remember who you are. You're strong. You're my father. King Doran says Ador should never beg. And I thought for sure this would be like something Gimli had said at some point or whatever. Like I couldn't find it anywhere. So this is a. This was chilling. A King D original here. And then the king shows his son the quote true wealth of their mountain. It's an ocean of Mithril.

And he says, behold, the dynasty of Durin. And, uh, again, this is not dynasty of Durin is not a phrase that comes up in any of the Tolkien books that I own. Um, but it made me think of the poem Ozymandias. Um, if you're not a Shelley fan or Breaking Bad fan, let me remind you the poetry of Ozymandias is about a man who comes, uh,

comes upon the bottom of a statue in a desert, and it's just a wasteland all around. And at the bottom of the statue, this is how the poem goes. And on the pedestal, these words appear. My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my work, see mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck. Boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away. So when King Durin is standing in front of all of this Mithril,

behold the dynasty of Doran. And then you think about in the Peter Jackson films, Boromir saying, this is no mine, it's a tomb. Like that this flashing to the future of Khazad-dûm, of Moria, as this, you know, look, my works ye mighty in despair. Like this is just an absolute wreck of

of hubris, which is exactly, you know, the digging too greedily into deep concepts. Oh, man. The, not only that connection to the past, the future, but also the connection to the past. This is like, again, to me, this is like one of the real great achievements of the show to date is being able to consistently draw back to something in the canon or our time with this group of characters in this slice of the second age so far, but also allow us to think about the future and have that feel like

it's existing in harmony together, not like a whiplash-inducing kind of push-pull. And so I was thinking as well, we have seen this before. This Ocean of Mithril, right? This is what went Elrond and Durin in one of our favorite scenes in the history of television. Very sweaty and rumpled. Save it for the other side. Yes, you save it, Durin. God. Couldn't...

Sonny D could not compel his father to even look. Father, it's more than we ever imagined. Like their positions are so inverted. This is so recent, right? And Papa D then in that episode-

We do not dig an earth that cannot support it. Delving into depths beyond the darkness, tempting shadow, rock, and mind to bury us all beneath the mountain. So this heightens the tragedy. This is a very tragic episode with a lot of tragic outcomes for a number of tragic figures.

And, like, also when do we see the Balrog for the first time in this show? The, like, the casting, King Durin casting the leaf, refusing to embrace fellowship and offer aid to those in need, threw that hole into the Mithril Pit the way it lands and catches flame and the harbinger of doom of the Balrog's roar. Ugh, just incredible. And then Dynasty, the idea of a Dynasty...

A dynasty. I loved the way that he said a dynasty. First of all, Peter Mullen. Incredible. I will really miss Peter Mullen's work as King Dern in the show. Sensational performance. Big sports fan. Love a dynasty. Love a dynasty. Roll Tide. But when I heard him say that, the hairs stood up on my body. I mean, it was one of those things that viscerally you feel like,

the doom just like blankets you. Durin's Bane, this is not, you think of dynasty, you think of achievement, you think of sustained success, you think of excellence, you think of making your way, working your way into the annals of history. Like this is not a portent of that. It's a harbinger of doom. And like the other thing that, doom, doom. Well, what else is it paying, right? The idea of like a figure like this talking about a dynasty for his family. It's very Tywin Lannister-y, right? Like the future of our family will be determined in the next few months. We could establish a dynasty

dynasty that would last a thousand years or we could collapse into nothing as the Targaryen said here's my observation usually if you're saying out loud here's the way we plot our course to dynastic legend status like it's it's gonna go the other way yeah the Greeks are pretty uh from the beginning of drama the Greeks are like this isn't gonna go the way you think okay so

I do think it's interesting given, as you say, that we saw Durin view this in season one for King Durin to say, to see Yarmouth in the way I do, you have to wear the ring. Well, Prince Durin saw it without the ring, right? Like he, he was able to find this last season. Again, I agree. They should probably not be digging because I know the future. So, but,

You know, the Tom Bombadil idea of it's not our mountain father. You taught me that. Like that, you know, we don't control the mountain. Right. Deesa's whole idea of we're in conversation with the mountain. Yes. We're resonating with the mountain. We're not, you know, holding it in our grasp. Yeah. Kingdurin says...

With these rings, it could be that idea of control and ownership, that perversion of your relationship to the natural world. And as he says this, to your point about how we see the reveal of the Balrog, you see the glow on his face first before you see the Balrog, to go back to the vision of Nimloth. The tree, you see this just ominous orange glow. So we see this light, this false light,

From the depths before we see the demon itself. And it's so chilling. Unbelievable. And so good. You taught me that. Yeah. It's not our mountain father. You taught me that. We're about to get to this...

just astonishing action sequence and actual death. But that line to me is the funeral for King Durin. Like that's the death. That's the end because it's an acknowledgement that it's gone. And then we get to glimpse it again for a second or return to it. But you just feel the depth of what like they shared and what passed between them and then what was lost and confronting what's been lost and what the ring has robbed them of. The ability to achieve that in one line, you taught me that.

Can I just say that like leaving the Hobbit films out of it because I don't rewatch them, but like a critique people have of the Peter Jackson trilogy. And I think it's fair is that they feel like in some ways Gimli is reduced to comic relief and that like the dwarf, the like nobility of the dwarves is not given it's like fair weight inside of that trilogy. And I, I, I could agree with that. And so I really, I just think emotional depths are,

The thematic richness of the Khazad-dum storyline has just been one of the high achievements of the show, I think. Totally. So the way... Okay, I will admit, the first thing... So they're on a sort of ledge over, you know, molten fire that's coming up in the form of the Balrog. So of course we're thinking of the cracks of doom. We'll talk about that in a second. But I also had to think about the Dragonbound. I was just like, oh no, we're back.

on and out cropping. I don't even remember the word we learned for that in House of the Dragon, but it's gone from my brain. I'm sorry. Something with a G. No. Gantry? Gantry. I think gantry. Yeah, I think it's like gant, but it's gantry. Love it. Thank you so much. Okay, so the Cracks of Doom...

Oh, man. The Sum of Nahr, the volcanic fissures in Mount Doom where the One Ring is forged. It's the only place you can throw it back in and it'll be dissolved. We know it. We know it well, okay? So we're thinking about the cracks of Doom, obviously, when we're thinking about this. We're about to watch a ring bearer, like,

go over the side. But the fiery whip, of course, encircling King Durian's ankle has to make us think of Gandalf, of course. What I will say is this. He gets pulled down by the fiery whip. He gets dragged. His crown doesn't budge a millimeter. And I would like to know his secret.

Cause I can't keep a hat on my head to like save my life. But like, do you think it's, here's my question. Is it bobby pins? Is it wig glue? Or has he just not removed that crown since they put it on his head? And it's just sort of like, Oh, everything's grown around it. You know what I mean? Like the roots of the tree growing through. You know, I,

My observation was just how harrowing it was to see the blood coating King Durin's face and crown, but I love... You are your purest and truest self when you're able to make observations like this. How did this hefty crown stay atop his head? I was just impressed. I wasn't critiquing. I was just impressed. Yeah. The Balrog looks amazing. I think it looked really good last season. I think all

all of the creatures have looked phenomenal this season. But this, I think, is maybe the crowning achievement. The flaming sword tearing so much of the mountain down with him as he crawls up again and again. Like, so we know eventually he's going to tear down the whole thing. And so, like, this is...

just knowledge that this is what, well, I mean, I guess it's the question. We could talk a little bit about the text a little later on, maybe in ring too, but it's like, is this going to be the Balrog interaction or is there, my guess would be, this is not the last we see of the Balrog. I think we have temporarily with the, the, the cascading of rock kept the Balrog at, at bay before, for how long. Yeah. Um,

That's my interpretation as well. I just wanted to... Yeah. What do you want to say about this visual here before we get to the king of all visuals momentarily? This was just amazing. Like, the king of all visuals. I can't wait to hear your thoughts on that. The initial, the whip, like you said, and the way that it makes us think of Gandalf. I just want to say, like...

We've talked before, sometimes actually in the battle episodes, like we talked in season one, episode six. Okay, if it's like, if the staging and the setting, if you're inviting us to think about Helm's Deep, say, then maybe you're not doing yourself actually any favors by inviting that comp. Gandalf and the Balrog and Khazad-dûm in Fellowship is one of the most iconic moments

Moments and visuals and the history of story. According to the ringer listeners, it is the most iconic moment from the Lord of the Rings. There you go. Per a podcast we did recently, yeah. Right. And so like...

To know that that will be on our minds and then to invite it even more directly with something like the whip around the ankle is like bold and I think kind of brave. And then to pull it off is incredible. And they did. It would be so easy to not measure up to one of the grandest and most hallowed things that we carry with us as consumers of this world and this story. I didn't feel watching this, and we don't know, but just like watching it

I didn't feel that they were daunted by that. I felt like I didn't feel fear. I felt only like the embrace again of that Sam idea were in the same tale still and like what a privilege it is. Yeah.

To get to work inside of these connections and these ties. You just felt like, again, we love the show, so you feel the trust in those moments that the story is in the hands of people who love and understand the world and the things that matter about it. And then you see Balrog scaling the side. Yeah. And it's just like, holy fuck, we're going to get to, like you said, the king of all images. But that was just...

It was spine tingling. It's gorgeous. And all the ways in which when the Balrog showed up in season one, when we like learned the mythology of how the Mithril came to be, which new mythology for this world. And when we like first saw the Balrog, I was like not entirely sold on it.

I was wrong. You're in. I was wrong. I'm all in. I thought this is one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen in any fantasy storytelling. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but that's genuinely how I feel right now. And...

I will be thinking, and this is the, I think the first time that this is really true. I will be thinking about this, this December when I rewatch Fellowship and Gandalf goes up against the Balrog. I will be thinking about King Durin in this moment. Yes. Dude. That's the highest praise you can give. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, King Durin is worried about, uh, Sunny D, right? Sunny D is reaching for him. Papa D, King Durin takes off the ring. Okay.

which is more than, let's be clear, Frodo could do in the end, right? He had to have his finger bitten off of his body. He didn't keep the ring off. So he takes the ring. And I just want to read two quick passages about the ring's influence on the dwarves. I think we've read them in Tier 2 before, but from the Silmarillion, the dwarves indeed prove tough and hard to tame. They ill endure the domination of others, and the thoughts of their hearts are hard to fathom, nor can they be turned to shadows.

And in the appendix of Lord of the Rings, quote, So this greed in their heart grows, but they are not as easily controllable as...

Nine rings of men do to die, I'll say. So that's what's going on here. And so then following that, the ring comes off and then we get these necklines from King Durin and they're done in this sort of voiceover style, almost as if he's speaking directly into the

Heart and mind and soul of his son, right? I never let you lift your hand. It was you, just you getting stronger. Shredded me. Devastating. The affirmation for his son at the end. The greatest gift truly could give him. Getting stronger, not you're weak. Are you strong enough to wield this axe against your father? You're weak. No, it's you getting stronger to heal this like...

childhood wound or whatever. Sauron gets a similar treatment in a showdown with Galadriel where he gets to speak inside of her mind. This idea of like speaking inside the mind of the heart and soul is an interesting one. And then we see him say, this is a weird phrasing, then we see him say with his mouth, it's no longer the voiceover style. He says, forgive me, forgive me my son, King Durin. He calls his son King. I cried. I cried.

And then he takes his son's axe, the axe that he has said multiple times this season that he needs. He takes his son's axe and Disa and the, and I like, I'm glad that Disa and the other doors are here to hold Prince. I always, I need, I need there to be a reason things happen. So Disa and the other doors are holding Prince.

Sonny D back. And they came despite him saying, no matter what you hear, don't come. And we're like, Deesa's going to follow him down. Of course she will. The king takes this flying leap at the Balrog. And this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I think I told Patrick and JD in an interview that I want to see someone put it on the side of their van. Yeah.

the way that people used to put like D and D imagery on the side of vans. I want somebody to get it tattooed on them. Like I, I want a poster of it. Like I think it was just like one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. His little body was like little legs flying out, flying, but mighty with the ass flying towards the crown still in place, flying towards the ball rug and the ball. And like the,

And then the way that the axe blade kisses the flaming sword, and then you just get this flash of light. And then it's over. Like, I just think it's incredible. And I just, I want to, I want to shout out front of the pod, Dave Gonzalez, who,

Dave and I had fights for years where I was always just like, CGI looks bad. CGI looks bad. CGI looks bad. And he's like, Joanna, bad CGI looks bad. Good CGI looks amazing. And I have conceded that over the years, but like, this is just some of our finest digital work. Just really incredible shit. And I can't wait. Again, we're recording this in advance, so we haven't seen any of the like behind the scenes feature as they release, but I hope that there's some sort of information about the composition of this.

because I think it's an achievement of the highest order. Mallory, what do you want to say? Yeah, this is like an instantly iconic visual. Yeah. I mean, you just know it's one of those things that the second you see it for the first time, you know it's going to be eternal. It's going to stand the test of time. It's going to be something that you think about that evokes a depth of feeling when you glimpse it. It was incredible. And whether we're covering this show or...

or anything else, like we talk a lot about that secret sauce, the true alchemy and the alloy, when you're forging the alloy of a story, it's substance and spectacle. You can't have the spectacle at the expense of the substance. And like, in addition to just being so visually arresting and striking-

no matter how cool it looks, it's not going to hit you the same if everything we just talked about hadn't been executed as well as it had been. But it was. And so it feels like not only the culmination of this shared arc for these characters, but of a life lived for King Durin, only a tiny fraction of which we actually got to glimpse. But you feel it all. And that's just incredible. You feel the ocean of the riches of that life, not just the ocean of the riches of Mithril. This is the dynasty of Durin, right? Yes! So I...

I was thinking about a lot of things here, many of which were moving and brought me to tears. And then many of which were like concerning and we'll get to some of them when we talk about the new King Durin looking at the ring at the end. But why don't you just leave it there? Just knock it over. Just knock it down. Just leave it there. Put it in there. So you can't reach it. Why not? Give it a try. Bury it. Destroy it. Destroy it. So even though King Durin,

his end here and does not emerge reborn as Gandalf the White. It's still impossible, not only because of the reasons we just talked about with the challenge that caused doom, the parallels there, to think of Gandalf and what the Balrog represented for him in that aspect

aspect of his story and just like really like thinking of the idea we'll talk about this with some other characters as well of like the test and the trial and how the Balrog represents that for characters in this slice of the story and so I mean there's like this entire stretch of Two Towers is just like actually incredible to read and revisit we don't have time to read it all but let's read a couple sentences of it that I think like evoke this idea and convey this idea then tell us what you will

"'And time allows,' said Gimli. "'Come, Gandalf, tell us how you fared with the Balrog.' "'Name him not,' said Gandalf. And for a moment it seemed that a cloud of pain passed over his face, and he sat silent."

Looking old as death. Long time I fell, he said at last, slowly, as if thinking back with difficulty. Long I fell, and he fell with me. His fire was about me. I was burned. Then we plunged into the deep water, and all was dark.

cold it was as the tide of death almost it froze my heart deep is the abyss that is spanned by durin's bridge and none has measured it said gimli yet it has a bottom beyond light and knowledge said gandalf to there i came at last to the uttermost foundations of stone

He was with me still. His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake. We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him.

We've read this part before recently.

Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day. In that despair, my enemy was my only hope.

That just feels connected to every single thing we're talking about. The thing you have to confront about yourself, about the choices that you've made, about the people who you are sharing this journey with and hoping to save or protect or reach again or challenge. And so then...

You know, we think back to, like, again, in the seventh episode of last season, King Durin's words when he was talking to his son, like, it is said that when Owly created our people, he crafted us of two elements, fire and rock. And then you have... Rock. Rock. This... But then he builds toward...

the fire embraces the truth that all things must one day be consumed and fade away to ash. And so you have this idea of the fire consuming in one respect. You have the idea as the fire being the thing that you need to pass through so that you can be reborn. And which of those is it going to be? And like we talk all the time about this series launching premise of sometimes you cannot know until you have touched the darkness.

You're going to hear us talk to the show writers about this in the interview. And it just felt so striking in this stretch that, again, Sonny D tries to reach his father with a memory, with shared experience, with a sense of identity and who he is with light. But it's only when King Durin...

sees this face of evil which is like a darkness and a shadow that he cannot deny right he cannot deny it that he's able to break free of the ring at last and make this stand and seek his son ask for his son's forgiveness i i just thought this was perfect i really genuinely perfect and i love to go back to that idea that you the the line you mentioned about um

the fire embraces the truth, you know, that we are all ash eventually, like that idea of things having a natural conclusion and the way in which, um,

the Saurons or the other sort of unnatural forces of this world seek to prolong it and how things matter, as we say all the time on this podcast, things matter because they end. King Durin's dynasty matters. His legacy matters because of this ending that he creates for himself right here.

So that all happens. It's terrible and it's devastating. This is the beginning of the episode. The Southern Valley starts. I wasn't, like, I wasn't overwhelmed with, like, dread until... Because I wasn't even thinking about it. I was like, well, there goes King Durin versus the Balrog. Bye, Durin. And in retrospect, it was so, I think, short-sighted of me to think that the tragedy of the Dwarven Rings would hit the king and not our beloved, beloved princeling. Because, like...

obviously the tragedy is hitting him here. He lost his father. We have, you know, the montage of them looking at the empty throne during Poppy's speech, which we'll hear her speech later. The idea is that sometimes when things are broken, they stay broken. Like all of that, that is tragedy touching Doran. But then we get this threat of the very real possibility that we might have to watch our Doran, the Doran of our hearts,

who has been so skeptical and resistant to Sauron and the rings all this season. I was not worried about him for a second in terms of like temptation this season. Take a look at that ring, right? Not like Narvi comes, he reports back from Morrigan. We get the like, and Elrond moment from Durin, right? He immediately offers fellowship and aid to, to Elrond. And Dees is like, listen, we got some home fires that need a attending to here. Um,

The Lords of the Blue Mountains. Shout out Thorin Oakenshield. Obviously, Eon's in the future. I'm not dumb. He's not going to show up at the show. But like,

are demanding repayment to collect. I mean, I don't understand why they wouldn't just give the literal piles of gold that seem to be lying around the throne room, but I'm not an accountant. Durin's succession is in question because even though his father named him King Durin, it was just them and the Balrog who heard it. So, you know, this is very much a House of the Dragon situation, right? When has this ever gone wrong before? It's the real succession.

successor here. Other Dwarflers are advancing claims. His brother, dun dun dun, is gaining a following and then they all look out the rings and I...

don't like it i'm so scared yeah it's worrying um the return for disa however practical it is we have troubles of our own my love the return to that again season one episode seven isolationist sort of thing yeah it's to you and me like it's it's yours and mine energy very worrying yeah

Very worrying. Lady Macbeth back in the mix, yeah. And then for Durin, you know, if we play out the string on like what we were just talking about with King Durin having to touch the darkness, then my question becomes...

Dare we hope and dream, is it possible that it would be enough for Prince Durran, now King Durran, to just have witnessed somebody touch the darkness? Like, he had a front row seat to the touching of the darkness? I mean, I think it's impossible that could count. I feel like the end of his beard hairs got, like, frizzled by the King of the Balrog. Yeah, he got cast back. He touched it enough, I think. Yeah. All right, speaking of people who've been touched by darkness, let's go down to Calibur for Prince Balrog.

And I know I just got done rhapsodizing about the imagery of the Balrog, but is this one of the greatest scenes in television history? Yeah. Could be. This was amazing. This was amazing. The big three in this episode are the Balrog sequence, this, and then Galadriel and Sauron. I mean, there's a lot of other good stuff too, but that's like a... Galadriel? Oh, not the dark wizard? Okay. So listen, Celebrimbor, Charles Edwards, and Sauron. Charlie Vickers.

So we open on Sauron using poor Brimby as target practice. Absolutely savage. Major sound design on the creaking of the bow, which invokes Boromir to me, of course. If you see someone just getting shot through with arrows, you've got to think about Boromir. But also in this... At first I thought it was being quite smart and then like, you know, the Tolkien academics of eons past were like, yeah, we figured this out a long time ago. Um...

It made me think of famous paintings of St. Sebastian. And more to, I think they are directly trying to invoke a series by Andrea Montaigne's, because St. Sebastian, the story of St. Sebastian, a Christian martyr, is that he was tied up to a pole and shot through with a bunch of arrows. And so all the paintings of him have him like,

in a loincloth shot through with arrows. It's a very classic St. Sebastian sort of imagery. In the books, uh, Celebrimbor's body is described as sort of riddled with arrows. So this is a textual sort of thing, but the way in which they have, uh, Celebrimbor here, uh, you know, we'll get to it in a second, but like, um, up against this,

ornate pillar is very much a specific set of St. Sebastian paintings rather than just like a good old fashioned pole boring pole okay um

Saint Sebastian, quote, and the archers shot at him until he was full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks and thus left him there for dead. And in the books, this is the parade of the ringmaker Celebrimbor, quote, in black anger, Sauron turned back to battle and bearing as a banner Celebrimbor's body hung upon a pole, shot through with orc arrows. He turned upon the forces of Elrond. This doesn't happen. Thankfully, we don't have to see this.

I mean, I don't know if we're going to see them, but it's like, it reminded me a lot of like sewing the dire wolf head on Rob Stark and parading his body around as like, you know, scarring. Absolutely traumatizing. Yeah. I still can't handle that. There's also a history for St. Sebastian, according to art historians, a sort of like very queer association with the character of St. Sebastian, the historical theory of St. Sebastian. And, um,

however you choose to interpret what happened in the seduction of Celebrimbor this season, I think that there are definitely shades of like sort of sexual desire or romantic desire here. And it's certainly in Tolkien, whether or not Tolkien was Tolkien Catholic of a previous century was thinking about it directly phrasing that he uses to describe Sauron's like particular brand of seduction or

When he writes in the unfinished tales, quote, used all his arts upon Celebrimber and his fellow Smith in the Silmarillion quote, yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth and the strength of his hidden will that air three years had passed and became the closest to the secret councils of King for flattery, sweet as honey was ever on his tongue. So take with that, uh, whatever you will. But, um, I think the image, I mean,

All that imagery aside, this is a devastating place to find our guy, Celebrimbor. And the sad pan up from his ruined hand to his battered face as...

The Lord of the Rings, the king of all gaslighters, says, look what you've done to yourself. Oh my God. What are you thinking about? Remains the gaslighter in chief. Sauron, my God, he knows what he's good at and he really leans into his skill set. This was just crushing, like,

find our guy Brimbo. You've swayed me. I've really quickly abandoned Kelly and I'm all in on Brimbo. To find him in this state and we're going to head into the really spectacular and heroic nature of this final stand. But he's a ruin. He's as ruined in body, in flesh as the forge around him. But what has he managed to tap into and what do we see is still intact? Mind. Yeah.

soul, spirit. And... A pillar of strength, a burning fire is still glowing in the forge. Yes! That imagery is all in there, yeah. Yeah, and we talk a lot about how, and we've had a great time talking about this idea in this storyline with Annatar and Brimbo this season, but...

and with Adar and with Galadriel, like the idea that part of what makes Sauron so effective in his manipulations is that he is appealing to the truth or to something that is actually in your nature, not just falsehoods. Yeah. And that his deceptions and his illusions and his manipulations are all the more potent as a result. And so like, I think, you know, my heart is breaking for Celebrimbor when he, when we find him in this circumstance, but like, I was thinking out in a,

look what you have done to yourself as top tier gaslighting and cruel, but there's like a part of it that you have to, you have to acknowledge a little bit is true. And I think the key is, is,

that Kell Brimbor, that was his trial. That was his test, was acknowledging that last episode. And he did. Like when he said to Galadriel, you know, from the beginning, a part of me knew, a part of me saw, but I wanted what he offered. So I blinded myself to what he was. And of course she says, so did I, which is very important for us to hold on to when we watch her interaction with Sauron later. Like this is Sauron's gift to,

And his menace and his delusion all entwined here. He takes the kernel of truth and he distorts it and he refits it. We hear this idea of him refitting, reforging, refiring Morgoth's crown to fit him. He does the same thing with the truth. Like he refires it to fit his ends and his needs and it is sinister. Well, but I think what's so interesting about what you just raised there is this idea that like the truth

He warps the truth and it is up to the deceived to hold on to the kernel of truth at the heart of that. Yes. Even if that's a rude awakening in a mirror, hold up to yourself. That goes back to that ill-end of the idea of the wholeness of the truth as the only defense against the deceiver. And so, yeah.

Look what you've done to yourself as he's sort of like moving the arrows about in his body. Absolutely hideous. Great performance from everyone. There's this like flinching defiance and he's not broken. He's battered, but he's not broken, you know, because there is this inner strength in him. And he says, he's talking, um,

Sounds like the orcs are at the gate. You don't want to let them come in. They got something called blood hunger and it's scary. And then he mentions... Blood hunger was so good. It was really good. And then he mentions gondolin. And again, every single word is worth parsing in this episode, in this script.

Gondolin is the last of the Elven realms to fall to Morgoth. And more specifically, it was this hidden idyll, this like paradise of an Elven realm that was betrayed from inside, from someone on the inside due to their own frailties, basically lust and envy and all this sort of stuff, like wandering too far afield, getting captured and giving up the entire city because of their own inner frailties. And basically... Lust and envy couldn't be me. Yeah.

basically allowing, uh, you know, the enemy in at the gate. And so, uh, which is considered quote, this was considered the worst treason of the elder days. Uh,

I mean, I hear that a lot. I feel like Feanor is the worst. Anyway, who's got the worst? But Maglin, who is the elf who betrayed Gondolin, is this huge thing. Invoking Gondolin, I think Sauron is trying to link Celebrimbor's weakness to Maglin's weakness, which is incredibly cruel. But also...

In the Unfinished Tales, Tolkien says that Celebrimbor is one of the survivors of Gondolin, but then contradicts himself as Tolkien sometimes does elsewhere when he says he descended from Feanor. So there's some versions of the story in which he's like, hey, when your last city fell to ruin, remember what the orcs did there?

We ruined another one of your cities, my guy. Can't stop us. So I loved that invocation here. This was so good. Like, again, we're about to build toward our high-glug starring show, just as we expected. It's time to shine. Yes, it is. A brief... Brightly and briefly. Brightly and briefly.

But like that blood, that blood hunger line. I'm sorry. I don't know. Glogg. Brightly. Too briefly. Glogg. Dear Glogg. Dear Glogg. Boy. Oh, you made it count. Your, your, your one act. Um,

Sauron sees them as meat, right? They're weapons, they're tools. We heard him say this directly to them in the opening flashback at the beginning of the season, and that doubt me at your peril, like you have nowhere else to turn. You're beneath me. And so I like remembering that because it was a really ugly thing to see in him as we watch him in this gondolin portion, like flick the arrows up and down in his wounds because this felt to me like,

Like, I felt embarrassed for Sauron watching this, right? This was so petty and small and dirty and grubby and beneath him, and that was why I loved it, because it feels important to remember that he's not always composed. He's kind of a hot mess. And then the moments where he can regroup and adapt and innovate and adjust on the fly are all the more impressive because we know he has this in him, too. On the one hand, yes, I completely agree, and I love that.

On the other hand, I think we see him lose his shit more than we ever have inside this episode. Working through it. Because there's what's going on here. And then the fight with Galadriel, we see Charlie Victor's big faces. We have not seen our composed Sauron. Yes. Okay. Yes.

I welcome you now to Birdwatching Corner TM with Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin TM. Fantastic. What a time. Because here in this sequence is where Caleb Remboer starts speaking wistfully of the Kingfishers that used to be able to hear heading towards the river before the corruption of Eregion. And the use of Kingfisher here is we have a few examples

We didn't ask JD and Patrick why they picked Kingfisher, especially. I did word search Kingfisher in all my Tolkien texts. I didn't find it anywhere. So that means it was their choice. And what are they trying to do with it? There's a couple options here. There's a poem, there's a poem, Prayers Like Watching for the Kingfisher by Anne Lewin, that I think is quite beautiful. This idea of like,

So that idea of like light and faith and all of that.

in the darkest, darkest hours is an interesting concept. A Kingfisher is another name for a Halcyon. Halcyon, uh, the he's, Kelber was literally thinking of fonder days, more beautiful, serene days of Regian. Halcyon days is a phrase that means sort of this nostalgic idea of calm days, according to the myth, uh,

of Alcyon in Ovid's Metamorphosis. Quote, "...when Alcyon made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus, king of the wind, restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the Halcyon Days, when storms do not occur. Today the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and or successful."

And then we're not even done because we haven't even gotten to like Mallory's brilliant insights, which she's about to hit you with. But one that we both sort of thought about was like Kingfisher. We thought about the Fisher King, which is this figure from Arthurian legend. What pinged for you with the Fisher King, Mallory? We were wondering, is this too far? It's like, no, we both have the same thought. And I think this feels like, you know, again, they could have picked any bird. Yeah.

A lot of colorful birds. Yeah. A lot of birds that emit a certain song. And so that's just that language. I think they want us to be, I mean, who knows? But I like the idea that they want us to be thinking about this and wondering if that connection is intentional. The Fisher King being a king who is wounded and his entire kingdom around him is like physically crumbling, connected sort of supernaturally to his physical wound. Yeah.

The wound in the Fisher King in Arthurian legend, which was created by the lands of Longinus, which was the spear that pierced the side of Jesus. We'll come back to that. But yeah, this idea of like the super, the wound of the, of the king of the leader, the Lord of Auregion and the collapse of the kingdom around him. And last but not least, Molly Rubin, put on your binocs, put on your binocular, get out your Audubon guide. What else do you want to say about King Fisher's? Um,

Listen, you were with me once walking the streets of Chicago where I saw a pigeon. Oh!

went from the rain and said, is this nature? So the interest of candor, I don't really know a lot about the natural world though. I do. I do enjoy my time commuting with it. I long to, to engage with it more. Nature. It's just like, wow. I was really struck seeing that pigeon in the corner of the dirty paper. I just thought,

We're about to get to some real bars from Celebrimbor, and this was among them. What a absolutely savage and brutal indictment of this self-propagated idea that Sauron is healing the world.

He silenced the fucking bird song for crying out loud. Like how can you claim to be the champion of healing and bringing peace if this is the undeniable effect of

of your presence and your actions. So I thought that, like, a lot of what Celebrimbor says, it's not only beautiful and deliciously delivered in the scene, he is saying things to Sauron that are going to work their way into Sauron the way that those arrows have worked their way into Celebrimbor. And at the end of the day, one of those wounds is more penetrating and more lasting. And it's the things that Celebrimbor says to Sauron here. I just thought also, like, to the color point that you mentioned earlier,

Again, I can't claim to know much about nature, but if you just Google kingfisher, not to be all

That basic bitch Google image it, but it's really just an astonishingly beautiful and colorful bird. And so then I think it's difficult not to think back to that episode six exchange between Adar and Galadriel, an ocean of color against which everything else feels forever thereafter. A dull gray. Because this is kind of the opposite, right? It's like Celebrimor has found his way

to the clarity that allows him to identify that Sauron doesn't bring the color. He saps the world of it. He robs the world of its sound. I was thinking, so after, okay, a couple things just came up to me. When you were making your silencing the birds point, I was thinking about, I was like, oh yeah, Silent Spring, the Rachel Carson book, which is about, you know, devastation in the natural world, which made me think of the three body problem, which is definitely a show that existed and we watched this year. Okay. Um,

But also, you had put this note in our doc about the colorful association, and I rewatched the episode after I had, again, for the millionth time after reading that. There's a shot later when Elrond is looking back at the ruins of Eregion, and it is just gray smoke and devastation, contrasting with, spoiler, then they go to Rivendell where it's all bright greens and light and natural beauty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

We're not done with Brimby yet. Good old Brimbor. He's got a lot to say. And he says, the rings are beyond Sauron's reach, which in the Peter Jackson films is what Aragorn says to Boromir. The ring is beyond our reach now as our arrow-riddled pal breathes his last. I would have followed you anywhere. And then...

Our guy, Brimbo, says, Gell-Brimbo says, he flaunts in Sauron's face. He's like, I'm about to go beyond your reach because I'm going to...

to heaven. And guess what? You're not invited. You don't get to come. You're all an angel. You are not welcome. So what does it mean to go to heaven if you're an elf? Aren't elves immortal? Glad you asked. Here's what I was able to put together. Hop into drag it to gmail.com if I got this wrong. If you die as an elf, you go to the Hall of Mandos, which we talked about when we were talking about a good old Baron and Luthien in the music episode. Hall of Mandos is sort of like

And then the spirits of the elves are, quote, re-embodied and sent to the Undying Lands to be reunited with their friends. So your spirit goes to the... So dying doesn't really mean much to the elves, it seems like. You go to the Hall of Mandos, they give you your body, another body, I don't know. And then you get to go hang out on the Undying Lands with your friends who didn't die, but took a boat. So either you can take a boat ride to the Undying Lands and not die, or you can go to the Hall of Mandos to get a new body, and then you go to the Undying Lands.

Either way, Sauron's not invited. So that's what's going on there. Oh, man. What do you want to say about this particular taunt? You don't get to come to heaven with me and my new body.

This was absolutely exquisite. We should be so lucky to go out with like a fraction of the impact that Callum Pimpern left this Middle Earth with. For soon I shall go to the shores of the morning, born hence by a wind that you can never follow. First of all, just sick flex, right? Great stuff.

you could see the way that this is impacting him because this is when he kind of like snaps the arrow down in rage. He's just having a hard time controlling himself. Not a great day. And what I loved about this so much is that like, this is Kelleb Roomba's version of the far green country idea and moments that we have talked about in both text and film. But think of like, if we think about how those tend to be presented and, and received like who they are spoken by and to, and for, um,

Let's just use the film version from Return of the King and how Gandalf uses this idea of the far green country to try to convince Pippin that it will be okay, that there is something after. I didn't think it would end this way.

End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we must all take. The gray rain current of this world rolls back and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. What, Gandalf? See what? White shores and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise. Well, that isn't so bad. No.

No, it isn't. Like there's peace and comfort there. Not for you, Zara. Right. But not for you. Like to be told that you can't have that, that that is not on offer for you. This great balm, this salve that is issued to make other characters feel that no matter what happens in the next moment, there is something waiting beyond that.

is like the greatest indictment and torment of them all. Except he's going to kind of keep building on it from there. He's not done. He's not done. Okay. Sauron says there are ways of keeping Celebrimbor alive. Like you don't get to go to the Hall of Mendo. Mendo's get your new body and go to the Undying Lands. I could just keep you alive. He says like, you know, don't tempt me to show you my craft. Craft. A reminder that Sauron will become the necromancer in The Hobbit. So this is like,

And then what else do you want to say about prolonging a natural life? A natural... Yeah, it just like pinged Ringwraith for me as well because, you know, like the way they're... Ringwraith's neither living nor dead or just like, you know, the shadows under his great shadow, whether you're pulling like a point to a line from the films or the books. This idea of like existing in this between state, I think there are a lot of different things that we associate with Sauron in that respect. So the fact that he is...

issuing this threat and we know that these will be parts of his future and his craft such that it is makes it all the more chilling. So he says that and Brimby's the brain is too sharp on Brimby though and he's like oh okay I gotta taunt him into killing me easy peasy let's go.

We heard this speech at the beginning. I can't do it as well as Charles Edward did it, but I will read it anyway. No, no, hear me. Hear me, shadow of Morgoth. Hear the dying words of Celebrimbor. The rings of power shall destroy you, and in the end, I foresee one, capital O, alone shall prove your utter ruin.

And then Sauron, who is Annatar and also Halibur, and says, you're wrong. I am their creator. I am their master. And then all-time shots fired from Celebrimbor when he says, no, you are their prisoner. And then shout out Charles Edwards, because in clipping that audio for the top of the episode, I was like, man, this is like...

It's so good, so I'm not critiquing it, but it reminds me of this parody of bad actors who will draw out their death scene to get more screen time. This is so good. I'm on the edge of my seat. It's not my critique here, but he just really draws out Sauron. Long pause.

Lord of the Rings. Now, I'm on record from earlier in the season and it's not really enjoying when they say Lord of the Rings inside. Exceptions made for Caleb Brimford, for Charles Edwards here. This whole speech is just killer. I love this. And I will be...

thinking about this concept of Sauron as a prisoner of the rings for a very long time. And I imagine Sauron will be too. So, yes, uh, this was extraordinary. First of all, from Sauron, real like Joffrey, you know, any man must say like, I am the master, no true master. Um, uh,

You know, we're going to talk about the actual death position that we find Celebrimbor in here in a second, but obviously the way that that calls back then to the Galadriel vision, like you're just, oh, there's so, so much happening here. But I thought shadow of Morgoth. Yeah. A mere shadow of your shitty boss that you told me abused you. It had hurt. Yeah. Couldn't have felt great. It had more than the spear, honestly, that will hoist Primbo's near corpse. That pillar. And...

obviously like kelly brimbor is pinging a lot of things for us as fans who like you know the the casting ahead to the one ring is this undoing but i think like the devastation on saran's face when he hears this this idea of being a prisoner of your own ambition the thing that i was thinking about most here after they're really just the exquisite experience of watching these two performers and these two characters together for and basically for the entire season um

There's no one who could say that to Sauron and have it hit this effectively like Celebrimbor could because who was Celebrimbor ultimately to Sauron?

he was a prisoner of his ambition. And so like, on the one hand, I agree with that, but I would also say as a fellow crafter, artisan Smith, this idea of being a slave to like the, the desire to be a creator, the way that in Tolkien's world, you're not supposed to, there is one creator you're not supposed to. Well, and like,

okay, if true creation requires sacrifice, you know, we're just an episode removed from the mic drop getting to like, but what if this is what the sacrifice really is? Like for Sauron to have to confront that and to hear it from Celebrimbor of all characters, if this is what maybe being bound means for him, not just the power of the binding, but the trap, the confine of the binding. Yeah.

So Brimby gets his wish, right? He gets him to kill him. That's something that he was going for. And I like this for this version of Brimby because in the books...

He gives up the location of the seven and the nine, but not the three. You hate to see it. Because Sauron tortures him for a really... I don't know why I just got Irish. Sauron tortures him for... It's hard to say. Sauron tortures him for a very long time. I saw someone say two years. I could not find a citation for that. Citation needed on two years, but tortured him for a very long time. I mean, according to the timeline in Tolkien, it took Sauron like

I think it's like 200 plus years to make the one ring. So we're obviously on a speedier little timeline here, but a few weeks. Yeah. Okay. So Brimby gets hoisted up. Uh, here's a couple of things that are going on here. You already mentioned, of course, the, the Galadriel dream, red tinged dream sequence from, uh, season two, episode two. So we're, he's up on the tree and in the Grove there, uh,

across from finrod silver lake fade um so he goes up the pillar uh it's giving us you know saint sebastian stuff uh the way he looks weightless as he goes up uh to speak to the physical strength of sauron i didn't think it was you know sometimes you see someone weightless and it looks like a mistake of you know the effects or whatever this to me just like

is to show us the physical strength of, of, uh, Annatar, who is also Sauron. Um, he gets the spear. I think it's a glaive technically, but it's a, this might as well be a spear, right? Pretty close to the old Jesus spear spot. Jesus gets speared to the side, like a little closer to his ribs. This is sort of down lower in the abdomen, but nonetheless, we're getting the spear in the side, uh, to give us, you know, uh, martyr, martyrdom, uh,

times 20. And then he dies. So this season on Naughty Island, when we were new, they spoiled me. They even gave me a phone, but then it's like, I didn't exist.

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Sauron's reaction here, I guess I don't want to go too deep on this personally because JD and Patrick have different ideas of what this means. And I think that's fascinating. And actually, I can't wait to hear what Charlie Vickers thinks this means. We don't know yet. But I will note that he dies, Jesus dies with five holy wounds, the stigmata and the spirit aside. Brimby has five arrows inside of him with the glaive as being like sort of the sixth wound here. But something that

JD was saying was go back, I guess, to the Galadriel vision and count the number of spears in him in that episode.

I mean, he'll say in the interview how many there are. Anyway, so what do you want to say outside of what JD and Patrick, their conflicting views on this? What do you want to say about this reaction here? The tears. Yeah, so the other thing that we, in addition to like parsing what is maybe going through Sauron's mind, the other thing that we got to like really just have the pleasure of hearing from them on was the idea of

Like, forgiveness as it pertains to Celebrimbor and then other characters, too. And I just thought everything they had to say about that was genuinely fascinating. So, again, stay tuned for that. I read Sauron's tears streaming down his face here as needing to confront that he is not victorious in this moment. He is damned.

And the specific thing that Celebrimbor said to him and has forced to worm its way inside Sauron's mind is that there is no breaking free of that because the thing that he is in pursuit of is the source of that damnation and always will be. And so to carry that with you, how could you ever shake that shackle? I don't know how you could.

Love to shake a shackle. The ring theme plays. The tears are streaming down his face. And here comes... Glug. Out brief candle. Your beloved Gluggy is here. To a mutiny. We don't get to see the full mutiny yet. But he walks in. He says, you know...

are you Sauron right and he says I have many names a phrase we have heard him say multiple times now except never with tears streaming down his face he doesn't have that smirk and swagger that he usually does but then he turns around to glug you with a like little empathetic quirk of his eyebrow and he asks glug his name and he calls him Uruk despite just calling the orcs

frenzied, blood-hungered, mindless meatbags. He's like, Braytel, what is your name? Uruk? And our guy Gluggy does not stand a fucking chance.

Why is it? I mean, who among us? It proves as sturdy as the pillar currently supporting Celebrimbor's corpse. It's definitely not like, I don't know, 13 minutes in the future of the episode that Glug is like, hey, what about us? Like a lot of us will die and just killed immediately. It's going to be fine for Glug. I actually like loved that. I like. Killed me. So funny. So funny.

Oh my god, his little orc baby! His wife! His orc widow, okay. I know. Speaking of orcs, let's go to Adar and Galadriel and Sauron and also some Gil-galad and Elrond and Erandir. It's the elves! So the orc have breached the inner walls. Galadriel gets this big hero moment, saving...

A small handful, I would say. Like, honestly, only a few. Like, five. Just, like, not even enough for, like, a couple tribes on a survivor season here. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about her. If we're about to, like, hand over the nine, we just have to be more people making the tunnels. I'm sorry. With love and respect. I really agree. So she takes a handful of survivors out through the oft-mentioned dwarven tunnels.

But it's out of the frying pan into the fire as the X is surrounded by the Uruk and she flashes the nine rings of power to the Uruk. And this just seems unwise to me. Galadriel, I always want to be on your side. I, I, I recall Brimbor and I had entrusted the nine to you. I just would be like, what are we even doing? Cause this isn't even the last of it. Okay. So they walk up on Adar. What would you like to say about your guy Adar and the,

prone position we find him in. Every now and then we are fortunate enough to witness and share true creation. That is what I felt when we got to see Sam's face for a moment. When the power of Nenya, because we see it from the first thoughts, like,

Actually really funny when we first come across Adar and he is kneeling and hiding his face. My read on this was that he was afraid that his Uruk children would reject his beautiful face. Yeah, his fucking beautiful face. They saw that he was no longer blighted, no longer coated in that cottage cheese. And here he is.

as healed as a leaf from the great tree, gold and shimmering. And while he's trying to hide it from the Uruk, he cannot hide it for long from us. Galadriel comes up and she's like, I accept your terms, Uruk. I have what Sauron seeks, endless slaughter. I will do as you ask. I will help you destroy him. He says, how do you expect to destroy Sauron without your ring? And kind of like tantalizingly lifts his hand. And then he stands and he turns and

We see his healed, beautiful face, piercing eyes. And he says, it would seem even wounds that have endured an age can sometimes yet be healed. And Galadriel whispers, like, my girl is legit breathless.

Seeing how hot Adar is. And I was like, it's stitches watching this. This is so good. Do you feel so vindicated of your season-long devotion to Adar paying off here with Sam's beautiful face? Oh my God. The way she said his name, I was like crying. I was laughing so hard. Oh boy. She says Adar, he's like meaningless name. A name I was given.

Adar was the name I was earned, right? She's like, what was your elf name? Was it Zaddy? It's a big episode for the concept of names, of course, between Sauron, many names, Gandalf, which we'll talk about, obviously, eventually. We haven't talked about Gandalf yet, and Adar. And then he asks her to help him earn back the name, and there's this near-fellowship

of Elfen Uruk-Hir as he talks about healing and means it and then gives the ring back and then...

On par with her, like, breathless, is this little, like, dope fiend flex of her, like, hand that she gives when she gets Nenya back on. She gives a slightly more subdued version of it later when she gets it back again at the end of the episode. But I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure this is fine. I'm sure it's fine. Nothing to worry about. She's like, the ring is back in my hand. Dope fiend is a great call there.

This was great. I loved, again, the tragedy at play, what we're about to witness, what happens to Adar, hearing him literally say out loud, like, it's never too late, but then having to confront the fact that even though he tried to do this thing and forge this path to fellowship, like, it was too late. I thought, like, specifically when he said, I forgive you. I was thinking back to...

Our gal, Winter Bloom. And our time with the Ents earlier this season in episode four. Our best friend. Our buddies, Winter Bloom and Snaggled Roots. They'll come up again. Speaking of falling blossoms. Exactly.

We would seek your forgiveness for the injury we have done. That's what Arandir said. And Winterbloom replied, forgiveness takes an age. Rain wash and clear the long memory of soil, new bark covering old scars. New bark, old scars. Forgiveness takes an age. It's one of the central texts of the season, one of the things that clearly they are so invested in interrogating, which characters can acknowledge the...

Adar bringing himself to the point of offering forgiveness is no small thing. And so which characters can simultaneously offer that or seek it? Seeking it is maybe harder than offering it, right? Because it requires you to make yourself so vulnerable and acknowledge that it's not easy. That it's not easy to find that. I love that. And it's like shades off of, but in the same conversation with

That pity-mercy binary that we were talking about before with this idea of offering mercy, offering forgiveness, offering absolution. Yes. Who do you offer it to? Who are you that can offer it? And how can that grace inoculate you against the corruption that is happening?

Sauron who looks like Annatar and also I regret to tell you Halbrand in this episode. No regrets needed. No regrets needed. We're going to get there for a second, yeah. That push-pull was present in a lot of ways in this Adar Galadriel sequence because you also have like, there's this beauty and grace. I love that. And there's also like, there's a part of our mind still that's like, wait, you guys saying you're going to use the rings to beat him and then forge peace is, why should we trust in that? Right? And this is the thing we keep returning to time and time again. And so like Círdan who,

did not return in this season of television, which honestly I'm, would you say it's confounded by calamity?

How many wears Ben Daniels? What is happening? How many times has he shaved with a seashell since we left him? I don't know the answer and it pains me. It pains me. I think it's a daily occurrence. Oh, God. But like when he, that appeal he made to Elrond in the second episode, which is very top of mind for us when we watch Elrond pick up the ring later, right? And use it and then give it back to Galadriel and everything with Rivendell. But like,

That whole sequence in the second episode, in Sauron's hands, they could work an evil beyond reckoning, dominating the minds and wills of all. This is why they must remain in the hands of the elves. You are wise to fear this power, Elrond, but do not let that fear blind you to the ways it can be used for good, for it is not your enemy that bears these rings, but your most trusted friend. Like, this is so still to me, like,

Captain America Civil War Sokovia Accords coded, right? Of like the safest hands are still our own. And can you bring yourself to trust in that? And what does it mean if you think that those hands are yours? But I think what's, yes, yes. And what I think is interesting is like,

I mean, yes. Why should Galagio believe him? He's already like betrayed her. You told me everything I already needed to know. He's still like, he's sung like a canary and possibly also a Kingfisher. Do they sing? I don't know. Yes. Their bird song was silence. Okay. So, but I feel like there's just this affinity between them.

In that exchange, I mean, I feel it most crucially in that exchange you already cited with the idea of the color being dreamed for the world. And she says Adele Grey. And I think he's like, I've seen and known. He takes the ring off and just lets that healing go. Lets that version of who he was go. I thought that was beautiful. And now it's time for Gluggy to shine. His long promise mutiny.

I put a link in our outline. Had you seen this video, Mallory? Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. I wasn't sure because it's a very popular TikTok audio, but I'm never sure what has made it to reels. Okay.

This TikTok audio, the video is this. I'm just going to describe a meme for you. Good times. It's an old man and he's being sort of like mugged by a guy and he like bends over, pretends he's having a heart attack. And he goes, call an ambulance, call an ambulance. And then he stands straight with a gun and goes, but not for me. It's one of my favorite things to exist. This is 100% Gluggs tactic here. He has seen this video and he's like,

Yeah. It's too late. No, it's too late for you. Klug loves a meme. Very online. He's always scrolling. He's always scrolling. So yeah, in a reverse of the cold, the very cold open that we got in this season, we get the orcs turning on Adar in Sauron's name as Sauron, who looks like Annatar, grabs Morgoth's crown. And I just need everyone to notice that between hoisting Celebrimor's corpse up a pillar...

Yeah. And meeting our guy Gluggy, Anatara has decided to change his clothing and redo his hair. Now, I don't know if that's just like a glamour thing that he could sort of like wave his hand and...

I mean, that would be handy, would it not? Costume change, hair change? Or if he went into his little chambers and took out the flat iron. The hair oil. I might say Galadriel. Gotta be ready. No flyaways for Galadriel. An icon. If you thought Galadriel's Hadar was something, you should hear what I'm going to call her stuttered gasp when he says Galadriel.

And he doesn't like make eye contact with her. He just sort of, it's, she doesn't turn around and he like walks past her and she does this like, I thought genuinely iconic little like side glance because she doesn't want to actually turn her head but she wants to look. The gasp, I gasped too. She gasped, I gasped when she heard him say, say her name and like we've got the second Caesar-ing happening. There's so much going on in this moment. And like the second Caesar-ing.

Don't think he knows about second, C-string, fifth. Oh, man. There's just so much going on on this little hilltop. Goodness. Okay, so...

it's no my heart sinks to see you but his his delivery of Galadriel pretty solid stuff wonderful business before pleasure though but also his business is also his pleasure because I'm pretty sure he really enjoyed watching Adar get stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed by his ungrateful children Glug he delivers the death blow fucking Glug and Lord Sauron gets his name hail the new dark lord

You know, thinking back to... I have many names. I have many names, but this is the one I would like to hear moving forward. One of them is Dark Lord. You know, that Hail the Dark Lord, like the naming, that was the cover, right? That Adar used, like the false chant that Adar used to use that crown to stab him. And like, we think back to then,

episode last season and that like, you remember me? No, we need him alive. You don't know what he did. Like the moment, the wrath in Halbrand's eyes as he looked down at Adar. And now we have so much of that is filled in for us and it just made this all the richer. Um,

really, really wonderful. And I'd love to, because he's holding the crown and you're waiting, I was waiting for him to stab Adar with it. Now, of course, he will be stabbing somebody with it. In mere moments, stay tuned. But ultimately, like, I loved the fact that he didn't because, like, to your business pleasure point, he's just watching in pleasure and decides not to dirty his hands. Like, Adar is not worth the spike of more of Warbounce's crown to him. What else is his favorite thing to do is just puppeteer. You know what I mean? Yes. Just like, you know, these are his weapons or the orcs. So, like,

Yes. From the Galadriel moment on, I'm just like quite... To your point about that idea of wrath, I think that they have done this season, though I haven't tracked it perfectly because, again, I often...

watch these not in high def, is they've got monster contacts that they put in Charlie Vickers' eyes sometimes. When Sauron is particularly monstrous, his eyes get all sort of like cat eye sort of thing. And I really like that in this sequence that we're about to see, the fight with Galadriel, we see that raft

No mere context can display for us what is happening here. But before you get set, it's soft and gentle from the Galadriel on. And she's like, this was your design from the start. And he's like, no, no, no. That's what a lot of people mistakenly thought when they watched season one, that this was my design from the start. But let me clarify for you at home. He's the great improviser, right? And then he...

perversely appropriates the road goes ever winding from our guy, our guy Bilbo and also our other guy Paul McCartney. How dare he? Genuinely how dare he invoke Paul McCartney and Bilbo at the same time. The road goes ever winding, the longer winding road, okay. And then he says, you know, even I can't see all outcomes, which is the tail end of, you know, the Gandalf quote that we talk about all the time. Many that live deserve death, some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment for

Even the very wise cannot see all ends. So how fucking dare Sauron, who is also Halbran, who looks like Annatar here, invoke Bo and Gandalf and Paul McCartney? Get their words out of your mouth. The Holy Trinity. How dare. Genuinely how dare. It's an outrage and a scandal. There is something I love about it. Like this...

embrace like that again, same tale still that applies to the villains and the heroes alike, you know, and this idea that this, this, this core concept,

could, could be shared and thus in its sharing be warped is, is so tantalizing to me, but like to take the sanctity of, you know, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to, which is like part of the, um, the, the great, the road, one, one of the road goes ever on passages in the text and, and polluted in this way was such a foul thing. And for that reason, I just, I loved it. I loved it. I loved it too. Oh man. And like he, to your point about the, the season one, like,

clarity here. Yes. You know, again, like we get that, I think throughout the season when we get that, you know, one more moment to shout out our guy, big D before the end of our season two pods, like we saw that, but what if tomorrow you have to choose it again? Hmm.

Slice of... I'm just going to keep saying Big D. I know we've got so many problems, but you meant Dermot. Yeah, you know, like, we know that this was something he was figuring out in real time. Then we get this sword v. sword v. crown fight. The way, I mean, I know the shot of him...

With their swords crossed with the crown over it was in like every single trailer. So like we all knew that they were like, don't worry, Galadriel and Sauron will see each other again. But the way the crown was used in the fight choreography was stunning. And the crown is a weapon. I mean, we saw it used as a weapon at the beginning of the season, but the use of it is not just like a thing to stab with, but to like parry and block with.

um i thought was was incredible um i also love galadriel's taunt of do you wish to heal me like loved that thought that was exquisite great and i love tracking i love tracking the fight choreography here right because like obviously she's outmatched by sauron he's sauron like she's outmatched by him like that's okay she's incredible fighter she's outmatched by him but like

So they have this like first exchange where like she's really trying and he's like trying a little harder than he did with like the Elven guards last episode or whatever. He's not doing his like stand still lean thing. He's actually like, you know, fighting. But I love that like he lands this cut on her and then she keeps going. He is this like slightly exasperated look like, I guess you want to keep going. Okay. Um,

Yeah. I did find myself, I mean, obviously you're right about the, the, the overmatched read, but I did find myself thinking back then to how he like watched her. Oh yeah. With awe and admiration as she was training the sea guard in Numenor. And so like, you know, as is ever the case, there's this like feeling of superiority and control of the circumstance, but also with Galadriel, like this genuine draw and admiration and desire. And I think, and then it, it like,

the tables turn because it becomes like the psychological battle as well as a physical battle. Right. So you like gets a hit on her arm, but like he, as they go on, he has to put a bit more and a bit more into the fight physically, but he's not taking a killing blow. He has a million different opportunities to do it. Uh, as she's sort of like recovering and he doesn't do it. He's not like quite toying with her, but like close enough. Right. Um,

And then he starts toying with her for real. He fucks with her head. He invokes Finrod of the Silver Lake Fade fame and invites her to touch his darkness. That's how I'm interpreting it. And let's just, let's just cure it. Shall we, Steve? Good luck, Danielle. Surely you, of all elves, must understand that to find the light, we must first touch the darkness. We are not alike. We never were. It was just another of your illusions. Yes.

Not to all of it. Halbrand accent kicks in before. He still looks like Annatar, but not to all of it was our, was our, is Galadriel here accent back in the mix. And then she gets this great kick in. Yes. I don't know that it would be curtains for Sauron, but that's what he wrote in the notes. Probably not curtains for Sauron, but he adopts the Halbrand costume, which she saw in her vision, right? She saw all of this. I will say it's, it's, it's,

Takes her back. Like, it's effective. She's freaked out by it. He looks a little too clean. The wig is a little too curly. Like, it's just not, it's not quite the Howell brand. It's just off. And I feel like on purpose it's a little off. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this was sensational. Really lived up. We're waiting an entire season. It's got to be good. It was. Like, you've got to be hanging on every parry and every exchange we are. That, not all of it. Mm-hmm.

Fuck. I mean, my God. Like, simultaneously, this sequence is the... Not that we actually, to be clear, ever really thought that these two were going to, like, hook up and live a love-filled life, but it's the end of a thing, right? It's this important test and trial and passing of a test and trial for Galadriel. But then, like...

you know, repeating her catchphrase to her, right? Like, touch the darkness once more. Everything about this was this simultaneous, like, invitation and reminder of everything that had gone wrong between them. Like, you told me this. I found it in your mind, Pallas, in the finale, but also you told me this in the middle of season one. Like, you offered these things about yourself to me freely, and I am going to remind you of that in this new moment of temptation. And...

When he shows up as Halbrand, like, it's not just any... I mean, your point about how he's cleaner and the hair is curlier or bouncier and he looks like just a little bit more like this is a bit of theater, right? This is intentionally being deployed to disarm and unmoor her. But he could have done any moment from Halbrand. But he didn't. He went log look. He went log. He went full log. He went log. He went full log. We got the full log. Okay.

Sadly, no, but sure. If only. In our minds, we're always thinking full log here. But like Safflin's battle armor, the episode six moment that we talk about all the time, that moment between them, like I felt it too, right? I felt if I could just hold on to that feeling, keep it with me, always bind it to my very being. I felt it too. This is what she saw when she was...

begging Elrond in the second episode, please, Elrond, I cannot let him in again. I cannot. And Elrond says he never left Galadriel. This is the moment that she flashes to. And the fact that it was like a little different, the way he looked, the way he repeated part of the line, fighting by your side, I felt as if I could just hold on to that feeling, but not all of it. Very Daemon and Viserys in the throne room, like Harrenhal ghost vision to me, right? Like the fact that there are these small degrees of difference between

heighten ultimately like the point and where we were before and what that tells us about where we are now. And like that log scene, ultimately like where did it start? It was each of them...

pulling the other back, thanking the other one for pulling them back. It was a moment of connection through restraint and being free of it, not marching toward it. And that is just not where Sauron is anymore, whether he puts on Halbrand's face or not. And that is unmistakable to Galadriel now. And that is the clarity that she has achieved. Restraint is not how I would describe

What happens? So, right. We get the Galadriel versus Galadriel and the taunting sort of, you know, we get Celebrimbor. These are the seeds you planted, are they not? Like, um, made me hopeful that we'll keep seeing Celebrimbor in future seasons, like either in Visions of Dream. I mean, stay tuned to our interview with JD and Patrick because that felt like an implication that they made. It hadn't occurred to me, but I'm delighted. Yeah.

Keep Charles Edwards employed. Okay. Please. This made me think so much, Joe, of the Gil-Galad-Galadriel conversation from the beginning of the season. Not only the description of like, if you've fallen for his deception once, you're always vulnerable. The reality altering, like literally priming us not only for what happens with Kellobrimbor and Annatar, but for this encounter. But also like, that's when Galadriel says, yes, he knows my mind.

And I know his, which is why I must face him, why I alone can slay him. And Gil-galad says, you cannot face him alone. This is her facing him alone. And we have a lot to think about, like, the vulnerability of that solitary state and then what is ultimately required to save her, to pull the darkness and the poison out of her. Would you call it fellowship? What is it? Fellowship? Fellowship! No, not at all! It's been a minute. Okay, so...

So we get this Mirror of Galadriel moment. The chapter in Fellowship of the Ring, Mirror of Galadriel, which we talk about all the time, which we heard from our pal Brian Cogman, was sort of the genesis of the show to begin with. This line in Fellowship where Galadriel says about Sauron, quote, he gropes ever to see me and my thoughts, but the door is still closed. That's what she says in Fellowship, which sounds very much like...

toxic ex-behavior. And so they had this idea of like, what are Galadriel and Sauron's previous relationship? So he's like, the door's still open, babe. And she's like, it's shut. And this is where he loses his shit. We've never seen him this upset. She lands...

a fetching cheekbone slice on him. We are forever slicing cheekbone. My friend Diana, it's like her biggest pet peeve that like when people get wounds, it's always like a fetching cheekbone slice, but I'm not that mad about it. It looks great on him. He stops with a crown. As, as JD will say in the interview, this is like a loop back to Sauron at the beginning. And, and then he, you know,

uses the old stale queen rhetoric on her more like mirror of Galadriel season one finale language. You shall have a queen. He offered her crown. Then he stabbed her with it. Now it feels very much of a piece of what Sauron would do. Absolutely. Yeah. There was something very intimate about this. Like you'll be stabbed by the same thing. I was stabbed by the way he's twisting it and dragging her, but also like,

It doesn't feel to me like he wants to kill her, right? He wants her to opt into this eventually. And so it's one more link that they share? Is this not how you get a date? Do you not? I'm with a cursed crowd. I do have some notes for Sauron on his dating profile. And some of the things he should be doing. I mean, I guess. Okay. And then there's this, I don't know, interesting fake out I didn't super love where Eladriel is like,

I'll tell myself it's like her pulling a con. Pretend she's like in a trance saying like, you know, you want to heal me and like giving up the ring, blah, blah, blah. And then she essentially, she doesn't literally say this, but in my head, she says, heal yourself, bitch. And then...

Yeah. Yes. Launches herself over the side of the cliff. I was thinking about- She pulls an Elrond. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Jump over the edge, no matter what it means for you, in order to keep those rings out of the hands of somebody that you don't believe they should be in. Well, unlike Elrond, she does not have the pouch of rings. She has a ring left, but not the pouch that she was supposed to take care of. Okay. Okay.

curtains are glug, RIP glug. We'll miss you. It's tough. It's a tough one. I just like this idea of even the gluggiest of fellowships, Sauron rejects. He's just sort of like, no, I can't have her. I won't have anyone. Then we've got Gil and Erandir and Elrond, and I don't need to do this beat by beat, but I do want to play the clip of

Elrond trying desperately to keep the scrolls from being burnt, which is so House of Arc coded. I love Elrond so much. Steve, can we hear this? No! That is the full record of Celebrimbor's works. The wisdom of all who ever dwelt in this place. Its value is beyond jewels or even blood. Take our lives, but leave it be, I beg you. Great stuff. Elrond would love you. I love him.

Deus Ex Dwarf. How did you feel about the dwarves arriving here? Molly Rubin. Did you go Doran? Doran. The way that Gil was like, dwarves! I loved. That was great. Nice to have a distraction from Elrond. Speaking of blood hunger, just lighting people on fire. Burn the books! I know, but I still remain a little troubled by Elrond's violent outbursts lately. Yeah, you know, the way that...

The way that Elrond called out for Durin and then found that it was Narvi under the armor instead. Disappointing. But at least they sent someone. They sent Dade. Yeah. They did. The dwarves came.

There was this whole thing. There was this meme going around of a shot of Elrond in the mud being like, Durin will come. And a shot of Hugo weaving his Elrond saying, like, the dwarves hide away in their mountains with their treasures. This idea that, like, this is where his bitterness comes from. The dwarves show up a bit late, but they do show up to Regan. And when Narvi says Durin is in mourning, like, you can't argue. His dad is dead. You can't argue with it. You can try. We'll see. Um...

We have this blur around Galadriel, as you mentioned, and she's like falling down onto the forest floor. The Jack from Lost overhead shot of her body on the forest floor. The blur, at first I was like, what is this? But then I was thinking about like, so she gets wounded.

atop a hill where there are ruins with a cursed blade that is the spike of a crown up in her shoulder region. It's the old Frodo on the weather top wound. And in a similar sense, as Gil analyzes the wound, she's being pulled into the shadow realm, right? And so in this description of Frodo, as he gets this wound in fellowship, he's

The world just sort of, we're in his POV and the world is just like blurring around him, quote, with his last failing senses. And Gandalf says, you were beginning to fade. The wound was overcoming you at last. So this idea of this cursed blade and this Frodo wound and this weathertop locale and what it means for the elves. Yeah. Elrond or Rivendell to heal you.

Yes. Yeah, this fading out of the scene world and being caught kind of between these spheres of existence. Frodo on my mind as well, certainly. I think the other thing I really liked about that association with Frodo was...

is like the fact that it'll never really heal, right? I mean, when we get to see this wound and it's like bloody, but also charred and the... Yearning tendrils. Yearning tendrils are creeping out of it. Yeah, and the center of it looks like the eye of Sauron. Yeah. It just looks like the eye of Sauron. And we know that Galadriel is not going to die, right? But the...

the Morgul blade comp, not only of the magic that is required to heal it, the association with Rivendell, all of that, but specifically that idea that the wound will never really heal and that it will be a reminder you always carry. I'll be interested. I'll be interested to see if that's the case here because like that, that was a thought I had. Like, will we, will we see her sort of like,

like sort of rub at that wound throughout the rest of the series. And, and we'll know what she's thinking of the same way when we see Frodo do it, we know what he's thinking about. Um,

But it's not, I mean, we're never privy to what's underneath Galadriel's gown. But it's not something that is known about Galadriel that she has this wound. I'm not against it. It's just me. I like the idea that it could end up literally being the case. Like, are you in pain, Frodo said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo's side. Well, yes, I am, said Frodo. It is my shoulder. The wound aches and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today. Alas, there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured.

But I like more so the idea that just the memory of it lingers, whether the physical pain and mark of it does or not. That where shall I find rest question that Frodo asks, and what's the next line Gandalf did not answer. That's what this is for Galadriel, whether the physical mark lingers. It's Galadriel, yeah. So Sauron, having bailed once again to recruit Galadriel to his team at the end of another season...

He's standing with Feanor's hammer as Poppy talks about building something new. And we should note that Feanor, when he created the Silmarils, had asked for Galadriel's hair three times and she was like, no, dude, that's weird. No, thank you. And then the light inside of her hair, her golden hair, it's...

inspired Feanor to bind the light of the two trees and craft the Silmarils. So like this idea of a Galadriel rejection and the creation of an iconic, I would say the two most iconic things in the legendarium are the Silmarils and the One Ring. And so like this connection between Feanor and Sauron, not just in the hammer that he might use to

create it but but but could also because that the the metal of that hammer is you know remember we we melted down finrod's dagger to create the three you you know kelburn was talking about the specific metal of valinor and so like could fan or his hammer be either used to uh hammer out the one ring likely but also maybe melt it down to create uh the one ring

Perverse. Love that. Twisted. Yeah. Sick. Great shot. What do you want to say about this closing Rivendell moment? I'll just, I'll read really quickly. So from Unfinished Tales, it's,

Here's Eregion leads right directly into the creation of Rivendell, right? Elrond would indeed have been overwhelmed had not Sauron's attack, host been attacked from the rear for Durin sent out a force of dwarves from Khazad-dûm. Elrond was able to extricate himself, but he was forced away northwards. And it was at this time that he established a refuge stronghold at Imladris, Rivendell, and then the stuff with the dwarves later. But like that, this is definitely where we are. We are definitely heading straight for Eregion. Right.

with a few more refugee elves than Galadriel managed to smuggle out of the city. Yep. Rivendell. So what do you want to say about like Gil, the sword and the shield, this whole like moment at the end here? Yeah. I mean, I think that like, I'm focused on the macro and the micro alike, like the founding of Rivendell, this idea of a sanctuary through the power of the ring, both the creation of this, this sanctuary, but also then the healing of Galadriel, like none of this can happen if Elrond doesn't use the ring. Yes.

And so like that just is this massive thing and change at the end of this season. And, you know, Mr. Choosing to wear these rings, you have all chosen to become his collaborators. I will have no part of it. Part of it has gone on a journey too. And like,

I think it's interesting to consider whether the kind of same alarm that we feel when other characters choose to use a ring and think that they can thwart the fate that maybe awaits others is dominant here, or whether it's the opposite, like whether the caution and wisdom of Elrond actually calms us, the fact that he is in on this now. I think the way that he was able to so easily give it back to her makes me unworried for him, at least in this moment. Yeah. Yeah.

Rivendell. Look great. Can't wait to build my Lego set. I've had it for a while. I've been waiting for the right time. It feels like tis the season at long last. I love a sword and a shield conversation always. Nice to see Gil do a little bit of like his egg on at the pit hoisting of the sword. Yeah, this is an exciting moment. The elves get the closing shot of the episode, though not this podcast. Yeah, sorry. We got one more major thing to do, I guess. But yeah,

Yeah, and I will just note that Galadriel, even though she's convalescing on the rocky ground, has been changed into a white gown that's very similar to the one that she wore on her way to Valinor. And she's been in gray all season, silver and gray all season. So she's now like sort of back in the white light, the source of the light.

Also, they ask her what they should do, which is just must feel nice after being shit upon all season. Good stuff from a Rondir. Yeah, personally a Rondir who has nothing but mad respect for Galadriel. He loves her. He's like, you're awesome. I've seen you fight. You rule. Okay. The Harfoots and who, Mallory?

Gandalf? Gandalf! The Stranger is Gandalf. We knew this was going to happen. It finally happened. I'm really glad it happened at the end of the season and that we didn't have to wait longer to find out. But this is a massive thing, Jo. Yeah. He got his staff. He got his name. He got his name. He passed the friendship test, which is something that we all thought was happening here with Tom Bombadil, all that sort of stuff like that.

I do want to... I don't need to dwell here. I have a lot of passages I pulled. I don't need to go through all of them. But, like, the Dark Wizard is using a lot of language that is directly lifted from...

Guess who? Saruman. Yes. So if you go into Fellowship and you look at... We don't get to see it in the book. It's just Gandalf recounting his interaction with Saruman at Isengard. And, you know, how initially Saruman's like old friend to Gandalf. And together, you and I. There's this great power rising together, you and I, blah, blah. This is exactly...

The same playbook the Dark Wizard is using. I don't mind it. I love, you know, I like this dynamic. It does make Gandalf seem a little dumb that he falls for it again if he encounters it here and then Saruman's able to sort of pull a similar thing on him later. That,

Yeah, I did bump on this as well. This was, I will say, probably my least favorite part of the finale. Not the actual reveal that the stranger is Gandalf. I'm excited that that happened. But the meeting at last of the Dark Wizard and Gandalf and

just the way the scene played out, the substance of it to your point of like what that then implies about the future, because the flip side is like knowing now definitively that the stranger is Gandalf. Like I'm, I'm going back through in my mind, some of the conversations that we had when we were like, well, if, or if this or that, yeah, you know, well, path A or path B, like now we know for sure. And so we can look at some of these moments with Tom bomb and, and,

And say, okay, like we are watching a character on a journey of discovery and forging an embrace of identity. And the fact that these are lessons that he is learning on his own, like a call to adventure, right? His own adventure, they must be shared.

and then imparts that wisdom to characters like Frodo later on is fascinating to me. I think the direct, the aspect of like what Nori meant to him and how we then now apply that definitively to his time with Bilbo and Frodo is like lovely and wonderful. And I do think that's like worth talking about for a minute. The dark wizard thing in particular, for the reasons, like something about the just like rhythm of the way they were speaking to each other was like

Just compared to the poetry of the rest of the episode, it was like a little off. But I think what you're saying of like, wait, then this dipshit got duped again. Ari, you let one of them do this to you again? You let two? Two out of five? It's not great. And we all know that Radagast couldn't pull off a con like that. Okay, so... Too busy not wiping bird shit off his head, you know? Gandalf has many names. I don't know if dipshit is one of them, but...

Sure. But this idea of naming comes up again, of course, because Darkwood is like, I know your name. I can find you a wand. Look at my sick wand. You can have one. It's great. What I like is that similar to that Adar conversation about names that are given versus names that are earned.

Yeah. So the name that the Dark Wizard certainly would have said to Gandalf is Eloran, which is his Quenya name. Yes. But the name he earns here is Grand Elf Gandalf. Grand Elf. We can call him Mithrandir. You can call him whatever you want. But Gandalf is the name that we most know him by. And so I loved all of that. Yeah.

R.I.P. Brank, one of the Gowdrums, gets his... Tough way to go. ...in fashion. Just a collection of sticks into the back of the brain. The mask had covered the back of your head instead of just the front. I have a note.

No for the other Galdrum. Yeah. When they're running off, it's like, let's do some more Kelly, like head on the swivel, Galdrum, the full head covers, please. When we got the My People Were Once Kings line, really feels like some nice juicy fodder there for some future ringwraith action. Yeah. And so, like, that's fun to think about, right? It's always fun to think about.

ringwraith theory corner is always going strong in ring two so you can always join us there um always uh then we get a pity conversation following up on our deep dive into pity at a previous episode so we don't need to like linger here but nori says you know yes i pity him and then the dark wizard says pity will not defeat sauron and you know we know it it will help it will help um

Yeah. And then, yeah, tell me about this, like how you felt about this. I called it a Ray moment when Gandalf protects not all the stores. One of them definitely gets squashed by a rock, but some, the majority of the stores from the, and this, this also, this is another moment that like, again, I'm hopeful for season three because I think something that the showrunners have proven that they can do really well is,

We had questions about Theo and Isildur in season one. And then we like really like what they did with Theo and Isildur this season. So we have notes about, we love Ciaran Hines and everything always. We have some notes about the dark wizard. I'm,

that in season three they can figure out a way to make that work a little bit better than I think it worked here. No doubt. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah, I think that the stranger who's spent the season seeking control and talking about can you teach me how to master it uses his power to shield, right? This is the shield and sword idea yet again is meaningful. Just as it's meaningful that he chooses to go

protect Nori. Everything he's doing here is about protection, saving, securing. And so, of course, that is the thing that leads to the discovery of his name and to the discovery of his staff. Because just as Tom Bomb told him earlier in the season, you're not worthy of it yet, but you can be. And this was the path to that worthiness was fellowship. Other people. What? Fellowship?

Okay. Nori is crying over broken Storville and then we get, and I'm going to, I have clipped the whole thing. Our babe Poppy gets an all time banger speech here. It is very Samwise Gamgee at the end of Two Towers Coated, but she deserves that. So let's, let's hear Pop here. After my family, Mr. Burrow sat me down.

told me some things can't be fixed. Some things lost are lost forever. No matter how hard we fight, how much it hurts, or how much our hearts yearn to put them back together. Because this world's so much bigger than any of us. And sometimes the winds blowing against us are just too strong.

At those times, Mr. Burrow said, we've just got to accept it. What's broke is broke and won't fix. And all anybody can do is try and build something new. Great stuff. What do you want to say about the parting of the ways between Gandalf and Nori here?

I really, I found this emotional and moving. I really loved the substance of what Poppy said here and the number of different characters. Like we talked about all these moments in their respective scenes, but you know, we see Durin and Diesel looking at the black cloaked throne. We see Elrond looking at the smoking ruins of Eregion, the elves migrating to their new home, Isildur sailing away, Estrid watching him, Miriel and Manacles, Elendil riding away from the city, Sauron,

holding the hammer, like all those things are cut into this speech, right? This is like a big moment, the climax of the finale. And I thought that like the link between the characters was very effective there in terms of this idea of like sub creation in middle earth, very meta. We asked Patrick and JD about this. And then that core idea of just like growing and tending and changing and building saying you cannot, uh,

fix something that's broken is not the same as giving up right and so the positioning of this as like embrace the thing that's next is beautiful and really empowering and something that's like it's for poppy and a hardfoot to be the character that voices that is perfect and then to have it stitched on all those different character sets is so interesting like when saron opens the season and we hear him say always after defeat the shadow takes another shape and grows again

that's alarming and fills us with dread. But the flip side is like for our heroes, this is a core idea too. It's the, it's the good part of the road winds ever onward. Right. If it's winding ever onward, you can decide where you go. And it like, this really, really made me think this poppy speech of our, of our music episode, the music of middle earth episode, and a number of different things we talked about. Like this is very fellowship walking song, return of the King edge of night home is behind the world ahead. It's very,

very now and for always like tell of adventure strange and rare wouldn't retreat just followed his feet now and for always and it's very wandering day i trade all i've known for the unknown ahead and so i thought it was like a beautiful and perfect note to to conclude this season on and spin ahead and especially because we build toward i think we think of poppy and the stranger as characters who in their unlikely friendship and their unlikely bond really are like

capture that idea of fellowship, like forged in surprising places that you, how could you possibly expect it? Like, you don't know that he's going to fall out of the sky right into your life. And helping someone you have no reason to help. Exactly. Like, what choice do you make when that happens? What choice do you make if someone falls into the sky in front of you? And, you know, it made me really sad to think that like,

Is this the last time we see them together? I don't know. But they're on their own force of the road now, at least for a while. It felt like the end of something. It was a tremendously significant parting. And it felt like a parting that was so significant that I'm like, are we not going to see them again until the finale of the show? You know what I mean? Yeah. And we're going to watch Gandalf walk up to the Shire and we're going to be like, oh,

this is how fellowship starts, you know, something like that. Yes. Yeah. Like when Gandalf says like hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I've said before, now to know the role that Nori and Poppy like played in that. Ugh. God. Gandalf question has been debated in the fandom since it was like, since especially at the end of season one, he dropped a Gandalf line. Everyone's like, that's gotta be Gandalf, right? And, uh,

Gandalf is not supposed to be a middle-earth in the second age. He's not supposed to get there until the third age. So what do we say about that? We asked JD and Patrick about that. They will talk about that in the interview. But I did feel a little smug because JD cited a passage I already had in our notes, which is this quote about Gandalf, which says, quote, "'He too dwelt in Lorien, though he loved the elves. He walked among them unseen or in form as one of them. And they did not know whence came the fair visions of the prompting of wisdom that he put into their hearts.'"

Daniel Wayman wig watch. Like, are we going to see an elf form of Gandalf hanging out with the elves? Is he going to be at the last alliance of elves and men in the guise of an elf? I think this, which was comes from legendarium opens the door for that for JD and Patrick. And they were like, let's walk right through that door. Okay. I love it. You don't think he's just going to sit and sing with Tom bomb by the fire for the rest of the show. No, no.

Merch alert. I need the porcupine slash hedgehog kettle. That's great. Tom bomb is pouring two cups of tea before he even shows up for, uh, our guy again. I also want to shout out Rory can hear like the little, I think some of this is like a little too on those. This was the test. It was friendship all along. Like a lot of that felt a little too on the nose for me, but,

Roy Kinnear's delivery as Tom Bomb of Now Let the Song Begin, I really loved. And I loved them singing together. And you can find that track of them singing together on Spotify. I've listened to it a million times. It's quite beautiful. Danny Wayman has a beautiful voice as does Roy Kinnear. Stormin'. Southlands.

We can breeze through this. We're running a little long, as you might have guessed. We can breeze through this a little bit. We've got some soapy stuff. We've got some beautiful bonding between Theo and Isildur. We've got some soapy stuff going on with Estrid. I loved it too. We can go out some soapy stuff going on with Estrid and with Isildur and with Hagen, who seems nonplussed a bit. Kamen shows up. It's his most Joffrey self, his Joffrey-ist. He threatens a lot of people.

Who does he threaten the most that you would like to discuss right now, Mallory? Let me say this. Let me get it on the record. They've called it the villain season. And now we know what they meant. This is not about Sauron. It was about Kevin who threatened to feed...

to the low man of the Largier. The cut to Beric, like, Kemen's like, oh, Stildor, oh, no, I didn't know you were alive. And Stildor says, no survivors left. There wouldn't be if not for Beric. And then we cut to Beric, who was loyally watching and observing this interaction. I was cackling. And in general, like, that Theo...

Theo Isildur, like Theo asking how do you carry it? What happened with your mom? Was like a beautiful conversation. What we heard from Isildur was basically like poorly. I've carried it poorly. I didn't realize that until I came here. This growth, these surprising relationships and connections. Genuinely, all jokes aside, like his devotion to Beric, his love for this creature and appreciation of this bond that they share. All of these things are serving to warm us up

toward Isildur and soften our hearts toward him and get us to invest in him ahead of what awaits. Yeah. Um, I also want to brutal stuff for him again, though. I mean, like, and also Estrid who I really like and I am, I am shipping the Estrid and Isildur hard. Like if you're going to go to Numenor with him and like, listen, the kiss was great. I'm glad one member of this civil and deals line is getting some action in this episode, but,

You had her at running water. Like, this was a lock. Estrin, don't let this poor fucking sap Hagen lay that foundation stone and make this declaration about the lasting nature of your love. Tell him you want to go fuck Isildur. It's fine. We support it, generally. Um...

I do want to shout out. So this low man, uh, language comes up more significantly here than it has before. Um, especially with Kevin sort of like, you know, very disdainfully, uh, saying it, Theo, Theo sort of lovingly owning it as sealed or lovingly own it. You know, like I like, I like being a low man and still just like I did too. Right. Uh, low man is not language from Tolkien, but he does talk about higher versus lesser when it comes to the Numenoreans and other men, um,

quote, the blood of the Numenoreans became mingled with that of lesser men. Quote, they still say the lords of Gondor have keener sight than lesser men. The Numenoreans are said to live thrice as long as lesser men. And quote, at first, the Numenoreans had come to Middle-earth as teachers and friends of lesser men afflicted by Sauron. So there's a lot of concern in the book about mingling the blood between the higher and lesser men. And spoiler alert, they do. Mingle, they do. Mingle, they do.

There's an implication here that potentially because he asked, Kemen asked, Ney demanded that the residents of Pelargir gather up some wood to build an armada. And they watched the show, the men of Pelargir. They remember that they just made friends with the Ents and solemnly promised that no one would hurt their forests.

All of this, I hope, is leading to Kevin getting his entire person squashed by an ant. That is all I can possibly hope and dream for for season three. I have no notes. I love it. I love it. I also really like the idea that Kevin is making this seem like really important work. The armada for my father, the king. You know, very clear to me that Farrah's always just like, please leave.

You keep fucking stuff up. I can't trust you with anything. Just like go down to the old New Norian colony of bloggers. See if they'll build me some ships. Go hang out with the low men. That's all you're good for. I only need bells and A-R-E-N and my small council. I'm good. Go. It's a small council too. It's fine. Take your sling with you. That does it, I think, for our main breakdown. Apologies to the Southlands if we gave them any short shrift, but Beric, we honor you always. Let us go now to our review with JD and Patrick.

And the first voice you'll hear from them just to help you distinguish is Patrick's. All right, I get to go first. And I definitely want to start by asking the very question they told us was embargoed, which is about the Gandalf reveal. And I guess specifically I want to ask the question, knowing as you did from the start that this is where you're going, how did you decide the when and the how and the where of it? I don't know that we did know from the start that this is where we were going. Oh, okay. No.

There's a story that it's really funny. I told it to somebody the other day and Markella Kavanaugh, who plays Nori, told it the other day at an event, which is the very first rehearsal that the Hartfoot ladies had with Mr. Stranger with J.A. Bayona five years ago. The first thing before we did anything, Markella was like, I have a question. Is he Gandalf? And Daniel Wayman, in his very Daniel Wayman way, took the answer and he was like, well...

I don't want to know because he doesn't know yet. He's in this alpha state, like an infant who has to piece together who he is and what the world is. Every step of that journey is important. To somehow make it about a name or have prior knowledge would actually not tell that story.

I think whether consciously or unconsciously, that's very much the approach we took for a very long time. And then it became clearer and clearer the more time we sat with the character that it was also obvious who he was the whole time. And at some point it was like, oh, OK, then I guess that's what we're doing.

more or less, you know, which is to say that we never wanted the name to be something imposed upon the show or the character. We wanted the character to come to that at a point in his evolution where it felt like maybe he'd earned

earned the mantle of it in a way that held distinct from things that anyone would be bringing to it, including him. Because season two especially is a journey of, I mean, both seasons really for The Stranger are a journey of self-discovery. And part of that is who he is, but part of that is also sort of why he is.

Why has he been sent here? What are his powers? How does he control his powers? What are his powers meant for? Who is he supposed to use them for? Who's he supposed to use them to fight? Who's he supposed to use them to help? And along that journey of self-discovery, when the time feels right, the name feels like it wants to come as well. So it felt like at the end of season two, once he'd earned his staff, you feel like he's also earned his name. But I would just add one more thing on this, and then we will try not to ramble the way we do. But it's also like,

not even hiding in plain sight. It's just in plain sight season two. Like we're sort of assuming within an episode or two, you're like, okay, that's, I kind of thought that's where it is. That's definitely where it is. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see how people react once it actually becomes official. I think, I think we say the word gand in season. Randolph. I mean, we could not hide anything. We're deliberately trying to say like, yes, that's who it is. Mel,

was like very firmly on the record. She's like, if they're messing with us, I won't appreciate it, but they're not. So it's great. But well, a quick follow-up question is just, you know, thinking about how people are going to react to this. Like how are, I know this is, we have talked, I've talked to you before about this is an adaptation. We're compressing timelines, et cetera. But how are you thinking about the sticklers who are going to say, he's not even supposed to be here. What is he doing here so early? You know? Our station that we've had for a long time and which we had with the Tolkien estate. Yeah.

really talked to them about like can get off me in the second age should he be in the second age and there are things that you find throughout the history of middle earth i think it's the history of volume 12 it's in the zilmarillion there's passages where it talks about um aloran coming to middle earth and wandering amidst the elves unseen and sort of whispering and maybe other peoples as well like there's some really tantalizing like deep cut things which you could lean on

And I think for some people we are, and hopefully maybe that helps. But also here's the thing with this show and an adaptation like this, there are people who don't know or maybe don't like Lord of the Rings, like my mom. Hi, mom.

Wow. Wow.

And we also, you know, there were a couple of really cool questions that we could answer by bringing him into the second age that would enrich his presence in the third age. You know, one of them is, you know, right before he leaves, actually, like the way end of, you know, Return of the King, as he's like about to like, you know, sail off to the Undying Lands, he says, you know, I'm going to go have a chat with Tom Bombadil. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and usually when you're leaving a place, you don't go like make a new friend. You go like say goodbye to an old friend, you know, like and it's like, well, wait, so are Gandalf and Tom Bombadil friends? And if they are, where did that relationship come from? Like, what would it have meant? And as we thought about, gosh, if you have an Ishtar who's trying to like find out who he is, who on Earth or Middle Earth would be a better in a better position to be his Yoda than Tom Bombadil?

So that was one thing. And also, why does he love hobbits? What's the history there? There has to be a rich one, right? Yeah, so there we are. Exciting. Love it. We were thinking about Dagobah a lot. I mean, Yoda's always on our minds, obviously. We have a lot of notes for Yoda still. And power, for better or for worse. Yes, exactly. This applies certainly to our guy Gandalf, but also more broadly. Like two seasons in,

Are you finding that you prefer the worlds and the slices of the story where you can play more freely, like Rune, or slices of the universe that feel a little bit more beholden maybe to the text, like Eregion? Because in the finale, it felt striking to hear Poppy hit us with the all-anybody-can-do-is-try-and-build-something-new line, which struck us as very meta. Oh, wow! And we're wondering if it is.

And, you know, whether two seasons in, you're thinking any differently about the burdens, but also the gifts of tending that good-tilled story earth and being sub-creators in this great Tolkienian tapestry. That is a great question. I love that idea. It never occurred to us that there was a sort of self-referential... We always try not to be meta. But what I would say is,

I don't know that we really make a distinction at this point. It's all, all these characters are, we love and we're constantly trying to come up with

the best material for these actors that we love working with so much and, you know, constantly looking at the text to be like, what things can we use, whether with an original character or situation or whether we could just freely adapt, like, you know, so much of Tom Bombadil was just straight out of the book. No one had adapted it the way we felt it could be done, you know? So, so in some ways it's just, how do we find emotionally authentic moments that feel like they belong in middle earth? Um,

and where the show accomplishes that is the stuff I think we're most excited about, and sometimes that's Elrond and Galadriel, sometimes that's Annatar and Sauron, sometimes that's, you know, Theo and Erundir, and I think, I don't know that we have a

J.D., do you agree? No favorites? I mean, it's just different. It's a different process, you know, but it's all Middle Earth. And, you know, you're always trying to make something that feels like it belongs in Middle Earth. And, you know, we're talking is giving us more guidance. You know, well, that sure helps.

You know, and where there's less guidance and it's more of just a tone or, you know, sort of an idea that has a lot of, you know, ellipses after it. You know, like that's exciting. But I don't think either one is like, you know, I mean, when there's like a big thing like a Reggion where it's like, you know, Annatar comes to a Reggion and seduces Celebrimbor to seize the Elven smiths. It's like, that's just one where you're like, you're so excited to do it. Yeah.

You know, because like you just feel like there's such a specific target for what it means to get it right. So that's cool. And that one. The other one can be maybe a little more, you know, intimidating or like, you know, anxiety provoking because it's so wide open that you can go anywhere. And, you know, that's exciting as a creator. But, you know, it's also. You're going in without a map in those situations. And you really want the map to fit Tolkien's map. Yeah.

All right. Well, we're going to talk about our pals, Caleb and Laura and Anna Tarr in a second. But first, I want to talk about...

In season one, you strike some chemistry gold with our very favorites, Elrond and Durin, or watching Galadriel bounce off against Sauron, all of that. And then you head into the season and you know that you're going to separate them for the majority of the season and make us wait and wait and wait for their reunions. How are you thinking about that as a building up, tension, excitement thing?

And then how do you approach both that Dern and Elrond reunion, which we loved in the previous episode. And then obviously the big... Genuinely weeping. Yeah, we genuinely cried. And then the sort of Sauron and Galadriel showdown in this episode. Perfect.

I remember being on set for the scene when Darn and Elrond come back together and are reunited. And I was like, and actually that line, the flagpole, the flowery tongue flagpole, that was Owen. Very rarely is anyone improv. Like, I think I should say this. We're like, okay. We had some other insult. I think Tidal Haired was ours. Tidal Haired is iconic. So good. Oh, I'm in there. It's wonderful.

I remember being on set and thinking, oh, this is this mega episode with all of this huge stuff happening and weirdly just this little tiny reunion. Like maybe this ends up being like one of the best scenes, you know. And I think what you can attribute that to is just what you're saying. You're wanting them to be back together. You're anticipating it, you know. And that relationship, you know, dwells in you as a viewer. You know, you want to take part in it.

I'm going to make a weird comparison quickly. Yeah, go ahead. Am I going to do the Iron Man? No, no, no. I was going to do Star Wars. Oh. No, you go ahead for Star Wars. Well, I was going to say, like, yeah, there's a thing we talked with JJ about. That's a JJ thing, yeah. A long time ago, like, you know, I think while he was working on Star Wars, I think we were working on a Star Trek movie. And he was talking about a delightful sort of storytelling tool of separating characters that you love. But in Star Wars, all the time, they're splitting up and coming back together. Yeah, like R2-D2 and C-3PO, you know, so like...

Even on the Death Star, Han goes one way, Luke goes the other. They come back together five minutes later and it's like their relationships they were separated. There's a joy in watching people that you want to be together, you don't have to struggle through obstacles to get back to each other. That's a better example. My Iron Man would...

been slightly you want to hear the iron man example though too okay the short version is you know i feel like you know you know when when robert downey jr first did iron man it was like oh my god we've never seen a character like this in a movie like this it's sort he's like endlessly hilarious he's sort of making fun of the whole thing you know but he's still doing the hero's journey it was so iconic instantly and then i feel like when i saw iron man too like not dissing anybody's work just making conversation it's like it was like oh that's

they knew they had that tool and they're like, great, we're just gonna let him loose. Like, and it felt a little bit like, oh, we're sort of going back to the greatest hits here in a way that is not pushing the story in a new territory as often as I wanted as a viewer. And I think-

mindful of, of just cause something works. Doesn't mean you should just keep doing it. Actually. It's like, okay, cool. That's an arrow in our quiver now. Like how do we now put those characters in new situations that'll, they'll test it in different ways, knowing we can always go back to home base and glad rail. And, you know, Halbrin could be face to face again for a second, you know? Um,

We really want to find new things for these characters to do and not just rely on the things we love them to do. Does that make sense? Like, yeah. Yes. Yeah, we wanted to ask about that actually a little bit more because obviously you're not just like resetting with a new character set completely. You are, as you're identifying, taking characters who you were able to strike this creative and chemistry gold with in a certain circumstance and then put them in a new circumstance. So like...

in the particular sense with certain examples, but also more broadly, like how energizing is that for you both as creators to know that you're crafting stories for new scene partners like Charles and Charlie, and that that's something you get to like have in your minds as you're putting them each in their season one circumstances and know you're building toward? Because it's not only a new dynamic for the characters, it's also a new dynamic for the performers. And you could just feel like that energy crackling off of the screen and

We're like in mourning right now. We're so sad. We just like...

Like we were talking earlier about whether Celebrimor can be like a ghost who haunts us and everybody else for years to come. We're not ready to say goodbye, but... We're not taking debate on that one. Oh. Oh. Interesting. Okay. Exciting. Great. Wonderful. We were going to carve our own little tree like right next to Finrod's. Yeah. But the tale definitionally, like you mentioned maps earlier, and the tale definitionally necessitates new pairings. The characters are going to move across the map. They're going to move across the world and across the story. Right.

How much of that fills you with trepidation? Because definitionally nothing can be fixed and eternal once you know it works and is a beautiful gift. It is a gift. And how much of it is just this like constantly creatively energizing opportunity because you know you're always going to be able to like mine something new? Exactly.

It's delightful. I mean, you know, like we talk about people and just as a dramatic thing in general is that, you know, people are like the elements of the earth. You take any element on the periodic table. It exists in one form when it's by itself. And you put you like you put, you know, you have sodium over here and chlorine over here. Chlorine is like a poisonous gas and sodium is like, you know, earth metal. Like you put them together, it's salt.

You separate it again, you get gas, you get metal. And anything else you could put chlorine with wouldn't be salt. It would be some other thing. And so endlessly mixing up the different elements on the table gives you endless different combinations, and dramatically it's the exact same way. So it's delightful to find different pairings. One we talked about in season one that we love is Galadriel and Theo. That was one that was just like, oh, wow, Theo's

totally different worlds, totally different life experiences, you know, but like also life experiences to speak to each other. And like, you know, those things, those scenes of them, like walking through like, you know, baby Mordor and, you know, together are like some of our favorite scenes of the season. Cause it was such an exciting and unexpected character pairing. So we're always looking for like, what are those characters we can put together? They'll just be delightful. And I would say like, you know, all the bands I love, you know, it's like, you're not listening to their next record. You're listening to their new record and it could be totally different.

Do you know what I mean? Like, I think we like that, like, like, like different seasons of this show might feel quite different to one another and have their own flavor and like have different characters at the forefront. And maybe somebody who was huge one season might be a little bit more, you know, in a passenger seat the next time, but maybe then they'll even bigger than ever after that. Like we like, like, you know, you know, I want to say like crop rotation, just, just not, not ever letting it become old hat and continuing to look for fresh angles and dynamics on this world.

Also sounds like you were trying to forge the alloy in increasingly new sets of rings as you mix your elements. Very fair assessment. I think, you know, something that Mallory and I are on record about for years and years now is that some of our favorite scenes in television are just people talking in rooms to each other. We love that.

And I was just thinking about Kelbermore and Annatar and the challenge you had this season of that. That was fundamentally the story, in my opinion, that you had to nail this season. And you did. We every time I was just worried because I was

just are like it's just gonna be two guys in rooms talking and they're both so talented but is it gonna like crackle the way that it needs to or people are gonna be like where's my cgi beast that i am waiting for we also love that too we have a balrog question later but like um don't forget about mr mouse oh exactly mr mouse is very important to us key contributor very very important yes pg pg is her name yes pg wonderful i love knowing this did you well

Well, I guess my question is, did you have any trepidation or sort of view it as a challenge in some way? Or did you know just from the start, like, we've cast this correctly, the text is here, it's going to be a breeze? I will take that one by way of saying this. I think...

I think JD had no trepidation. I was terrified. And I think, you know, all of us had a little bit of like, you know, can this kind of what really is ultimately a psychological drama about a

a toxic relationship, right? You know, can this carry, can this hold Lord of the Rings, you know, or will Lord of the Rings outweigh this? And I think like, you know, the more we worked on it and the more we focused on it and, and the more we felt like, no, this is holding like, and, and then that was before we even brought the actors into it. And then it's like, oh wait, this is like really holding.

And then it wasn't until editorial that we're like, oh, this is sort of the anchor around which everything else orbits. And we spent we really worked hard on this season in post. And despite what some folks might say, we obsess about pacing and how to have every storyline in the proper proportions, like talk about it endlessly and knowing that.

what Sauron wanted and how he was going to do it and how it was going to affect Celebrimbor was really, that's the engine driving the season. And that really directed, you know, hundreds and hundreds of choices in the last year that ended up with what it is. But it's all because Sauron

We took a chance, ultimately, and then it worked. But that was not a chance we took with the confidence of being like, well, this is what everybody wants. Like, no, it was just like, it feels like the story wants to go here. I hope it works. And the more we looked at it, the more I felt like it was. Would you add anything to that? So there are a couple of influences of things we talked about that gave us confidence, this kind of thing.

You know, we talked about the, you know, the old black and white film Gaslighting, which is where the term comes from. Yeah. You know, and it's just this sort of like, you know, intense sort of claustrophobic thriller that's so psychological. Social network, I think we talked about a little bit. Catch Fire, great TV series. Yeah, it's love.

sort of like you know interpersonal like dynamics of creating something new um you know and so like you know talked about sort of like something that existed in that space with the lord of the rings you know flavor to it um you know felt like really really ripe for drama and then you have an actor like you know like uh charlie vickers and charles edwards you know like yeah we have to really give credit to them like like it sounds like we're taking credit no no no no no no they they made this the symphony that you know we hoped and prayed maybe it could end up being in the best of all possible worlds

But they did better than we could have ever imagined, did things with it that, I mean, we love. Yeah. And you start day one of when you are shooting their scenes, and nothing is guaranteed. And if something doesn't work, you have to figure out ways to pivot. But when the fire is growing, you give it more oxygen, and then it takes on a life of its own.

They did from just really moment one. And we became very confident very quickly. And when we went into editorial and we said, gosh, these are, this is a four minute dialogue scene, a five minute dialogue scene. And it showed that, you know, usually moves at a different pace than that. But like, we was like, no, let's like sit there and do the entire thing. Yes. Yeah. We loved it. Yeah.

Also, you mentioned just now a bunch of references. And I remember in season one, you were referencing a lot of classical paintings. And so I'm always trying to keep up with you guys as I watch the show. And, you know, Kelbermore being riddled with arrows read St. Sebastian to me. There is like definite, you know, the glaive goes in him and it's like very Jesus imagery to me. We talked earlier in the season about

about Tom Bombadil and his lamb. And so obviously, for Tolkien, or the Balrog looks like the literal devil. For Tolkien, as a Catholic, that is a key part of the story for him. And I'm wondering how you think about the religious iconography that you put inside the story that you're telling. Well, you know, it's really interesting. Every one of these examples, I think, kind of came out of source material and text, right?

rather than us applying them on top. Right, because obviously he gets arrows in the book. I do know that. But I think those connections are there. You know what I mean? A fun Easter egg thing for I'm sure your fans will enjoy is count the number of arrows that are in Celebrimbor. It's five, right?

Yeah, there's more than that. Really? There's more than that? In the dream. In the dream, count the number of arrows that she sees. Okay. Exciting. Thank you. There's six in the dream. It's nine. Great.

You gave us the nine. Wonderful. Amazing. Exactly. But anyway, yes, I mean, like something we just come from, you know, things, things like that. But yes, I mean, go ahead. You were talking about talking. No, no. I think I think, look, you know, you know, his faith is very important to him, but he

wanted it to be, you know, buried in genre and buried in, you know, a world that was true unto itself and not referring outside, but it's there. And I think the stuff that's there is stuff that we try to be faithful to and shepherd along, which is an interesting metaphor to use for this particular. Let's stick on our guy Brimbo for one more second here. Yeah.

Let's stay with Brimby for a moment longer. I wanted to ask you about the idea of legacy and lessons and to use his character as like a way into this idea. This is a question about what you both think personally, but then also maybe what the show is trying to say and reinforce. How do you weigh...

The mistakes that he makes, which he made, and the heedless and sometimes reckless ambition that guided him,

against the strength of his final stand and the clarity that he is able to ultimately gain and then champion at the end? Like, is the latter possible without the former? Did he have to touch the goopy, sarani darkness in order to make this progress? And then what does his life and death teach us, like, about...

A character like Galadriel, who also was simultaneously deceived but culpable, as our title-haired pal Elrond would be happy to observe, right? So characters make mistakes in the story and in life. People make mistakes. And if we refuse to forgive the characters, then it feels to me like we're no better than Sauron.

then, right? Who stood there in his Halbrand form at the end of season one with Galadriel and basically said, like, I will never let anyone forget the role that you played in this and how you pushed me to new heights. And then he has his version of that

with Celebrimbor as he's gaslighting and manipulating him and talking about the role that he will occupy in history moving forward. So what does Celebrimbor's journey then teach us about the pathway to forgiveness and growth and whether there is an essential ingredient on that journey? Is it remorse? Is it accountability? How does fellowship unlock the capacity to find those things? Because certainly one of the things that Sauron seeks to do is isolate so that people cannot

help each other find that clarity. So I think a lot there, a lot there. Awesome. A couple of things I'll weigh in on, particularly in terms of Caleb Brimbor, is that both things are true. He must take responsibility and ownership for what he unleashed on Middle Earth. Without Caleb Brimbor, the Nine would not have existed, the Nazgul.

you know who would not have existed like you know the seven rings that wreak such havoc and cause a doom would not have existed um you know and keller brimbor bears responsibility for that and he feels that um at the same time uh you know he is able to recognize before the end um you know that he has done something that uh he he should not have done uh and he's able to try

try to pivot and make amends for that. And, you know, that's something that I think, you know, can hold true for any of us. You know, it's never too late to make a pivot, you know, back towards the light. And he meaningfully is able to impact things even in those final moments of his life. He's able to die a hero, right?

His death scene, I think this will be released after the... One of our favorite scenes that we filmed this entire season. He's able to die a hero on the right side of things because of the fact that he

been able to overcome Sauron's illusions and manipulations and deceptions. He's been able to firmly decide what side he's on and be able to push against the darkness with every last ounce of strength that he has. So in our minds, Celebrimbor dies a hero. Again, you know, I think some of the connections you're drawing, I am loathe to

speak on other than to say, I love that you're drawing those connections and it is why I love what you guys do when engaging with the show. And like, you know, I can speak as a viewer and be like, oh, that's interesting. But like, I mean, I think we're still too close to it to have that kind of perspective of like what we're trying or what the shows, I don't, we don't think that way. We're coming at it from a more instinctual place. But what I will say is,

I think having done two seasons of this now, we have a really high tolerance for flawed heroes. And when you were talking about Caleb Rimbaugh, I think I thought of Galadriel right away. It's like, me, like, you know, she's like an unabashed hero.

but she's also often kind of a mess and going the wrong direction you know what I mean like but I think the same of Celebrimbor like all those flaws are like right out there but to me as a viewer when I watch it endears me to him because no one is all good or all bad like you know all of your friends have hinge points that in the wrong moment could be a fatal flaw but that doesn't make them bad people in fact they could be great people like you know what I mean it depends what they're going to do with that I mean look at Adar

Adara is horrible and a villain by any standard, but like, I don't know, when I watch him, I start to like weirdly feel like, well, he's got a point. Same. Our flaw as, as drama, but like, I think we, we like these heroes who are complex and naughty and like are a combination of good and evil. That doesn't,

you know, the fact that Frodo says he wants to keep the ring in the end doesn't make him less than a hero. It makes him a human, you know, I think. Absolutely. I think even more so, like if it's easy, then, you know, why are we invested? Yeah. Right.

Sort of on that front, we want to talk a little bit about like this. We went down a whole rabbit hole about the concept of like pity as it recurs in Tolkien pity or empathy. If you prefer, we get a pity shout out in the finale from the dark wizard, but like,

That enduring idea of pity as the savior of Middle-earth, of all of its inhabitants there. This pity, almost, that Celebrimbor offers Sauron at the end here. You're a prisoner. The tears that Sauron cries for Celebrimbor. We think about those moments a lot, and we think about...

I guess I want to ask you sort of how you think about a big theme like that, that is so important to Tolkien and how you want to sort of lace it through. And, you know, again, two years into this, are there other themes? I wish it was only two years. No, sorry, sorry. Half your life into this, you know, are there other themes that take sort of more of a primacy in your mind when you're thinking about Tolkien as a storyteller? Has it changed?

uh, from 200 years ago when you first started this project to, to now, you know? Um, so you just said 200 years ago and then you said half our lives. Does that mean that we are the doodadine and we, and we look like foreigners? Yeah. You seem, you seem quite tall. You're sitting down, but you seem like you might be taller than most other people. Pity is an interesting thing to think about. I think pity is a fellowship that can exist between, even between people who aren't friends. Um,

And fellowship, I think, is the sort of bigger umbrella I would put pity under that is a thing that can save the world. It's Frodo and Sam staying true to each other, even in the cracks of doom. It's Aragorn and Gimli and Legolas deciding they're not going to leave their Pippin and Merry to torment and doom and let's go hunt some orc. Fellowship.

is the thing again and again and again that ultimately is what saves Middle Earth. It's more powerful than Sauron and armies and monsters and anything else. And I think pity falls within that. It's when you can look at another creature, another being, another intelligent entity, even when you don't have any sort of natural...

duty or relationship. But can see them and feel empathy for them. Exactly. You see them and you're like, yeah. Yeah. Okay. But can I now give you the other side of it, which is I'm going to pick on one thing you said, Joanna. Please. This is me as a viewer. When I watch Sauron's Tears, I'm not sure if it's Celebrimbor, he's pitying. Oh, okay. Great. That just feeds me into a follow-up question that Mallory and I both had, which was just sort of like,

All the moments that... There are moments throughout when Sauron as Annatar is talking to Celebrimbor and there's almost like a wistfulness about the ending of it.

or when he says to Galadriel in their conflictless episode, not all of it. We're wondering, like, are those moments sincere that are breakout moments of seemingly connection between Sauron and these other people? Or is there no sincerity inside of him? I love thinking about that. We might give you different answers. Okay. Oh, great. Exciting. Like, we can give different answers. This is great. I can answer honestly. It's all about him.

Now he thinks that's empathy, right? So fundamentally broken and so actually evil that like even empathy to him, it just comes back to himself, right? He's crying because Kelly Brimmore is like, you lost. And he's like, I lost. And that's such a blow to his ego. His narcissism is so profound. You know, but ultimately, who am I to say other than as a viewer, right? Like, like we like that, like,

He could argue what JD's about to argue, which is, no, no, no, it's totally genuine. And ultimately, like, you know, it's not for us to say, you know? Is that what you were going to say? In some ways, Sauron has been seeking fellowship, you know, in all the wrong places, you know? Like,

You know, and, uh, you know, season one with Galadriel, I mean, maybe season zero with Morgoth, you know, like, like how did that go? Like, you know, like, Oh, this is a guy who, you know, if you go back to the, you know, the years of the trees, you go back to like, you know, the song of the Ainur, he has such a clear vision of like order and of like, just like beauty and in the way that it could all, you know, work tranquilly. And at first he's like, all right, I'll hitch my wagon to Morgoth because he seems really powerful and he'll be able to give me the power that I need to make this order, you know? And,

and then that goes horribly wrong, you know? And, and okay, I'm going to try Galadriel. Like Galadriel is this like, like being of like almost pure light. And like, you know, if I can like, you know, with my sort of like ambition and her light, we can like, you know, bring something really special to the world. And then that doesn't,

work and then it's like okay i'm gonna try to kill a brimbor he's a craftsman who will allow me to like take this idea that i have and i don't quite have the craft to be able to execute and now he'll execute it then we'll bring it to path pass and like so again and again and again he's been sort of trying to find fellowship trying to find someone with whom he can sort of like come together in this way that will create something greater than some of its whole sorry greater than some of its parts but there is something twisted in him that keeps on messing it up um

I'm going to make a really weird analogy. Then we'll move on. In Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke's character has written a book about the events of Before Sunrise. We love those movies. You talk about all that. Same. A novel, a novelization that is essentially the story of Before Sunrise. And in the opening scene, everybody's asking him, well, do they meet together in six months? And he's like, well,

you think they do and you think they don't. And like, I think, I think there's ambiguity here that like, we're happy to let lie. Like, do you believe him? Do you not? Maybe that says more about you than him, you know?

Interesting. Love it. Thank you. Interesting. Ooh, okay. I have some reflection to do later. I'm going to, I'm going to noodle on that. Listen, Halbrand just wanted to stay in Numenor. Sure. You know, just wanted a peaceful life. Shrinking pints and smithing in Numenor, getting in alley fights. And I'd like to go to Numenor for a moment as well here. He tells us that there was a church. He like thought of what we're cutting. Yeah. After the first stage is over. That's right.

But there's something in him, couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Anyways, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Fellowship or worship and adhere? It's interesting. I'm thinking about what to talk about here. Six of one. A rich text. Numenor. Elendil receives Narsil in this episode. This is a massive moment that fans have obviously been anticipating. Yeah.

We definitely haven't spent two full seasons looking at every single sword in the background of every shot and theorizing about when it would make its way into Elendil's hands. So as we've already talked about today, there are a lot of core themes and concepts that are just essential to present in any sort of Tolkien adaptation. But there are also moments and objects and outcomes. So how do you both...

grapple with the reality of fan foreknowledge in that respect specifically. Like, we know that Elendil will receive Narsil. We know certain fixed endpoints await for his character and for many other characters, of course. We don't always know, though, what the pathway is to that. What...

leads a character to end up holding a sword in their hands or leave their home at a given point in time or align with or rebel against a given friend or foe or not kiss the person whose hands are on their chest throughout the entire season despite us sitting at home shouting kiss the entire time. Couldn't be me.

Do you feel like instead of feeling limited or confined by those endpoints, is the fan foreknowledge in that respect actually helpful because it can maybe put less focus on plot and more on motivation, choice and consequence, how characters maybe think about their destiny, a destiny that whether we think, whatever personal views we all have on the relationship between choice and destiny, a story destiny that we know.

I got something. Yeah. You know, I keep thinking of, as you were talking, I'm thinking of like, I feel this is where we, we are just the beneficiaries of this incredible man's life's work and this unbelievable act of imagination and creating, I mean, a universe that's so richly imagined that we just sometimes feel like we have, you know, the bag of Santa Claus toys next to us that just has no bottom. And you're like, well, you know, Ellen Dillon, Muriel, okay, well, he's got a kid out West. He's, you know, and he's supposed to...

kind of become a king and his season has sort of been about like you know you know finding out who he really is when everything that you know else is gone um you know so so what what in this scene should change things and put him on that and you're like oh well I reached in the bag and out came Narsil and it makes perfect sense because like you know she's like

you know, I'm now trusting you to kind of carry the thing that belongs in the king's attic, you know, because you're the one man who this season has proved he's going to be true to the principles we both agree to, you know, no matter what. And so the fact that Narsil is a thing that then carries its own meaning is just like, well, we're just lucky. You know what I mean? Like, and I love talking just in how much detail and how much richness it is. It always rewards, you know, like deeper examination, like Narsil, no one but Elendil could end up with Narsil. Like you look at etymology,

Narsil, like Anar and Sil. It's the name of his two children, like Anarion and Ithil. The white flame, it literally, you know, like... And Arian's clearly been written out in official records. Oh, yeah. Anarion has the sun in there, and Ithil has the moon in there. So Narsil is literally a sword that combines the names of Elendil's two children, and now he has it as he's going to find his lost second son.

I love that. Incredible. Narsil's one sort of, oh my God, fan moment of many in this finale. The other is this Balrog showdown between King Doran. I just have to say, and Mallory and I have talked about this at length in our side texts as we were watching this episode. I would want someone to paint this on the side of a van. Like this shot...

Of Peter Mullen or the double flinging himself exactly... It's incredible. ...at the Balrog is one of the coolest, like, fantasy images I've ever seen in my entire life. We just absolutely loved it. Gorgeous. But, like, thematically, though, this is such a crucial moment, obviously, for our guy Prince Doran because, like, he's trying to reach to his father. He's trying to appeal to their history, his childhood, their...

But it's not until the Balrog is there at the doorstep that King Doran can take the ring off. And so how much does that circle back into this idea of touching the darkness, which we come back to again and again? Like, how close do you have to get to the darkness in order to have that seeing the light moment? And then also, I just want to say for the record, we are very scared for our guy Doran. Concerned. And the way this...

The back of the head looks a little grim, doesn't it? Trouble and dismayed. Very upset and scared. So yeah, like talk to me about this, this last stand for King Durin. For sure. Yeah. I mean, so Tolkien is filled with, you know, we like to call heroic tableaus. You know, they're all over the books. You know, when Eowyn is, is facing, you know, the witch king and the fell beast, there's just this wonderful sort of like, he almost paints it with the words of just, you know, this like, you know, the light that reflects off of her golden hair, the,

darkness that's around the fell beast and like you feel that it's just this sort of like small being facing this larger-than-life monster with light and dark facing off in this just sort of grand epic fashion and so like we look for so like what are those moments where you can sort of create those paintings you know of sort of light and dark and like you know if King Durin is one who has fallen victim to the sort of addiction of the ring like the ring that's so much invested with sort of compulsion and addiction you know and he's taking it off and now he's sort of able to like fully face

the demon that you could say sort of like, you know, is that addiction sort of like personified, you know, like the evil. It's like now that he's taken the ring off, he's ready to just like give his life to sort of like, you know, even strike one blow against it. And like this, so being able to sort of memorialize that in a Tolkienian heroic tableau of light versus darkness, uh,

you know, with the ring off his finger. You know, it feels like, you know, it's like, those are the moments we look for. Sometimes, a lot of times, entire storylines are generated by an image on this show. Like, we really want it as, like, we want it to be, what we say all the time, we talk about, how do we, where's the cinema? Like, it should be cinematic. Sometimes it's going to be two actors in a room. Great. But like,

but like we want to find like, so that image of, of King Doran against the Balrog, that's been five years. Yes. Five years in the works. It almost ended season one. And then we realized there's a more story here, but that exact image of him making the leap for the Balrog was one that like the entire storyline was built around, built around for, for two whole seasons in terms of just like getting to that end point and having that hopefully have maximum emotional impact. Um,

And yeah, so delighted that you guys liked it. It was spine tingling. Loved it. Okay. Yeah. This is our last question. Devastatingly, we could talk to you all day. Yeah.

So, other than giving the gift to Mallory of finally showing us Muriel and Elendil kissing, we have some questions about season three, which is this. I mean, you're teasing some characters, right? You're teasing Isildur's brother. You're teasing Durin's brother. These are things that are on the horizon. But something I thought was interesting when you—I know you're thinking ahead as you're making these seasons—

You talked about season two as like the villain season. Do you have a concept like that that's attached itself to season three for you so far? A sort of broad stroke? No, that's a great question. There was a time actually in which we talked about when we were titling the show, we talked about sort of having each season have its own sort of title, you know, and, you know... It's shifted though. Yeah. We're not doing that, but like, you know, there definitely is like...

we had a title of what season three would be during that time. Like, like how do we done that? I mean, yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Like, you know, we have a story. We think it's a really good story. I don't think we can tell you anything about it. Other than like, you know, I think what's in the second season, you know I mean, look, you know,

Sauron ends the season holding the hammer and Poppy's talking about making something new. You know... Yeah. It also holds the season holding a little bag with nine rings for men in it. Sure. It sure feels like, as a viewer to me, Galadriel has definitively

and passed the test interpersonally with Sauron. I don't know if it felt that way to you, but it sort of feels like she, you know, the temptation. This portion of the test. This portion of the test, sure. Like a death and rebirth kind of way at the end of the season? Well, there's a little bit of that, right? But it's also like the whole season is like, you know, she's having to face her own culpability. Yeah.

And then it's like, you know, well, what's going to happen if you face him again? That's what Elrond's saying. She is stabbed with the same crown that Sauron was stabbed with in the opening. And then she falls the way that Sauron also falls to the center of the earth. And then, you know, but she has fellowship where Sauron had no one. Right.

I don't know if we're... I mean, how dare you just... Just the rat that he had to absorb. The rat and that Zorah Peddler woman. Like, come on. That's just a little chip of a kind. A lot of lonely little, like, tumble of the somersaults down the hill, though. You're right. Yeah. Very sad. Very sad. So what I'm hearing is season three...

Okay, so season three, colon, Beric. It's still on the table. Yeah. The hero. But I mean, that horse makes so many demands. You know, he needs the oats. He deserves everything he's asking for. Everything. He won't eat them. Okay, here's my question. Did you laugh out loud when it cut to Beric today? Yes! Literally,

That was the first thing I texted Joanne about. That's not true. It was the second. The first thing was seeing Adar without the, yeah. Yeah. Adar healed his face. And then the second thing was the cut to Beric. We laugh every time. It's really good. Maxim has an amazing relationship with that. He loves that horse. Like in real life, you know, they share a very close, a very, very close bond. Oh, I love that. Once a horse of Westerness has...

bonded with this writer. He can feel his faith. It's canon. Book of Beric or Beric Hero of Pelagia or something like that. We'll work together. Book of Beric. Thank you both so much for this season. Thank you so much. For your time. We really appreciate it. We could do this for hours. It's a lot of fun. Do not tempt us.

Yeah, exactly. Is there anything we haven't covered that we should talk about? There's more stuff I thought about. You guys think about Sour and Galadriel. But I'll listen to the episode. There's one more question about fans and get-offs. Yeah, yeah.

One other thing we've talked about from the way beginning as we talk about the Astar in the Second Age is in the Third Age, they have this really kind of peculiar code that they live by, which is you can't match power with power. You can't try to defeat Sauron's power by just hurling more power at him. Gandalf is a freaking Maiar, and in the books, he is very restrained with his powers. He'll...

a little fire every now and again or some light or, you know, talk to a moth, you know, but like, he's not like, you know, unleashing Old Testament, you know, sort of like, you know, I mean, he'll make light come in, like, scare the Felbisoi, but like, you know, like, it feels restrained for like, you know, what you know a Maiar could do. And so a question we sort of had is like, why might they have that, uh,

sort of like, you know, code and that restriction. And we thought that could be a really interesting answer of like, you know, well, what may have happened in previous times in which the Myra may have come to Middle-earth that might lead them to decide in the Third Age that this is how they're going to live? Reverse engineering principles that in the Third Age are taken for granted. I mean, yeah. I don't want to overstep our time, but I was just, I was re-listening to our conversation after season one. And I remember that you likened the Stranger to the Iron Giant. Yeah.

And of course, like the Iron Giant's like not a weapon, that whole sort of ethos that they forgot about in Ready Player One. But like that not a weapon idea, thinking about that again and again as it comes to Gandalf. We were very struck by the distinction in this season of like,

the stranger seeking this guidance on how to master power, which is tantamount to control. And then what we end up hearing servant of the secret fire and that distinction. Right. And so like, again, we know where we will find this character if it in fact proved to be the character, which it did. What is the journey to that clarity? And then before Gandalf becomes a figure who can impart this wisdom to the fellowship and to so many readers and then now, you know, viewers,

How did he come by it himself? Like, what a fascinating thing to get to watch. It's thrilling for us. We're having the time of our lives. Very sad it's over. As ever, you guys are astute readers of the text and it's really a delight. So, so great to see you again, Joanna. So lovely to meet you. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

possibly can so we're on oh my gosh well come we can't wait podcast anytime you want if you get bored with like all your downtime you know what i mean okay standing invite yeah exactly all right thank you guys bye-bye great stuff

from wonderful just like truly wonderful genuinely great yeah i hope you enjoyed that if you're watching this on video we are wearing completely different things in that interview it's a different day okay uh i'm wearing an oriole shirt and both just different oriole shirt yeah okay um ring two we're gonna breeze through this because we are running take us you just breeze us through it take us through it hit the highlights yeah the kelleborn piece yeah uh

Per what JD and Patrick said, and this wasn't necessarily my understanding, but then I rewatched after they said this, this really feels like a definitive corner turn for Gladriel. She has shut the door to Sauron. He's locked out.

Does that mean her actual husband, Celeborn, can join this show? I feel like people are constantly asking us where Celeborn is. If you remember from season one, she's like, he fought Morgoth. I presume he's dead. Yeah. I told him he looked like a clam. I was like, the last thing we said to each other. It's really, really brutal.

Celeborn's not dead. So I'm excited to see who they cast as Celeborn and he could probably show up as soon as next season. He missed the Battle of Oregon. He was supposed to be there, but we await your arrival. Some fun casting ahead. Yeah, Celeborn, Anarion, and Durin's brother. Durin's brother, by the way, there's a couple different people that could be. I was like looking through. There's not like a clear, because they're fudging their Durins a little bit. There's not like a clear like, and then Durin's brother came along and threatened his brother.

Succession rights. Okay. Let me just briefly say what I think season three is going to be about, which is from the Silmarillion. In that time when the One Ring was forged and there was a war between Sauron and the elves in Eriador, which is what Gil-Galad promises, right? Mm-hmm.

Now he learned that the kings of Numenor had increased in power and splendor, and he hated them the more, and he feared them lest they should invade his lands and wrest from him the dominion of the east. But for a long time he did not dare challenge lords of the sea, and he withdrew from the coasts. Yet Sauron was ever guileful, and it is said that among those whom he ensnared with the nine rings, three were great lords of the Numenorean race."

He had taken now the title of King of Men and declared his purpose to drive the Numenoreans into the sea. So he shows up in the Southlands in Pilargir, in Halbrand's drag again. And it's like, it is me. I have returned. You're King of the South. Oh, you got a Numenorean infestation? I can help with that. I'm worried about Theo.

I'm worried about... I'm not worried about Kemen, but Kemen is just like right in the crosshairs of ring temptation. And then eventually Farazan's going to get pissed off and come to Middle-earth himself and snatch Sauron off. I can't wait for this. That feels like a season four. If they're doing a season... Yeah, but we build toward it. Season four. Yeah, I think so. I think it's back to the Southlands for Sauron would be my guess, but we'll see. Big Numenorean season next season.

Do you think Farazan, as he does canonically, is going to make Muriel his wife against her will? I don't know. I hope not. It would give Elendil some extra...

I need Muriel to do... I mean, she did something in this season. She lived past a sea beast trial, but I would really like her to have some more political agency than we've seen. She's just like, I'll do nothing. That's what matters. And I'm just like... Yeah, I'm fascinated with what she thinks, you know, what the play is from her perspective of staying and presenting herself to Farazan beneath the throne like that. I... Oh, God. You know...

I don't put it past Farazan. I wonder if the show wants to do that or tweak it in some way. But obviously she is, you know, she is his prisoner. So one way or another, that's the circumstance. Could have been fucking on horseback with Elendil. God damn it. Anarion.

Yes. Fun casting to think about. I'm really excited to see what they cast there. You know, he'll be part of all of this, of the founding of Gondor and everything that comes. During the Last Alliance, a stone cast from Barad-Dor strikes him in the head and he dies. So... Terrible. Terrible. That was brutal. Yeah.

He's not making it past the end of the show, but they're up until the end and I'm excited to meet him. He lives forever in my Argonaut bookends. Yeah. Narsil, I mean, whatever. We talked about Narsil a lot. I do like that in thinking about Narsil. How did the shards get from

you know, a sealed door to Rivendell. It's that they were presented to his son, Valandiel, who, you know, we, we mentioned from the jump when that character Valandiel showed up, it was like, Oh, he names his kid Valandiel. Like that's going to be really sweet. Uh, he's being sort of fostered at Rivendell, which is part of a long tradition of the sons of the Dune of Dine being fostered at Rivendell, but that's how the shards get their way to, uh, Rivendell. And then Moria stuff, uh,

I don't know. I was just trying to figure out like exactly what we're going to see. I was just like on Durin Death Watch, essentially. And it's just sort of like, too deep we delve there and woke the nameless fear. Long have its vast mansions lain empty since the children of Durin fled. Balin listened to the whispers and resolved to go. So like, is the Balrog will return and will Durin and Disa lead their people out of...

to other lands Doran folk travel around or is Doran going to die there as well? I don't actually have a firm answer here. When do you think he puts on the ring? Or does Disa do it? Does Disa die easily without her? I hate it. I hate all of it. Yeah. Okay, here's this.

So this is my thought. I don't know how to pronounce. N-A-I-N. Nine? Nine? Nine?

Okay, Nain. So Durin was slain by it, and the year after, Nain I, his son. So let's say that's King Durin. Papa D was slain by it, and the next year, his son, Durin's promised brother, nameless brother. So if his brother is killed by the Balrog the year after, and that is what inspires Durin and Disa to leave. And its people were destroyed or fled far away. Most of those that escaped made their way to the north. Blah, blah, blah. So...

I don't know. And then last but not least, the ghost of Celebrimbor, dare we dream? Will he haunt Sauron? Will he haunt Galadriel? Will he... How will he show up? I don't... I think we're just going to see him in visions, in ring visions, in Mirror of Galadriel stuff. I hope he just haunts Sauron forever. My chilling thought was, what if instead of the ghost of Celebrimbor, we just get his...

body on a pole and that's what they're talking about remember when Charles Dance filmed some of a season of Thrones and it was just him with the stones on his eyes tough one yeah oh man it is like the question of whether we have three seasons left or two is a big one because like when are we when are we forging the one ring you know like when are these things gonna happen one ring next season I think so and then when are we giving out the nine well across okay here's my guess

season three and four sprinkling of the nine uh four fall of Numenor five last alliance of elves and men yeah that sounds right to me yeah but if it's four I don't know okay anything else you want to say this has been a treat and treasure and a joy at the time of my life I just don't want to be done I'm so sad I just don't want to be done

It is. This is going to be a, this is going to be one or two. But you know what? It's worth it. Worth it. The final episode of a season of TV that we love in a world we love to visit. And who knows when we'll get to talk rings again. I mean, we'll find a, we'll find a reason. Just an absolute joy. An absolute joy to do this with you. I'll miss it terribly. We'll be back for Agatha at the end of the week. We'll be celebrating our pod-aversary the week after, like next week is our three-year pod-aversary. Yeah. And when this podcast goes up, which will be Thursday, it's your birthday.

So happy fucking birthday. Thank you. My gift to everyone is many hours of a podcast. Okay. Thank you.

speaking of many hours to Stefano Sanchez for video editing, John Richter and T Cruz for video production work. Thanks to Steve Allman for sitting on this entire call with us. Thank you to Joe me at dinner on first work on the social end to our junior and compel the ever patient Arjuna. Thank you so much. We will see you for Agatha tomorrow.