Ok, let’s see what I remember from the show (because I was messing around on my phone for at least half the episode):
This part is not factoring the lore:
1. Some of the pacing is very odd. Some characters’ storylines move at a glacial pace while some other story elements jump all over the place. Elrond is still in the mines without much movement while Galadriel, in one episode, is imprisoned, escapes prison, gets banished from Numenor, is leading the people of Numenor to middle-earth.
2. That Galadriel prison escape. Yeah, we know she’s a Mary Sue Karen but the direction in that scene… rough. I think they did a quick cut to not show her fight the other guards and only show her shoving the guards in jail because it looked blatantly laughable. What we saw was already bad. Speaking of Galadriel, still with the same express and delivering poorly written lines as always. The scene of her coming back to Numenor was also very stupid. Everyone saw her get off the boat so did the queen tell her “stay hidden there and when you hear me say xxx, you come walking dramatically out”. Such bad writing.
3. Elrond and Durin’s friendship seems as fake as ever. My wife told me “I don’t buy them as good friends” and I agree. They told us they were good friends but we’ve never seen why nor have we seen them have a real conversation. They’re just reading bad lines that’s trying to sound deep. Also did Elrond teleport from Eregion and Khazad Dum again?
4. Singing to the rocks… urgh… dumb concept. Not much else to say.
5. So the queen doesn’t have guards to accompany her to middle-earth? They’re recruiting people from the market grounds to accompany her? They made Numenor look so small in this episode.
6. Arondir - so this guy is not only not killed by the orcs who killed everyone who were trying to escape (remember when all his friends were being killed, he was dragged down to go meet Adar) but he also is released by Adar. Adar btw, who was trying to be secretive but suddenly go tell the others. Classic trope this is - all because the writers didn’t know how to get him out of there. Btw, his arrow catching looked so silly as well. An arrow flies so fast that if this wasn’t slowed down, it would have looked ridiculous, like something from a Benny Hill fast forward sequence. Again, poor poor writing.
7. Another episode of Numenor 90210 starring Isil, his sister and his friends.
8. That Theo escape sequence - yeah, no one orc saw him until the end. He’s stomping about and no one is noticing him. Just because an orc is out of frame doesn’t mean that Theo is not visible to them.
Factoring the lore (I know the lore doesn’t mean much in this series but still):
1. We’ve seen the LotR movies, we’ve read the books - we know a palantir does not show the future.
2. Why is Numenor, meant to be the greatest military power the world has ever seen recruiting civilians? I hope this is not when they go to capture Sauron.
3. Rings of Power is suffering from the Star Wars syndrome where, because they are compressing the timeline so much and because the story is moving only due to a handful of characters, the world building sucks and makes the world Tolkien created look so small. Like in Star Wars, everything relates to the Skywalkers.
4. I hope they’re not making Adar the first orc or elf that was made into orc.
