November 14, 2022

Episode 5

Rings of Power Season 1 Discussion, Part 2

Hosts & Guests

Alicia

Alicia

(she/they) A queer Tolkien scholar and Zelda nerd interested in adaptation, audience reception, and biography.

Grace

Grace

(she/her) An acquirer of books, a queer-rights activist, serves as as the Subscriptions Steward of the Mythopoeic Society, and is a Professional Nerd (okay, technically it’s an unpaid internship).

Leah

Leah

(she/her) Just another weird Tolkien geek living in the Grey Havens (also known as Seattle WA) with two rabbits and far too few books.

Tim

Tim

(he/him) An experienced podcaster, Online Events Steward for the Mythopoeic Society, all-around nerd, and firmly believes that if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

Resources

About This Episode

Part 2 (of 2) of our discussion about Season 1 of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’. Alicia, Grace, Leah, and Tim examine how the series depicts elves and their gender roles, “Incel Sauron”, and Queer representation (including everyone’s favourite “Throuple”). Spoilers Ahead!

 

Transcript

Queer Lodgings: A Tolkien Podcast

Episode 5: Rings of Power Season 1 Discussion, Part 2

[ Intro music with birdsong plays ]

Tim: Hello again, friends. Producer Tim here. As you may have heard at the end of our last episode, our review of “Rings of Power” went pretty long so we ended up deciding to split it into two episodes. So, without further ado, here is part two of our conversation about “Rings of Power”, featuring Alicia, Grace, Leah, and myself. Enjoy.

[ Intro music with birdsong plays ]

Leah: Do we want to kind of shift into some of our issues with the elves? Because I think that that’s been kind of a point of contention for all of us.

Grace: Yeah.

Leah: And we kind of touched on it a little bit in… earlier on in this episode, but…

 

Alicia: Gil-galad’s the giantest penis man who has ever lived.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Alicia: I hate him so much! What the fuck!

 

Leah: Gil-ga-daddy.

 

Tim: He is a dick bag.

 

Grace: There is one moment, one moment where–kudos to Benjamin Walker’s, like, nuance of expression and everything like that—like, there is the tiniest shift in his eyes at the point when Elrond is asking him for, like, three more months and being, like, hey I’m throwing your own words back in your face. There’s this tiny shift that the actor does and all of a sudden, it’s like… oh,  this is who Gil-galad could be if Gil-galad wasn’t set up to be an absolute dick.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Grace: We get that Gil-galad for about .3 seconds and then it cuts to something else, but…

 

Tim: And hopefully he’s a character we’ll see some character development in throughout the series, and that we’ll get to see him evolve into less of a dick bag.

 

Grace: I really hope so.

 

Leah: I think so. I hope so as well. Because I think that I noticed that kind of same shift, and I kind of noticed on this second go around that this is a man who’s under a lot of stress and under a lot of pressure, I think? And that… I think that he’s making some decisions and saying some things rather, uh… bluntly (to put it lightly). I kind of think that he’s been put into a position of power that he hasn’t quite figured out yet. And, to me, he kept coming across as somebody who’s under a lot of stress and is coming across as a bit of a dick because he’s very stressed. [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: I do appreciate that at the point when they’re like, and we’re gonna make you a crown! He’s just kind of like… I–[ Sighs ]

 

Leah: Yeah. He’s just like I don’t know about this, you guys.

 

Tim: Yeah, this might not be the best use of this metal.

 

Leah: That was kind of a turning point for me when I kind of went back to rewatch some of this. Some of these interactions with Elrond especially and sort of discussing, like, the state of the tree. You know, I do think that there are still some off notes about the idea that he has the power… the “power” to release elves to Valinor. I feel like that could have been written differently and still would have gotten a good point across, and not quite putting as much of the decision into his hands as we kind of know that he doesn’t really have.

 

Grace: I think the actor is doing a great job.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: But this is one of the places where I think there is genuinely valid critique around the writing.

 

Leah: I think so too.

 

Grace: There are writing choices that could have been stronger. There are writing choices that could have been more in keeping with the legendarium. And the actor certainly could have handled those better writing choices.

 

Leah: Yeah, I mean like… I’m here for Gil-ga-daddy, for sure.

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: I want him to rise up and kind of take that mantle of power, like, pretty lightly that I think that he takes throughout the Second and the Third– throughout the Second Age anyway. I kind of feel like he’s feeling the weight of that mantle of power a lot in this show, which is a choice, for sure. I know that a lot of people have had some issues with it. I’m having… I’m still having some issues, for sure. I’m kind of finding myself kind of feeling a lot more for Gil-galad [ Leah pronounces the name Gil-GaLAD ] on this second go-around– or Gil-GALad, sorry, not Gil-gaLAD. Whatever.

 

Grace: Yeah, whatever.

 

Tim: Gil-gaLAD is perfectly valid.

 

Leah: I say Gil-gaLAD because… that’s what I do.

 

Alicia: This is going to sound a little… “Why is Arwen doing Glorfindel’s job” but…

 

[ Group chuckles ]

 

Alicia:  I think the centrality of Galadriel in this narrative is harming other secondary characters, of which are Gil-galad and Celebrimbor. Because you’ve now at this point taken Gil-galad’s major reaching out to Númenor–because Gil-galad realizes they’re in trouble and reaches out to Númenor, and he’s the kind of the one who makes that contact. You’ve taken that away from him. So, now he’s just, like, this shitty little king doing shitty little things and ruining Elrond’s life?

 

[ Chuckling ]

 

Alicia: And then you have Celebrimbor who… What is Celebrimbor known for? Making the rings and then discovering that Sauron deceived them into making the rings. And he now no longer gets that beat either because it was given to Galadriel.

 

Tim: I think he could still get that beat.

 

Leah: I agree.

 

Alicia: How?? Galadriel already knows!

 

Tim: I think if Sauron returns in a different form to Celebrimbor and helps him with the forging of the dwarven and the rings of Man, then we can still have that moment.

 

Grace: I agree.

 

Tim: It will have less impact—

 

Leah: I agree.

 

Tim: –Now that Galadriel has already revealed him once, but I think he still can have that moment.

 

Grace: I think that it absolutely can still happen and that by giving that beat to Galadriel here, and then leaving us for two years while a new season comes up– and this might be something that would be a season three thing instead of a season two thing. So, we’re—we could be four or five years away from seeing who gets assigned these character beats and the story arcs and all of that. I think that that’s a questionable choice to go in that direction. It leaves us with a lot of questions that I don’t think were necessary.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: But they could still pull it around. I think there’s a lot that they could still do in season two to assuage many of my concerns. It’s just a little rough on it being a two-year gap before we might see any of that.

 

Leah: Yeah, it’s gonna be a long wait. Because I’m in a similar position, Tim and Grace, that I don’t think that the events of season one have totally ruled out those character moments, for sure. But this relies on me saying I have to wait and see and that’s going to be another two years, so.

 

Tim: Yeah, and how many things can you say that about, and how many will they actually come through on, right? Like, if I have a list of ten things that I want them to do, or to turn around, or frame in a different light in season two, and they only do two or three, then alright, I’m going to be disappointed. But if they do eight or nine of them then I’ll be like, oh, okay!

 

Leah: Yeah. Or it might be like, I get two or three in season two, maybe I’ll get two or three in season three? It’s kind of like–knowing that this show is going to run for five seasons is kind of like… uuughhh, you are kind of asking the audience to do a lot of wait-and-see-ing to really come down on, you know…

 

Grace: Especially having switched many things, like Alicia points out, from one character to another, or switched the order in which things at least appear to be happening. Time compression I’m great with. My salt on dialogue and everything is that we never need to say three days for anything unless it’s plot-relevant.

 

Leah:  [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: That’s one of my major notes for them–is leave your timeline more flexible so that you can suspend disbelief. I hope to see that in season two. But switching some of the events around… they could still complicate that in season two. They could show us flashbacks to previous things happening, they could show us things that we didn’t perceive in season one. But making all of those changes in season one leaves the audience in a very strange place going into a two-year hiatus.

 

Leah: Yeah. It makes us doubt the strength of the adaptation, and it kind of relies on us giving a lot of good grace, which I have! I extend a lot of optimism and hope for the future, for sure, to these guys. But not everybody is gonna do that.

 

Alicia: Nope!

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: One of them is right here.

 

Alicia: You are correct. Not everyone is going to do that.

 

Tim: I am gonna broach this now while we are somewhat on the subject of Galadriel, and know that this is somewhere where I differ considerably with Alicia. I am generally okay with where they’re taking Galadriel. I think that they’re starting her off purposefully to be sort of more cold, and vengeful, and unfeeling. You know, she’s been probably the most under-the-microscope character in the fandom because she’s the character that so many fans know from the Jackson movies that is–that is still around. But yeah, she’s mourning the loss of her brother and she has room for that character growth, which I think we saw even in the end of the first season.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Tim: You know, and I think we will continue to see until we get something closer to the Third Age Galadriel that we know from Lord of the Rings, book and movie.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: By the end of the first season, she’s clearly becoming more self-aware about how her desire for vengeance has started to become an obsession, and I think it’s very symbolic that she gives up Finrod’s dagger, which is like the literal symbol of her rage and her drive for vengeance, to be part of the alloy that goes into the rings as well. So, I’m… I know that a lot of people have really not liked where—Alicia staring daggers at your screen right now– have really not liked where they have taken Galadriel on a whole, but I think that the journey that we’re going to see her on hopefully will end up being rewarding. We’ll see why they made the choices they did in the beginning.

 

Leah: I agree. I really, really enjoyed seeing Galadriel grow and seeing her be that prideful, flawed, hasty sort of person that we catch glimpses of in Unfinished Tales, and some of the earlier drafts. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, like, you know, watching Galadriel in this show has really, like… she’s always been kind of a favorite character of mine, but she’s really—it’s really, like, put into stark—it’s highlighted just how much I really am… how much I love her and how much of a favorite, and how much, like, I can think about her journey and where she goes for ages, for sure. And so, I’m really appreciative of what they’ve done in this show, for sure.

 

Grace: I think she–this characterization works within the variations in the legendarium. I think it’s largely internally consistent. So, I’m good with it for the most part. There’s a thing that I am incredibly, incredibly salty about. But I want to hold some space if Alicia wants to counter any of our points, and if Alicia doesn’t want to that’s fine too.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: I think it was a mistake to focus on her as much as they are, to the detriment of other characters. Not just with the stuff that I’ve already brought up, but also just the sheer amount of screen time. You get so much more with a Galadriel than you get with any other character, and I don’t feel like the tiny bit of character progression we get thus far really necessitates that. I feel like if they would have taken fifteen minutes away from Galadriel and given it to Celebrimbor, I feel like you would have gotten a lot more impact with the rings being made and everything. And also—

 

Tim: I will give you the thirty-second close-up of her on the horse. They can have that back to give to another character because that got painful.

 

Grace: [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: 100%, that was horrifying.

 

Grace: If they cut at least seven seconds out of it, it would have been so much better.

 

Leah: [ Laughing ]

 

Grace: I have notes, they can tell them where I have cut it. It’s so much better.

 

Leah: Aww, I love Horse Girl Galadriel.  [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: There’s so many horse girls in this show. You got Isildur—

 

Leah: I love Horse Girls! They’re great!

 

Tim: Isildur and Elendil are both horse girls too.

 

Leah: I love it!

 

Alicia: But like, you also, with Galadriel, fall into this, like Joss Whedon-esque feminism where a woman is a strong female character because she can take a beating. And a lot of the women in this show are like that. Why is Galadriel strong? Because she’s a military commander and can, like, beat the shit out of people. Why is Míriel strong? Because she’s a military commander.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Grace: Bronwyn as well. Although I would argue that each of them embody that role very differently and so I do find a lot of nuance in it. But….yeah, there aren’t a lot of our main characters who are not drawn into the physical fighting.

 

Alicia: Yeah, you got Disa and that’s basically it, really, in terms of like main female characters.

 

Tim: And Nori.

 

Leah: Yeah, and Nori too.

 

Alicia: She is also strong because she can take a beating!

 

Grace: And, like, Nori and Poppy and… oh, what is Nori’s stepmom’s name… Marigold?

 

Leah: Marigold, yeah.

 

Grace: They all end up going up against the priests, the acolytes of Sauron.

 

Leah: The priests, the cultists, that’s very true.

 

Grace: And so, they have that, they fight back, they survive. That’s a very Tolkienian thing of, like, particularly women fighting when they need to, and then going back to being their demure selves.

 

[ Hums of agreement ]

 

Grace: But yeah, I think there’s… It is a note that is hit pretty consistently among the female characters in this first season, for good or for ill.

 

Alicia: Yeah, and it’s 2022. We should fucking be beyond that by this point. Like, you can be a strong female character without beating someone’s ass or having your ass beaten.

 

Leah: 100%

 

Grace: We should be able to see other examples of women in, like, even just in the secondary or tertiary levels of background, around Middle-earth, that have different ways of relating and different ways of being strong, or whatever. And that they shouldn’t just be background extras. There should be some more nuance and conflict. And in a second, that’s going to bring me back to one of my big salts. But my Galadriel salt, in particular, is that by centering her in this way, and having Sauron be centered on her in this way… I find it to be very contradictory to the legendarium where Galadriel and Gil-galad are the characters who are never taken in by Sauron, who never allow Sauron into the elven cities and strongholds. And here, Galadriel rides in with him on a horse and that just… that does not feel, to me,  tonally like it is meeting the purpose laid out in the legendarium. So, I have a lot of salt about that storyline–that element of that storyline. There are other pieces of it that I like,  but that one in particular… and then pulling back from Celebrimbor a bit I think has gotten very… like, very inappropriate as far as relating back to the legendarium. There’s a big gap there for me.

 

Tim: So, in terms of Galadriel, you know, not seeing through Halbrand? Right from the beginning she is immediately suspicious of him, she just pegs him wrong at the start. So, like, she’s never fully… there might be a point, like, where they’re having their conversation after the battle in the Southlands where, you know, she’s started to trust him more? But I think for 90% of the season she is distrustful of him in some way. It’s just she doesn’t come around to the actual conclusion until he basically tells her.

 

Alicia: I’m sure Halbrand wants Galadriel to peg him.

 

Leah: [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: I also caught that, and also believe that.

 

Leah: I was going to say I was having a similar experience where I also think that this might be one of those changes that, like, folks either have a really big problem with or are kind of like in adaptation it works okay. In the same way that (and Alicia’s going to get mad here) Faramir is tempted by the Ring in the film of The Two Towers.

 

[ Grace and Tim chuckle knowingly ]

 

Alicia: They did my boy dirty!

 

Leah: I kind of think that, in the original story, having these characters be immediately suspicious of this villain and reject him right from the get-go works well in the story. However, on film, when we are supposed to have the experience of being deceived by this villain who is known for being a deceiver, is known for being a liar, and is known for sneaking his way into the good graces of people and betraying them, I feel like… I kind of feel like we need to be taken along with the main characters and deceived as well.

 

Grace: [ Hum of consideration ]

 

Leah: In order for that to be sold as a villain who needs to be feared and who needs be a real threat on the screen. You know what I mean? I feel like us kind of being deceived along with Galadriel gives us a chance to participate in that same character development that Galadriel is going through, and it kind of gives us kind of a first-hand experience, in a way, of understanding Sauron the Deceiver, you know?

 

Alicia: That definitely works if you’re also deceived by it but, like, he’s obviously at very best a morally grey character, if not an evil one, basically from the outset.

 

Tim: Yeah, we had him pegged as probably ending up as a Nazgûl, and so I wasn’t too far off.

 

Leah: That’s totally true. And, like, I feel like… maybe being deceived along with the character is kind of the wrong way that I’m explaining it. But, like—

 

Grace: No, I like it! I think that works.

 

Leah: Going along with the main protagonist, which in the first season is very, you know, for good or ill is Galadriel. I feel like having us see that she, too, can be taken in gives us a little bit more empathy with her, and kind of gives us… It kind of lets us experience her humility and kind of like her embarrassment and her pride first-hand, because she’s… by the end of the series (by the end of the show, I should say, or the end of the season, even) she’s very humiliated and embarrassed that this has happened to her, and that she has allowed this to happen.

 

Alicia: And she fucking should be! Because she’s been making dumb ass fucking decisions the entire show!

 

[ Laugher ]

 

Alicia: The entire show! She made zero good decisions… except jumping off the boat. Everything else is just garbage.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: [ In a country bumpkin accent: ] She just felt like swimming!

 

Leah: Aww! see, I feel like… for me, like, experiencing that along with her—like, really… I don’t know, it made me feel so much empathy and, like, so much kinship with her in a way.

 

Grace: I do like the ‘deceived along with the characters’ thing. It’s just that a couple of small changes in writing or depiction would have made me go “Oh, I see how you skirted around that and still got me there as an audience member”. If Galadriel had met Celebrimbor and Elrond as they were walking– If they were strolling just outside the gates of Eregion and Celebrimbor invited them in. This would feel different to me than Galadriel bringing him through the gates herself. If we hadn’t seen Sauron as Halbrand picking up the actual mithril piece that’s used in the making of the rings. Granted, I did love the lingering sensual shot of his hand in Celebrimbor’s hand handing that mithril back, that was excellent, delightful. It was crumbs, but it was good crumbs.

 

Leah: No notes, no notes. [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: But if he hadn’t actually, like, touched it directly, it would have felt a little bit closer to the notes in the legendarium of, like, Galadriel didn’t allow Sauron into whichever cities.  Sauron never touched the rings. Like, these are certainly things that can be interpreted, but I needed them to be a little bit more literal than what this adaptation showed because they’re pretty small things but they stick out to me as not working tonally.

 

Leah: I hear that, yeah.

 

Tim: Let’s get back to Halbrand wanting to be pegged by Galadriel because that is a thread we can pull on.

 

Leah: Oh yeah!

 

Grace: So, absolutely I think you are 100% correct in that, and valid.

 

Leah: Very valid.

 

Grace: I do think that Halbrand’s interest is a much… it exists on many more levels, his interest in Galadriel than her interest in him. So, I think you’re correct there.

 

Tim: Let’s just say, big incel energy coming off of Halbrand, and unrequited love? And I really like it in a… It gives a big “Kylo Ren represents the petulant ageing Star Wars fan” energy?

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: I’m now, like, Halbrand is my vehicle character now for all the petulant, like, fucking lore boys that are just angry about “Rings of Power”.

 

[ More laughter ]

 

Tim: And he’s like “how dare you not make this exactly how I want to! I should be the arbiter, only I know what is good and right!”

 

Grace: Yeah, I was genuinely upset about that level of, like, incel energy coming from Halbrand, Sauron, what-have-you, at the point when episode eight aired and was, like, ready to be in a rage about it– And then! Then a delightful thing happened on Reddit, which was that I realized that self-identified incels had caught that reference and they were displeased by it. They did not like that their behaviours, and ideas and everything, were being assigned to the Dark Lord, and they were big mad about it. And I suddenly found myself much less concerned that it would be, like, taken up as a championship cause by them or whatever, and just a lot more assuaged in my concerns.

 

Leah: You can’t see my face but I am just, like, beaming! [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: Yeah, you are pissing off the right people.

 

Leah: Hilarious!

 

Grace: Yeah. So, I was super salty on that one and I have backed off on that now because– They could still ruin it for me, the people on the internet, but definitely people read that as not being an appropriate thing. And… good, because I was afraid that that was not how it was going to be read.

 

Leah: That’s so funny. I’m also really here for the… Galadriel is like, “We never dated. We were never, ever, together. I don’t know how you could possibly imagine us as being together, but, somehow, you’re still my toxic ex. How is this happening?”

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Alicia: They spent all that time with only one bed on that raft.

 

Leah: With only one bed! And Sauron–I just… I’m so here for this relationship between, like, Sauron being, like,  the horrible, toxic ex that Galadriel never had. [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: Yes.

 

Alicia: That’s the real reason why Galadriel doesn’t put on her ring. She just doesn’t want to be confronted with Sauron’s horse shit.

 

Leah: She just doesn’t want to see him! She’s just like, fuck you, go away!

 

Grace: Like, no, no, no, we are not—I am not–

 

Leah: We never dated. We were never, ever together! Go away.

 

Tim: Get off my lawn with that fucking boombox!

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: Get off my lawn! Stop playing that stupid boombox.

 

Grace: She’s basically playing the Taylor Swift “We are never, ever, ever getting back together” but just with, like, an asterisk footnote: we never were together.”

 

Leah: We never were together!

 

Tim: Please tell me somebody has done that meme already where it’s Halbrand holding up the boombox in the yard.

 

Leah: Oh my god, please!

 

Grace: I will get right on it.

 

Leah: Yeah, I was gonna say… please, and please vid the “Never, ever getting back together” to the two of them, because I…

 

Grace: I may need to wait for season two for a lot of my vidding because I do plan to take every single toxic Taylor Swift breakup song and apply them to either Sauron and Galadriel or Sauron and Celebrimbor.

 

Alicia: So, you mean every single Taylor Swift song.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Tim: Basically.

 

Grace: There’s a whole catalogue to go through. I’ve got goals.

 

Leah: Whole huge catalogue. Yeah… On this rewatch, uh… it’s also, like–spoiler alert for folks who have not seen the end of “Rings of Power”. I’ll give you a couple of seconds to tick off spoilers.

 

Tim: We will spoiler the episode notes for sure.

 

Alicia: Right, you shouldn’t have been listening for the last forty minutes.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: This is a BIG spoiler! Halbrand is Sauron, just FYI. Like, on this rewatch that I’ve been doing, understanding that Halbrand is Sauron is 1000% more hilarious to me in the way that, like, reading the interactions between the two… I don’t know, for some reason, it’s just striking me as so funny and so, like, this is the energy that I want between the two of them. As antagonists, for sure, but they have this, like, inexplicable… This stupid, stupid bond that they can’t, like, get rid of each other, basically.

 

Grace: There are some pretty good moments on a rewatch.

 

Leah: So funny!

 

Grace: One of my favorites is in episode three, as they wake up on Elendil’s ship together. And he’s like… Sauron is over here going, like, “Oh yeah, that food isn’t poison–at least not to humans.” There are no humans in that ship’s hull! You’re just a little shit!

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: And just like… I know that this is something that we have also talked about before in that Charlie Vickers did not actually know that he was playing Sauron until they were filming for episode three. I think they just wrapped filming for episode two. So, that first episode with him on the raft and him making those first initial connections with Galadriel, and him saving her a life were performed and filmed with him not knowing that he was Sauron.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Leah: And I think that that was a missed opportunity for the showrunners to really place a lot more trust in Charlie, who I think has proven through the show that he is extremely capable of giving kind of a double layer of meaning to every single line, and giving even, like, triple layers. I feel like his performance was really one of the strong suits of this show, for me anyway, in that every line that he says is kind of like–you kind of had to keep asking yourself, like, okay, so he’s trying to deceive the person he’s talking to. Is he also trying to deceive himself? Is he trying to deceive anybody else who might be watching? What’s his motive? What’s his game? And those are the questions that we always need to be asking when it comes to Sauron.

 

Grace: And some of my salt is that due to the inexperience and just frankly idiocy of the showrunners in this regard… Those questions cannot be answered because the actor could not answer those questions in delivering their performance.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: So, as someone with a theatre background and a theatre degree, I would just like to take a moment to speak directly to the showrunners here. Traditionally, at the point when you begin rolling cameras or raise the curtain, it is best for your actors to know who they are playing.

 

Leah: [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: It’s a best practice sort of thing.

 

Tim: Minor details.

 

Grace: It tends to work better. And you can really see the cracks that show on a rewatch where the actor clearly did not know. There’s a moment at the end of episode two where either there was really good direction to, like, play a moment surprised or it was filmed after the COVID break and after he had been told who he was. But really, like, you can tell the point at which the actor was told that they were going to be playing Sauron. And that doesn’t work for unpacking a mystery box.

 

Leah: Yeah. I think it’s only one episode where he doesn’t have that full information. So, I think that that helps. I also, on rewatching it, I was kind of looking to see if I could see those cracks a little bit better. I actually think that it might be the strength of the directing that it doesn’t quite show quite as badly for me on rewatching, to where it feels disingenuous or it feels like this couldn’t be looked at again and seen to be, like, oh this is actually just him making up things as he’s going along. So, the cracks didn’t quite show for me as much but I absolutely agree that–I really think that you do a disservice to your actors when you do this. And in the name of, I don’t know, connecting in a different way… I really feel like, based on the strength of the performance that he does in the later episodes (especially when they’re in Númenor) that I was really noticing…. I actually felt like there were slightly more cracks in Númenor than there were in episode two on the raft.

 

Grace: There is a huge crack from the perspective of the show–not the acting, not that. There is in… I want to say episode four, there is a Míriel voiceover discussing the topic of valour. And it is after Halbrand has been released from his jail cell, presumably by Pharazôn, and he is walking through Númenor. And it is the show textually telling us that this character of Halbrand is a character that we should trust.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Grace: That he has valour, that he is valiant, that he is a good character.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Grace: That is an outright lie from the perspective of the show and it was, I think, a deeply criticisable writing choice. They did not need to put those images with that voiceover and have that connotation come through to deceive the audience because that was deceiving not misleading the audience.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: And it makes that mystery box a lot harder on an unpacking. So, those two things, for me, are really key as far as… I think missteps that they made because of inexperience.

 

Leah: Yeah. I feel like… there was a moment in episode five I think, where Halbrand is really angry at Galadriel for “using him” to sail to Middle-earth. He explicitly tells her “Find another head to crown”. And when you kind of look back at it, knowing that he is Sauron, you’re kind of like… what’s your motive behind that statement? What are your real emotions behind that anger, you know?

 

Grace: I get that you’re gaslighting. Why else? Why are you doing that?

 

Leah: Yeah! It’s kind of like, are you trying to make her feel like… are you kind of trying to, like, egg her on into believing that she is the one who really pushed you to go back to Middle-earth? That without her you would have, you know, been very happy to stay here on Númenor and be a smith for the rest of your life or whatever?

 

Tim: Well, he does bring that up in the reveal.

 

Grace: Yeah!

 

Leah: I was thinking about that.

 

Tim: That he wanted to stay there. And I’m thinking, okay, he didn’t really care where he forges the rings, he just wanted to forge them. He could have forged them in Númenor just as easily as he could have in Eregion.

 

Leah: Yeah. I was thinking a lot about that in kind of… in reflecting on episodes four and five especially, which was him in Númenor especially, where I was kind of like… it’s hard to kind of figure out what his real game was. And, like, is he just kind of, like, trying to goad Galadriel into… is he trying to convince both Galadriel and himself that he really does want to stay in Númenor? And it’s a little tough to kind of… to land on that. And I know that that was a motive of the writers and the showrunners, to… They wanted it to be deliberately very tough to figure that out. I feel like it could have been a little bit stronger in terms of trusting both the actor and trusting the audience to kind of second-guess those motives, you know what I mean?

 

Grace: I think that they may be able to recontextualize that in season two. Interviews that I’ve seen suggest that they are looking to do that.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: That there will be more of an explanation for, you know, why Halbrand was on the raft and whatever. And I know we’ve turned out theories–If he was trying to get to Númenor, he was trying to get to Valinor, something else yet unannounced? Or he was trying to escape something in Middle-earth. Like, there’s a lot of different things it could be, but I think that it was a misstep to leave so much unaccounted for going into a two-year hiatus. And I think that’s one of the places where the inexperience of the showrunners really, really shows–Is that there are a lot of things that may be fine after season two airs, but leaving fans with a two-year hiatus and some of these questions not being answered, or things they have come to depend on as fanon or, like, truths that fans kind of agree to and then the canon of the show doesn’t hold to? Are going to cause some issues down the road.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: I think they’ve set themselves up for some troubles there.

 

Leah: I agree, I agree.

 

Grace: I think also just a couple of points as far as the sexism of the show again. Um, we have to talk about the background elves.

 

Leah: Yeah…

 

Grace: Like, not the background elves that don’t show up going to Valinor, not the background elves that die, really, or… we need to talk about the veiled elven women in Lindon.

 

Leah: The servants.

 

Tim: Yeah. And on the boat, they’re on the boat too.

 

Alicia: Yeah, Lindon and boat.

 

Leah: And they’re explicitly servants. Like, we don’t see any male-coded elves clearing away the table, taking away armor on the boat. It’s all women, and they’re all veiled. And that’s very… Hmmmm… That does not sit well with me, at all.

 

Alicia: It’s very dehumanizing.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Leah: I feel like this could have been very easily avoidable if you had had… if you had a veiled, you know, male elf clearing away the dishes from the table, or one of the folks on the boat, you know, helping to undress the warriors. If you wanted everyone to be veiled, sure, I mean…sure, why not?

 

Grace: If more of these characters had speaking roles and names, and things like that and weren’t just set dressing? That would make a difference as well.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: But only one of them, to my recollection, ever speaks and it’s to, like, deliver a message to Elrond. He’s a bit snippy with her.

 

Leah: [ Hums in agreement ]

 

Grace: It’s just not a good look. It is not a particularly ethical treatment. And considering that there are not a lot of female elven characters in the show, like, it means that everything ends up landing on Galadriel as your token character.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: No other female elf really speaks for more than a line, and there’s only one of them that does that.

 

Leah: Yep.

 

Alicia: So, your options, if you’re a female [elf], is you go into the military or you don a veil and serve the king.

 

Leah: [ Makes a sound of disgust ] On the rewatch, I was noticing that the Númenorians and the dwarves actually come across as—and even the Southlanders–come across as far more, like, egalitarian and a lot more evenly in terms of gender– not blindness, but I noticed a lot more women soldiers in the Númenorian guard and working. I noticed a lot more women dwarves just kind of, you know, scattered in the crowd. It felt very deliberate and it also kind of stuck out like a sore thumb that when it came to the elves, all the servants were women and all of them were veiled.

 

Grace: Yeah. There were some background extras who were elven women but who were not wearing veils. They were wearing the more like–the blue robes that Elrond was wearing. But it maps on to a lot of concerns about why this aesthetic choice was made. Because certainly there are plenty of examples in our real world of, for cultural or religious purposes, a culture of covering. That is something that is both challenged and very much desired by various groups of people. It’s not a simple issue, certainly.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: But to introduce this concept into an elven society which is not depicted anywhere in the legendarium to my understanding. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this isn’t depicted anywhere within Tolkien’s writings. So, putting this in this regard without making any sort of explanation for why, for why it would be something that is desired by the participants in the society is… very strange, very lackadaisical I think, and it ends up being deeply sexist because it doesn’t get into any depth as to why that decision might be made. It’s just on the surface.

 

Tim: They’ve definitely made a conscious decision to depict these distinctions of class within elven culture in particular, but they’re not doing anything with it.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Tim: If you’re going to do that, at least, like, you know, show that there’s some pushback against it or whatever, right? Maybe it’s part of how they’re trying to depict the elves as, even at this middle stage of Middle-earth’s history kind of thing, starting to become detached from the rest of the world and losing touch with the rest of society. But, you know, it’s just–it’s not played that way. It’s just played: Hey, here’s some creepy background people and we won’t show you their faces because they’re just a lowly servant class.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Alicia: I mean, they’re already doing enough to show that elves are kind of apart from everyone else. You have the fact that going to Lindon’s a big fucking thing, and they don’t have anything to do with the dwarves, and they have, like, this literal tower of elves standing watch over humans. I feel like you don’t also need to veil a bunch of elf women.

 

Tim: Yeah. That really heavy-handed fucking “Elves are coming to take our jobs” Númenorian thing. [ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: Oof, yeah. That still comes across as pretty cringy on this rewatch.

 

Grace: Yup.

 

Leah: I noticed; I was just like…oh boy…

 

Tim: It was like: Here Progressives, we’re gonna throw you a bone with this one. Go enjoy it.

 

Leah: [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: Amazon! Please don’t come at us!

 

Leah: Yeah, please don’t. [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

 

Tim: Yeah, exactly, the Jeff behind the curtain.

 

Leah: [ Laughing ]

Alicia: Yeah… Speaking of cringy. The whole boat scene is ultimate cringe.

 

Grace: Oh God.

 

Alicia: We’ve mentioned, I don’t know, a dozen times now? That one of the showrunners is Mormon, and I really feel like this is pure Mormonism just being put on the screen.

 

Grace: There’s a lot of Mormon or Masonic iconography with this.

 

Alicia: They’re the same thing.

 

Grace: They are the same thing.

 

Leah: Woof. Yeah, there’s a lot of–there’s definitely a lot of overlap, for sure.

 

Grace: The Mormon temple traditions are 100% adapted from Masonic temple traditions, and that is something that outsiders aren’t supposed to know or speak of, but…

 

Leah: Too late!

 

Grace: That is certainly something that has been revealed and confirmed over time.

 

Tim: Well, I look forward to getting that Masonic hate mail now.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: If this podcast never puts out another episode, it’s because the Illuminati got us guys.

 

Leah: The Illuminati got us!

 

Alicia: Oh no…

 

Grace: Listen, my step-grandfather was a thirty-third-degree Mason.

 

Tim: Cool!

 

Grace: He didn’t share very much but, you know, whatever.

 

Leah: Ah man. Yeah, we gotta reach that Masonic audience, that very important demographic.

 

Alicia: Right.

 

Tim: Yes, yes.

 

Leah: The key the podcasting!

 

Grace: I don’t think that they’re going to come after us. They are all too busy trying to find their aprons because no one remembers where they put them.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: They’re all trying to get to their pancake breakfast at the Lodge. So, you know.

 

Alicia: It’s…why? Why did you have to insert that scene in… Like, I understand narratively what they’re trying to do, but did they have to make it literally a Mormon temple ceremony? Did they have to have the characters being undressed by veiled servants and then ripped through the veil of the clouds into, apparently, the surface of the sun? Like, why?

 

Grace: I have consulted my notes and they did not need to do that.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: Yeah, did they have to be wearing the Mormon undergarments? Like, almost literally the Mormon undergarments, basically. Yeah, I… Mmm…

 

Grace: That–you guys, we figured it out! That is how you’re protected going through the veil to Valinor! Is the magic underwear.

 

Alicia: [ Laughs ]

 

Leah: Oohhhhh! That’s how you survive.

 

Grace: So, it was plot-relevant plot armor, okay.

 

Leah: It was literal plot armour, oh man.

 

Grace: I’m so sorry.

 

Tim: And we also—we had talked about, previously, there being, like, a lot of other Christian image as well. Mormon is a Christian tradition. There is, like, very Christian image when Galadriel is getting pulled under the ocean. Like, her arms are spread, like, bound to a beam.

And then one I picked up on my rewatch, too, was Galadriel’s very Christian speech to Theo after “Udûn”,  after Mount Doom erupts. Her whole, like, “everything happens for a reason, there are designs that we can’t see” sort of thing was very reminiscent of the whole, you know, “God has a reason for everything that happens, we can’t question his designs” and shit like that. And I was like, that really does not seem very elvish, that particular philosophy.

 

Alicia: She’s been in Valinor though, so she would know quite literally that there are designs in place that were sung in the music.

 

Leah: That’s also very true.

 

Tim: Yeah, but they can be known because you can go to Valinor and know them.

 

Alicia: Well, Galadriel can go to Valinor but then she can’t come back. Unless she’s Glorfindel.

 

Leah: I was going to say– I remember, though, that Theo explicitly says, like, what’s the design in this? And she can’t answer.

 

Grace: Like, my home is gone.

 

Leah: Like, my home is gone. And she’s like, I don’t know what it is. So, I kind of felt like that was kind of a bone being thrown to us non-Christians a bit where we’re like, uhhhh can you explain this? And they’re like, actually, no we kind of can’t, okay.

 

Tim: Well, that was literally where she says, like, that, you know, there are parts of the design that we can’t see. That was how she explained it away, was like the very Christian, like, we shouldn’t deign to understand our creator’s creation kind of thing.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: I’m not saying that it’s not horse shit–specifically overtly Christian horse shit that’s been thrown in my face my entire life.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Alicia: But I could also understand a real–like an in-world reasoning behind it.

 

Tim: The Valar and the… Yeah.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Right, you guys want to talk about some gay shit?

 

Tim: [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: I think we should but before that, wait, I have one more piece of salt!

 

Leah: Ooh, Ooh, one more!

 

Grace: One more serving of salt here. And that is–Real quick for me, just because I’m going to work through this theory on air too. List for me the characters who people thought might be Sauron. So, it was like–reallythought might be Sauron. So, Halbrand, the Stranger.

 

Tim: The Stranger…

 

Leah: Adar. Gil-galad.

 

Tim: Adar… Gil-galad… Celebrimbor. Berek.

 

Leah: Berek.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Grace: In pretty much every single one of these instances, the characters who responsibility for Sauron’s actions can be shifted off to and who can be blamed for his appearance or return in Middle-earth are women. No matter who they chose, it would be women. Nori—Nori and Poppy would be responsible for The Stranger.

 

Tim: And I’m very glad that they’re not in the end. Because that would have been my worst-case scenario, I think.

 

Grace: With Gil-galad and everything that—it’s set up to be that tension with Galadriel. And then with Halbrand, a woman brings him to Númenor and a woman brings him to Middle-earth. A woman gives him an army and, like, helps lead an army into Middle-earth as the Queen Regent from Númenor. A woman, Bronwyn, affirms his right to the crown and affirms him as King of the Southlands. Everywhere that you turn, people who are misogynists can blame women for Sauron’s actions and appearance in Middle-earth. And that is something that I think they needed to be more cognizant of, is how those narratives can be received. I think it’s most problematic for Galadriel, but you end up with several different women who can be blamed for Sauron showing up and being able to go do a whole bunch of fuckery again.

 

Alicia: We left out Theo. That he also…

 

Tim: [ Laughs ] Yeah. Waldreg…

 

Leah: Waldreg… I think that’s totally valid. Like, that definitely wasn’t, like, my intuition or my experience watching it, for sure. But I think that it’s all too easy to kind of… to go there and… Yeah, I definitely think that this is something that the showrunners–Again, kind of like with Disa, and kind of like with Míriel’s blindness. I kind of feel like… Y’all kind of need to outsource some of your perceptions and get some real good feedback from other folks.

 

Grace: Yeah, I think this ended up being a blind spot for them. Certainly, part of the reason that it is possible is because they decided to center female characters. And I don’t want them to step aside from doing that in order to make it harder for misogynists to be misogynists.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Grace: Because they will continue doing that fuckery no matter what.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: But… I think just a little bit more thinking through how the actions of women can be perceived and who can be blamed for negative events. Yeah, there’s probably a need for a bit more of that. So.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: Alright. So, let’s talk about some gay shit!

 

Alicia: Hell yeah.

 

Tim: It’s not even subtext. The throuple is text.

 

Alicia: Yeah.

 

Leah: It’s canon! It is absolutely canon now.

 

Tim: It’s an arrow. It is the 100% arrow that points at Durin.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Alicia: Just that–the initial speech between Durin and Elrond when they’re going up the elevator and Durin’s like “I lived a whole life without you”! They’re—it’s just—

 

Tim: It’s heart-breaking.

 

Alicia: They’re gay! They’re gay for each other. 100%.

 

Leah: Sobbing! Sobbing! I was just like, oh my God, they love each other so much! Durin was so hurt!

 

Alicia: And Disa’s like, hello new boyfriend. You love my husband. Come into our lives, here are our children!

 

Leah: Yeah, she was immediately like, hugs, you’re part of the family now, you know?

 

Tim: Yeah, exactly. Welcome to the polycule.

 

Leah: Aww!

 

Tim: Durin’s very much: This is my wife Disa, this is my boyfriend Elrond.

 

Leah: This is my boyfriend Elrond. Aww!

 

Grace: Some of the moments, too, where he is defending Elrond to his father.

 

Alicia: Oh, yeah.

 

Grace: And Alicia made an excellent meme in that regard.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: Yes! [ Mimicking Ariel from The Little Mermaid: ] Daddy, I love him!

 

Grace: Daddy, I love him!

 

Tim: Durin almost gives Elrond his secret name, and—

 

Leah: [ Gasps ] Oh my God!

 

Tim: Elrond practically puts his finger up to his lips to stop him from saying it.

 

Alicia: I almost died. I was like, oh my God! Is he going to do it?? Oh my God! This is huge!

 

Leah: Dying. Dying.

 

Grace: And like, the text in there is like, so we tell our wives… and also other people–and Brothers! Brothers! I mean brothers.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Grace: For the uninitiated–I mean brothers! I definitely don’t mean…

 

Leah: We definitely tell our college roommates, our cousins, you know? Yeah.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Alicia: I would love to have, like, some flashbacks about how Elrond and Durin actually met.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: And, like, their life before the sundering of their acquaintance. I would love that.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Grace: There is a textual way for them to do it, too. Because every time Disa asks them a question, they have different narratives about the…

 

Leah: They have different stories.

 

Grace: They have different fishing stories about the, like, who slayed how many trolls or whatever.

 

Leah: Who saved who? Yeah.

 

Grace: And it’s beautiful, and I love it. And they could just keep doing that. Like, just give us one of those a season and I would mine so much out of that.

 

Leah: Ugh, it’s really so good. And in my rewatch, I’ve only gotten up to—listeners, I’ve only gotten up through episode five which, of course, means that I got to relive the experience of “give me the meat, and give it to me raw”.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: Give it to me raw…

 

Leah: Oh my God! I was howling!

 

Alicia: That was amazing.

 

Grace: And then the two of them get furniture to bring back to Disa!

 

Leah: Get furniture to bring back to their wife! Oh my God!

 

Grace: And then argue about who gets to claim that they gave her the table! Like, oh bless!

 

Leah: It’s so good!

 

Alicia: And I haven’t really talked about it but, like, the actor for Prince Durin is fucking knocking it out of the park.

 

Grace: Oh, he’s amazing.

 

Leah: So good!

 

Tim: Owain Arthur is doing great work.

 

Alicia: Like, every single time he’s on the screen he’s just, like, utterly captivating, and every interaction he has with his father, in particular, is just fantastic. He’s so good.

 

Leah: Yeah, he’s so, like, emotional and so, like, vulnerable and the way that he connects to everybody on the screen that’s around him is just, like, he’s such a good performance.

 

Tim: And the three of them have such great chemistry together.

 

Grace: Yes.

 

Tim: Robert Aramayo as Elrond, and Sophia Nomvete, and Owain Arthur just… they just work so well together on screen.

 

Grace: I mean, that scene where Elrond is challenging Disa about where Durin is, and she is lying to him but, like, so believably for the audience, and he still doesn’t get it but he doesn’t fault her for it. Like, and the loyalty discussion that they have there–absolutely beautiful. Every interaction between Durin and Disa. And I love even, like, one of the moments where Durin is like… what is the phrasing they use… like, heaping slag on her mother or whatever and she complains about it.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: And he’s like, well in your mother’s case–I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Like, they are so beautifully, wonderfully, married and, like, it is such a beautiful thing. And I’m so glad that we get this relationship, like, my gosh.

 

Alicia: It’s so good that, like, I forget about Elrond’s horrible hair, and that is saying a lot.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Tim: Yeah, it is a highlight for me, for sure. Honestly, the treatment of the dwarves, in general, is likely my favorite out of any Tolkien adaptation so far.

 

Leah: Yeah!

 

Tim: They’re much more developed and dimensional. They’re not played primarily for comedy. They are still a little comedic but it’s not their primary purpose, which it really has been in some of the past adaptation stuff.

 

Grace: They get to be whole beings instead of just comic relief.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Leah: Totally.

 

Tim: Back to queer characters.

 

Leah: Yeah, back to the queer shit.

 

Alicia: Not a personal ship of mine, but a ship of other peoples: Míriel and Galadriel.

 

Leah: Into it!

 

Tim: They definitely have some tension between them in some of those one-on-one scenes.

 

Grace: There’s definitely– Some of the face touching is a little, like, oh… and they were just friends?

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Tim: Just gals being pals.

 

Leah: Just gals being pals.

 

Grace: There’s definitely things to pick up on there and to have a queer reading of that relationship.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Well, I mean, Galadriel? Canonically queer. [ Laughs ]

 

Leah: We’ve proven that. We’ve proven that.

 

Tim: Yep.

 

Grace: And now that she has met Míriel, obviously. [ Laughs ]

 

Leah: Obviously. I think, like, the conversation that she has in the tower when she goes to kind of confront Tar-Palantir, there was a really wonderful moment of vulnerability between the two of them. Míriel is… she kind of really shows, like, a really secretive, hidden part of herself that nobody else really gets to see because she wants to very explicitly keep it secret that her father is ailing and dying. And Galadriel is sort of brought into this and has this really lovely moment, kind of like that we’ve seen before where she kind of comes up short against, like, her kind of bull-headed, very focused sort of goal-oriented seeking. And it sort of comes up across like a real moment of empathy. You know, she’s just–She kind of realizes that, like, oh. Oh shit, I had no idea that your father was like this. And I also had no idea that both of you had this experience with wanting to remember the ways of old Númenor, and the relationship with the elves that the Númenorians had before. And so, I feel like she… that moment, that conversation between the two of them is really lovely. Like, it’s really vulnerable and gives kind of a real, like, depth and softness to these characters who are–have been kind of armored up against each other, and armored up against the world around everybody else as well.

 

Grace: I do also want to touch on Poppy and Nori, the two bestest friends who just can, like, share a cart and um… Like, Poppy has an outright love declaration to Nori at the end.

 

Leah: Oh my gosh…

 

Grace: And however, we read this, like, that deep love is something that I am very delighted to see. I certainly… I can ship it. I also appreciate it on the level of friendship and… it’s just absolutely beautiful to me and I love seeing it.

 

Leah: Ah, me too. Yeah, I–Friendship is magic. Love is magic. Poppy and Nori are magic.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Tim: Realistically, we do have three young sailor characters that like to ride about together and, you know, do big manly things together.

 

Leah: Mmm!

 

Tim: We have Isildur, Ontamo and Valandil all hanging out together doing a lot of stuff.

 

Leah: Doing manly things.

 

Grace: There’s definitely some Isildur/Valandil shipping.

 

Tim: Yeah, that does not surprise me at all.

 

Leah: Yep, into it. Into it.

 

Tim: It never gets lonely on those long nights at sea with only so many hammocks to share.

 

Grace: Right.

 

Alicia: Sleeping on your bed of half-eaten apples.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Grace: One of the things that I do really appreciate about those three characters is, like, how much they know each other’s shit and call each other on it.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: Like, they are… they’re so very aware of Isildur’s shit and just don’t put up with it in a way that suggests, like, such an intimate knowledge of each other and that’s—that is beautiful to me, so.

 

Leah: Yeah. They’re old friends and they’re not afraid to call each other out on their shit. It’s… Yeah, I was really struck by watching Valandil and Isildur as well. And poor, poor Ontamo.  Again, I really feel for ya, nameless fiancé and father-in-law. [ Laughs ]

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ] Yep.

 

Leah: He seems like a good guy.

 

Grace: So, we do also then have to talk about the flip side of this, which is potentially de-queering characters.

 

Alicia: I have so many thoughts about this, oh my God. How dare you make Sauron straight. He is so gay and fucking Celebrimbor; how did you miss this Amazon? Everyone knows.

 

Tim: Again, there’s still time. We can have him come back in a fairer form.

 

Grace: I am fine for queer Sauron. Like, if we get queer Sauron who’s, like, well you know that one girlfriend that I had, and she’s like, we were never dating my dude? Oh, right, so my boyfriend Celebrimbor.

 

Leah: I’m here for a pan Sauron, yeah. Bi Sauron.

 

Grace: But I can certainly interpret, like, the very brief crumbs that we get of Sauron and Celebrimbor as, you know, some queer coding and all of that. Very sensual lingering touches of—

 

Alicia: I need explicit anal.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Grace: For that, I think you’re going to have to go to AO3? Just for the rating system.

 

Leah: That’s the never made HBO Max show, I think. [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: I think the most that you’re going to get is, like, a phallic object in the background of Celebrimbor’s workshop.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Grace: That, like, we know is for—

 

Leah: Oh yeah.

 

Alicia: But like, Sauron is such a good character for exploring really interesting things. We’ve discussed this previously about why not trans! Sauron?

 

Leah: Totally.

 

Alicia: Why not Sauron not only being transgender but trans-species or whatever.

 

Leah: Totally.

 

Alicia: Like, there’s so many good things to mine there and he’s just some generic white dude who wants to fuck Galadriel. And that’s, like, the least interesting thing you could have done.

 

Grace: Yep.

 

Leah: Mmhm.

 

Grace: I’m still really hopeful that we will get, like, Sauron coming back in the Annatar guise and, like, that we’ll see some Annatar/Celebrimbor content. Never as much as I’d like to see but, you know.

 

Leah: One can dream.

 

Grace: I would particularly appreciate if, like, Halbrand basically comes back but just, like, shaved face, pointy ears and is just, like, yeah, I am Annatar.

 

Alicia: [ Laughing ]

 

Leah: I’m Annatar! And everyone’s like, what’s happening??

 

Tim: I’m definitely not—

 

Grace: It’s the Superman, like, Clark Kent’s glasses sort of thing. It’s like, no no, I’m an elf. See? The ears.

 

Tim: Dyes his hair.

 

Grace:  And Celebrimbor just over here going, like, no I’m into it. I’m into this flirting and it’s all good. I believe you; I believe you.

 

Tim: Oh, oh, role-play, huh?

 

Leah: I do have to say, I recently saw an interview and a photo shoot with Charlie Vickers with a haircut and a shave. And he is nigh unrecognizable. I was like… Oh. I was actually joking that they might do the Clark Kent, like, shave and a haircut Annatar disguise but they might actually get away with this because he is unrecognizable.

 

Alicia: [ Laughing ]

 

Grace: I am impressed enough with Charlie Vickers’s acting that I think he could pull it off.

 

Leah: I think he could do it. The way he looks in this photo shoot, maybe we’ll stick it in the show notes or something. But I’m like, he looks like he could play Annatar. He is draped over that couch in a very interesting way. [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: You have intrigued me.

 

Grace: So, I would love to see some of this come through in season two, but I have deep concerns about how much was not done in season one, and how much of the connection to the elves’ piece of the storyline is given to Galadriel rather than Celebrimbor. They might fix this in season two. I’m not going to get up in arms and outraged about it until we find out if they do better or not. But they’re going to need to do better, or I’m going to be up in arms.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: [ After looking up Charlie Vickers in the photoshoot ] Wow, he does look completely different, holy shit. [ Laughs ]

 

Leah: Right? I was absolutely, like, gobsmacked, like, on the floor. Like, I was just like holy shit, I was joking but I think that they could actually do this. [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: Oh!

 

Leah: So yeah, I’m here for Charlie Vickers as Annatar. See what I mean??

 

[ Laughing ]

 

Leah: Okay, yeah, we’re definitely gonna have to put this in the show notes because…

 

Grace: [ Laughing ] Wow.

 

Leah:  But yeah, you see what I mean? I’m like, holy shit, Annatar, hello! How are you? [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: And I note that Celebrimbor has that beautiful chaise lounge in his office.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: He does. He certainly does.  I just imagined him draped over his chaise lounge.

 

Grace: And I–clearly there’s a skill set here that needs to be utilized.

 

Leah: [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: It’d be nice to have Annatar being draped as opposed to Celebrimbor being draped.

 

[ Groans ]

 

Grace: You know, first one and then the other.

 

Leah: Ooh, boy… [ sounds of distaste ]

 

Alicia: I will have so much respect for the showrunners if they do Celebrim-banner.

 

Tim: Oh yeah. Yep.

 

Leah: Same.

 

Grace: Charles Edwards did just have a mask made of his face. Like, a latex mould made of his face.

 

Alicia: Interesting.

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: Yeah, I think it’s possible, for sure.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Yeah, like, not that I necessarily want it to happen but, like, that’s ballsy. Like–And that’s really what I want more of out of the show, is I want them to make good choices and brave choices.

 

Leah: Yeah, make ballsy choices.

 

Alicia: If you’re going to deviate from the text, fucking give me something worth watching. Like, give me something that’s better than what is already written.

 

Grace: In fact, we have an example of them doing that. Durin, Disa and Elrond is a deviation from the text. It’s an introduction of a new character and it is better than anything I would have imagined. It is queerer than I imagined that they would go, and I hope they do not pull back on that.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: I would argue that the way that Mordor becomes Mordor is also a significant deviation that I really enjoyed, the way that that happened and the way that it was brought about.

 

Leah: I did too.

 

Tim: And the way that it was visualized, for sure. So, I think they are doing some of it, but I agree that there’s room for more.

 

Grace: I’m also a big fan of Bronwyn and Arondir, and I think that choosing to do a human/elf relationship that is overt and on screen is something that I am more pleased that they did than if they had just left it aside, so…

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: I think, where they are making bold choices, I think they’re doing a pretty good job. Not all the time. The silmari…thril…

 

Tim: [ Groans ] Do we have to talk about that? No, let’s not.

 

Leah: Do we have to talk about it? It’s going so well. Do we have to talk about this? [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: We’ve been talking for two and a half hours and took that long.

 

Grace: Because we all–We don’t need to go into this thing. It’s a lore thing that everybody knows is a deviation from the lore, that there’s a lot of concern and consternation about and, like, I don’t think that there’s a much deeper issue there. Like, they made something up, and it’s not hitting for a lot of folks.

 

Alicia: I haven’t met a single person who has been like “Yes, the mithril story, that’s great.”

 

Grace: I think there are a lot of people who don’t know any better, right?

 

Tim: Yeah, and I know people like that that are like “Oh, that’s really cool, is that from the lore?” And I have to say “the fuck it’s not!”

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Tim: But, like, if it’s working for you, cool. I still hold out hope there that it could be a deception of some sort on behalf of Sauron, or planted well before by Morgoth, or something like that because…

 

Grace: Yeah, the apocryphal…

 

Tim: Elrond does go out of his way to mention that most people consider it apocryphal, mythological kind of thing and that it’s—

 

Leah: Yeah, and the showrunners—

 

Grace: There’s been a Word-of-God commentary about, like, remember that they said it was apocryphal. And Elrond is a lore master and so is probably one of the people best equipped to determine if something is apocryphal.

 

Leah: I mean, I’m still kind of like… The visual of the elf battling the Balrog? I was like this is–I’m pretty sure that this is, like, a Blind Guardian, like, album cover, right?

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: This is a metal as fuck image. [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: Now, I think tempering my expectations that, you know, what I read into the text is probably a lot more queer than what I will ever see depicted on screen, I still expect them to leave space for those readings to occur. Because I think when you don’t, when you try to actively de-queer characters, when you try to step aside from the inherent queerness or campiness of a character, particularly when good representation is not necessarily all the villains being queer, right?

 

Leah: Right.

 

Grace: But there’s a long history of queer coding of villains and that’s been encoded into our entertainment structures by things like the Hayes Code, by things like even MPA ratings and all of that. When you try to step aside from that and you pull it back, it’s always visible. It never works. It usually impacts every other level and every other reading of those characters’ interactions, and I think that we do see that happening, at least so far, with Sauron and Celebrimbor, where you get the forging of these rings and they’ve shared the screen for mere seconds, maybe a minute.

 

Leah: Right.

 

Grace: And it’s just not sufficient to hit the emotional notes that you need to hit, the story and character notes that you need to hit, when you try to desaturate the queerness from the subtext.

 

Alicia: I think they need an Ian McKellen on set saying “No, Sam, you have to hold Frodo’s hand, people are going to be looking for this”.

 

Leah: Take his hand, yeah.

 

[ Sounds of agreement ]

 

Tim: Going back to Word-of-God, the showrunners have said specifically that they are not interested in taking a bunch of fan feedback into where they take this show going forward. So, maybe that means they do have bold directions in mind that they don’t want to listen to–Because let’s be honest, the most vocal critics have been “Oh, you can’t have Black people in the show”, you know, “it’s all divergent from the lore”…

 

Grace: “Women shouldn’t be fighters”, yeah.

 

Tim: Exactly, those sorts of things. So, it is heartening for me to hear that from them, that they are not going to give in to those vocal minorities of angry trolls on the internet.

 

Alicia: That’s all well and good, but there are fans who have actual fucking critique that it would behove them to listen to.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Tim: I don’t disagree, but those aren’t the loudest voices that I think that they’re referring to.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: So, I have a couple of criticisms to–just of, like, the behind-the-scenes element of the show. I think they’re doing, overall, a truly excellent job but they could come up to the mark and meet the moment a little bit better on some editing pieces. So, like, some of—like Alicia has pointed out, some of the cuts that they use are very… you know, sharp cuts, very static and rapid, that they could do a little bit more in the planning and editing there, and I think it would continue to elevate the show. I think their lighting is actually amazing. That is one of the places that I’ve been super, super impressed from, like, a technical standpoint.

 

Tim: Yeah, for “The Eye”, the episode that, like, everything was in the fallout of the eruption of Mount Doom, they did most of that in camera, on set.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: Yes.

 

Leah: Beautiful.

 

Grace: They built, like, an entire different lighting structure to create a version of moonlight that seems believable in Middle-earth but actually illuminates the set enough to be able to show what is going on on-screen. That’s one of, I think, the great compliments that I’ve seen a lot of people give is that the night scenes are visible.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: And in a lot of other fantasy IPs, they’re not. And so, I think they’ve done some pretty good things there.

 

Alicia: People are going to be angry about the battle for Winterfell for the rest of eternity.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: I mean, they’re not wrong.

 

Tim: [ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: I was gonna say, gotta crank up the brightness on my screen.

 

Grace: Every DC movie ever is like–it’s very dark. I don’t mean gritty; I mean it’s just really dark. It’s real hard to see.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: So, I like that they’re finding some ways to work with that. But there are also some things that I think that they might want to take into account like… It is a bold choice to take and leave some of your main principal characters not checked in with in the final episode before you go on a two-year hiatus. A really bold decision and I don’t think it really pays off here because we didn’t see, in that final episode, a single glimpse of our power throuple, who we all love.

 

Alicia: The fuck we did not, and I am in my feelings about that. I only basically like the episodes where the power throuple is. Like, how dare you? How dare you.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: We didn’t check in with Arondir, and Bronwyn, and Theo. And I think, textually, there’s an issue with this because they do lean on the idea of hope, and they do lean on that very Tolkienian idea of hope. But the relationships that most manifest hope, the loving relationships, the familial relationships, the deep friendships, are ones that we largely didn’t check in on at any point in the final episode. And that means that where you leave your audience going into a two-year hiatus is forgetting half your characters.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: And it would just be stronger even if they had, I think, if they had just done a little touch, a little check-in, added an extra minute to the episode so that you could see everybody. That would have been a stronger choice.

 

Leah: Or even billing the final two episodes as the season finale. As, like, mushing it together into a big mega one, kind of like they did for episodes one and two. Because I noticed during episode seven that it was definitely, like, a fallout episode, and it was checking in with everybody and kind of getting into… there wasn’t a lot of stuff happening because a gigantic cataclysm just happened. It kind of felt, like, a lot more like the first half of a season finale, to me, after a gigantic climax. And so, I feel like even just billing it as a two-part season finale could have done quite a bit to kind of mitigate, I think, some of those feelings. But I agree, it’s hard to go an entire episode without–and knowing that it’s a season finale–without checking in on everybody.

 

Grace: I was also surprised–they’re in a streaming service, they aren’t locked into particular episode length. I was surprised that this wasn’t an hour and twenty-minute episode, a little bit longer to wrap things up and check in with everyone.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Grace: I think they have more tools in their toolkit that they can use in future seasons, and I hope they employ them.

 

Leah: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Oh my God, are we done?

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: Yeah, I was gonna say–So, was there anything else that we wanted to…

 

Grace: I believe you may be released from your agony, Alicia.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Tim: I mean, there’s definitely things I think we could all still talk about, but I think we’ve covered kind of the biggest elephants in the room.

 

Leah: I think so, yeah.

 

Grace: Yeah.

 

Alicia: Well, that is fantastic. [ Laughs ]

 

Leah: Go in peace, Alicia. Go with God. [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: No thanks.

 

Grace: I do have a question—

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Leah: Any closing thoughts from anybody else? I mean, my closing thought is, again, I’m excited about this show. I’m excited about where it’s going to go. I really think that they’ve made something really special here, and I think it could kind of only get better, really, from my experience. And the things that we’ve talked about today I think are very real problems, and I think that they definitely have the potential to be addressed and fixed in the future.

 

Tim: Yeah, agreed. It’s not a perfect show, for me, but I really enjoyed it overall, and the things that do detract for it weren’t, like, overly distracting from it.

 

Grace: My overall feelings are that… I’m very–I’m excited for the next season, when that does come out. I loved being back in Middle-earth. I loved having another Tolkien adaptation. I do think that the more Tolkien adaptations that we get, the less all-consuming each one has to be, the less each one has to represent everything about Tolkien and Middle-earth. And I like that we’re coming into that place with our media where it doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all. You can take things that you like from one adaptation and like different–like more in a different one.

 

Tim: The stakes are lower.

 

Leah: Yeah!

 

Grace: Yeah. And I think it’s a lot more open than… in the same way that when you do a Shakespeare adaptation it is one of many, it is not the be-all and end-all sort of thing, you know? So, I appreciate having more entry paths into Middle-earth. And overall, I think the show itself did a lot of things really, really well, and the things that it did poorly it did kind of average-poorly in ways that other shows are also doing poorly, or doing worse. And so, the highs were pretty high for me and the lows were pretty average for me. And so, overall, I would grade the show pretty highly.

 

Alicia: I will continue watching the show. I don’t believe it has a lot of rewatchability for me, personally. I will go to YouTube for my Khazad-Dûm supercuts if I want to rewatch anything, because I really just give zero fucks about a lot of what’s going on on the screen. And I’m really excited about “War of the Rohirrim”.

 

[ Laughter ]

 

Alicia:  So, if it has done anything for me, it has made me more excited to see that.

 

Grace: I was more excited about that before the producer for “War of the Rohirrim” started tweeting.

 

Tim: Oh yeah, that’s not so good. Yep.

 

Leah: That’s true.

 

Alicia: I will point out… Weinstein is who did the “Lord of the Rings” movies.

 

Leah: Also, true.

 

Grace: True.

 

Tim: This is true.

 

Alicia: Yeah so, hey…

 

Leah: Well, with that.

 

Grace: And what a great place to leave it. So, we did end up wandering into Mordor.

 

Leah: Remember, Weinstein made the “Lord of the Rings”. Let’s leave it there.

 

Alicia: [ Laughing ] Fucking Christ. Problematic faves.

 

Grace: [ Laughing ] We’re gonna get cancelled, Alicia!

 

Alicia: I am not saying that Weinstein is my problematic fave, absolutely not.

 

Leah: Okay.

 

[ Group laughing ]

 

Alicia: If you’re gonna cancel us, just cancel me. It’s fine. Um, yeah. So, that’s the fucking episode. [ Laughing ]

 

Grace: Or two.

 

Alicia: Yeah, or two. We’ll see what ends up happening on the editing floor there. Thank you everyone for joining us today. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or stream episodes directly on Zencastr at zencastr.com/Queer-Lodgings-A-Tolkien-Podcast with hyphens in between all those words. Leave us a rating, like, share, and subscribe. You can find us on Facebook at QueerLodgings, at twitter (for now) @Queer_Lodgings, and you can email us with feedback or episode ideas at queerlodgingspodcast@gmail.com. Bye everyone.

 

Leah: Thanks everyone, bye!

 

Tim: [ Putting on a Scottish accent ] A recipe for strong gravy.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Grace: Please leave that in.

 

Leah:  [ Laughing ]

 

[ Outro music plays ]

 

Tim: They had to know. They had to know!

 

Alicia: They had to have.

 

Leah: They had to know.

 

Grace: Listen.

 

Leah: I was howling.

 

Grace: Whether the showrunners know…

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Grace: Some of the writer’s room and the actors know.

 

Leah: They absolutely had—I was gonna say, I’m sure that they did. I’m like…hm??

 

Grace: Can you just imagine, like, Robert Aramayo, and Sophia Nomvete, and Owain Arthur sitting around going like, alright, so.

 

[ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: The look on Elrond’s face when he says that, like, says…

 

Tim: Who’s the top? [ Chuckles ]

 

Leah: [ Laughs ]

 

Grace: Disa.

 

Alicia: [ Laughing ]

 

Leah: Who switches? Do you think any one of them is a switch? I think Durin’s a switch.

 

Tim: Yeah.

 

Grace: I think Durin’s definitely a switch. I think Elrond is still figuring himself out, despite his advanced age—

 

Leah: Aww, yeah…

 

Grace: Because, like, elves and, like, weird purity culture bullshit.

 

Leah: Yeah, totally.

 

Grace: And I think that both of them would like to get pegged by Disa, and she is an obliging woman.

 

Tim:  [ Laughs ]

 

Alicia: I think Elrond’s a bottom but, like, he hasn’t gotten to the point yet where he can admit that he’s a bottom.

 

Leah: Aww, yeah, yeah.

 

Grace: I mean, to be clear, I have written fic of these three. I have written 12,000 words of Elrond, Durin and Disa, largely smut.

 

[ Group laughter ]

 

Leah: Ah, it makes me so happy. It’s so much fun.

 

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