Gabriel Hall

There are so many trolls that just want to rip this show to shreds no matter what it is or has become. I would honestly much rather watch Season 2 of RoP than I would 2/3 hobbit movies. It has flaws, it has characters that don't make sense, but it's still good. It's probably most appropriate to assign a rating to each plot to make a rating make sense Sauron/Celebrimbor 9/10 - Charlie Vickers is excellent at portraying the previously unseen titan of Sauron. Celebrimbors finale scene with Annatar is particularly compelling. Yeah some of the elves are dumb and easily tricked, I write it off as they assume he's a valar emissary. He displayed his power to convince them of such and if you genuinely thought Annatar was a valar emissary, yeah you'd trust them a lot. Elrond/Gil Galad/Galadriel 5/10 - Galadriel is better this season but is kinda a 1 dimensional character. Her only motivation, thought or desire is to kill Sauron, in every piece of dialogue. So it doesn't make the "will her ring corrupt her" or "will Sauron dominate her mind" a very compelling question. However I didn't find the elves actively irritating so they're improving. Isildur/middle earth peasants 2/10 - why does this plot line exist? We don't need scenes of isildur to remember he exists and the characters are boring and doing nothing. Push it to S3 or cut it. Numenor - 6/10 Kemen is overused, some good bits, some bad bits. I feel like this story should have just been pushed to S3 and be the primary focus there. No reason it needs to be here, it's just a lot of unfinished set up that doesn't need to be happening right now. Granted it's got some good stuff, but it feels a little pointless Wizard/Stoors 2/10 - i liked the direction this was going for 70% of the season. The Hobbits are annoying, but at least the head stoor is somewhat compelling. Every other hobbit is a waste of screentime or downright annoying. The stuff with Tom Bombadil was good, but they showed too much of him. Should have only had him in 1/2 episodes. The final confrontation is terrible and I hate the "revelations". Just make the wizard a blue wizard and I'll forgive a lot of the Canon oversights. Adar 7/10 - love adar himself, however I feel like his plot conclusion this season felt rushed and unearned, even if they had the right story beats. Overall this show would be a lot tighter if they cut Isildur, Numenor, and some of the hobbit stuff. Put a lot kf that in S3. More time to flesh out the other parts and make them truly compelling. I enjoyed it more than the hobbit movies, which may have been more faithful, but far less entertaining and way more goofy silly nonsense. I think RoP is worth a watch, especially for Charlie Vickers. If season 3 makes the jump in quality that season 2 did from Season 1, this show I'll be genuinely able to say is good. For now it has 30% really really good stuff and 70% "oh god go back to Eregion please". I'd rather watch this than 60% of the crap on television nowadays. And no, it's not "woke", shut up. Overall maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10