Amazon’s website already confirms the Númenoreans as long-lived. They’re introducing such lore elements slowly in the show itself.

We’ve already seen Finrod in the prologue. He’s both played by a different actor and dead and buried by Galadriel herself. There’s no way that Adar can be the same person. 

Just the lighting. He’s wearing a nice but a bit plain travelling garb of mundane materials. 

The only brother the show’s acknowledged Galadriel having is Finrod. She had two more in the books, but the show hasn’t said a peep about them, so there’s no way that Adar could be introduced as such without coming completely off the left field.

It’s funny how differently people think of these episodes. I found this one to be a welcome change of pace after the ponderous, lore-heavy fourth episode.

I meant that Kemen could in turn claim that Isildur was the one behind the sabotage. Although the accusations couldn’t be proven either way, Kemen has a better reputation and stronger backers than Isildur at the moment.

That, and Kemen is currently considered the more trustworthy of the two. If Isildur tried to throw blame, Kemen could just blame Isildur of everything.

On Galadriel, do you really think she should have debuted much closer to her final form at the beginning of a planned five season run?

That harness thingy is actually straight from real life, the showrunners have done their research. 

One of them (Poppy Proudfoot) is a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (etc. etc. etc.) auntie or grandma to Bilbo (who had a portrait of Linda Baggins, nee Proudfoot, in his house).

Given that we have another fantasy series with rape/incest vibes at the moment, I’m happy enough that they leave that aspect out of this one.

I am not well versed in the lotr lore, can you tell me in what big way is the show departing from the books?

The timeline compression at work again, along perhaps with other tweaks. Originally the Númenorians were described as men of peace with no interest in battle or conquest, and their militarization was a slow process over many centuries. The show seems to be inclined to squeeze that into a few years at most.

They are new characters, who seem to represent the unseen sorcerers and cultists who served Morgoth and later Sauron in the books, but whose individual representation was left at the Nazgûl and the Mouth of Sauron in the books. 

Once again, the exaggerated urgency created by the timeline compression unfortunately shows itself. The idea that every Elf in Middle-earth could be introduced to mithril in a few scant months or that witnessing it would do anything to them as a race is extremely far-fetched, I’m sad to say. The concept of the Elves fa…

And it would have made moments like Cristen killing Joffrey feel less forced and awkward - in the written story, he does it during the wedding tournament

(Maybe, just maybe, absolute monarchy is a bad system!)

The Númenorean guild system is from the books — from the Unfinished Tales, no less, so the show’s probably exploiting the fact that guilds aren’t specific to Middle-earth. They’ve got a guild for everything, including an Explorers’ Guild.

All the Elves originated in a single place, Cuiviénen. And likewise, all the Men regardless of ethnicity originated in a place called Hildórien. Both existed in the far east of Middle-earth, both were destroyed before the Second Age began. Middle-earth is a created world, there is no inherit reason why specific skin…

Sauron isn’t supposed to know about hobbits until the LoTR, I thought?