it also came across to me as a bit of interpersonal power play for Mon - she’s using emotional leverage to get him on board with a possible arranged marriage for their daughter with a gangster’s son

Even if we’re to believe that Maarva’s told this to Andor before, it still makes little sense that Andor wouldn’t want to see what Luthen knows about it given his surprising familiarity with Andor’s background.

Yeah, I there’s ample reason to be skeptical that this is an endorsement. The raid on Spellhouse might be a red herring, and while it’s possible Bix was the actually the only person who used the radio, that could as easily be a partial truth Paak gave up to protect others.

Except... well, he is good at his job.

Agreed, the writers have probably read Campbell (derogatory).

I’d been thinking that it’s a shame the show has to be so tied into particular actors that it narrows the scope of any shapeshifting, but one thing they’ve set up if Celebrimbor’s in Eregion is that Sauron could show up pretending to be Gil-Galad, and suddenly that’s what I want to see most.

This season is so little rooted in anything of the Tolkien I’ve read that I don’t think rereading anything will make a big difference in your enjoyment of the show.

Well, you’ll certainly have the time? Be forewarned that this isn’t a show that rewards your having done the reading, though.

Well, they’ve already blown past it, but there’s a version in the Silmarillion you could work with if you wanted to, where Sauron’s sufficiently regretful after the War of Wrath to ask forgiveness of the gods, but not enough to face punishment. So he stays in Middle-Earth and ostensibly means well, but the Elves never…

Considering the only reason Gandalf is even in this show (likewise the proto-hobbits) is strictly for fan service, that’s not going to happen.

Well, FWIW, I think the Halbrand presentation is more about the writers’ love of misdirection for its own sake than anything else.

Considering the outage about the Harfoots being Irish Traveller pantomime, it’s probably for the best that they steered away from making them more recognizably Jewish, no?

The Walter White/Tony Soprano comparisons are especially odd because Sauron’s probably not going to become the protagonist of the series. In effect they’re really just saying they’re going to spend time developing things from his perspective rather than tucked into Galadriel’s basic arc.

Initially, I read this as “Go kill Galadriel, or else.”

None of the Numenorean stuff has been especially cogent, I don’t think, starting with Palantir being alive and mad (IIRC in Tolkien’s writing this is only ever mentioned as something that befell the King’s Men who would not simply die peacefully).

This isn’t inconsistent with how the elven-rings were forged in the writing. The implication I took from Celebrimbor forging them separately is that it explains why they were able to be used/worn while Sauron was dispossessed of the one through the Third Age, as opposed to the Ringwraiths.

So broadly, I think it’s mostly cut for time, same reason as Celebrimbor being in Lindon and not off at his own cavern/quarry. It’s a bit of a shame because I think you could have a lot of fun playing around with Sauron in fair guise, i.e. have him be Halbrand to get to Lindon, have Gil-Galad brush him off, and then…

Also: What are the showrunners going to do for the Seven and the Nine? There’s no reason for the elves to create those now. Is Sauron going to make those himself?

Why not start right out with them being this immensely powerful force?

If I had to spin a background narrative out of what we’ve seen, my guess is that Halbrand knew he needed Celebrimbor for the rings, identified Galadriel as his way in, and posed as a Southlander when meeting her because that would raise the least scrutiny in Numenor.