Rings of Power S1E6 Recap: "Udûn"

Welcome to the Podcast of Power, the only Lord of the Rings Rings of Power podcast on the Internet, medically accurate. I'm your host, Mike White joining me of course, this mister Chris Tashue. Oh dude, I prefer to be called Eric. Thank you. Oh sorry, sorry, that's just walking.

He was just walking. He was just walking around calling us oracle over and over again. Who Done? Yeah, the name of the episode, Who Done. It's like a type of noodle, right I was.

I wanted to message on Facebook so bad. I'd be like, why did you keep talking about noodle? Why is it called Ouden when they keep saying nam pot nam pot Odune is the name of the mountain, Oh don well doom. So well Oodun is the valley that that becomes Mordor so Oodun is is where Oodune, as we find out very quickly in this episode, is a very important part of the world. Ladies and gentlemen, do you mean oh I love it?

I mean look that there is a whole thing. There are a couple of YouTube creators who make really well done J R. R. Tolkien content, but they pronounce the quenya correctly, and so they really are like so and it's I mean they trail the ours. Look, I mean it's a real lang which George or George R.

Martin, Jesus Christ speaking of real languages and fake languages j R. R. Tolkien. I mean, that's a whole thing. It's he was a linguist, so you know, the Quenya language is a real thing.

Yeah, his wife was very lucky. We can swear on this podcast, right, can we? Yeah? Yeah? Sorry, no swearing on pod.

Yeah, fucking get out of here. We are so close to the end of the show. It doesn't even feel like it, but apparently we are. Well, we have the joining of two storylines. We have no car foots or dwarves to be seen, but we've got two of our main Elf characters coming together.

We've got a battle that rivals Helmsteato. We have we have idiot orcs. We have dumb dumb dumb orcs, that's what we have. Yeah, and we've got a lot of cannon fodder humans because this battle that takes place through this episode, it is a multi stage battle. You've got your mini boss, your other mini boss, your big boss, and basically the humans lose.

Sorry, but they're not doing too good because apparently However, many years ago they came up with this ingenious plan where that sword we've been talking about, that Morgel blade, it just unlocks a little thing that unlocks all kinds that breaks a damn all kinds of water comes in and don't you know when you add water to lava instant volcano. Yeah, so when you add water to a volcano, it's a bunch of steam and there you go. It's I don't know what to think, Like, I don't think here's the thing we mentioned early on, like in the second or third episode, so like three episodes ago, I was like, hey, Mountain Doom's gonna explode in this show. Oh yeah, here we are. It has happened, And like, I don't think any one of us could have predicted how it was going to happen.

But it makes sense in a way, Like now I understand what the orcs have been doing this whole time, and it makes sense. And you know what, give give give this show with credit where credit is due. I didn't see that coming. I didn't understand what was going on. Maybe there are people smarter than me out there.

Oh well, you should have known when they're digging the trenches like no way. They did a very good job of not letting us know what that sword did. What was the mcguffin essentially the sixth episode mcguffin, Like they didn't let us know what the point of it was. And now that I understand what the point of it was, okay, Like I I mean, yeah, sure, And what did Adar says? Like, hey, ork brother, I'm gonna hook you up so you don't have to worry about walking around in the daylight anymore, because he does create basically an eternal night right around more door.

So yeah, man of his word. Yeah. And you know the other thing that I really appreciated about this episode that I was not expecting, way to make Adar kind of sympathetic. Yeah, oh yeah, like Joseph Molly. Up until this point, he's been very like mustache twirling villain, like, oh, kill this kid to prove your loyalty to us.

Now it's like almost seems like he is put upon, you know, like he's doing this out of a sense of like obligation to the Orcs because he because he something that we've never had any explanation in Lord of the Rings up until now, though I think I mentioned it because it's part of the source material. Orcs are fallen elves, and now in the show they've gone and mentioned it, and he is the original. He's one of the original uruk atar adar Is, and that's a big thing that's never been mentioned in the movies up until this point. And it makes sense now his name too, right, because he's an elf. Right, he is an elf.

He's a fallen elf. Well, and he's the father of the orcs, so right, he's one of the original wall ruck yeah, exactly. Somehow he manages to help progenitate these orcs. I was thinking that he was planting them because we saw the urukai coming out of the ground and we see that seeing at the beginning where he's planting these seeds. But then they call back to that later on when it's like, oh, you plant these seeds before battle in order to kind of replenish the woods and all the summer out.

Well, that's kind of cool. This actually it moves along. I watched this episode twice now. The first time it took a little bit to get going, just because it is so multi stage as far as like, okay, now the tower fell, all right, and now we're over here oh, we took care of all these people. Wait a second, they're actually humans.

Oh my bad. And then we get to the final stage and it's like, oh, we're fucked. So it just moves pretty good. The second time I watched it, I was like, oh, wow, this is just blazing along. Well.

And that's the other thing about this that I wasn't expecting is you have a converging of the storylines, like they're coming from New Menore and then they're there. Yeah. Yeah, I was wondering how fast those boats move. I was also wondering how many horses are in those boats, man, because they got a lot of horses at the end. There.

A friend of the show and watcher of the show, Father Malone, and I were talking about it and he mentioned it seemed a little ride of the roherum e oh very much. I was looking for them at the dawn of the fifth Day type of thing. Yeah, and I would I would agree. I think it's I think it makes sense from a style standpoint to show it that way, but yeah, there's logistically it's like this, some of this doesn't make any sense. I really didn't think that they were that close to one another either, because they're just you see them riding and then all of a sudden they're there where the conflict is with Bronwyn and Rondeer, and it's like, whoa, whoa, that's I think for me, even though Mount Doom exploded, even though Mount Dooom exploded this episode, the thing that was most surprising for me was the fact that now these storylines have officially converged and Arondeer and Bronwyn and all of those humans are saved by a seal door and Alendu and Galadriel.

I was not expecting Gladriel and Arondeer to interact by the end of this Perst season, did you well? And then I'd like how he's just like, oh, that's Gladriel. She's the King of the Northern or the general of the Northern Armies. I'm like, oh, okay, I guess everybody knows everybody. That's pretty cool.

Well, she's famous, right, I mean it's we see when they were in New Minor. I mean you see them with like, you know, puppets of Galadri, right, because they're thousands of years old, So it's I just wasn't expecting it that quickly. But now that we're at this point. It opens up this show in a lot more ways, because now it's like, well, now the thing I was expecting to take place in season two or three, he's already here, Like Colladriel and Arondere and Bronwyn, they're already all together. Like whoa.

That presents a lot of interesting directions for the show to go. Now, well, and that was very odd how quickly how brand is there and it's just like, oh, you need somebody to take this burden off of your shoulders. Well, actually we got there forgotten King over here. Let me just reinstate him right now. Yeah, I didn't know what to think of that.

I think there's this this idea in my mind that there's some big twist with his character, and I think every everybody who's watching the show is kind of expecting something in that vein like big twist or he is he is someone that we know from movie slash source material already, so he could I mean, we've talked about the witch King of Angmar. Maybe he's not a villainous character. I don't know. Yeah, there was a little bit of still wonder how he got on that raft and he makes mention of that, like not that noble you know, right, I got on that raft and like, okay, yeah, I don't know what to think of the Halbrand character. He's an interesting is an interesting character because again, like we had that scene in newman Or where he's breaking dude's arms and he's like, I'm al Brand, and it's like, that's the same character now that we're supposed to be.

I guess like rooting for I don't. I don't understand. I guess I don't understand. What are we supposed to think of the Halbrand character? Is my question because the last time he was doing anything on his own, he was breaking the arms and legs of men in newman Or who were assaulting him.

And now he's a hero. I just couldn't. I can't figure out what the show is trying to get us to understand about his character, right right, And then I'm very curious what Adar did to him. I was waiting for I was waiting for him to be like do you remember remember me? And Adar is just like I have no idea who you are, just that classic villain, just put down like I might have ruined your family, taken you know, the everything from you, but you're just so insignificant.

I don't even know your name, and he does it. I mean he hits him with it. I mean it's it's it's very fanos, right, Oh yeah, yeah, that's and you know that's yeah. I don't know where they're going to hell Brand character, it's I thought there. I don't know.

I don't know, because it seemed like they were going one direction and maybe it's it's not that I hope that he's not I see like he's supposed to be Aragorn is what it feels like, right, Oh yeah, definitely, but he is way more more chaotic evil. I mean I would think that, like, you know, Ergorn's more like lawful, neutral type of character. Oh yeah, for sure. How Brand, it's it's weird, like I haven't I haven't gotten a sense of who his character is in the show. I don't think has done a very good job of giving us an opportunity to get an insight to his characters.

Maybe that's coming, But we're supposed been shown kind of opposing ideas about him. At once he saves Galadriel and another time he's just breaking dude's arms of want and abandoned. Like, are we supposed to feel sympathetic for this character we're supposed to be. I don't know. He's an interesting character because a lot of these other characters were not invented for the show.

These are characters where we know where they're going, so like hal Brand and Arondere and bron Win, like they don't have a source material counterpart. So like with the horror Foots, like we know that those characters, we know that the hard Foots exist, but we don't know specific characters. And so I think, you know, like with Dorian or with Gladriel, like we know what happens. But with the non source material characters, that wiggle room is what is exciting about this show because that's where the twist comes from, our characters that we don't know. And I think the twist works in this episode.

I don't know. I didn't expect it, did you a twist? That the sword was gone, that the villains succeed. I mean, the best of the hero's abilities, they can't stop it from happening. I mean, I knew something was up as soon as he came out of the little house, and I was just like, hey, human traitor guy, I've got a task for you.

And I was like, Oh, he's doing the old switch. So when they were carrying around the sword in the sword quote unquote in the little cloth, I was just like, that's not the sword in there. I was just like yelling at my TV. Just cut that open, look at it. It's not the sword.

See. I didn't pick up on it. I don't know why. Normally I'm like yourself, pretty adept at picking up on those things. But I think it's to the show's credit.

The pace of this episode is so fast that it doesn't give you a lot of time to sit with the characters. It's really about this conflict between Adar and Arondeer and Bronwyn, and I think those scenes inside of the kind of tavern are pretty good, Like they have a fair amount of attention. I mean, we know, I guess, we don't know if Bronwyn's gonna die. I assume she's going to be around for a lot longer. But there was a moment in this episode I was like, are they just gonna kill her?

Like, I guess, I don't know where the show was going, so they could They don't, But yeah, it was a fair amount of attention in that scene. I felt. I agree. I agree. I like that they brought back the whole thing with the seeds and the burning and all that those kind of bog to make that kid burn his own mother.

It's one of these things where they introduce it at the beginning of the episode and then it comes back into play later in the episode, Like, you can introduce it earlier in the show, doesn't have to be the same episode. It's like, I don't know, I always have an issue with that kind of storytelling and stuff where it's like, you you don't have to introduce it the same episode. It could be planted two or three episodes ago, especially in a show where it's like on a previous episode of Reads of Power exactly, and then you watch that and you're just like, oh, this is going to come back. Oh there's a reason why they showed us this shot. Okay, they're remembering Game of Thrones, the episode where there's a big like seasons long twist revealed, and they did that whole like on a previous Game of Thrones, and they referenced something that was like four seasons ago, and you're like, finally, it's happening in this episode.

And if you didn't know that it was coming beforehand, you never would have known, so they like gave it away immediately. Yeah, it's it sucks to be a smart fan, is what it feels like in a lot of ways. Yeah. Well it was kind of funny because on She Hulk this week, she actually makes a reference to you know, do you even remember who this character is? Yeah, we should do it previously on, and then she just like breaks the fourth wall and they suddenly do it previously on and they reintroduced this character, and you're like, Okay, this is that guy, all right, because like she's right and the writers are right, there was no way I was going to remember who this one very small character was that showed up like four episodes ago, and they keep referencing this attack in the opening previously on, and I'm like, is this ever going to come back?

Like at some point we're gonna that one creepy guy that she was on that blind date with He's going to come back, and I know that he's got to have something to do with this, that and the other thing. So yeah, it does suck being a smart fan. I do try sometimes just skip the previously ons, Like with this show being on Amazon, I'm like, okay, skip the commercials, all right, skip the previously on, all right, skipped these credits. They go on for way too long, just like taking to the show. Oh yeah, three yeah, it would be three skips.

Yeah, you know, I don't know, like in the day, in the day and age of streaming, I almost feel like they don't need previously ons. Yeah, that's like a TV show over the air, terrestrial TV show thing. Right. Well, it's funny because with when you're when you're binging something, they will generally just skip that, which is nice. But since we're not binging this, since we're watching this week by week, then we're getting the previously on and we're getting the preview at the end.

But when we go back and we rewatch this, we won't get any of that. It'll just feel like one long, eight hour plus movie. Well, and I think that this episode more so than it definitely the last one. This one really feels very Peter Jackson. He oh yeah, yeah, you're right.

With the roherum and just the way that the battles are. What was up with that orc with the knife in his eye and when he pulls out the knife, the orc is bleeding, but the blood doesn't look right. To me, it looked almost like big globules. I thought that he hit a jackpot, Like it almost felt like black coins are coming out of the orcs. It's like, what the fuck is that?

I honestly, the issue I had with that scene, and we've talked about it once already with the show, is like, that's mighty convenient. Oh yeah, he's struggling, and he's struggling, and he's struggling. A Rondeer is about to be stabbed by this giant organ and he's struggling and he's and the knife is getting closer and closer, and then she saves him right as he is literally about to die, like one second later, and he's dead. I don't like that storytelling convention. I really, I'm sick of it.

Yeah. Yeah, we keep getting the arrow or sword through the back type of thing. You know he's going to get saved it. I don't understand why you would do that in this story when it's been made very apparent that a ronde is a character that's going to be sticking around for quite some time. I was thinking that that was going to be the moment when the ships come sailing into the harbor, thinking that they were still on their ships, Like the ships would come sailing in and they'd be like that ELpH is being attacked by an orc.

Oh, I take care of them. And I'm like, oh, this is where the two storylines are going to match up, because the way that they end up finally marrying doesn't feel right because that tavern is so dark it feels like nighttime. And then the horse riders are riding in the daytime, and I'm just like, well, this doesn't make any sense time timeline wise. I'm like, how is this going to match up? Because we're night and day literally here.

And then when they come out of the tavern, it's like, oh, they just had no windows in that tavern. Okay, I mean, I guess it is their keep. So well, it's something that Game of Thrones did, and this show has now done it a little bit. Game of Thrones did it a lot in its eighth season. It stops caring about distances that the show has established.

Like in Game of Thrones, you have characters going from one end of the map to the other end in one episode, and earlier on in the show's run they would have spent they spent again, like I've mentioned you before. They spend three seasons with one of the main characters in another place from the rest of the show, and it takes her three seasons to get to the rest of the characters. But then in the final season she's just flying around everywhere, like going from A to B to see And it's like a sense of time and space is important with TV because you have that amount of time you're not it's not a movie. In a movie, you don't question it unless you're being told the question it in a TV show, especially one like this, where there's clearly a lot of room and a lot of land to cover.

The hard Foots have been traveling all season, and juxtaposed that against the rowherum stand ins just showing up literally just like showing up, and you're just like, oh, I guess they're here now. I was. That's the most shocking thing. Like, I know Mount Dam exploding is one thing, but I was so surprised that they were already just there. Yeah, it doesn't feel it doesn't feel like it makes sense.

Yeah, it's been a while since I had a map of Middle Earth up on my wall like I would have when I was a kid. Yeah, I'm like this just yeah, time and distance because more Door is pretty far over to the east there, and if anything, I thought they would have been again like traveling in on the river and getting close and then jumping up. But we just kind of lose them for a while. Well, I think that that was their way of saying like, oh, they're traveling, is by not showing them, and it's like that's I don't like that either, because then that's just like, well, we're not gonna We're just gonna let you fill in the gaps and they were just traveling the whole time. I'm not a fan of that either because it's it's lazy or it's overexplanatory.

I guess I don't know. There's a happy medium there. I feel like if we had seen if we had seen nothing of them all episode and it had all taken place at the village where they were fighting, where Adar and Rondeer were fighting and Bronwyn was all that, and that if that were longer and almost the whole episode, it would have been impactful when they show up at the end, because you're like, all right, you just show them leave you need. They don't even show them landing, so I don't understand why they couldn't have just waited all episode to show them. It didn't make any sense because the scene with Galadriel and a sealed or is not much of anything right, really established much though.

We're talking a lot about a Silder's mom in this episode, right, like who is your mom? Where is your mom? What's your mom doing it? And then again, you know, Colladriel hints at a seal door being more important in the grand scheme of things, but again, like that's that's not fun either. One character talking cryptically to another about things they know are gonna happen, Like come on, J J Abrams, like tweet, you don't have to withhold all the information from us just because we're the audience, and I don't.

I don't know, Like they don't do a lot of effort in giving a sealed Door much. They still haven't given him much of a character. He's We're on the sixth episode now, we've seen him in three or four of the last six episodes, and I still know very little about him. I don't care very much about him. I care more about his dad, A Lendel than I do about him.

And you know, I know that he's just as big as a character, if not bigger than a Lendel in the grand scheme of the story. But it's not the actor's fault. I think the writing is just not irving his character. And again, given that he's ostensibly a main character, they should be doing better because I think that I personally still am a huge fan of Irondeer and Bronwyn, even if there's even if now it's been established that Bronwyn has a fair amount of plot armor right right, which is lazy and convenient. I mean, now that she's not ostensibly the leader of the humans of the Southlands, what she's going to be up to, right, I'm very curious where she goes from here because I don't see her staying still.

I mean, is she gonna have to go on a quest now with THEO and Irondeer, I mean, it feels like she's got to have something, and then there's always you know, the end of this episode is pretty damn devastating with this explosion and oh god, all the fanboys complaining about, oh, there's no way Galadriel could have just stood there and withstood the power of this volcano as it was blowing through and I'm like, she's an elf, it's magic whatever, you know. They as long as she's got the light, you know, she's fine. What I mean, I don't I understand the complaint, but also like it's a magical TV show about elves, Like I don't know, Like I feel like everybody wants to find a reason to hate this show. Be my guest, Like at this point, At this point, there are plenty of real things to complain about.

We just mentioned like four or five of them legitimate concerns that you can have with this show. With pacing, with narrative structure, with use of tropes that have been used over and over again. Those are three things you can actually complain about and that you or I would probably agree with. But bitching about the pyroclassic flow would kill elves, Like yeah, fuck you, Like I'm sorry, but elves don't actually exist. We're talking a lot of fantasy world Like don't understand what people want?

What do what do big internet man babies want? Like because whatever it is, just like they're not gonna get it, so stop asking for it. No one wants to cow tow to your bullshit and just everything once it's black dwarves now it's pyroclassic Flow is not killing elves. Like. The one thing that I didn't see enough people complaining about is the thing we talked about last episode, which is the mythro nonsense, Like, complain more about that, please, because that wasn't good and it's still not good.

But like you're gonna complain about Galadriel and Elf not dying to a Pyroclassic Flow, I mean, I get it, but who cares? And man, what a way to end this episode though, right like a what an absolute just banger of an ending, Like I didn't Again, I know you were kind of expecting the twist, but when the twist happens, like holy cow, Like I wasn't expecting the scope of what happened happening happened at the end of the episode, because who know, I mean, I have no idea where the show goes from here. Yeah, I don't even know who's alive anymore. I don't know who's alive. I don't know who's dead.

I don't. Yeah, who's got the diamonds? I don't. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's gonna be wild next week. I'm very, very excited to see what happens.

And it's very strange because again, we don't have a title for next week, but we do have a little thumbnail on the IMDb of just Galadriel looking at the camera looking very sad with all of the soot and everything all around her in the big orange sky. And that was what I had seen in the trailers that everybody was like Mount Doom is exploding this season. Was that orange shot with her covered in ash, And yeah, it's you know, every episode up until this point, it's been like, Okay, there's a little bit of a teaser at the end, there's a little bit of a cliffhanger, but this is this is like changes the show's complexion almost entirely, because what it feels like is probably the next episode is going to go back and show us everything from the hard Foots and the Elves that aren't there and the Dwarfs.

It's probably gonna show us that and then bring us back with the final episode too, like the fallout from after this episode's ending. And I hope and that would make sense because we don't know what the Hartfords are doing, but they're in the Southlands. We don't know what Dorian and the Elves are doing. But this is going to affect them too. Yeah, I don't.

I don't know. You know, I'm glad that they now I understand why they left those stories out, because this episode would have felt like way too much if they had had all four storylines in there. Oh yeah, yeah, it was so I think I told you last week that Andrea just it's like I can't even pay attention. I don't know what's going on. So before this episode, I sat down with her and I was like, Okay, there's four storylines, and I just ran through all four storylines, tried to give her the best recap that I possibly could.

I was channeling my inner guy from Aunt Man, you know, and I was just like, Okay, well there's this, there's this, there's this. And then when the episode started, I was like, oh, well now we have two storylines. So now there's only three storylines that we have to worry about until this one breaks aparted to two, which I have a feeling it will. Well that's I mean. My question is where does the show go from here?

Because I guess my expectation was this show would end this season with Mount Doom exploding, and it has ended the seventh the sixth episode of eight with Mount Doom exploding, which means there have to be one, at least one, possibly two episodes of fallout from what happened. Oh yeah, and I'm excited to see where that goes because there are a lot of possibilities for this story moving forward. Now that it's been established that Mount Doom is exploding within the first six episodes of a five year show, the stakes have been upped immediately, you know what I mean, Like all of a sudden, the stakes have been just cranked up to eleven. They are like A four or five. But now we understand what the orcs were doing, why they were doing it.

Eight aar survives ostensibly the explosion of Mount Doom. Here's the thing, I don't know how any of these characters could have survived, right because a sealed door and the Lendill have to survive. That's non negotiable. So how today survive It's it's I don't know. It's it's a lot of questions being asked in a short period of time.

And I like that scene. I think that's the most Jackson inspired scene that I've seen in the show so far, is that the shots of all the water going into it's like that reminded me so much of like what Peter Jackson brought to this series is just an eye for I don't know, and I for just interesting interesting scenery, interesting landscapes, and a sense of I mean, the story just keeps going and there's a sense of progression. You're not even getting a moment of like rest, you know, all the characters are celebrating. It's like just kidding like in the background, like there's more things going on and here we go. So I don't know, like it's it's the show is going at a pace I wasn't expecting.

But I'm kind of glad it's not wasting a lot of time getting to the because this is essentially the epilogue or the prologue for the story, right, Like I would say the show's probably gonna hit its stride in the second and third seasons, as most TV shows do. But Mount Doom has to explode for a lot of things in this show to happen because we still don't we don't know, and where the fucks are on is because oh, by the way, they mentioned that Aidar killed him in this episode, right, what does that mean? Like, what does that? What does that mean, I have no idea. Fanboys get angry.

I don't know what that means. Was he even telling the truth? Right? Yeah, I don't know, killed him and took his woman. It's you know, this show, in the Game of Thrones show are very much mirrors of one another.

But when we sit, when I sit and watch both of them, I realize the scope of the shows are the same. It's the way that they're going about showing you the scope. In Game of Thrones, it's very much one family wreaking havoc on everybody, and this it's the Orcs wreaking havoc on everybody. But we get to see the little stories that are kind of unknowingly connected, and we're seeing kind of how they're being connected. And I think the next episode we're going to really see the hard Foot connection to the story and we I don't think we're going to find out who the stranger is on the next episode, but we might get more clues as to who he is.

He might be sorrow. I doubt it. I don't know. We haven't, you know, us not seeing him. This episode was very smart because, oh yeah, it gave this story time to breathe.

I do think that the scene and the tavern goes on a little too long. I don't know about you, it's a little I now understand that there were going to be a lot of characters with plot armor in this show. Ron Wyn is one of them. THEO probably is not one with plot armor, but a rondere Is and Glad, you know. And it's like some of the characters you understand can't die, but other ones, like you know, Bronwyn, like would have been a lot of tension to have Bronwyn die, Like maybe there's more to her character in the future, and I'm sure there has to be, given that she doesn't die, But we're still by the seventh episode of the season at Lisa sixth when none of the main characters have died yet.

So I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I'm very curious to see where they take us with this, and yeah, who knows, maybe next episode they just start with you know, oh, by the way, Stranger, we found your name. Here is this It's on your tag? Right? Yeah?

Oh this whole time, Alph Lauren look for the laundry mark. Yeah, Calvin Klein just recycle that joke from Back to the Future. I will say though, like this show still pretty good even after last week's kind of stumble. I think this is a really good episode of the show. I agree, I agree.

Yeah, the whole thing with the Mythril is just it's still stuck in my crawl a little bit. But I'll get it. It's not great like it's I think for me it is. Actively the worst thing about this show is the handling of Mythrow, and like the weird backstory that they've concocted, because it didn't you didn't need to expound any further on something that was not needing to be explained more than it already was. You don't have to make it magical for the sake of being magical.

It was already like, you know, the thing that everybody wanted, nobody could find, only the Dwarfs had access to. And there's a limited amount like that. Why do you need any more than that? So I don't know. I think next episode we're going to get more about the mythrow.

I don't like. I wonder now, given the way that they treated Mount Doom, like, are we going to see Kaza Doom fall in like the next season to this show? Like they're running, they must have a lot of ground to cover because I know it's like twenty years I think, is how long it is from the explosion of Mount Doom to the killing of Saron. But like that's five seasons of the show Man. They're gonna have a time jump from I guarantee the next season this show takes place like maybe one or two years after this one.

It has to, right, at least it seems like it will. Yeah, it feels like each one of these will probably have its own thing. Maybe the fourth and the fifth season will be the same timeline, but yeah, I agree with you that the next one will be like you know, oh, remember five years ago when Mount Doom exploded? Right, how can I forget? And you know what, though, like there are four names on this episode that wrote it, Nicholas Adam, Justin Dobele, JD.

Payne, and Patrick McKay. As for as many names as there are, I really am impressed. And I know this is going to sound like fanboying, but I am impressed by how smart the Mountain Doom thing was, how just like simple, just diverting water into Mount Doom, Like yeah, all right, Like you know what if that was all this was for the first four to five episodes of the season is eight are just taking a bunch of trenches for water, Okay, Like, yeah, fantasy ingenuity at its finest. It's not some magical bullshit. It's literally just diverting the water down channels into Mount Doom.

Like when that happened, I was like, huh, that's kind of that's kind of ingenious. Like good on them. So, yeah, the Orcs won the bad He's won. Yeah, cool, I like that. I like you said, I think in the second or third episode of the show, like this is about the rise of evil, and I don't want things to get better, I want things to get worse, worse, worse, and more worse.

And you know, Mount Doom exploating is definitely a step in the right direction if you want to see some bad things happening. Yeah, they kind of have to get worse. Oh yeah, I have to get real worse. Yeah, because the show started and everything is kind of copacetic. I mean it's not eight, but Mount Doom exploding is going to throw everything in Middle Earth and probably not just Middle Earth for a entire loop.

Because again, like they've been actively trying to prevent this from happening. I don't even know. In a lot of ways, you get the sense in this universe that they didn't know what the Orcs were doing because they would have stopped them. So the Orcs have been kind of operating clandestinely, but people knew. I mean, people knew what was going on, they just didn't know.

So the big questions that still have to be answered, like wow, did that sword get there? Like are they going to explain whose sword that was? And you know again, or does it matter. I'm not sure it matters anymore. But I just want the mcguffin to be gone because like, this show doesn't need mcguffins.

We're about to have the mcguffin this show. This show is based on the story with the mcguffin of mcguffins for you know, it's the mcguffin that's mentioned in the title. It's like the multi falcon. It's the rating and it's just as big as mcguffin as you can get. So I don't know, man, I'm really excited to get into the last two episodes of this show.

But this episode I had had a hell of a statement at the end, and I think it kind of nailed it. I think it definitely stuck the twist ending, so it's really kind of weird. I was just looking at these writers and you mentioned that there's four of them. Nicholas Adams has like no credits or barely any credits to his name, like a documentary called Failed State from twenty seventeen, and then this episode, and then you get John d. Payne and Patrick McKay and they are writing partners, again barely any credits other than apparently they're doing a remake of Flash Gordon, which is odd, and also uncredited writers on Star Trek Beyond.

And their trivia for both of them is is a practicing Mormon, Like, Okay, I don't see why that's relevant. And then I think it's just justin Doblay has the credits. He's the guy who has the most stuff. And even then it's like Into the bad Lands, The Path, Stranger Things, Lord of the Rings, he's producing, he's writing more than that, even wrote an episode of Fringe, Almost Human, a couple other things. But it's like, these guys don't have a ton of credits and they're all pretty Darren Young, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, well, and that's I mean, we kind of we've mentioned that several times, you know, with who's working on this show outside of you know, Wayne chay Yip and j Biona, Like, it's not like the biggest and best names of anybody. It's a lot of people that clearly people are putting a lot of faith in. You know, even someone like Jason Kayhill. I mean Jason Kayhill worked on the Sopranos like that was and he wrote the third episode of the show Adar. Like everybody who has worked on this show has some creds, but they're not it's you know, it's not like Terrence Winter or Aaron Sorkin.

But again, I think to your point, I think again, you know, the online fans aside, this is a pretty entertaining show. I think it is a complicated show. As you've mentioned with your wife several times. It's you know again like wants you to track of pre existing source material that you know about while introducing you to new characters that you should get invested in, even though you know some of them cannot die. And that's not easy.

But I think they're doing a pretty good job with what they have, which is a billion dollars and Amazon's backing, so I would hope they're doing a good job. Speaking of that, the visuals in this episode fantastic. Look like a goddamn movie again. Yeah, looked really good. I didn't see any special effects where I was like, hey, that looks questionable.

Not like you know, book a Boba fet or something, right, another show made by a multi billion dollar company. Yeah, yeah, no, you know, I don't know. I love Game of Thrones, I love Lord of the Rings, I love Star Wars, but Lord of the Rings right now is the one that's like getting I think it's moment to really assert itself as more than just a movie series. I think it's like really asserting itself as like we can tell a story in a serialized format that people will be interested in. And regardless of the Internet ural, the show is going to get a second and third, and fourth and fifth season and it can only go up from here.

It really can. If you think this is bad right now, subjectively, that's one thing, But objectively, I don't think you could really complain much about this show. Yeah, I'm pretty happy, very happy, and nothing else all right. On the next episode of the podcast of Power, we are talking about, of course, episode one point seven. We are nearing the end of the first season.

And yeah, Chris and I were talking before we started recording, how long between seasons are we going to have, don't know, a year at least they're filming right now. Supposedly all right, supposedly, Like I said early on, I'm sure they have all these folks in our contracts for years, so we don't really have to worry about losing characters through that. They probably own their firstborn. So yeah, we'll be seeing these folks around as they go through. And this is almost making me want to go back and watch what was that one crawl the Sam Rami produced Alligator movie, because the lady that plays Gladriel is in that, so oh wow, that once and that was pretty good.

There's there's a film that stars Barry Pepper. It is, Yeah, that's Barry Pepper up to these days. Oh man, he was so hot for a little while. Battlefield Earth's own Barry Pepper. And didn't he play oh god, Dale Earnhardt Junior or something.

I can't remember that real, that's I don't know, I think so. And yeah, she was in Saint Maud, which I have yet to watch, but kind of not given much to do. I wish Gladriel was more of a character. Yeah, I mean, she tripped that horse pretty well, and then it was kind of funny how they had to show that the horse was okay. I know, I appreciated that was what a show made in twenty twenty two.

Yeah, I was like, you can't kill that horse. Oh it's okay. I feel like if if I do agree maybe with the online criticisms, it's gladul it is not much of a character, not yet, no, no, and she just angry, right, I have a Maelstroe within me, like great or like I forget what she says this episode. It's something to that. It's the same shit.

It's just like, stop saying those things and just do something. And we see her do stuff in this episode. But it's just like, I don't know. I feel like I understand the criticism with the Gladriel character. She's not much.

But that being said, the scene between her and Adar, I think is an interesting direction that they could mind with the character of kind of placing her on the defensive about what she did and the evils that she's kind of had to allow herself to do or allow herself to sink too. So that was kind of interesting. There was a little bit of nuance, a little bit of character building there. Get her away from the New Manauians and maybe we might see something interesting. Like that's what it feels like, Like, let Galadriel go off and do her own thing and stop worrying about how brand and everybody else.

And I think I might have a different opinion of her, But yeah, that just doesn't feel like she's being given much to do. Even now in the sixth episode of the show. Yeah, I mean, Queen Muriel, she's a total wet blanket as well, and it's like I would like to see her do something, mbe something, because she seems like she could be a cool character. Agreed. I mean, they gave so much to the hard Foots with the main hard Foot character Poppy No Nori, excuse me, Nori.

They've given her so much, and yeah, it's like every time Gladriel opens her mouth, it's just like some badass sounding thing. It's like, no, if if she's going to be our main character, like give her more, because they've done a lot for the l Ron character. They've given him. I think it helped that they had Duran to play off of Gladriel's. All Gladriels had is like hal Brand, who again seems like a character whose name we're not supposed to know because he's a twist character or maybe not.

And then all the new Manaians who cares aside from the ones we're pulled to care about. So yeah, I don't know. That's the one criticism I do understand is Gladriel's just not much of a lead, like Bronwyn is a much better lead, not a zanying Bonniatti's fantastic, like all right, didn't give her some time, but even she's kind of sidelined here. So yeah, well until then, Chris, where can people find you? Do you want to find the stuff I work on?

Specifically cestashu dot com, cstacchiw dot com. That's my link tree, but more importantly, all the things that you and I Mike work on for the most part, weirdingwaymedia dot com. That's the link tree for ourn't link tree. That is the website for the podcast network that we have created. And you can find all the shows that we work on, along with all kinds of other shows that you might want to check out at weirdingwaymedia dot com.

What about you, Mike? Where can people find you Weirdingwaymedia dot com. It's just that easy. Just go there. It's a one stop shop.

Baby. Why do I even pitch c stashu dot com anymore? Why don't? Yeah? I don't know.

I just all Weirdingwaymedia dot realistically. Yeah, you're right like that? Yeah, let me redo that then, yeah, because you're right. There's no point. I mean like there is a point, but not it's big of a point.

Do you want to find the things that I work on, which are coincidentally the same spot? To find things that you work on? Mike, Weirdingwaymedia dot com? What about you? Where can people find things that you work on?

Weirdingwaymedia dot com? So wow, same thing twice over? Geez yeah heh once more for the people in the back weirding Waymedia dot com, ardingwaymedia dot coms, I'm shouting it from the rooftops. Yeah, for the people in the cheap seats,