Doomed to Die

While the first season had huge pacing issue, the second season improved in all aspect. Sauron is in full motion and spread his vile intention to a poor Celebrimbor who slowly drown in madness.

The writting of Sauron is impeccable. Each sentence is design to slowly torture his subject while outside, the war is raging.

This is the best episode on an already incredible season. I am thrilled that we have more LotR to explore. This is story worth telling and i dont care if they twisted a few arcs. Tolkien purist will always find something wrong. But we cannot deny that the showrunner have up their game by a lot.

There are still poorly written character (Isildur), but the costume, scenery, dialogs in this episode are all top notch. I am eager to see where we will be left off. 5 season of this.... yes please.

See how things improve when you cut out the harfoots and numenor?

This show can actually be good when meaningless threads are removed and they prioritize one story arc.

This episode was refreshing because it was literally the first time I've the series was fully focused on what works.

The harfoot and numenor storylines are both the weakest and most unnecessary links in the series. Harfoots being blatant og trilogy fan service / rip off, while Numenor seems to exist in its own show while still constantly inventing new ways to convolute itself.

Thai episode is a straightforward battle episode, where the core characters choices and motivations are all in clash with each other in an appropriately climactic explosion. Also things actually happen, which if you've watched the show you'll probably find refreshing.

Series still mid, but this episode is a fun peak into a universe where it could've been good.

Hands down, the best episode of this series. Until this episode I was painfully forcing myself through the slow pace and some irritating stories and dialogues. But this episode was a gem. I will probably rate it 10 after a re-watch.

This episode for the first time brings this series to somewhat near to the LOTR trilogy. Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Adar were great. The others have also improved compared to their portrayals in the previous episodes. Especially, Galadriel has done a lot better in this episode. I hope the characters not shown in this episode will also have improvements as some of them are still very disappointing.

I wanted to talk a lot about it but in the fear of spoiling, I am stopping.

Finally, "Highly RECOMMENDED"

This is, so far, probably the best episode of Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power that we've seen, but it still exemplifies a lot of what's "off" about the adaptation at large.

It isn't completely inexplicable to me that Season 1 had fans, but I am prepared to argue that almost none of them would exist if it simply wasn't set in Middle Earth; if it was largely the same, only the characters and locations were named something else. If people weren't being reminded of other, less bland movies and books while watching this one, nobody would be telling themselves this is great -- beyond the people who pretend to enjoy it because it annoys "M-SHE-U" YouTubers.

The mere fact that this is Lord of the Rings is enough for some fans; it's about fealty to a brand. The mindset of the creators may have been something similar: "Should we give viewers a reason to care about or want to follow these particular characters? No need, it's Lord of the Rings! Should we try to live up to the production design and art direction of the films, to make this show stick out just a little bit from other generic straight-to-streaming Fantasy shows? No need, it's Lord of the Rings! Could we at least try to mimic the prose of Tolkien? No need, we already copy-pasted bits of it!"

Season 2 is not as lifeless as its predecessor and sometimes its effects are impressive, especially during the battle in this episode. But its characters are still frightfully boring -- even if you don't know how awesome and majestic they're canonically "supposed" to be (I know little of Celebrimbor but I know I wouldn't have cast someone who gives the impression of a younger Michael Palin) -- and its attempts at subverting expectations are facile. This modish deconstruction might have a valid point about the values of Tolkien's time but plays like an attempt at rage-baiting on Amazon's part or, at best, a fatuous attempt at complexity from one of the writers. ("What if orcs had a family" has about the same ring to it as "What if Cruella DeVil was just misunderstood" and neither question led to a particularly clever work of art.)

Oh but they also do a version of the "help is coming" moments from the battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor fields except this time it's a fakeout and it turns out nobody's coming. Aren't we just so ironic and subversive?

I have no understood a lot of the hate for this season. There is a lot of stories and moving parts that must be told and spread out for purposes of continuity and the story making sense. So therefore like the wonderful films there will be a lot of dialogue and non action episodes. I think they have done a great job mixing in enough adventure with the "slower" more dialogue driven scenes and episodes.

This episode pays off for the people complaining they are not seeing a battle in every episode. The rings are all but made and Sauron's plan is working. The battle commenced and the orcs are laying siege. As with all battles in LOTR the formula is the same. The battle for good and evil. Evil is winning but ultimately good prevails, or does it ? The Orc father's intentions are not totally clear and what he wants from Galatria and the elves is certainly not good for all. Some more answers to the story progress without giving any spoilers. The dwarfs story also progresses with the king being enslaved by the ring . It all comes together in a great battle. This will drag into the finale I'm sure for a great finish to the season. The creators have done a great job at keeping the show as close to the quality of the movies. The visual effects and how they created middle earth is visually stunning. I have loved both seasons so far and think they have done a fantastic job . Great episode.