[Huinesoron]

This one was so much fun. I was giggling the whole way through.

• I initially objected to the flyover shots of the Elves in the mountains, but actually, yeah, they had to pass through the Blue Mountains. Fair play to them.
• The subtitles say "Axa Bridge". Is that from Axan or Axor? Either the Bridge of Law or the Bridge of Bones.
• The very broken bridge is a bit of a geographical riddle. The map seemed to show it so far south that I thought it was going to be Ost-in-Edhil, but Team Elrond end up going south from it to Tyrn Gorthad = the Barrow-Downs. I think that means it's bridging the upper Brandywine, which never felt like the kind of river that had its own gorge, but like, I guess maybe? It's wide enough by the time it reaches the Shire that it could have, upstream.
• HA HA The Stranger got eaten by a tree! Not "had a fight with" - he just got randomly eaten. I guess that's the last we'll see of him.
• It was not the last we saw of him.
• "Old Man Ironwood" is really funny, because it implies that everywhere Tom goes, he runs into a Grumpy Old Man tree and uses exactly the same spell to get it to quiet down.
• The sheer volume of direct quotes in the Bombadil sequence is staggering. My wife says they wrote it for all those fans who complained about not seeing it back in FotR, and I can't argue.
• I was impressed by Bombadil, though. They made him a somewhat ominous and mysterious character, rather than a singing buffoon. I miss the blue jacket, though.
• Oddwen, I think Tom gaslighting the Stranger over Goldberry was intentionally hilarious. (Also, is Goldberry the lamb? Is she Old Man Ironwood? Hey, maybe she's also Old Man Willow - new headcanon!)
• Stoors! Racist Stoors! Oh, who's surprised, they're Hobbits, they were always racist.
• I love The Goom (or whatever) treating "Burrows" as a mysterious ancient surname for which there can be only one bearer. It's ridiculous.
• I paused the show to protest that "the Suzat" has the definite article in twice (Suza-t), and my wife looked at me, and then told me it was probably the geekiest thing I had ever said to her. ^_^
• The big reveal about Isildur's girlfriend being evil is just that... Arondir already clocked her brand, he just wasn't saying anything. Welp!
• My wife tells me that wound didn't look like a burn. She's a nurse, so she'd know.
• Isildur and Arondir in the Swamps of Sadness. Good thing they didn't bring the horse, we know how depressed horses can get in that place. (Yes, we watched Neverending Story again recently. Artax... )
• Well, I guess Isildur and Arondir are dead. Maybe it was his cousin Isildur the Angry who nicked the Ring WHOA WAIT WHAT IS THAT.
• NO ARONDIR YOU CAN'T JUST QUOTE THE BOOKS WHAT IS THAT.
• We will never find out. Or see anything again, because it's back to nighttime mode.
• I love the murder-entwife! These two are much more tree-shaped than the movie ents, it's pretty cool. (I do note they kept them in the dark so the CG could be cheaper.)
• Their names are Winterbloom and Snaggleroot. Not quite a match for Treebeard, Skinbark, Leaflock and the rest, but pretty close. (Naming Ent characters is surprisingly hard, actually.)
• They'd probably be something like *Rhîwloth and *Gamphond in Sindarin?
• Darn, Theo isn't dead.
• Sooo... where is this Ent-forest Arondir has just promised to prevent anyone from cutting wood in for an Age? Just north of Pelargir? Ithilien? Or are we somehow all the way up in Fangorn like Arondir's promise would suggest? Ultimately it doesn't matter, because he wanders off immediately, leaving the Wild men to continue hacking up any trees they please.
• Oh, and Isildur's girlfriend has found her betrothed who she said all along she was looking for.
• And then, Barrow-wights! The Downs are actually appropriate; there's definitely a line in the books saying they date from the First Age. I don't know why they're a forest now, though - the whole thing about downs is that trees don't grow there well.
• I really liked the creepy-eyes version of the Wights. If we'd just had that and the white hand that shows up once (before Elrond chops it off) I would have been delighted. Un-fortunately we also got zombies with chains, which, why? Did they steal them from Jacob and Robert Marley?
• I did like that Random Elf just got randomly shot. The Orcs loose one arrow - boomf, right in the chest. Sucks to be him. Except not, because Nenya can just heal mortal wounds now. Can Narya do the same thing? If Gandalf had been there on Amon Hen, would Boromir be with us today??
• And then Galadriel shows off the acrobatifighting from Season 1, and the Orcs have a napalm lantern for some reason, and luckily Adar is around, because otherwise she'd definitely be dead. Is she going to ally with him against Sauron? I genuinely would not be surprised.
• I giggled through the entire credits. They wrote! A Bombadil! Sooooong!

So yeah, this was amazing, best episode so far, A+++ no notes (except TURN THE LIGHTS ON ISILDUR).

hS