[William Cloud Hicklin]

Yes, one could cobble together a Second Age storyline from Appendices A and B. Especially since, as per the showrunner, the series only takes place in the last century or so of the Age: Isildur's lifetime, and the Fall of Numennor and the Last Alliance are covered laconically but decently..

But it should be kept in mind that such a storyline only could, hypothetically, be done. There was never any guarantee that it would be, because there was never any guarantee that the job would be entrusted to writers of any skill or sensitivity. And now it is apparent that they possess neither; they can no more comprehend what they have been given to work with than a tribe of cave men could comprehend a smartphone. Every single thing about the reveal reeks of cluelessness, and the replacement of Tolkien with schlock standard-issue Genre Fantasy.

Whether or not they get hair color or skin color or the basics of nomenclature right is just the surface of it, and really unimportant except as a symptom of the disease: total incapacity and incomprehension, Cardi B fans confronted by the Missa Solemnis, Orcs in Lothlorien.

Now, I don't think it's necessary that to count as a "true fan" one has to have read the Athrabeth or the Statute of Finwe and Miriel, or even the Silmarillion for that matter. But if we take The Lord of the Rings on its own terms, it is palpable on every page that they are in the same universe, that Frodo and Aragorn and all the rest live in the same reality that encompasses the high seriousness of the more recondite works.

The Athrabeth could not exist in this Amazon travesty. There is no room for a philosphical framework here, because the only framework there is is "how do we work this hackneyed plot device into the story?" The most expensive television production in history has less intellectual depth than a decent superhero flick: nothing but an assemblage of lazy cliches. The problem with General Galadriel in her silly plate armor is not wther it is "canon" or "faithful to the books," but rather, and far more egregiiously, that Warrior Wimmen are a tired old pop-culture trope by now (dear God, James Cameron made Terminator 2 and Aliens back in the eighties!), and Amazon Galadriel (ha!) is just a reflection of an impotence of creativity, an inability to conceive of a mighty woman in any terms other than the worn-out masculine framework of hitting things with sharp objects and climbing glaciers with really, really inadequate mountaineering equipment. Tolkien, a man born in Victoria's reign, could manage it, but not these contemporary Hollywood hacks.

I have to say, this has caused me to ameliorate somewhat my disdain for PJ's LR, simply by demonstrating that it could have been so, so much worse.