[Boromir88]

This was the best episode of the series, so far. I'm invested in the story lines and interested to see where everything goes.

The only niggle from Episode 3 is the look of the warg. Oddwen's comment cracked me up, because it's true. Elsewhere, wilwa said "it looked like it had a silly instagram filter on," which is also true. If given the choice, I actually prefer Jackson's hyena-things, even though I didn't like the look of those either. I wonder if it was a decision to try to not look too similar to the dire wolves in GoT?

For as much as I didn't like the warg, I loved the design of Numenor. I'll echo what others have said here, about seeing the societal structure. We got a glimpse into Numenor royalty, the navy, merchant class, guilds, library, architecture. It gave me a feeling of Numenor's history and diversity.

I kind of hope we get a look at orc society that isn't in a military setting. I'm not too hopeful we will. I think the look of the orcs are excellent and I like that they're not being portrayed as cannon fodder. I think the series has done a good job to show there is a real threat to encounter an orc in this world. That's something I don't recall in any other fantasy story. They're just nameless baddies for the good guys to chop through. There are rumors of a female orc being in the show, but I kind of doubt we're going to get orc society outside the military. I think it would be fantastic for the series to portray the question about orcs Tolkien struggled answering. Whether they are by nature evil and beyond redemption, or not.

I thought the orcs' slave camp were the best scenes. The way the watchwarden talked against cutting down the tree. The hope and plan of escape, needing to get a look above the trench line. The captive working together to break their chain, as the orcs are visibly hurt by the sunlight, "release the warg," it was all a a great build up of tension. "Is one of them going to escape?" To then sudden hopelessness as we finally get a view above the trench. The visual is striking. It reminded me of reading about the trench warfare battles of WW1. Trench digging and soldiers living in the trenches, because you would die if you ran out. But the industrialization of war degraded the landscape into a desolate waste. There was a great buildup of hope, if someone could just escape and get out of the trenches. To those hopes being dashed and the desolation that's happened to the land above.