[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Here go my first predictions based on the first two episodes.

I am not sure how "obvious" things I should mention - on the one hand not to be "Captain Obvious", on the other hand for not miscalculating to take something for granted which, in fact, is not granted or self-evident at all.

I will therefore trust my intuition. Just for the sake of completion, here goes what I consider borderline self-evident: we are going to learn that Halbrand is actually Theo's father. I am also writing it here because it forms the basis of my most important first theories.

Topic 1: Theo will become a Nazgul (Witch-King?)


It started with the "reverse Morgul-blade", which I think is an evidence by itself. In any case, SOMEBODY needs to become a Ringwraith, and so far we do not have that many characters (also at the time when I am writing this, we have not yet seen the Númenoreans, but I took a glimpse of the character list on Amazon and there is that one young dude who is effectively a page to Ar-Pharazon or somesuch and who is described as wishing to impress Ar-P by all means necessary, well that sounds like a recipe for "from clerk to a Nazgul 101" to me, so that would be 2/9 accounted for, as far as I am concerned).

Regarding Theo, I have said elsewhere that it inevitably must lead to some horrible tragedy of his mother being good (obviously) and him being evil. (No matter that it would have been interesting to see her, the nice healer lady, turn into Nazgul, but I do not think that is likely.)

My ultimate prediction for their tragic family fate is that eventually, with broken heart, the kind healer mother kills her son, but he rises back as undead. And if he happens to be WK himself, you could somehow, after his un-death, connect it to the future Witch-King prophecy about being killed "not by a man".

That being said, I certainly hope that THIS prophecy is addressed as coming into existence already now (I mean, I think there is nothing indicating that it was literally uttered for the very first time with some Arvedui and co. - it could have existed in another form by some Númenorean or Elven soothsayer).

Another related element, which would be really really cool, but which is based on lack of definite geographical knowledge of what is where (especially on my part) so I cannot vouch or it making sense, would be if the beautiful green land we see in the Southlands got turned into Mordor/Nurn. It would be a good explanation for all the Orc-digging: they are building the foundations for Barad-dur and co.

Topic 2: The Entwives

Vaguely connected to the idea of transformation of lush green lands into fire and brimstone is my following prediction: We are going to see the Entwives.

I think we saw some Ents watching the meteor and I am sure it was not a coincidence. But what would Ents do except look pretty and whisper in the wind if there was no plot surrounding them? They can't go to war like in LotR, so what else would they do?

It would be very neat - and I cannot see why not - to see the destruction of the Entwives (in ambiguous terms, of course), or maybe the entire Ent-Entwife rift and development. Maybe even Treebeard himself and Fimbrethil as characters (? when did this actually happen? Is it specified? I always thought that it DID happen in the Second Age). In any case, we know the Entwives lived in what became the "Brown Lands", and I always understood the point being that they had gone there when it was still a normal place, but by the time Treebeard and co decided to check it, Sauron had been there and nothing much was preserved.

So, these are some of the predictions that come to me from the top of my head. What are yours?