LotR3-RotK-Seq18

[alatar]

The King is dead. Long live the King!


Éowyn, wounded by the Witch-King and almost by Gothmog, crawls over to her Lord and Uncle who still lies where he and Snowmane landed. King Théoden wakes at her touch, and though his time in Middle Earth be short, he at least will have a chance to say goodbye, at least to Éowyn. The shieldmaiden, staring at Death yet again, still wants to deny it, but this time sword or tag-line cannot hold back the inevitable. The King asks to be let go, and gives the words straight from the text. No, Bernard Hill, even in this company of fine actors you should not feel ashamed, as your work in the movies was well done.

The King dies, and I’m creeped out by how long the actor holds open his eyes.

Éowyn weeps.

Gandalf and Pip walk the war-strewn Fields. They witness Aragorn giving up the ghosts’…help. Gimli speaks for me, as here there’s no reason not to use the ghostly green slime to invade Mordor, as no help arrived by ship nor is now marching north to Gondor. If, by chance, Aragorn rides out to challenge battle, he will be riding out with considerably less then when the whole mess started – plus leave the city underdefended. Regardless, Aragorn sends the Dead King and folk on their way, and it looks like there will be a long line behind Théoden if the King doesn’t hurry up.

Gandalf nods to the last King standing, who acknowledges the gesture with his eyes. Good job bringing those green guys.

The scavenging begins. Pippin and others look over the dead, obviously searching for loose change and anything of value. Pip finds an elvish cloak, and gasps as he knows the value of it on the black market. What a find! Oops…okay, so maybe he was concerned about Merry. The good thing is that there’s not a body inside the cloak, and in Middle Earth, until you’ve seen the body…

Éomer makes a find of his own. It’s the still and silent form of his sister, and he screams in pain and anguish. How she came to be there maybe was unknown to him, unlike to the rest of the Rohirrim. How she becomes ‘mostly dead’ is a mystery to me, as when last we saw her, she was shooting the breeze with Théoden, having crawled along the ground to get there. Maybe it was that last effort, and now she lies motionless more from despair – and the Black Breath – than any physical wound. Next we see her lying upon a bier inside the City, and Éomer sits nearby awaiting oil and wood.

Aragorn chooses a somewhat unconventional method of healing, and takes her arm and bathes it with a solution of athelas (that’s what I see). And it’s only now in the movie that I see something else in the text, that the waters of Ulmo wash things clean, bring life again. We see Aragorn is truly King, as he has the hands of a healer and not just that of a butcher.

Éowyn arises in white, and looks not to the light but to the new Steward – Faramir – and I have hope for the two, and only wish that we spent more with them than with lessons in dwarven humor.

Pippin, using much of the day, continues to search for the body of Merry. Finally, possibly knowing the look of a hobbit’s foot, he sees his friend underneath the body of a foe. Merry’s all right, and Pip vows to take care of him, which is, I guess, PJ’s way of showing that Pippin is now growing up and not relying on Merry.

It was in the Appendices or Commentary that it was noted that the ‘Pippin searches for Merry’ scene was originally in the daylight, but due to the extra ‘healing’ scene, was moved to the night simply by darkening the existing scene.

With all of the heroes/heroines accounted for and resting, we will pause until next time to see what the next throw in this end game will be.