We’re close enough to the release date of August 29 that I’m kind of beyond much speculation, just at that, “shrug, we’ll see” stage of thinking. Let me point out some places where I was definitely wrong in my guesses based on earlier promotional material, and comment on some of the latest news:

-Elf with Sean Connery face is definitely the recast Adar. My bad.

-Miriel is the Numenorean sea monster bait character. Also my bad. I suspect she’s going to survive this trial, which is frankly a bummer because when it comes to the Numenorean actors, this lady runs Elendil Guy and Pharazon Guy a *very* distant third.

–New trailer: It made me curious about season 2, so I guess it did its job. Only a few points jumped out at me:

–Tom Bombadil: Always imagined him in more brightly colored clothes than that, but the casting’s not bad.

–Entwives: bad cgi, but the personality of the one who talks in the trailer seems well-done.

–Nori’s line about helping her friend find her destiny: Welp, the writers’ command of dialogue certainly hasn’t improved any. This is merely the most egregious example.

–I’m pretty annoyed with Gil-Galad’s sneering emphasis on “man” in his question to Galadriel, for much the same reason that I was super-annoyed with Galadriel throwing her pedigree (“…of the Golden House of Finarfin!”) in the face of the Numenorean court last season. These two elves have close(1) relatives who actively sought friendship and alliance with the Edain, the humans the Numenoreans are descended from. Gil-Galad and Galadriel should be about as unbigoted towards humans as any elves (other than Elrond Half-Elven) are likely to be.

–“Give me the Nine!” Some morons think they’re scoring one on RoP by claiming that Sauron “ackshually” forged the Nine (possibly a misreading of the prologue to the PJ trilogy): No, the Elves made the Seven and the Nine with Sauron’s assistance, and the Three based on lore provided by Sauron but without his direct involvement. RTFB(s), guys, and then you will be better equipped to trash RoP.

–Elrond tenderly touching Galadriel’s face: Dude, you’re her future son-in-law. Please stop. Yes, I know some of the producers hail from huggier European cultures and that episode 1.8 established that Elrond saw Galadriel as kind of a mom/cool big sis who found and befriended him at the destruction of the Havens of Sirion. Still, this moment didn’t work for me.

–Durin III (not IV) receives one of the Seven, seemingly through Celebrimbor or Sauron’s agency, while Durin IV distrusts the ring, same as his friend Elrond (more about that in a moment). My bad, I thought they were going to use the Elrond/Durin IV friendship as a conduit for the first of the Seven.

–Elrond’s insistence that they not use the Three Rings is interesting, and the vaguely sinister vibe associated with the use of the Three is…odd. Tolkien says(2) that the wielders of the elven rings heard Sauron chanting the “One Ring” incantation when he first put on the One, and immediately and angrily took off their own rings. If the One has not yet been forged during this sequence in RoP, then it should be relatively safe to use the Three, and if the One has been forged, then Galadriel and Gil-Galad ought to be a lot warier about using them.

—My suspicion is that the One is forged in secret relatively early in the season’s chronology (maybe before Sauron leaves Mordor to return to Celebrimbor in Eregion) but we and the elves only find out in a late season flashback. The Silmarillion’s implication that the Bearers of the Three recognize the power of the One the moment it is put to use will be ignored.

-More thoughts to other news coming out:

–Ciaran Hinds playing a Wizard/Istar in the east styled to look like Saruman: I’m all for the Two Eastern Wizards enacting a variant on the Gandalf/Saruman conflict, but I’m not in favor of them actually *being* Gandalf and Saruman. Saruman’s fall in LOTR is supposed to be a comparatively recent development, not something that stretches back to the Second Age. (Quite aside from the question of whether the Istari were kicking around in the Second Age).

—On a related note, people are being rather stupid when they say Hind and the late Sir Christopher Lee (movie Saruman) look alike. No. They both had/have long rectangular faces with bags under the eyes and a tendency to Resting Grump Face, but where Lee was fairly gaunt through the face and cheeks, Hinds is flabby-looking. Admittedly, between the wig and the false nose and the giant beard, the LOTR movie fans have no idea what Lee actually looked like(3), unless they also watched him in something else. Here’s your assignment guys: Go watch the 1995 Persuasion (made when Hinds was in his early forties) and the 1959 Hound of the Baskervilles (made when Lee was in his late thirties) to get some sense of how different those two men actually look. Bye.

–more diagetic music this season: Dwarves, a Tom Bombadil/Stranger song, and Gil-Galad singing (check twitter or reddit, the clip of Ben Walker singing the song at Comic Con is not on youtube yet). I didn’t love Hymn to the Rocks (the Dwarf chorale from the first season), but I liked the Numenorean drinking song and the harfoot songs, so my main reaction is “Bring it!”

–Big battle for Eregion: the footage looks good, but I don’t care nearly as much about big battle scenes as the LOTR movie fans or the Game of Thrones fans do, so whatever.

–Extension of the Sauron/Galadriel romance: the writers had Vickers (Sauron actor) answer “Yes” to a question about this at Comic Con, which to me suggests possibly a romanticized version of the dynamic in Unfinished Tales and Silmarillion, where Sauron-alias-Annatar constantly schmoozes Galadriel even though she rejects him. Or perhaps he gets into her head again, this time warping her memories of her husband (We can haz Flashback Celeborn?) instead of memories of her brother. I don’t see room for her being willingly interested in Sauron, based on how the last season ended, not without weakening her character, but that doesn’t mean the writers aren’t dumb enough to do it.

–Poppy getting a romance: I personally envision the end of her arc when the show is finished as being the wise, feisty matriarch that Smeagol will rebel against. So, I’m all for some scenario with her meeting a nice proto-hobbit guy and having many kids beside the river Anduin, while perhaps Nori keeps wandering and helps found the Shire.

—On a related note, the writers apparently dropped some vague hints that one or more of the established characters might be gay, and the usual idiots immediately applied all the usual stereotypes and assumed the stocky hobbit woman was It. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but we also have news/rumors to the effect that Celebrimbor and Sauron-alias-Annatar move in together, so, make of that what you will.

(1) If ill-defined in Gil-Galad’s case. Some of Tolkien’s drafts had him as a descendent of Fingolfin and Fingon, the previous High Kings of the Noldorin Elves in Middle Earth. Others make him a member of the House of Finarfin, a nephew or grandnephew of Galadriel’s and a son or grandson of one of her several brothers. But Galadriel is always the sister of (Finrod/Inglor) Felagund, the first Noldorin Elf to befriend humans and the first to accept them as warriors and lords under his command. Why are you so bishy to your bro’s friends, Gal?

(2) I believe this comes up in the Silmarillion, which admittedly the RoP makers don’t own the rights to and have to negotiate with the estate on a case by case basis when they want to borrow from it.

(3) Then again, an astonishing number of people can’t tell the difference between Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Sir Christopher Lee. These people can’t all be deaf, face-blind AND incapable of distinguishing between a tall man with a fleshy build, a moderately tall man with a very thin build, and a very tall man with a moderately thin build. So I suppose I should keep doing the birthday tributes.