Probably the best or second-best episode of the season, with the main defects being a couple of mildly bad turns of phrase(1) and some weird plot contrivances going around Galadriel. Keep in mind, though, that the middle of season 1 of this show really lowered the bar for all the other episodes before and since, so “best/second-best episode of the less flawed of the two seasons of Rings of Power made to date” is not the biggest compliment ever.

*Waggles hand* Meh. About on par with the last one, maybe a shade less good. Charlie Vickers groupies and the idiots who think Middle Earth is all about the fight scenes might grade it more generously than I do. In other news, my cowatchers and I have been rewatching (and for the most part enjoying) the extended editions of the LOTR movies, and I may put up a post about that at some point in the near future. The main relevant points for now are that watching ROP and LOTR side by side a). really underlines how much better Jackson/Walsh/Boyens were at simulating Tolkienesque dialogue than the ROP team, and b). how much ROP unnecessarily remixes bits from the movies, especially bits that were so inane that I recognized them at the time I saw the originals in the LOTR rewatch but they’ve fallen out of my head by now.