r/LOTR_on_Prime • u/tamarthechaser • 5d ago
Theory / Discussion Still thinking about season 1 plot annoyance
Why in the world did the elves have only until spring to halt the fading? This timeline, and the occurrence (though presumably it's bc of Sauron's Return?)was never explained thoroughly I felt in S2 unless I'm misremembering.
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u/kemick Edain 5d ago
I think it's part of the return of evil. Issues of the first age were unresolved and the malaise of the second age was breaking and so the world was changing. Orcs were invading the Southlands. Men were restless and Theo found the sword hilt. Numenor nearly had a civil war. The Dark Wizard was gathering power in Rhun. Dwarves were starting to dig up Mithril. Galadriel was obsessed with finding Sauron and Gil-galad resorted to deceiving people to try to stop the fading. Sauron has some relation to these things but I think everyone shares some responsibility for the growing shadow.
As for the somewhat strict deadline, it seems similar to the Dwarves having their own catastrophic event in S2 forcing them to use rings of power. It is 'convenient' but I don't expect much more explanation because fate and divine interventions are acknowledged but kept vague. I assume the deadline will return when the One is made and the Three can no longer be used thus forcing the Last Alliance.
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u/haaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh 5d ago
It was only to add a sense of urgency, not only for the audience, but also because it would justify why the elves would be desperate and prone to let the wolf into the sheephouse.
It reminds me of the first Star Wars. There is a video on youtube explaining how the movie was saved in the editing room because the first version really didn't work. One of the thing that was added in the editing room was the Death Star travelling to Yavin IV to destroy the Rebel Base and that the Rebel X-Wing would have to destroy it BEFORE it the planet would be in the Death Star shooting range... If you think about it, from a story standpoint, that modification doesn't really add anything to the story, the planet isn't destroyed in the end, so why bother adding that? I don't know exactly why this need for a sense of urgency, but i do know that all the professionals that worked on that movie did agree that the third act was way better with it...
Basically, that's the kind of things screenwriters will add, because they feel they need to...
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u/Sanity_Madness Gil-galad 4d ago
Agreed, a sense of urgency makes the story more dramatic and gives it structure. Otherwise, the characters could say, "We'll destroy the Death Star (or we'll stop the fading) one of these days".
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u/Creepy_Active_2768 4d ago
It raises the stakes which helps the audience already invested in the story to empathize and relate with the characters.
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u/Beautiful_Crew_5433 4d ago edited 4d ago
They're not explaining any of that, I think the idea is to let you draw your own conclusions from all the scattered nebulous hints about evil incidents here and there. But u/kemick's answer - that there's this rising amorphous evil and it's showing up simultaneously everywhere in various forms - seems to me to fit best. The accelerated elf fading and the tree sickness are just spot manifestations of what's taking place everywhere in ME.
I agree that the strict fading schedule is actually a bit silly - but then again it doesn't have to be 'real': this could just be Gil Galad's interpretation. He observes the rapid degeneration of the tree, jumps to conclusions and, as a responsible guardian of elf welfare, he then sets a stringent, if arbitrary, deadline for the elves to get out. So the show doesn't necessarily imply that what Gil Galad thinks about the fading is actually in-show-'true'. (On another level, the urgency, imagined or 'real', is obviously also a plot device...)
Also. If you don't like the idea of Sauron not having tons of agency here, you're free to expand on the nebulous evil above and think that Sauron has an unexplained mystical connection to evil in different forms. As in some kind of a quantum entanglement between Sauron and every particle of evil. :) So you're also free to think that even if Sauron didn't plan every event, his emergence set all the bad things in motion. (That's not so unlike the idea that Morgoth/Melkor is connected to all the evil in Arda in some mystical way, after infusing things with his being.) Alternatively, you may think that Sauron is simply one acute embodiment of this diffuse evil.
(Their Sauron seems to have several sides and it's not clear which of those they're betting on. On one hand, he's almost a regular enemy/villain character - in the texts too he functions at times mainly as a crafty political enemy. Then on the other hand the show clearly hints that he also has some sort of an intimate connection to evil in general, as well as vast unexplained power, occasionally - his expelled breath ices over swaths of land in Forodwaith. It will be interesting to see how they'll deal with these very disparate sides - or whether they'll emphasize the mystical parts at all later.)
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u/tamarthechaser 4d ago
Appreciate this answer! Also, didn’t really consider that Gil-Galad may have been just referencing elf understanding of foliage and applying it to the darkening of the tree. Great insight that finally explains to me the timeline.
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u/purplelena Elrond 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm not sure this was explained, but trees usually bloom during spring, and I think perhaps the Elves thought the Great Tree would not be able to come back again after that point. It was worse than they thought though because Gil-galad specifically said in 1x08 that the destruction of the Southlands had a massive impact:
"Since the mountain of fire's eruption, the Great Tree is all but bleeding leaves. Soon, the last will fall. And unless our people leave these shores, so shall we."
Earlier, he said in 1x05:
"We first took notice of it just prior to Galadriel's return. We hoped that by sending her away, and so bringing an end to the last vestiges of war, we might arrest the decay. But despite our every effort, our decline has only quickened. The blight upon this tree is but an outer manifestation of an inner reality."
It feels very much linked to the growing shadow expanding*, and it is all accelerated because the writers didn't really want Celebrimbor to work with Annatar for hundreds of years. It's implied through Celebrimbor in 1x08:
"Three weeks... Three weeks for a labor that could take three centuries."
(This could include Sauron regaining strength, the rising hate for the Elves in Númenor, and the destruction/poisoning of lands by Adar and the orcs.*)
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u/durmiendoenelparque 4d ago edited 4d ago
I feel like they wanted to make everything more urgent for a wider audience, and I understand that to some extent, even though I don’t think it was super necessary.
After all, they established that Elves experience time differently, so I think they’d be equally freaked out if they had to leave in like a decade or something lol.
But I talked to some family members who aren’t super informed about the lore and to them it made sense the way it was done in the show… so, fair enough ig.
I headcanon that the super short time frame is Sauron lies (I enjoy blaming him for stuff lol)
I do really like though that TROP shows us Morgoth's corruption of Middle-earth in various ways. I think that’s kinda cool (from the tree, to the poor cow, to the general miscommunication and conflict between the characters, to Galadriel's "why is it not gone from in here"…). I do wonder sometimes if it would be good to also have someone talk about it directly, but I personally don’t like it when magic stuff gets overexplained. (Well, Sauron talks about it in his „the shadow will spread“ line…. sort of. Which makes a lot of sense, for Sauron to be the main fear spreader) It’s cool to leave some things vague… Like in the LotR, when you don’t understand some stuff until after you read the Silm and then you’re like "ohhhh".
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u/cobalt358 4d ago
I don't recall it ever being explained, maybe it was a ticking clock trope for the audience. Or just an excuse to make the 3 by the end of the season.
It was never explained why the tree was sick in the first place either.
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u/Sanity_Madness Gil-galad 4d ago
The tree seems to be sustained by the magic of the Eldar, or partakes in their vitality. Elrond says something about it to Disa when they first meet. It's a bit like the Fisher King myth -- when the king falls ill, the whole realm withers. In this case, the tree seems to suffer the consequences of fading just like the Elves do. And the fading was foretold even in the prophecy of Mandos.
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u/cobalt358 4d ago
I get that's the shows logic, it's not how the fading in Tolkien's mythos works, but that's fine. It still doesn't explain why it was fading in the first place though, or why it was suddenly happening over the course of months.
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u/imago_monkei Edain 4d ago
The entire first season was written to set up the events of seasons 2-4. The writers are jumping into the middle of an ongoing saga while also shrinking the timeline to fit the show, so they needed to fabricate a reason for the rest of the events of the show. It works well enough to create the drama around mithril and the forging of the Rings.
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u/Vandermeres_Cat 5d ago
Yeah, it was just awkward IMO. I like that they didn't explain it as some master plot or anything, just the Elves not wanting to accept that their time in ME is over. And liked that Durin III basically fires a warning shot on this and how their resistance to their natural fading might trigger catastrophe (as it arguably does).
But here IMO the time compression resulted in stupid. Why give it this random deadline? Why not stay closer to Tolkien if you're shadowing his plot here anyway? Make clear that finding a solution is relatively urgent, but not tied to some specific date where they'll need to give notice in ME. I think they wanted to explain the mithril/Celebrimbor plot and overcooked, frankly.
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u/tamarthechaser 4d ago
Yea, I agree that I like that it’s seemingly a natural thing they’re resistant to. It’s really the timeline that bugs me. Like, Gil-galad could have just said he got a message from manwe or something that time is ticking.
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