“Well, if you see the President, tell him from me that, whatever happens, there will be no turning back.” — Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to Henry Wing, May 5, 1864
Tolkien is famous, or perhaps infamous, for how much he loves trees and forests. But there are a few exceptions to this; some of the forests that appear in the books are scary and sinister places. This can either be, in the case of the Old Forest or the deepest corners of Fangorn, because they themselves are old and fell, remembering where they themselves were masters of the world; or because they have been poisoned by the darkness entering into their borders, such as Nan Dungortheb on the borders of Doriath and of course Mirkwood, which used to be Greenwood before Sauron the Necromancer arrived. In this latter category Tolkien would almost certainly include The Wilderness, a 70-square mile area of northern Virginia full of dense, nearly impassable second-growth forest with thick underbrush and almost no clearings or passable roads. Darkness came in force to these woods from May 5-7, 1864, when Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all the Northern armies (never his official title, but I’m using it for obvious reasons), clashed for the first time with Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Nearly 28,000 Northmen and Southrons were killed or wounded; massive trees were cut down by close-quarters musket volleys and artillery fire; hundreds of wounded men were burned alive when the underbrush caught fire and they couldn’t get out of the way in time; for the second time in as many years Lee lost the services of a close friend when James Longstreet was wounded (only about 4 miles where Stonewall Jackson suffered his own mortal wound during the previous year’s Battle of Chancellorsville); when the full tally of losses was told him, Grant, far from the heartless butcher of legend, broke down and wept. But he didn’t just possess great empathy and humanity, but also unconquerable determination and perseverance, a sense for the bigger strategic picture, and a firm belief in the righteousness of his cause. When in 1863 the bold and dashing Joe Hooker had taken a similar beating at Chancellorsville, he retreated, his spirit broken. Grant moved south, keeping his promise to President Lincoln. The army spontaneously erupted in cheers as he, General George Meade, and their staffs trotted down the crossroads that led towards Richmond. There was even more bloodshed to come, with places like Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor etched in red in America’s history, but Grant did not stop and did not give up until June 17th, when he boldly crossed the James River and pinned Lee’s army in place at Petersburg. Even more grueling fighting followed as the armies engaged in nine months of trench warfare that Tolkien would have recognized from the Somme, but it would finally result in a decisive victory, and Lee’s final surrender, at Appomattox Court House; and as Grant would later write in his memoirs, 9 months is still a shorter time than the three bloody years it had taken to reach what was essentially a stalemate before he assumed command. It’s hard to deny his logic.
Iron determination, courage, keeping your word, a belief in a noble cause and a great task. These are virtues that we should all aspire towards in our daily lives. But they really shouldn’t be necessary when talking about our favorite movies and TV shows, right? Unfortunately, that very much is the case with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Even two years on, even while the show itself took a hiatus to film Season 2, it never took all that much to provoke a serious negative reaction. So much hatred, so much dishonesty, so much calculated neglect and snubbing of this particular adaptation of Tolkien, and only this one. I’ve even written about this, just under a year ago, how Youtube channels and meme pages go out of their way to attack the show (in particular Morfydd Clark’s interpretation of Galadriel), how Instagram accounts and dedicated Tolkien FB pages act as though the show doesn’t exist, how even mentioning something positive about the show in the wrong space will bring down a hammer of wrath. And the problem has not gotten better since then. As just one example: on May 4, Star Wars Day, a fairly harmless meme I shared on my social media pages ended up triggering a response from a much larger Tolkien Facebook account to the effect that although Galadriel may have been a warrior, she was never a “Nazi”. I truly do accept that not everyone loves Galadriel in the show as much as I do, but was a slur like that really necessary? No, it wasn’t. Neither is using the news of Peter Jackson’s old creative team from the Original Trilogy returning for a movie about Gollum as an excuse to crown him some sort of Tolkien messiah, explicitly dump on the show, or implicitly wonder why he doesn’t try to steal its thunder by telling his own Second Age story (spoiler alert, he can’t). So much negativity, it’s exhausting to witness it, even if I am currently just a small fry and as such haven’t yet run into personal experience as much as some bigger content creators (although back when I was on Twitter in 2022, I was definitely no stranger to nonsense and hate). It almost makes one want to give up. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve changed my mind on a piece of pop culture; I used to be quite strident in my fondness for Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, and was far more charitable to “The Long Night” and “The Bells” than those two worst episodes of Game of Thrones deserved.
But no. I’m not giving up. Rings of Power falls squarely into the category of those movies and TV shows that I truly love, that stick with me, and mean something to me. Like Community, or Roland Emmerich’s 2019 Midway, or Zach Snyder’s Justice League, or Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, or the classic animated Redwall by Nelvana. Because Rings of Power is good. It’s noble, aspirational, sincere, beautiful and optimistic, in a time where nobility, aspiration, sincerity, beauty and optimism are hard to find both on our screens and in the world around us. And this makes perfect sense when you consider that, contrary to what so many people would like to tell you, the show is truly faithful to the transcendent and universal themes and ideals that Tolkien sought to do justice to and to share with those who read his. And a lot of what has been said against the show, its inspiration, its themes, its characters, both by committed ragebaiters and by book- and Tolkien-influencers of level heads who really should know better, is just flat-out wrong. “I would see true history written,” said Ulysses Grant in his 1885 memoirs, throwing down the gauntlet to the beautiful lie of the Lost Cause that was rising in the historiography and memory of the Civil War just as he was dying from throat cancer. I may not be the most famous American of my age, indeed, I would probably guess that I have only about 300 followers max across my various platforms; but I too would see the truth written, regarding both Tolkien’s imaginary history of the Second Age and this TV show that is bringing those events to life.
One truth that took me a while to understand and to grasp is: What exactly is Rings of Power? And that question is one I still see being misunderstood and misrepresented to this day. It is not, as many people call it or imply, an adaptation of The Silmarillion. Except on a case by case basis, those rights are currently still held in a death-grip by the Tolkien Estate, and they are not going to be relinquished to anybody, not to Amazon or to, for example, Warner Brothers (so contrary to what I have seen on numerous occasions regarding the news that Peter Jackson will be producing movies set in Middle-earth, adapting Silmarillion stories is not going to happen). This nullifies the argument that Rings of Power is a bad adaptation of The Silmarillion; how could it be, when it isn’t even an adaptation of that book in the first place? It would be closer to the mark to say that RoP is an adaptation of the Appendices at the end of The Return of the King, specifically the first parts of Appendix A and the Tale of Years in Appendix B; both of these sections deal specifically with the Second Age. But at the same time this concept is incomplete. If The Silmarillion has a reputation of being a dry chronicle, this portion of the Appendices is even worse, and even shorter, almost by design. Not a lot to hang a hat on, let alone a five-season epic. And Rings of Power knows this, hence why so many of the show’s elements—Galadriel’s warlike past and flawed nature, the greyness of Sauron’s villainy, Elendil actually having a personality, the appearance of an Istar nearly a millennium before they “canonically” appeared in the Third Age—come from other parts of the Legendarium. These include Unfinished Tales, the History of Middle-earth, Tolkien’s letters, parts of the original trilogy1, and yes, The Silmarillion. All of this is to say: Rings of Power is not adapting any Tolkien book as such, but rather is an adaptation of the story of the Second Age whose bare outline is found in the Appendices; and to do so it draws upon material from the full breadth of Tolkien’s legendarium to actually tell a story instead of just a bare, clinical recital of dates and events.
So, we’ve established what Rings of Power is trying to do. But is it successful? The answer to this question is even more contentious than that of its source material. After all, it is true that even in the expanded Legendarium, Galadriel never is explicitly stated to have visited Numenor (although King Tar-Aldarion did visit her while she was still the Lady of Eregion, so it is possible that she returned the favor and Tolkien just never wrote about it); more importantly, it is true that during the Second Age, Galadriel wasn’t quite the armored knight that we see in Season 1 (she was more of a grand strategist, like Isabella of Castile and Maria Theresa of Austria), and was not motivated by vengeance and righteous anger quite to the extent she was in the First Age. And there are numerous other examples of where the show changes events, even when dealing with established characters; one of the most impactful and controversial involved the decision to compress the entire second half of the Second Age into at most a single millennium. Some of the reasons given for this decision are defensible, most notably the wish to have characters whom the audience can connect to for the long haul rather than change them practically every season; on the other hand some things will of necessity be lost, most notably an idea of just how long and how peaceful (for the most part) High King Gil-galad’s reign really was. But given how important the length of the Second Age is to the idea of how important questions of longevity and immortality are, with all their ramifications for events and character, it does make sense why some people would react so poorly to this part of the Second Age story being changed. And you can pick literally any aspect of Rings of Power’s story that is different from the printed pages of the Legendarium, and you will find loud and strident voices saying that these differences mean that somehow, that means the show is being unfaithful to and a bastardization of Tolkien.
But here’s the thing: just because a work of historical fiction may change a few things does not necessarily mean that it isn’t a worthy depiction of the event or person it is portraying, and just because an adaptation doesn’t have every detail correspond with its source material doesn’t mean it doesn’t get the source material right. This phenomenon has been a thing long before Rings of Power; and long before Peter Jackson and Ralph Bakshi’s movies, for that matter; and it comes up frequently in the war movies and historical epics that I encounter by choice and study. And sometimes these are fairly big changes. For example, the beloved Civil War epic Glory depicts the 54th Massachusetts, the second regiment of black soldiers recruited to fight for the Union during that war, as a regiment that welcomed former slaves into its ranks and had to fight tooth and nail for basic military supplies and training and equal pay, even before it was even allowed to take the field against the Rebels; in fact, as a favored “pet project” of Massachusetts governor John Andrew, the 54th would never have wanted for anything, and its recruits would have been drawn from Massachusetts’ free black population. But these changes and others did not overall detract from the historical merit of this story. Writing in 2003 for National Review about the deeply flawed wannabe Civil War epic Gods and Generals, Naval War College professor MacRubin Owens had this to say about Glory: “But historical inaccuracies aside, Glory contains a deeper truth…By inaccurately depicting the 54th as a regiment of former slaves, Glory reveals the deeper truth that blacks in general were not the natural slaves that southerners believed them to be and that abolitionists feared that they might be. ‘Who asks now in doubt and derision, Will the Negro fight?’ observed one abolitionist after the assault of the 54th against Battery Wagner. ‘The answer is spoken from the cannon’s mouth…it comes to us from…those graves beneath Fort Wagner’s walls, which the American people will never forget.’” It seems that Mr. Owens is arguing that Glory’s historical errors should be forgiven on the basis of how the film so well captures the spirit of the story it is telling, of the true cause of the Civil War, of the concerns even committed Abolitionists had to widening the Union’s recruiting pool, and the structural and racial difficulties black soldiers faced as they fought for freedom and for their rightful place in American society.2 And this can be seen again and again. George S. Patton may have had a much squeakier voice than George C. Scott’s growl, and his best friend was not Omar Bradley but Eisenhower himself, but the classic film of his life does capture many aspects of his human complexity and his genius for war. Desmond Doss’s exploits as an unarmed medic rescuing the wounded from under the noses of the Japanese at Okinawa spanned nearly 3 weeks, not just one night, and they were the culmination of previous heroics on Guam and Leyte; but his only son praised Hacksaw Ridge’s level of accuracy in “adhering to the principle of the story.” And although I know, probably better than many, how Midway from 2019 does end up condensing elements from the story of that battle for time and budget, or exaggerating them for dramatic effect, I also know how so much of the story of that battle still found its way into the movie, in ways that only somebody who has actually studied the historical record could have gotten across.
And thus is the case with Rings of Power. Not every detail is accurate to the many scattered texts that comprise the story of the Second Age. No, Sauron never took on the form of a scruffy rogue from “the Southlands” named Halbrand; but he absolutely did go through a time lasting nearly a thousand years when his yearning for peace, order and freedom clashed with his own sense of shame, his injured pride, his desire for control, and the continued effects of his long domination by Morgoth. No, Celebrimbor was not some elderly gentleman, in fact as Galadriel’s second cousin he should probably have been closer in age to Morfydd Clark3; but in his wistful memories around his grandfather’s hammer in Episode 2, and his fiery intensity in Episode 8, we can fully see the “mad” ambition for beauty and mastery that would make him both the greatest smith of the age and an easy mark for Sauron. No, the Dwarves don’t have, in the text, any rituals such as those shown by Disa’s Plea to the Rocks; but one need only listen to how Gimli of the books speaks with such reverence of the Glittering Caves of Aglarond at Helm’s Deep, and see that Tolkien’s dwarves have a nearly mystical relationship with rock and stone that Disa’s song perfectly illustrates. Arondir may not be a character whom Tolkien actually wrote, and the whole storyline of him being part of a Silvan Elvish “peacekeeping force” keeping an eye on Men living on the far side of the Anduin does have some problems (more on that later). But as many of his fans have called him, he is indeed the “Elfiest Elf who ever Elfed”, and that’s not just from his grace and athleticism in combat or his calm and stoic demeanor; his apology to a tree that he is forced to cut down is perhaps one of the most Tolkienian scenes ever put to screen, and his reverence for Yavanna is truly special even if for legal reasons he can’t say her name. And while the exact chronology of Galadriel’s transition from sword-swinging warrior to grand strategist to angelic guardian is definitely not the same in the show’s timeline as it is in the actual texts of UT, this flawed, striving, but still heroic and inspirational character is truly one that embodies and displays the penitent heroine on a journey that Tolkien wrote about. No longer will you find me grasping at straws to find ways in which, even when it differs from the written text of Tolkien’s work in small ways or just makes stuff up to fill in the gaps, the show is an exact match to the Second Age. I am at peace with no longer needing to. What matters is whether the show is faithful in spirit to Tolkien’s themes and ideals, and to the broad outlines of the Second Age events. And yes, it does.
In some ways, this final conclusion about Rings of Power’s worth is the same as it was back in January, when I wrote my first essay for this blog that served as a review-retrospective. I still very much stand by the main thrust of that essay. But some things have changed, mostly in how I view how the show accomplished its noble work. Remember that jibe about Arondir being part of a “peacekeeping force” for men living in what we would call Mordor? That illustrates a problem that has grown in my mind the more times I’ve watched the show and the longer I’ve studied Tolkien: namely, how in the service of its larger story and themes, some story choices just…don’t work all that well on closer study as they did initially. Perhaps the biggest example of this is the Southlands storyline taken as a whole. The individual parts still hold up superbly; Arondir himself, the tenderness of his relationship with Bronwyn, what exactly Bronwyn represents (an homage to Tolkien's surprisingly progressive views towards race, as we can see in how he writes even about the Easterlings and Haradrim), the depth and complexity of Theo beyond just being a typical troubled teenager, the greyness of Adar, the “humanity” of the orcs which does not detract from their status as a ravenous enemy that needs to be fought with “the utmost severity”…but putting this story in a geographical box labelled “Southlands” just doesn’t work as well as some of the alternatives. Perhaps, in this universe, Numenor could have had its empire that stretched deeper inland at least as far as northern Mordor* and Arondir could have been a Numenorean soldier in this empire; the spice of a “mixed-race” relationship with a woman of Middle-earth would not have been lost, given how by this stage the Numenoreans, especially the King’s Men, were so stuffy about race. Or perhaps the entire story could have been shifted west, perhaps to the lands of Calendardhon that would eventually become Rohan; there Arondir could have been a soldier in the service of King Amdir of Loriand, one of the two Elvish kingdoms east of the mountains that can be shown expanding its influence and holding a line against the east. Instead, we have Silvan Elves swearing fealty to a High King of the Noldor who is many hundreds of miles from them and has a very different system of politics and costume and military organization from them, being a police force in a quasi-imperialistic fashion that even the militaristic Noldor have never practiced.4 I know, I know, the Southlands storyline serves three important functions: we get three wonderful original characters in Arondir, Bronwyn and Adar, who all bring something new to the table; we touch upon some delicate topics like colonialism and imperialism, which even Tolkien did touch upon sometimes; and in the eruption of Mount Doom, involving magic and geology, we have a plausible and visually spectacular backstory for Mordor’s rebirth that also serves story purposes. But the phrase “kill your darlings” comes to mind. Not everything needed to have been thrown into this one storyline. Doing so ends up raising difficult questions that didn’t need to be asked, and probably shouldn’t have been asked, and which only end up detracting from the good elements here. The whole is less than each individual part, to paraphrase Edgar Morin.
However, there are a few areas where time and exposure have caused other elements of the show to actually rise in my esteem. Some of these really shouldn’t come as a surprise; I love Galadriel even more now than I did when I first saw her in action two years ago. But another area that has greatly improved in my estimation is more surprising: the Harfoot storyline. Even if one accepts that Harfoots, along with the other halfling clans of Fallohides and Stoors, do in fact exist, there remains a great deal of resentment at this storyline even existing. There are only 8 episodes in this season, we are dealing with Numenor, the Noldor, Khazad-dum, and the return of Sauron, with Galadriel, Elrond, and the Dunedain; a lot of epic, heavy stuff that deserves to be dealt with. But with so much ground to cover in so little time, spending time with proto-Hobbits, who don’t even appear in the tales until the Wise took notice of them in the Third Age, seemed a waste, and one that ran a risk of cheapening and trivializing the narrative. And it’s true, with only 8 episodes sometimes the Harfoot storyline did end up sucking the air out of other storylines. And not just in the finale, where the initially settlement of the Stranger’s goodness had to clash with Sauron’s reveal; another big instance of this occurred in Episode 3, when our first proper introductions to the glory of Numenor and to the menace of the Orcs had to share time with a Harfoot autumn festival which really could have appeared in either the Pilot or Episode 2, with more efficient writing. But occasionally sloppy execution is not enough to damn the entire storyline. The Harfoots’ presence in this epic saga, in a way, is a reflection of something that Humphrey Carpenter quotes Tolkien himself as saying: “I've always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable spirit of quite small people against impossible odds." And he would write to W.H. Auden, “I myself saw the value of Hobbits, in putting earth under the feet of ‘romance’ and in providing subjects for ‘ennoblement’ and heroes more praiseworthy than the professionals: ‘nolo heroizari’ is of course as good as a start for a hero as ‘nolo episcopari’ for a bishop.” For all the criticisms that have been leveled against the inclusion of the the Harfoot storyline, it does indeed many small but deeply impactful moments of grace. And not just from the levity and humor they bring to the show, especially since Durin and Disa, Celebrimbor’s facial expressions, and Elendil’s dad jokes exist. There’s something else, as can been seen in Nori and her storyline. Here is a small heroine with “something Tookish” inside her, not in the comic-relief and bumbling sense that we see in the movies right until the scene where Pippin pledges himself to Denethor, but in the selfless, conspiratorial and comradely sense that we see first in “A Conspiracy Unmasked” from The Fellowship of the Ring. Nori has a sense of awe at the wide world around her, a desire to engage with it fully and find joy in it, a heart big enough to help others despite the possibility of embarrassment or worse for herself, and a sense of her own place in a wide, grand cosmic plan that she needs to live up to. And in their own ways, the rest of the Harfoot community also are avenues of grace. Largo Brandyfoot, Nori’s dad, is a true model of non-toxic, heroic, servant masculinity, and her stepmother Marigold is as different from a “fairy-tale” one (think Snow White or Cinderella’s) as night is to day. Elder Sadoc Burrows may not have the broadest of visions, but within its confines he is wise, charitable, perceptive and brave. Malva Meadowgrass initially comes across as the most unpleasant halfling since Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, but by Episode 7 she has something approaching a redemption arc quite similar to Lobelia’s. And last but not least, there’s Poppy. While she may not have the same sense of destiny and awareness of the divine drama that Nori has, she is still a true friend in the best traditions of Sam, Eomer, or Beleg Strongbow, with a lot of common sense and courage that may be buried a bit deep, but is all the stronger when it comes out. In the past, I may have spoken in favor of the Harfoots in general and Nori in particular to be contrarian in the face of some of the more “kill-joy” takes about them. Now? Nori is legitimately one of my top six characters in the show, along with Galadriel, Elrond, Elendil, Miriel and Arondir, and I’m genuinely looking forward to her story unfolding as part of the wider Season 2.
Fighting Lee across northern Virginia was not the first time Grant had faced serious obstacles. Two years before, commanding the Army of the Tennessee, Grant had made 10 different attempts to lay siege to the great Confederate fortress of Vicksburg, and failed each time. Writing about this time of stalemate in 1885, Grant would say, “At this time, the North had become very much discouraged. Many strong Union men believed that the war must prove a failure…It was my judgement at the time that to make a backward movement as long as that from Vicksburg to Memphis would be interpreted, by many of those yet full of hope for the preservation of the Union, as a defeat…There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory.” With that in mind, his 11th attempt to cross the Mississippi was a resounding success, the first of a whole string of epic marches and victorious battles in the open field, culminating in the victory at Vicksburg on Independence Day, 1863, perhaps the greatest victory won by any general on either side in the Civil War5. It is for no such decisive victories that Rings of Power’s fans like myself can look forward to; after all, even nearly 24 years after Fellowship of the Ring, there are still people who dismiss Arwen as “elf-Xena” for wielding a sword and for taking Glorfindel’s place. I know that there will always be people who will hate the show, and no amount of disciplined arguments from the actual source material are going to change their minds; in some cases, hate is too financially lucrative for them to give it up. But thankfully, the show is also too lucrative and successful for Amazon to give it up; it still holds the record as Prime’s most successful show worldwide, and was only recently bumped down to second place by Fallout.6 And success cannot only be measured in viewership, or even in awards wins and nominations. We also have to consider things like how the release of new Tolkien books, including a new edition of The Maps of Middle-earth and a collection of all Tolkien’s poetry, has only increased in the couple of years since the show’s release. And we have to consider how, just as was the case with the Peter Jackson films before, the show is directly responsible for introducing people to Tolkien’s big, vast world. A world that is big enough for a five-season epic TV show, and for the people who love it and who might find elements of it even more appealing than from the PJ movies. How many people have found themselves relating to Galadriel’s struggles and trauma, her hopes and dreams, and thus taken up Unfinished Tales and the Letters for the first time? Or been in awe of the majesty of Numenor and thus picked up The Fall of Numenor to learn more? Or gravitated towards Arondir since, unlike Legolas in the movies, he’s more than just a pretty face and some sick athletics? Or found in the characters of RoP a chance to put their own “other minds and hands” to work with fanfic or art? The more people who love Tolkien and engage with his world, the better our own world becomes. And Rings of Power is a big part of that. It certainly is the impetus for this entire Substack. So, I am committed to loving this show, using it as a way to learning and sharing more about Tolkien, and standing up for anyone else who loves it. “Whatever happens, there will be no turning back.” And from what we’ve seen so far, I have the highest of hopes that only the best is ahead of us.
As if to illustrate this point, recently news broke that Tom Bombadil, a mysterious and somewhat confusing character from Fellowship who has never before appeared in any adaptation save the obscure Russian one from 1991, will be appearing in the second season.
The number of black soldiers in Union service would eventually swell to nearly 180,000, and two regiments that contributed to Grant’s final victory over Lee at Appomattox were black ones from General Ord’s Army of the James; that fact has long been a source of pride for the Black community
Part of the problem is that the role was initially filled by a younger actor named William Budge, but for some reason he didn’t work out and so was replaced at somewhat the last minute by Charles Edwards, a revered thespian with a fairly lengthy career behind him.
The closest would be the arrangement they made with the Three Houses of the Edain, where the First Men who came into the West swore fealty to the Elvish kings, marshaled armies to fight under Elvish banners, and sent their sons for training in arms and lore to the Elvish courts; but even in this somewhat feudalistic relationship, the Edain had real autonomy and independence that the men of the Southlands could only have dreamed of.
A day before, George Meade and the Army of the Potomac had finally triumphed over Lee in the bloody three-day Battle of Gettysburg. Together with Grant’s liberation of Vicksburg and a successful Union defense of Helena, it was perhaps the best Independence Day the country had seen up to that point in its young life.
And Fallout probably wouldn’t have even been possible had Rings of Power been a failure. The latter show was so expensive, had it failed Amazon Studios itself would probably have been crippled, and could produce nothing more ambitious than The Boys. But Rings of Power didn’t fail, and Fallout is only the first new show from Amazon that can exist because of it; among other things, we have talk of a Metal Gear show and a Warhammer 40k one.
I appreciate your desire to defend the show and your love for Tolkien's works, but this quote is why the show is ultimately indefensible to me: "But given how important the length of the Second Age is to the idea of how important questions of longevity and immortality are, with all their ramifications for events and character, it does make sense why some people would react so poorly to this part of the Second Age story being changed." I don't think these themes can be left out without destroying the entire integrity of the show because then it just becomes an ill-conceived story written by people who didn't really understand the mythos within The Lord of the Rings.
I wrote an entire piece about the importance of Death and Immortality (and the Machine, and much more) in Tolkien's writings earlier this year: https://deathinthegarden.substack.com/p/the-tales-that-really-matter-part