Does Sauron psychologically need the One Ring or is it just nice for him to have? Does he just view it as a useful tool or does he spend all his time trying to recover it at the expense of other productive tasks?
I'm not super familiar with the books as I always had trouble focusing on long strings of text, so this may be a relatively straight forward question. I was watching the recent Nerd of the Rings video and he mentioned that when Isildur loses the Ring he initially is unhappy/wants it back, but that even before he emerges from the river that feeling has already washed over him and he didn't desire it. To my knowledge no other character does this. Gollum certainly doesn't, and I don't think Frodo or Bilbo do (at least before its destruction). I'm not really sure about Sam to be honest, and I think it is clear that the rules don't apply to Bombadil. In the films I know that each Bilbo and Frodo seem to have a moment where they want it back, although I'm not sure if those scenes are true to the books or not. The only difference I can think of between Isildur and the others is that he held it for much less longer. Is that the reason why, is there another reason, or do other characters show the same behaviour?
So we been hearing Amazon(may)compress the timeline so it will be easier for casual audience to follow the show. Does this mean Ciryatur will merge into Isildur and he will be leading the Numenorean army? I don't mind the change since Ciryatur was a very minor character from the books. We seen this done before, for example from GOT where lots of charcters merge into one.
Does this mean they're going to gloss over most of the second age? The creation of the rings, the war with the elves, and the years of history of Numenor? My only thought on why is so they can keep the same cast throughout. Which is understandable, but still bums me out.
Would either Elrond, Galadriel, or Círdan have become corrupted and done horrible deeds, as Galadriel and Gandalf are afraid of in LOTR? Would they have refused to take the One Ring? I believe he was traveling to them to do that when he was ambushed and killed.
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It's generally accepted that Isildur failing to destroy the Ring when urged to by Elrond is a massive missed opportunity.
However, it's interesting to consider what would have happened if he had destroyed the Ring. We see that, when the Ring finally is destroyed, Mount Doom erupts, and Frodo and Sam are only saved at the last moment by the intervention of the eagles.
So if Isildur had destroyed the Ring, unless he somehow had the foresight to send everyone away first, the implications could have been disastrous, with Isildur, his sons, potentially Meneldil, Elrond, Círdan, and many other human and elven nobles killed in the eruption.
So Sauron would have been defeated, but the implications for humans and elves of losing so many of their leaders could have been grim.
Elrond knew about the importance of the ring and why it needed to be destroyed. Why didn't he immediately go on a search and recovery expedition upon learning of Isildur's fate, especially since Isildur was coming to Rivendell to give the ring to Elrond anyways?
If you're like me, you might be concerned that we wont be spending much time in the early Second Age with the announcements that Isildur and Elendil are in the first season, as they were around only until the very end of the Second Age.
Thus, it could be argued that we won't see periods when Dwarf/Elf relationships were at their best, Celebrimbor and Eregion, pre-corruption Numenor, or the initial rise of Sauron.
But I'm not so sure. I think it might be possible that the Second Age might be squished substantially, merging characters from the past with characters from the future, relatively speaking. It's entirely possible that in this telling of the Second Age Elendil and Isildur are around when Sauron and Celebrimbor start fashioning the Rings of Power. We could have the War of the Elves and Sauron, and instead of a 2000 year cold war between the Free Peoples and Sauron it's a few decades.
There's precedent for this, albeit on a much smaller scale. In the original Lord of the Rings trilogy movie, Sauron declared himself openly during Fellowship of the Ring and Barad-dur was still under construction, whereas those events happened decades prior. Also, and I'm not sure if this is canon or if the game developers needed to consult the Tolkien estate, but in the video game Shadow of War, Minas Ithil was still very much in Gondor's control after the events of the Hobbit, whereas in the books the city becomes Minas Morgul a thousand years prior.
Thus, if we're going to assume that the show is going to follow characters we already know from the Second Age, then I think the showrunners arguing for condensing the gaps between events in the Second Age to the Tolkien estate is perfectly fine. Nothing is really lost...at least in my opinion.
I was super excited to see Annatar-Celebrimbor relationship, forging of rings, and downfall of Eregion!
Now when it is confirmed that the show will feature Isildur as the main character, does it mean we might skip all of this that I mentioned above? As I remember from the books, Isildur appears AFTER Sauron is captured and brought to Numenor by Ar-Pharazon
I would have liked to see the timeline before that, but if Amazon were to go for whole history since Elros, it would have been a lot of fan-fiction. It's not so detailed like the Third Age. So if they are going to use flashbacks for those events in early 2nd age, I would be fine with that. I'm one of those who wants a connection to the Jacksonverse and what better way is to have a younger Isildur and his father Elendil in their last years of the island of Numenor. We'll still get to see Numenorean politics at play and Annatar deceiving them. And the the mother of all battles in the second age: The War of the Last Alliance. That is something I really want to see on screen.
Still, I hope we get to see some lengthy flashbacks of forging of the rings, War of Sauron and the Elves and other stuff.
Elrond knew about the importance of the ring and why it needed to be destroyed. Why didn't he immediately go on a search and recovery expedition upon learning of Isildur's fate, especially since Isildur was coming to Rivendell to give the ring to Elrond anyways?
Does Sauron psychologically need the One Ring or is it just nice for him to have? Does he just view it as a useful tool or does he spend all his time trying to recover it at the expense of other productive tasks?
