Rangz Season 2 is Really Looking Promising
They’ve gone into reshoots, when it was already in the can. Apparently, Amazon did audience testing this time.
The first season showrunners have been fired without being “fired,” they are now Consulting Producers. This has all the hallmarks of a Disney Marvel production. The difference being Amazon can afford to throw away hundreds of millions on a project no one will like.
I understand where it’s coming from. These people are simply incapable of admitting an error due to the size of the error. If they can turn it around, then its all good but the problem is they wouldn’t have gotten into this quicksand if they were able to tell good from bad in the first place.
There is absolutely no market whatsoever for the genre of Current Year Fantasy. There are plenty of people that will shill for it but nobody actually wants to see it. The closest thing to a success was Bridgerton.
Since the OG showrunners have been not-shitcanned, it’s possible that Amazon lost faith in its alleged AI scripted writer and genuinely fired whosever idea that really was.
Regardless, Amazon is now in the position of having to salvage the unsalvageable.
It makes for an interesting intellectual exercise. How do you fix Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power?
Saying they were going to be much more true to the lore was utterly pointless. The Tolkien fans were pretty leery about this thing from the start. The Peter Jackson fans were more open-minded. However, after season 1, the Tolkien fans are simply not coming back, the lore wasn’t just broken it was shattered like glass snow flake. The lore is irretrievably gone, vanished in a puff of incompetence and an underbaked AI. Even the Jackson fans hated it.
You can’t get back the Tolkien fans, it’s just not going to happen. Which means that you have to work with the Tolkien pastiche you already have.
That’s honestly a good thing in this case. It gives you a lot more latitude if there is no hope of having this thing setup for Peter Jackson trilogy to start. You’ve got freedom of attitude. It means you can start killing characters that need to die now. Where to start?
The biggest hurdle is the multi-culti cast. You can clip out one or two of them but if you kill all of them it will cause a stink. Dissa, honestly isn’t the worst thing in the cast, she was going all lady MacBeth in the last episode so run with that. She murders the old dwarf king to put her husband on the throne. Keeping him there proves to be too much a challenge to do by herself so she needs Sauron’s help to maintain her rule. Which he will happily do… In exchange for Mithril, also she and Durin must always wear their rings, always.
Tar-Míriel is a much bigger problem, but is easily dealt with and can be done so without killing her. She was blinded in the final episode. Just come up with some bullshit legality that declares the monarch of Numenor must be perfect in body to take the throne. The first half of the season is her trying to cover up her blindness until the coronation. When its exposed, she is sent in exile while the rest of the season is spent finding out who shall sit on the throne. The Dollar Store version of Ar-Pharazon we were stuck with is obviously more of a Bismarck type, far happier ruling than reigning. Unlikely to lead an invasion of Valinor.
However Miriel wants her throne back and is willing to accept a ring from Sauron, which he claims will restore her sight. It actually makes her see things as they truly are, she loses all hope in the world and becomes the leader of the Nazgûl. GRRL POWER!!!
The Filthy Gully dwarves are revealed as another project of Melkor’s. He made them to be a cruel mockery of the second children of Eru Ilúvatar. They were once men but were twisted into a race of abhorrent, evil homunculi meant to be a repulsive reflection of Man. When this is finally revealed, Hobo-Galdalf accepts the reason he was sent to Middle Earth and kills all of Harfoots.
Celebrimbor finally confesses his love to Elrond who is like totally grossed out by the idea. I mean like barf. The heart broken artificer is tricked by the new Phone-Scam Sauron into wearing a ring so he wouldn’t feel anything anymore. Sauron kept his word as he always does and Celebrimbor’s hair turns white as he skin becomes jet black, the drow have come to Middle Earth.
Eärendil and Elwing return to Earth and tell their son Elrond that he must stop trying to come up with ways to defy the will of Eru, the first children of Illuvatar’s time on Middle Earth is over and that he, Elrond has been charged to lead the Elves back to Valinor.
Middle Earth goes black as the Last Fruit of Laurelin is taken back to Valinor. The only light left in all the world is from the tree Nimloth. The armies of Mordor sweep across the land. Elfagorn, his not-wife and not-son are killed along with Isildor and his friends. Ar-Parazon’s son and his son’s girlfriend along with any of the other characters I hated and forgot about.
Ar-Pharazon in desperation finds a king for Numinor, one who can lay waste to the Orc’s fleet with ease. One’s whose armor is like tenfold shields, his teeth are swords, his claws spears, the shock of his tail a thunderbolt, his wings a hurricane, and his breath death!
Why not? Even in the real canon he’d still be alive at that time.
At the start of the season before all this happens, Galadriel gets word that her husband Celeborn lives but is being held in the ruins of Angband (Melkor’s old citadel). She has adventures getting there but alas, Celeborn really is dead, it was a trap by Sauron to capture her. Her character arc during this season is about all of the horrible tortures Sauron puts her through to break her will. He’s finished the One Ring and he is trying to get her to put the ring Nenya on her own finger, freely of her own will without let or hindrance. In the climax of the season Sauron finally points out she has always been his, he recounts all of her actions from Season one showing how each and every single one of them were demonstrably evil. However, in the end…
It totally works. She places Nenya on her finger having accepted the monster she has become. Galadriel is willingly enslaved to Sauron mind, soul and body. She marries him and in the final shot of the season, a heavily pregnant Queen Galadriel is sitting on her throne next to him, a crown of black iron on her brow, beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love her and despair!
Now that I think of it, if you do all that the Tolkien fans might show up for that after all.
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