I’m still enjoying the series. My complaints are still primarily about personal preference with the style of storytelling (too many parallel plot threads). There are lots of things to nitpick, but I also think that very few matter in the grand scheme of the events being depicted. That said, I think that Vladius raises some excellent ideas about different ways that this project could have been approached and is one of the more fully fledged pushbacks I’ve seen.

I’m absolutely loving the amount of breakdowns available each week. The Tolkien Professor’s “Rings and Realms” show on YouTube in particular makes me feel like I’m back in college as an English major studying some of my favorite texts again.

I’d continue to rate it more highly than The Hobbit trilogy but lower than the LOTR trilogy. I’m most interested in seeing what fan-edit versions we get at the end of this season and five years from now, also what a new Fellowship prologue might look like incorporating footage from this series’ portrayal of the forging of the rings and the last alliance.