Rhûn

Yeah,

but Haradrim maybe, but I suppose it's interesting to point out that, you know, Gandalf seems to be battling a Mummikul or an Oliphant out in Rune.

So maybe they're just taking Rune and making that Harad.

So the Haradrim are going to be the Runeans.

I don't know what the people from Rune are called.

yeah maybe maybe they're just saying okay forget harrod we just say harrod and rune they're both places there where there's evil men so we just kind of combine them and make it one place so i don't know i'm just speculating because yeah what would uh an olifant be doing out in in rune and then to show that there's gonna be loads more of the season so maybe that's potentially something as well that might be happening they might just say okay look there's too many locations for the casual fan to know so we'll just say this is the place where the evil men who follow Sauron they're coming from there but actually yeah I just kind of took it for granted that there were orcs but yeah you could be right there could be there could be Haradrim or people from Rune or whatever

yeah i'm not really sure i tried to blow that image up and zoom in but it's kind of hard to see um i know we get a shot of orcs close up but that's i i don't i don't know if that's taken from the same scene they might do like oh like just directly afterwards yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah it is nice to

get those close up shots to see just the prosthetics it's not just a wide establishing shot and then nothing else we do get those kind of close ups so yeah but I know what you're saying maybe that shot is actually a completely different moment in the season so I think there's a few of those in this trailer as well where they try and trick you

Yeah.

Rhun explains that they are...

These murder twins are distant cousins of his, and that he, and Flynn, and Declan had called them that since their, you know, famous trip to Avellen that led to Rhun being punished by being sent to the Cave of Princes, inadvertently sending him to find the Star Sword there-

Ah

... claiming this title of Starborn at the time away from Cormac, and Rhun having his ordeal all at once.

So that was when they were introduced to these murder twins.

They were there with Cormac, and they were real bastards apparently.

He's the beans layer.

Um, so that was kind of intentional.

Anyways, they're in Rune, but they're lost until Poppy surprises them and says she's joining the adventure and has discovered the walking song of the Harfoots.

It's really a guide map for this trail.

Despite the good news, the group is plagued by the strangers' ominous dreams of a staff and skull-masked scouts watching from afar.

Yeah, they do a lot with it this season, which I think is a lot of fun.

So, yeah.

Well, our last section here for this episode is Nori, Poppy, and the stranger are still being tracked by the mystics and their mysterious scouts, whom we learn work for a mysterious magic user further into Rune who seeks to capture the stranger.

To evade the threat, our trio takes a risky trail through the desert and nearly dies of thirst.

He left his wife with one son, who, on reaching manhood, estranged himself from his mother by an undesirable marriage.

Indeed, it was immediately after this latter event that Christian quitted her post at court, retiring to Rhun, where she lived until the possession of Ardguys, which she inherited a few months later, gave her a home of her own.

Different stories were afloat concerning her departure.

Many people said that she had gambled away the greater part of her small fortune and was forced to retrench in some quiet place.

But the believers in this last theory were laughed to scorn, not because the world saw anything strange in the Chevalier's alleged infatuation, but because it was quite sure that Christian Flemington would have acted very differently in the circumstances.

But no one could be certain of the truth.

The one certain thing was that she was gone and that since her retreat to Rhun, she had openly professed Whig sympathies.

She'd been settled at Ardguys, where she kept her political leanings strictly to herself, for some little time when news came that smallpox had carried off her son and his undesirable wife, and as a consequence, their little boy was sent home to the care of his Whig grandmother, much against the will of those Jacobites at the court of Saint-Germain who were still interested in the family.

So we're just adding a few more bullet points into what happens plot-wise, character-wise in that section.

So it's not doubling the amount of time we're doing analysis on Rune.

It's just adding a few more points for us to consider in that section.

So mentally, I'm like, okay, that makes sense.

But in the appendices, we also learn that the Easterlings weren't ever truly peaceful in Aragorn's time, as it says this, For though Sauron had passed, the hatreds and evils that he bred had not died, and the king of the west had many enemies to subdue before the white tree could grow in peace.

And wherever King Elessar went with war, King Eomer went with him, and beyond the Sea of Rhun and on the far fields of the south, the thunder of the cavalry of the Mark was heard.

But we do have one more ally of Sauron to talk about before we can finish talking about his allies, the Easterlings, and that's the Variags of Khand.

Now, Khand was southeast of Mordor, and it sort of served as a buffer zone between the Easterlings in Rhun and the Haradrim in the south.

Now, we only get brief mentions of them in Lord of the Rings, just sort of tacked onto the lists of Sauron's forces, and we're given very few other details.

In the Hammond and Scull Reader's Companion to Lord of the Rings, they note that Variag was used in some old manuscripts to refer to the Varangians, a sort of Russo-Viking peoples in the 9th and 10th century that subsequently became a mercenary guard for the Byzantine emperor, and some speculate that Tolkien meant to invoke that same mercenary idea with the Variags.

Where will he be going?

There is another wizard in Rune, so it'll be interesting to see how they get on together.

But no, it'll be really interesting to see where Gandalf's journey takes him this season.

We've got this impression that he has developed as a wizard.

about you, Rosie? What's your vibe? Well, I think, like you say, they've set up this conflict with the Dark Wizard at the end of season one.

So I'm assuming he will be continuing to either try and defeat him or maybe win him over.

as it sounds like from some of the interviews that Gandalf has taken more of a softly softly approach so it'll be interesting to see how he approaches that and also I find it interesting that in the marketing they've had Gandalf and Sauron posted up together they've put Charlie Vickers and Daniel Wayman together and I think they have been positioning them as rivals for the entire series so far I kind of want them to have a bit of a face-off So I don't know if that's maybe Sauron goes to Rune because we know he's going to want some armies and he'll be heading there.

There'll be some ring bearers from that area.