Where is Everybody in Season 3 Frame?

Marielle

Marielle

Well-Known Member
Really, this could be called "Where is Aragorn in Season 3", but this gives us more leeway.

Was reviewing Season 1, hoping to keep me from going into SilmFilm withdrawals, and it got me thinking... I know Corey really wants (and I'm partial to it, too) a teenage Aragorn as the main frame character of Season 3, but that got me thinking:

a) how do we create conflict/make the Feanor's fall plot relavant to him without having him forget/ignore all he learned in Season 1? (Personally, anything that hints of "backpedaling" for the sake of drama that isn't well thought out/explained is a pet peeve.)

b) What is he doing/where is he in all this? Both physically and mentally. We're thinking this is before he learns his true heritage, correct? Or are we planning on having the frame narrative consist entirely of those four or so hours in between him learning his destiny and meeting Arwen? I don't have the appendices right in front of me, but I thought his errantry days came afterwards? Are we planning on fudging that? Giving him minor expeditions with the twins in the wilds around Rivendell?


On that note, where are the twins, mentally/emotionally/spiritually? Corey wants one of them (Elrohir?) to have the potential of falling. Is that going to climax this season, or are we thinking slower burn?

What roles will Gilraen and Elrond play this season?
 
Season 3 Aragorn is teen Aragorn. Season 1 Aragorn is 10-11 years old. Season 5 Aragorn will be 19-20 years old. And so Season 3 Aragorn is 15? or so? It's possible the same actor will be able to play Aragorn in all three Seasons if he happens to get his growth spurts at the right times, but that's not what you were asking ;).

No true Errantry yet. But he can leave Rivendell on 'excursions'. He can meet the Dunedain. He can be trained by Elladan and Elrohir. Glorfindel can play more of a role in his life at this point. It's not that his growth from Season 1 is cancelled, it's that we get to introduce Teen Angst, and realize that he's chafing a bit at growing up in a safe valley when there's a whole world outside. Perhaps he could be a bit repulsed when he sees how his own people live, and need a bit of an education in the value of mortal culture. That would be Gilraen's fears realized.

The difference is that this time, Gilraen and Elrond are working together as a united front to parent Aragorn. That's the growth from Season 1 that 'stuck' - and now the audience knows that Elrond understands very well her grief at losing her husband, as he too has (essentially) lost his wife. The challenge will be to not lead the audience into thinking that Elrond and Gilraen are becoming a couple. They're co-parents and friends, but...that's all.

Elladan is the 'darker' twin, because it's more fun to shout his name. We've begun to hint at that in the Season 2 Frame (he wants to take on Moria just because), but have done nothing with it yet. We should....do something with it in Season 3. The peace after the Battle of Five Armies may be slipping - orcs and trolls may be seen again, that sort of thing. Or perhaps he insists on going further afield to find such foes. Point being....we need to come up with a story for him.
 
MithLuin said:
No true Errantry yet. But he can leave Rivendell on 'excursions'. He can meet the Dunedain. He can be trained by Elladan and Elrohir. Glorfindel can play more of a role in his life at this point. It's not that his growth from Season 1 is cancelled, it's that we get to introduce Teen Angst, and realize that he's chafing a bit at growing up in a safe valley when there's a whole world outside. Perhaps he could be a bit repulsed when he sees how his own people live, and need a bit of an education in the value of mortal culture. That would be Gilraen's fears realized.
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That's an interesting idea, but isn't Season 3 still largely going to be an elf-centric story? I might be wrong here, but I had mentally assigned the tags "Pride and Fall of Feanor" and "Beatdown of the Noldor" to Season 3. If the narrative is mostly about pride, a "here's why you should value mortals/mortality" storyline might not work. We actually could push that a bit further: maybe with the Aegnor/Andreth storyline? Aragorn might very well resent his mortality, because it will limit his time with/possibility of marrying Arwen.

MithLuin said:
The difference is that this time, Gilraen and Elrond are working together as a united front to parent Aragorn. That's the growth from Season 1 that 'stuck' - and now the audience knows that Elrond understands very well her grief at losing her husband, as he too has (essentially) lost his wife. The challenge will be to not lead the audience into thinking that Elrond and Gilraen are becoming a couple. They're co-parents and friends, but...that's all.

Elladan is the 'darker' twin, because it's more fun to shout his name. We've begun to hint at that in the Season 2 Frame (he wants to take on Moria just because), but have done nothing with it yet. We should....do something with it in Season 3. The peace after the Battle of Five Armies may be slipping - orcs and trolls may be seen again, that sort of thing. Or perhaps he insists on going further afield to find such foes. Point being....we need to come up with a story for him.
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It almost seems inevitable that some viewers will ship Gilraen/Elrond, even if we just leave it as is from Season 1. But we'll do our best to make them... weird.

Elladan, right. Maybe we could have him partner with Aragorn as the connection to the frame story: Feanor, after all, is consumed with pride and wrath. So if we have gifted, slightly full-of-himself Aragorn buddying around with a wrathful Elladan... we could play with that.
 
Yeah, it seems like if we're thematically linking the frame to the story, perhaps linking Elladan with Feanor is the best way to get that in there. And then a scenario where Elladan survives a superficially similar situation to the one where Feanor is lost - because Elladan has his brother to save him where Feanor does not.
 
The more I think about that, the more I like it. I mean, there isn't really that much of a journey for Aragorn to go on. he's already in a pretty good place where we left him in S1, and the interesting bits are yet to come in S5. He's around, and things will happen to him, but there's no hook. The twins, though. We've got a setup for them in the S2 frame, and kind of a blank slate for the future (they are mentioned and talked about in several places in LotR but they aren't really "characters" exactly). But they have a choice to make in front of them as well, just as their sister does.
 
Personally, I love the twin sons of Elrond, and find them fascinating characters, so I would be in favor of making the season 3 frame twin-centric. :) It's certainly an idea worth considering. We want to give these guys a story beyond what is glimpsed in LotR. They are going to wind up staying in Rivendell with Celeborn when their father sails to the West. Do they eventually go with Celeborn? Do they stay in Middle Earth and eventually die as mortals? It's...an open-ended question. What I don't want to do is leave the viewers uninterested in their fates.


Also worth pointing out that Fëanor will be dead by episode 4 or so of this Season. We haven't plotted out the Season yet, so it's possible that the Doriath storyline will take up some space and push Fëanor's story back a few episodes. But. He's certainly down and out by the half-way point in the season. We know that Season 3 begins with the Oath of Fëanor, and ends *either* with the rescue of Maedhros by Fingon *or* the declaration of Fingolfin to be King of the Noldor by Maedhros. (I want to vote for the latter as it's a good 'breaking point' and allows us to pick up in Season 4 with the Mereth Aderthad [Feast of Reuniting]...but I realize that is hardly set in stone.) There is a lot to get done in Season 3 (we'll be introducing the dwarves, building Menegroth, crossing the Helcaraxë, bringing the Green Elves to Ossiriand, introducing the orcs, making the Sun and Moon...and that is aside from the Rebellion of the Noldor, Kinslaying, Doom of Mandos stuff at the beginning. Thingol will find out that Finwë is dead, but *not* learn of the death of Olwë yet.)

Finding the central theme that winds through all of this will be difficult, but it's likely to be something along 'the cost of rebellion'. If we're going to have Elrohir save his brother in the end, it would be easy to parallel that with Fingon's rescue of Maedhros. And, we can see Elladan start to go wrong in the beginning with Fëanor, with the death of the youngest twin, with the naïve attempt at betrayal where Maedhros finds out that Morgoth is waaaaaay more committed to deceit than he is..... Having Elladan follow Fëanor and Maedhros' story while Elrohir follows Fingolfin and Fingon's story is probably workable. And then we need some other character in Rivendell for all the Sindar stuff - Elrond or Glorfindel? Gilraen and Estel have to appear, but I don't know what we're doing with them now.



Oh, and as for viewers shipping Elrond and Gilraen, I don't really mind. We probably can't teach them the 'elves don't remarry' lesson loudly enough for them not to jump to that conclusion. I just want to make sure they aren't *anticipating* that development...we can't tease it.
 
Haha, oh, *that* relationship can have all the subtext and underlying tension you like. Celegorm and Aredhel is a what-might-have-been not quite to the level of Finduilas and Túrin or Andreth and Aegnor...but a few steps past the might-have-been that is Caranthir and Haleth or Celegorm and Lúthien ;).

('Half cousins isn't incest' is a point some elvish scholar felt the need to make. The only relationship that could have applied to would have been the Sons of Fëanor with their half-cousins Galadriel and Aredhel, soooooooo........)

But yes, in this project, their relationship is a healthy platonic friendship.
 
Marielle said:
(Personally, anything that hints of "backpedaling" for the sake of drama that isn't well thought out/explained is a pet peeve.)
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Me. Too.

Hi, meet Thor. He's lived for a thousand years and is mostly an entitled jerk with too full an opinion of himself. After a few days slumming it on Earth as a mortal, he learns a very important lesson about valuing others' lives (plus, it's the only way to get his hammer to talk to him again, and without that hammer, life isn't worth living.)

Next film: I'm confused why my brother is angry with me! Also, let me treat him the same way I always did before. That will go over well.
 
I can see a story centered on Aragorn discovering how his own people live as a parallel to the Noldor discovering the life of their Sindar cousins. I think Estel should go through a phase of rebellion against Elrond and Gilraen, foircing them into a kind of parenthood situation they hadn't forseen. Estel could want to leave the lifestyle of the Elves and want to live in the wild, but he wouldn't have the skills so the twins or Glorfindel would have to save him or teach him ranger stuff. He could get in real trouble, be lost or something. (No I don't mean fall into a river and saved by a horse)
 
The only problem I have with this is the lack of central narrative. Is the whole season about seeing how the Dunedain live? Or is it about his rebellion against his parent figures? Or about adventures with Glorfindel and the twins? Remember, we're going to spend about an hour or so in the frame all season, so having a unifying arc is important.
 
The theme would be his rebelling against Gilraen and Elrond. Or rather, the theme would be coming of age, and part of that would be rebelling against them. Maybe rebelling is not the right word, but a reaction against the way he's been treated by Elrond and Gilaren and their presentation of the world. It would be a part of coming of age but also a part of finding out who he is. Perhaps he doesn't like his kin at first, I mean he could meet some humans and feel he doesn't want to identify himself as one because they are dirty or whatever. This could turn into a curiosity and he begins to want to find out more about them. There could be an inner conflict which leads to him running away and getting lost.
I think this could become a nice parallel to both the kinslaying, the exile and the return to Middle-earth.
 
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Doesn't match my head-cannon for young Estel, but that is very likely a relic of 15 year-old Mike back-casting himself as Estel 25, no wait 27 years ago.

I always saw Estel and then Aragorn as someone who was very aware of the expectations around him and feeling... not so much pressure as a genuine desire to meet those expectations. Honestly striving to do his very best all the time, already kind of feeling like an adult, without a lot of the... rebellion... that can make some teens stick out so dramatically. There are plenty of teens making a big show about their rebelliousness (and who turn out to be perfectly wonderful adults), but there are also plenty of teens who just go about their business with quiet determination.

Makes for a bit of dull TV, though, hence my delight at the prospect of shifting a lot of the focus to the brothers.
 
Haakon said:
The theme would be his rebelling against Gilraen and Elrond. Or rather, the theme would be coming of age, and part of that would be rebelling against them. Maybe rebelling is not the right word, but a reaction against the way he's been treated by Elrond and Gilaren and their presentation of the world. It would be a part of coming of age but also a part of finding out who he is. Perhaps he doesn't like his kin at first, I mean he could meet some humans and feel he doesn't want to identify himself as one because they are dirty or whatever. This could turn into a curiosity and he begins to want to find out more about them. There could be an inner conflict which leads to him running away and getting lost.
I think this could become a nice parallel to both the kinslaying, the exile and the return to Middle-earth.
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I don't think we want to do a full, Harry Potter-esque, teen ANGST and rebellion storyline, but "coming of age" does feel like an obvious focus. We also have the possibility of playing up "the world is a lot bigger/darker" than you think with Estel. He's been raised in safety in the beautiful but small realm of Rivendell, after all, and that could tie back with Feanor and the Noldor, as 1) F. has no idea how much he's screwed himself by challenging Morgoth, who's a lot bigger and badder than he thought 2) the Noldor are returning to Middle Earth from the "narrow place" of Valinor and 3) they all really, really underestimate how sneaky, cruel, and tough the Enemy is.

But I like the idea of giving the twins time to shine, especially as it seems we'll be weaving them into the Third Age story from now on.
 
Teenage angst wouldn't be necessary and probably awful; personally I don't care much for the Harry Potter movies' long scenes with silences and faces expressing pain while nothing really happens (sorry HP lovers)... But we should take the opportunity to show that he's a human and how that is different from being an elf. And even if rebelling teenagers is a cliche it happens and it is something that elves could feel is a bit of a mystery.
 
I guess another part of why I resist that rebellion is over-reaction to the PJ movies - I want my Aragorn to have been fully on-board with his destiny from the moment he learns of it, and to have already been unhesitatingly heading in that direction even before learning his identity.

It's the difference between Tuor and Turin. The former fully accepts what destiny has in store from him right from the start, the latter struggles against it incessantly. I don't want Aragorn to shift from Turin to Tuor - I want him to be Tuor from the start.
 
amysrevenge said:
I guess another part of why I resist that rebellion is over-reaction to the PJ movies - I want my Aragorn to have been fully on-board with his destiny from the moment he learns of it, and to have already been unhesitatingly heading in that direction even before learning his identity.

It's the difference between Tuor and Turin. The former fully accepts what destiny has in store from him right from the start, the latter struggles against it incessantly. I don't want Aragorn to shift from Turin to Tuor - I want him to be Tuor from the start.
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I don't disagree, but remember that in this season Aragorn -- Estel -- doesn't know he has a destiny. Sure, he probably suspects that there's something about him (there are no other human fosterlings in Rivendell, after all), but he doesn't know what. And Ulmo does (gently) rebuke Tuor for tarrying overlong before reaching the Sea. So while I don't want all his dialogue to be in CAPSLOCKS or him to just want to be a stoner/musician/hobo/whatever, some feelings of uncertainty or displacement might not be out of place.
 
amysrevenge said:
I guess another part of why I resist that rebellion is over-reaction to the PJ movies - I want my Aragorn to have been fully on-board with his destiny from the moment he learns of it, and to have already been unhesitatingly heading in that direction even before learning his identity.

It's the difference between Tuor and Turin. The former fully accepts what destiny has in store from him right from the start, the latter struggles against it incessantly. I don't want Aragorn to shift from Turin to Tuor - I want him to be Tuor from the start.
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I get that. But a rebellion can take many forms and contain different things. This would be a reaction against his being kept in Rivendell, and containing a sense of direction towards being a central part of the human society.
 
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