So, still a lot to think about from today's session as far as world-building goes, but a few comments.
We have essentially been given the green light to develop these roles within elven society and think of ways to incorporate them into our depiction of elves in the show.
The Hosts broke character roles down into: major roles, minor roles, repeat background faces, and extras.
Extras are people who are there on the screen, but the audience does not know their names, does not care about their fates, and usually doesn't even notice them. They fill out a crowd. They can be memorable, and they are certainly useful for teaching the audience about a culture. Think about all of the hobbits we meet in the beginning of
Fellowship of the Ring. Obviously, Frodo and Bilbo are main characters, and we learn Sam, Merry and Pippin's names. We even learn that Sam likes Rosie Cotton. But the rest of the hobbits in Hobbiton or at the party or the Green Dragon? They are there to show us who hobbits
are. It's not important that we know the names of the people polishing the pumpkin or herding the pig or sweeping their step. But it was important to show us that hobbits are farmers who like food and parties and don't get out much. Those scenes introduce hobbits to the audience, and some of those characters are memorable. But 'troop of hobbit children' is just...background color. Even if they have lines and say 'fireworks, Gandalf!' and appear again in the party scene, it's safe to label them as extras.
Figwit was originally an extra in the Council of Elrond. His name is an acronym for 'Frodo is great....who is
that!?' which was what happened when some fans noticed that he was a handsome elf. He's barely on screen at all and has no lines; he's just filling out the elvish contingent at the council. But the filmmakers realized he was well received, and brought him back for
Return of the King. He's the elf who reacts in surprise when Arwen turns back from the journey to the Havens. He has a line there ('My lady?'), but he's really still just an extra.
For another memorable extra, consider the beacon-lighters in
Return of the King. Everyone noticed them living in that hut on a remote mountain-top, but they only appeared in that one scene and had no lines. But because of them, we know that 'beacon-keeper' is a job one can have in Gondor.
That's one place where it's important to talk about roles - we're going to show roles in the background. I know we have suggested anywhere from 5% to as much as 30% of the elven military forces would be made up of women. Corey Olsen is fine with 25%. So, whenever we show armies, we're going to show elf women in military gear. We are going to incorporate the role of besan into this project, so whenever there are travellers leaving on a journey, they can be gifted lembas by the local besan. Healers/Scholars are going to have an active role in society (no ivory tower academics), but we will show them learning/studying/teaching (and maybe even writing books). And of course the healers will provide medical care. Crafters gonna craft. In other words....we have things for our non-fighters to be doing (in addition to the obvious farming/animal husbandry). They might do these things largely in the background, or without being a character in their own right ('just' the besan or the healer in the scene).
But there are also 'repeat background faces'. These characters don't have quite enough personality to be considered minor characters, but they are a step up from extras. They might have a line or two. They might be in enough scenes that the audience gets used to having them around and knows their role. Or they just get enough camera time to be memorable instead of just there.
Like this guy:
He's the one who shouts 'Proudfeet!' at the party; but I'd say his role in this scene of smiling at the fireworks and then dropping the smile for his wife is what audiences saw and enjoyed and remembered. He also shakes his head at the returning hobbits in
Return of the King. Audiences are meant to know and remember him, but he's not even a minor character. This is where we add the nuance of any roles we have. If we want to make the point that healers can't take life, and so can't hunt or join a fight...then we would do it with one of these characters being barred from an activity when a general call-to-arms goes out. Etc.
The other Ringwraiths who are not the Witch-king are also this. They never have lines, and the audience knows next to nothing about them....except that there's more than one Nazgul, so they are filling out the numbers. But they aren't just in the background - they are playing an important role in multiple scenes. We might do this with Círdan's sailors or Finrod and Beren's companions. When our main characters travel from place to place and bring an entourage, the entourage will either be extras, or some recognizable repeat faces. They will likely have lines and maybe even names, but the audience will know them as 'people travelling with x'. Since these people will be present in multiple scenes over the course of a season (or even stretched over multiple seasons), it's possible to give them personalities. Nothing overly developed, but the audience can start anticipating that this one is always grumpy and has nothing positive to say, whereas that one is, I dunno, always interrupting others. Or something. In other words, there's more to them than just background set-dressing that is just there....but we can't expect the audience to learn their names or know who their families are or care if something bad happens to them. 'Lightly drawn characters' might be another way of saying repeat background faces. They are there, and they fill a role, but it is a very minor one and they probably aren't directly involved in the main plot in any way.
Which brings us to...minor characters. Minor characters are different between TV shows and movies, I think. In a movie, a main character is only a main character if they are a main character throughout. In a TV show, you can have someone be the main character of a single episode, but not appear in very many other episodes or be important to the main plot.
Game of Thrones may have a large, sprawling cast, but even so, there are only 6 characters who appear in at least 50 of the 73 episodes to date (Tyrion, Cersei, Danerys, Jon, Sansa, and Arya), and a total of 37 characters who appear in 20 or more episodes. I would not label a character as 'minor' simply because they only appear in 8 episodes (Ned Stark, for instance), but his importance is limited to season 1. Many long-running shows will have a single episode told from the point of view of a more minor character, so that the 'main characters' are minor characters
in that episode. Like that episode of
Buffy where the whole world revolves around the one kid who wanted to be important. In that episode (which is, admittedly, an alternate reality), Jonathan is the main character. In the other 20 episodes in which he appears, he is a minor character/sidekick type. It would be easy to label Sam Finn (Riley's wife) as a minor character, as she only appears in one episode. And yet, she is the key plot point of that episode - Riley Finn has moved on, found a new partner, and gotten married. The episode is all about Buffy seeing Finn again and meeting her. So, on the show overall, she's a minor character - it would basically be a trivia question to ask
Buffy fans what Riley's wife's name is. And yet, in that one episode, she's a major character of the episode. Dawn is a main character on the show, but she's only introduced 3 seasons into it.
Back to our show...
So, with this understanding - minor characters can either appear in multiple episodes as small roles, OR, they could play a very important role, but for only one-two episodes. Someone who is important in multiple episodes is a main character, even if they do die off eventually. Even Fëanor only appears for one full season of the show, after all.
In Season 2, Nurwen and Miriel's sister Tatië were minor characters at Cuiviénen. They played important roles in 2 episodes, and then they were gone from the show. We will have opportunities for minor characters like that in each society that we have, but we might not revisit them very often. This 'revisiting our immortal cast in future episodes' issue is what makes the Hosts nervous about introducing new minor characters. They want to know how much they are expected to invest in these characters, and then to ask whether or not the audience should expect to see them again. Killing a character removes them from the story neatly, as does leaving them behind. We would have to come up with other ways to say goodbye to our minor characters if we don't want to kill them.
Soooo....I think we should consider that before introducing minor characters, but if they have a niche/role and don't have to just hang around in the background of a lot of scenes, we'd have a use for them. One way to go about this would be to introduce repeat background faces, so we have someone who is there...and then when we get to an episode where we are trying to figure out who can do something, ta-da, upgrade to minor character.
Main characters are the ones driving the plot of the Silmarillion forward, and there's not really much to discuss there. Lúthien is a central character in Season 6, and a consistent character in Seasons 3-5. There was never any question of whether or not to include her in this show, obviously! We do need to flesh her out between her introduction and Beren's appearance, but so far we seem to be developing her character.
In other words, I think we have carte-blanche to think up as many repeat background faces as we like, to tell the audience more about how elven society works. But if we want to introduce more minor characters into the show....we'll have to consider the repercussions.
One suggestion that was offered to us was that if we wanted to steal a role from a canon character and give it to someone else, that canon character could then be killed off instead.