Absolutely obsessed with that exchange between Adar and Arondir in ep. 6 when the orcs break into the “keep.” Even besides the sheer BDE of Arondir’s “I will consider it” (what an icon), I can’t stop thinking about the fact that by all evidence he was fully going to let Adar kill everyone in that room, Bronwyn included, rather than give up the sword hilt. What a fascinating character beat! I mean, we see characters presented with that same choice all the time, in all kinds of stories: give the bad guy what he wants, or someone you love dies. And every. Single. Goddamn. Time. The hero picks the person they love. It drives me crazy! Because it’s always presented like that was the right thing to do, but it’s not! It’s the trolley problem, right? Do you save one person or ten? Of course you should save ten, even if the one person is the love of your life, because the grief you would feel for their loss doesn’t outweigh the moral imperative to save as many people as you possibly can. But that’s never what the hero does, and someone always suffers for it. But that’s not what happens here: Adar is about to have Bronwyn killed and Arondir doesn’t stop him. He chooses Middle Earth over the woman he loves (and those are the stakes we’re talking about here: we just saw the creation of Mordor for fucks sake. Obviously we’re all glad that Bronwyn survived, but I don’t think anyone would argue that the world wouldn’t be better off if Mount Doom never erupted). I love that that was Arondir’s choice, because it’s so heartbreakingly pragmatic and almost shockingly unselfish. If Arondir had been the only one who knew where that sword hilt was, Bronwyn would be dead and Adar’s plans would have failed because he was expecting the typical hero’s choice of love over everything and everyone else. It never even occurred to him that Arondir might save the world at the expense of someone he loved, but that’s what Arondir would have done. And I fucking love that.