Forbes Review of Rings of Power S2E8: "A Truly Dreadful Season Finale"

Erik Kain, the critic, started off way back in season one of the show with "Hey guys, it's not so bad, give it a chance" and "I enjoyed this episode, it should get better from now on".

Then a few episodes in, he said "yeah, the writing is bad, they're screwing it up" and he's been critical ever since. So I respect that because he can't be accused of being a hater or a racist or sexist or the rest of the comebacks that the show put out about critical reception. And it's a lot better than the media outlets which were all "oh this show is so great" when it ran, then when season one finished the same outlets came out with "yeah it was rubbish".

His Youtube channel is fun because he's given up on the show now and is One Of Us Haters 😁 His point is "no, it's not because of the Strong Women or the Diversity that people don't like the show, it's that (a) it's not faithful to the source material whatever the showrunners may say and (b) it's just badly written, even as a generic TV fantasy show".

Personally, I think the last episode was the best of the season, the trouble is that they should have let the characters be like this all along and they gave themselves so much to do, they had to cram about seven storylines in to tie up loose ends so everything got about five minutes each. At least they finally stopped with the "Oh is the Stranger Gandalf or not?" shit, yes he's Gandalf, everyone watching figured this out the minute he showed up.