I know, I know, I should hold my horses and wait for you two to catch up; but after the dynamite climax of "Mount Doom," I was just giddy with excitement to return to the Front to formally witness the fall of Sauron and defeat of Mordor up close and personal! So was it worth it to barrel ahead like this?
Sure. I guess.
Probably anything and everything was going to feel like a come-down after "Mount Doom"; nevertheless, after all of this struggle and set-backs and existential threats, the end of the War of the Ring can't help but feel rather perfunctory. It just sorta...ends. Frodo and Sam are promptly picked up by Gandalf and the Eagles. Sauron rises as a great shadow and promptly disperses to the winds--as opaque and incomprehensible as he ever was--as does the massive Mordor military alliance. The Orcs do not carry forth under new leadership, or break apart into a series of Rump States or guerilla fighters or roaming militias, they just simply...scatter. (Where to? Tolkien appears as uninterested in saying as he is in discussing Sauron now that he's dead).
There's an off-hand reference to the forces of Man entering into Mordor to destroy some fortresses, but no reports of armed resistance from the denizens therein, nor of mass-surrender, nor of all those countless slaves being liberated. Rarely has such a massive war had such a clean and decisive finale, with so little messy fall-out.
Don't get me wrong, if any set of characters deserved a completely happy ending, it's these folks. But it's almost a little too neat; Frodo's missing finger is the absolute extent of their losses, they even get their clothes and gifts from Galadriel back--and it might as well have been with a bow on top. I know we still have that delightful little detour, "The Scouring of the Shire," to look forward to, but at the moment all I really see coming is the longest denouement ever, and there's not really a whole of lot of dramatic tension therein.
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