There are a few quotes I’ve read I can’t find at the moment, but they basically outline that the writing was done with story accuracy on the back burner. They’re doing things based on money. For example, they didn’t want to hold out on bringing in some of the known characters till the 3rd season even though that makes the most sense for the era the story takes place in. And they wanted their human characters to stick around for the entirety of the series, even though it takes place over hundreds of years. There are some things you have to do within a particular universe. Humans don’t live long. Elves do. And Tolkien’s universe, Elves are the main characters before the Third Age. In the Second Age, where this story takes place, men, mostly Numenoreans, don’t emerge as a powerful ally till later to fight against Sauron. Even if you did a little non-linear storytelling, human characters, again, wouldn’t really show up till halfway through. And again Amazon didn’t like that, so they’re just going to change it. It speaks to how corporate and safe this project is and how little care is being taken with the writing being faithful to Tolkien