It‘s really kind of dumb to have a major Westeros noble family on the show be black in the first place.
But the writing isn’t bad and they don’t draw any attention to it.
Contrast with Rings of Power, where they feature prominently a black elf warrior, a black dwarven queen (they have lived under mountains mostly for thousands of years, what the fuck they need much melanin for?), and a black proto-Hobbit, despite it being thousands of years too early. They also feature a thing that is supposed to be Galadriel but isn’t that character in the slightest and Gandalf is here despite it being thousands of years too early…
And let’s get back to that black elf. In the first scene he is in, some easterling yokel at a bar calls him a racial slur and tells him to let go of the past. Now, the easterlings are actually one of the cultures where you might find someone with darker skin, but no, this guy is super pale and the elf is black. This is not subtle. This is just trash writing and all they care about is modern politics, not the setting, not the lore.
There is no evidence of anti-elven racism being a thing in Tolkien, they are clearly superior and everyone knows it, so resentment would make sense, but racial slurs? If you really want these undertones, have the elf be the racist to the easterling, unfairly, because they fought against easterlings hundreds of years prior. Have the vague-ethnicity easterling be black even if you want.
But no, that would be too lore-accurate. Can’t have that.
okmagazine.com
