If I had written this post a week ago, I would have said that RoP was a vast improvement over the first season, provided you accept that it's very much not Tolkien - it's what you might come up with if the only exposure you'd had to "The Lord of the Rings" was from watching the Peter Jackson movies.
Unfortunately, the final three episodes represent a spectacular collapse in quality the like of which I don't think I've ever seen. Fundamentally, I think it's trying really hard to be good, but just doesn't know how.
There are two fundamental problems I can see.
The first is that there are too many characters and too much space, and too little time. This means that some key character disappear for several episodes at a time, and many others get only a handful of minutes of screentime. There's an awful lot of "who's that guy again?"... followed by an awful lot of "you know what, I don't care."
The other is specific to the final episode, which is basically made up of recycled material from older, better sources. We have Aragorn being given Anduril, being re-enacted shot by shot and pose by pose. We have Luke Skywalker giving a little smile before jumping to near-certain doom. Not to mention the Rebel Alliance rallying at the end to look forward to a better future. And there's a lot of sound and fury, and a lot of peril... being endured by characters who we know can't die, or even be seriously injured. (Though, actually, we know that elves sometimes return from the Undying Lands, so maybe they actually should have pulled the trigger. Then again, then we'd just get Galadriel the White.)
Long story short, it's just a mess. And, I'm afraid, it's a mess I'm going to watch no longer. If you haven't started, I'd recommend avoiding.
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