Lord of the Rings Series -- Amazon

I appreciate the analysis but think you are over-thinking it with regard to a show that is very much under-thinking it.

Face it - he's Gandalf. He should not be. But he is. Because Amazon does not give a crap.
It's fanfiction. It's 50 Shades of Sauron. If you want to call the thing you're doing an 'adaptation', you can't directly contradict the established source. Something RoP did in the first episode and continues to do all over the place.
It's not Tolkien, it's barely related to Tolkien. It's a wholly independent work that really didn't even need to have bought the source rights. A few name changes and you'd have a derivative, but standalone story.