1. I fully understand how far humans (these aren't humans btw, but elfs) can travel. We have no indication how far it is true, but obviously it is close enough for them to get to quickly, to tunnel to towns quickly, which means it is at most 1-2 days, and that is digging. Elves are supposed to see far, like miles far, they also have a tower to expand the distance they can see. Would they see tiny orcs no, but this is A MASSIVE CUT IN THE FOREST and trench, it would be visible for many miles, not to mention the smoke from it. You are telling me no elves noticed it for the weeks/months it would take to dig it? none of them ventured in that direction?
2. It wasn't surrounded by huge mountains, it has mountains on opposite sides. This also means btw they have less area to monitor/less areas for the orcs to hide as they aren't going over the mountains. This means more chance for them to run into the orcs as they are patrolling less area. This tower is also very fucking tall, like hundreds of meters tall/on a mountains edge. HOW DO THE ORCS SURPRISE THEM.
3. They mention others, but you do know SMOKE RISES. So a whole village burning would have had a lot of smoke rising form it, that would be visible from miles away. It wouldn't be hard to spot.
4. ... The show gives us an image of the "tunnel" being like over a mile long and hundreds of feet wide. That is a massive amount of trees that are shown burn, and since we have no reason to believe otherwise they apparently did tree burning the whole time meaning thousands of trees were being burnt. That isn't something small you ignore/don't notice. You are acting like it is some chimney fires, this is more like a controlled forest fire, it would be noticed.
5. All of them in a tower on a mountains edge are ambushed AND CAPTURED?
How far do we have to ass pull to make this somehow maybe kinda of make sense? Why defend this? Just admit it is pretty shitty writing, because it is. I mean if you are okay with this low a level of writing I guess more power to you, I expect better, especially from a billion dollar show, and double that expectation for something written by Tolkien.
The issue with that then becomes they had to have tunnels/traps set near the tower/between the Tower and the north. Yet the humans all make it to the tower with no issues, meaning it would have to be in the north. This means orcs got around/past the Elves with none the wiser to setup a trap for them than then also captured all of them.
So either the orcs scouted the elves tower/routes without being seen or the have you heard of Sauron guy has other friends that report to the orcs/Adar. If they is the way they want to go, okay, but show more things that suggest treason/spies to lay the foundation for it. Also have a hard time believing the Elves who show such disdain to humans allow them to come up to their tower and map it out for orcs.
To many things have to go right to make this scenario work/logical for me.