Galadriel and Sauron
Episode 8 the final battle
Season 2 Galadriel pining for Sauron
The whole of season 2 Galadriels character arch has been toward Sauron. She is desperate for the rings, she wants to go to Eregion, she gets kidnapped by Adar and bemoans the dull gray her life is without Sauron, tells Adar everything he needs to know, except what Sauron offered her, and instead of fleeing Eregion with the rings like Celembribor tells her too, she her sticks around. Then in Episode 7 the writers throw in this Elrond kiss, after all this rising (at least on her part) Galadriel/Sauron tension.
For context Adar and Sauron are enemies. Adar murdered Sauron and Adar’s deal with Galadriel is that they can permanently destroy Sauron with the power of the rings and Morgath’s crown.
So that is the season set up for episode 8
Galadriel is found by the Orcs and offers herself up to Adar (reminiscent of Halbrand at the beginning of episode 1) She offers Adar the nine rings if he promises to stop destroying Eregion and sends his Orcs back to Mordor.
“I accept your terms Uruk, I have what Sauron seeks. End this slaughter and I will do as you asked. I will help you destroy him.” Galadriel says.
Adar “How do you expect to destroy Sauron without your ring? It would seem even wounds that have endured an age can sometimes yet be healed”
Galadriel says, “Adar” - He stole Nenya from Elrond, put it on and now Adar looks like a regular elf.
Adar “When last I looked like this I was known by another name,”
Galadriel, “What was it?”
Adar, “A meaningless name. A name I was given. Adar is the name I earned. Help me earn it back”
“Take it. Help me vanquish Sauron with it, And I swear to you, I will recall my children to Mordor. Never to make war on Middle Earth again,”
Galadriel says,”I have slain more of your children than any elf alive,”
Adar says, “I forgive you. No more flames, no more darkness, let this ring heal the rift between Elf and Uruk,”
Galadriel takes the ring.
Adar says,”let us create a lasting peace on Middle-Earth, Now and forever,”
Galadriel puts on the ring and she looks down on it.
Now I don’t know how long Sauron has been there, looking at what was going on but I’ll bet for the entirety of the three-minute conversation.
So the other Uruks arrive carrying Glug in a stretcher. Adar looks and walks away from Galadriel towards the Uruks.
Galadriel puts her hand over her chest protecting the nine rings of men, basically what Celembribor gave his life for.
Adar asks the Orcs, “What happened here?”
They say, “We found Sauron, Lord-Father. He tried to make Glug betray you, but he resisted,”
Adar, “So Sauron did this,”
“The others are pursuing him right now,”
Adar, “Forgive me child. “
Glug, “It’s too late,”
Adar, “It’s never too late, not even for me. And not for you my son.”
Glug repeats, “It’s too late.” and then he and the other Orcs proceed to attack Adar while Galadriel looks on in horror.
Then coming up behind Galadriel, Sauron, grabs his crown (which was on the Rock Adar had been kneeling on) raises his eyebrow and says ,“Galadriel,” in a slightly hypnotic voice. Almost like he is slightly enchanted.
He walks past her, Galadriel shudders with horror, but does surprisingly little else, and goes to where the Orcs are killing Adar. While Adar is dying he says, “my children,” to which Sauron replies in a pitying tone, “They are not children anymore,”
The Orcs say, “What orders, Lord Sauron,”
And Sauron says, “Raze Eregion, leave no elf alive, but bring me their leaders,”
Now I’m not sure if Sauron wanted to do this, (probably yes) because he would take out one of the Elven Kingdoms, and the elfs were his main opponents. But he could have also been enraged with Galadriel. He smiles as he says this.
Now Galadriel has several important rings, and so the logical thing for her to do is run, but she stays and confronts Sauron.
She says to him, “All this was your design from the beginning?” And by beginning she probably means, when we met?
Sauron says to her, “Please. You think too much of me,” This of course is somewhat sarcastic, as he knows she hates him,
I didn’t realize the importance of this when I first saw this, but it is another one of his temptations to her.
This line also touches on Galadriel’s personal obsession with Sauron. She has spent centuries hunting him, driven by the belief that he is the source of all evil. By saying "you think too much of me," Sauron could be pointing out how much mental and emotional energy she has devoted to him, subtly reminding her that her obsession with destroying him has shaped her own life and choices. This is another way of undermining her by making her realize how deeply entangled her fate is with his.
“The road goes ever winding, not even I can see all its paths,”
Sauron recites a corrupted version of the poem to Galadriel, using it as a metaphor for their intertwined fates and the long journey that has brought them both to this moment…Sauron uses the poem to suggest that no matter how long or winding the road has been, they are bound to a shared future.
Galadriel grabs a sword and charges Sauron who blocks her with his crown.
Sauron looks at Nenya, the ring that Galadriel has forgotten to hide, and says, “it is even more beautiful than Celembribor led me to believe,”
Sauron says,"Give it to me,”
Galadriel starts trying to strike him with the sword.
Sauron says,"Give me your ring, and the nine. It is not my wish to harm you”
Sauron could have told his Orcs to go after Galadriel and restrain her or better yet kill her but he didn’t. He sends them away to Eregion.
The other point is that the Eregion guards were under Sauron’s influence and Sauron ended them by making them kill themsleves. To what extent he could have done this with Galadriel I don’t know.
Galadriel says sarcastically, “Do you wish to heal me,”
Sauron looks perplexed and says, “I wish to heal all middle-earth,”
and Galadriel looks at him, overcome with rage, and says, “As you have Eregion,”
Galadriel really goes after Sauron and he defends himself while nabbing her.
Sauron kicks her down the stairs.
They continue fighting and then he traps her with his sword and the crown and says, “Galadriel, surely you of all elves must understand that to find the light, we must first touch the darkness,”
He pushes her up against the wall.
Galadriel seethes at him,“We are not alike, we never were. It was just another of your illusions.”
Then in a Halbrand accent he says,“not all of it,” to which point enraged she pushes him and gets out of his trap.
She kicks him down jumps down and then is about to strike when he appears to her in a Halbrandesque form. Or a form that has significant similarities to Halbrand but doesn’t really look like him. Some have said it’s an Elrond Halbrand form combine, and certainly maybe…but anyways it stops her in her tracks as she recognizes it as Halbrand. She can’t move, and the vision says, “fighting at your side. I felt as if I could just hold on to that feeling,” Then he reappears as Galadriel herself, and says “They could no longer distinguish me from the evil I was fighting,” the voice is such a high pitched silly school girl version of Galadriel that’s mocking her.
Then he turns into Celembribor, “Are they not the seeds you planted,”
The henge they were fighting on breaks and Galadriel collapses to the floor. So while she is on the floor she starts dragging herself forward but Sauron, now in his own form, walks forward and kicks her sword over. He’s got his back to her. This was how he was when he said, fighting by your side in Season 1, like he cannot say these words to her face because he cannot bear to see her reaction,” He says,”I see you, I know your mind. The door is still open,”
Galadriel is badly beaten, where Sauron looks barely ruffled.
Sauron offers her a smile.
Galadriel in a rage says, “The door is shut,”
And then they viciously fight until Sauron is screaming and goes at her full strength. She gets a slice across his cheek. He is in shock for a moment and then charges at her with the crown. She blocks him with her sword for like two seconds but he just pushes it into her chest.
The showrunners said Galadriel could actually beat Sauron in a fight. That’s preposterous. She lands some blows when he’s not expecting it, but honestly, he’s trying not to hurt her too badly.
So he stabs her in the chest with the crown. And then he stabs it even harder so that Galadriel is groaning. He looks at her groaning, much weakened and dying and says to her.
“I would have placed a crown upon your head,” as opposed to in your heart,“I would have never rested until all Middle-Earth had been brought to its knees to worship the light of its queen.”
She tries to look away from him but he takes the crown sword pushes it into her and forces her to look at him. This is all “actions have consequences bitch,” and “you have no idea how much I loved you,”
And she finally very weakly is able to say, “The free peoples of Middle Earth, will always resist you,”
Sauron drags her body with the crown impaled in her and then draws it out while Galadriel collapses.
Now in a normal situation, plausible, this is pretty much the end for her. So she’s on the floor writhing around in pain. Sauron drops his sword, but keeps the crown, kicks over Galadriel’s sword, and happily with a big smile on his face bends down to grab the nine rings, which have fallen out of Galadriel’s jacket. Sauron says, “The rings are mine,”
He’s momentarily distracted by a horn blowing. The dwarves have arrived to “help” the elves.
Sauron starts looking at Galadriel on the floor and he’s no longer talking to her out loud, instead directly communicating in her head. In her head, he says,”Give me your ring,” So it looks like the crown had some black magic in it that’s now given Sauron even more access to Galadriel.
So in the lore Sauron was obsessed with the ring and most likely would have just taken it from her hand while she lay dying and kicked her body off of the ledge. But not in the Rings of Power. Instead in the Rings Of Power, he cannot, in spite of stabbing her with Morgoth’s crown, grab her hand and take off the ring?
So with Sauron staring at her she is somehow magically able to stand up (there are two gaping wounds in her body where the crown went)
And Sauron says in her mind, not outloud, “Galadriel, your ring,”
But Galadriel says outloud,"You wish to heal Middle Earth,” To which Sauron smiles with a deep happy face.
And then Galadriel says, “Heal yourself,” and then pulls an Elrond and throws herself off the cliff.
So considering that Galadriel was madly in love with Halbrand, to the point she couldn’t fight when Sauron put himself as Halbrand, she spent the whole season with Sauron far away from her saying her life was now a bitter dark grey, and that Adar an odious Uruk had been healed after thousands of years of Urukness with the ring, you would think she would want Sauron to have and try out the ring, just in case he could be healed with it.
Sauron and Galadriel are kind of a difficult pairing.
There are those who have just watched the series and aren’t as familiar or concerned with the lore who just think Clarke and Vickers have great chemistry and are fascinated by the intensity of enemies to lovers dynamic. These are the people who love the show just for their dynamic.
But then there are the lore fanatics who view Sauron as a wholly evil being who must be continually opposed and cannot see any possibility of that type of union. Or the dude bros who feel that Sauron will become the sexy bad guy that dude bros think women fantasize about and that it’ll be a rivalry between Galadriel’s actual husband and bad boy Sauron.
So for the writers showrunners this must be a difficult thing. And I think they are trying to replace Sauron and Galadriel as a couple by putting Galadriel with her son-in-law Elrond. Elrond is a good guy and I think he’s great, don’t get me wrong. But that ship is weird and creepy.
Maybe Galadriel could say some nice things about Sauron. Maybe instead of saying the free people on Middle Earth resist you, she could say something,” You say you wanted me to be a queen, I saw in you a King, but this is the type of King you want to be. I have no doubt you have nothing but design schemes and deceptions, but I loved you and you used that to betray my kind and the free people of Middle Earth” Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have said that. One of the Creaters on X @dhi created a Haladriel gifi based on a song, where the singers goes when I was out there picking blue berries you were plotting. And I think that lyric is something Galadriel should have said to him. I understand what Galadriel said, she wasn’t playing Sauron’s game there. She was just telling him that he may kill her but Middle Earth will never be ruled by him.
Anyways #Haladriel fans are still shipping but really it seems they are fully enemies and the only relationship they could ever have is one being the useful idiot of the other. In this case, Galadriel being the useful idiot of Sauron.
The most amazing thing is seeing the #Haladriel shippers twist the whole encounter, which is completely enemies into something different. The fact that Galadriel liked Halbrand makes her hate Sauron even more. Or at least from the impression I get. Who knows?
Show still hasn’t been officially renewed. I like it so I hope it gets renewed. I also hope they stop drawing on other franchises (predator with black goo, Star Wars, some Avengers things). I know the critics are being picky. They look at things that are clearly symbolic (like light and dark, elf army versus Orc army) and say it’s unrealistic but Galadriel’s stabbing and fall disconnects the audience because she clearly looks like she’s on the verge of death. If Sauron healed her on the cliff from her initial stabbing we need that blank filled in. Arondir surviving Adar was another thing. We see him badly stabbed but we don’t see how he was healed. There also has to be greater moral consistency. An elf and a Uruk pairing? Adar may have liked his “children,” but Galadriel was pretty right in season 1, when she said they are not children they are slaves. Adar brutally murdered and oppressed the Southlanders, and he led the siege against Eregion. What’s more in episode 7 when Galadriel finally listened to Celembribor and did not try to go and meet Sauron on his behalf. She initially wanted to go and confront Sauron and have Celembribor take the rings. This probably would have saved Celembribor’s life without harming her own. But this time she actually listens to Celembribor and I thought wow, some growth there. Galadriel no longer thinks she is always right. And then instead of having gone far away from Eregion with the rings, instead she tries to make an allyship with Adar. On what basis can she trust Adar?
Then there is the fact that the elves in Eregion are just letting the Orcs attack them without any type of protests. Without getting any confirmation from Celembribor himself. Maybe Mirdania okay, her hormones are raging, but the rest of them? It just seems incredibly stupid, not believable etc.
Then the elves take so long to get to Eregion. They’re meandering and going around for no real purpose. A lot of these unrealistic or not consistent issues are situations as a result of the characters having to move for the plot as opposed to the characters moving the plot. Or maybe things are obscured. Maybe Galadriel goes somewhere Sauron will find her because she’s still missing him. Or maybe she just has no growth and think everything does is right. Even Elrond will not make an alliance with Adar to save her life. Somehow though she miraculously survives that and is able to escape and come out of the camp without anyone noticing her. Maybe the problem is we don’t have enough time with these characters to get the details that will bridge the gap in what’s going on.