Galadriel and I are each wrestling with the best way of Middle-earth. In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the hero is torn between returning to the West with the remainder of her firm and dwelling out her days in whole peace, and persevering with to hunt Sauron, who she is aware of is alive. For me, nicely, I’m saved up at night time excited about the elf maidens.

On the boat to the Undying Lands (aka Elf Heaven), because the elves granted passage are standing upright on the deck of the ship with swords in hand, there’s a line of elf maidens who file out and begin to put together them for the completion of their voyage. They take their weapons and their cloaks, oozing ceremony with each movement. And then they simply… throw them on the bottom. What’s extra, as soon as the ship itself (minus Galadriel) heads to the Undying Lands, the maidens are simply nonetheless on the ship?

I introduced the query as much as Polygon’s resident Tolkien knowledgeable, Susana Polo, casually, anticipating (as there usually is) some deeper lore at play within the scene. She instructed me “I don’t know; Tolkien wasn’t very specific about these things.” I pushed a bit of more durable, anticipating there was absolutely some rationalization behind the sleek visuals: Why have been all of them girls? What occurred to them as soon as the ship went to Elf Heaven? Why did they take the weapons solely to discard them only a few toes from the folks they took them from?

Susana had no solutions for me. As she put it, Tolkien doesn’t actually dig into how elves “decide what to do with their lives.” We have the broad strokes of the most important households or ruling events. But past that Tolkien (who, Susana notes, was very Catholic) went lengthy on marriage, growing old, youngsters, linguistics… however not jobs.

What meaning for the elf maidens, I’m not certain. They may simply be a decrease degree of elf servant, and there may very well be extra to what they do than we’re seeing in Rings of Power. But earlier than your mind goes too deep down this rabbit gap, let me guarantee you, mine already has. Being on the boat to Valinor is supposedly the best honor an elf can acquire, the possibility to return to Valinor, a pardon from their earlier expulsion. Were these servants additionally invited in? Is this akin to the (inflated) notion of pharaohs being buried with their servants? Or have been the handmaidens merely heavenly flight attendants, doing the circuit between Lindon and the Undying Lands and solely paid when the ship’s doorways have been locked?

These are ideas that can, for those who allow them to, fuck you all the best way up, and can probably make a number of folks depart the room as you proceed to yell in regards to the implications of the Rings of Power elf ascension scene. They should not the purpose of this divine second in any respect, and but they really feel consultant to me of the cracks in Rings of Power.

The scene itself is supposed to floor us in Galadriel’s battle, turning away from the afterlife so a lot of her variety search with a purpose to put herself (presumably) by way of far more battle and ache with a purpose to guarantee a greater world and make good on her promise to her brother. Amid all of it are the ship’s celestial deckhands, serving to (I assume?) the weary troopers on their manner. They’re the form of factor that feels within the second cool and consistent with the elves’ elegantly stoic aesthetic.

But scratch at it for even a second and all of it comes aside; these maidens appear to exist purely to additional dramatize Galadriel’s reluctance, one thing already pretty nicely established all through the primary hour. Rings of Power is, reportedly, a billion-dollar sequence, and a world as wealthy as Tolkien’s deserves greater than visuals that really feel so thinly drawn. Middle-earth is a realm full of many mysteries, however the destiny of the elf servants/choir/shiphands on the best way to Elf Heaven shouldn’t be certainly one of them.