The climax of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s first episode is a doozy. Weary warrior Galadriel spends the entire episode wrestling with a weighty resolution, and within the last scene she makes a pivotal alternative in a riot of sunshine and music and ocean waters. It’s stunning. It’s transferring!

But additionally, what the heck simply occurred? Why was there all that gentle? This looks like a a lot greater deal than simply getting on and off a ship?

Sail west with us, reader, and we’ll unpack The Rings of Power’s brush with Middle-earth’s divinity.

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power episode 1.]

Image: Prime Video

If you’ve watched the episode, then you understand: Galadriel spends the hour weighing her conviction that the nice warfare isn’t over with Sauron nonetheless at giant in opposition to her want to return residence to the Undying Lands throughout the ocean. In the tip, simply as her fellow troopers escape right into a music of homecoming and the divine gentle of the land of the gods breaks upon their ship, Galadriel leaps overboard. She offers her residence one final look, after which turns and begins her lengthy swim throughout a complete ocean again to shore.

Because elves actually simply be like that, man.

Rings of Power reveals all of this with solely gentle rationalization: It’s framed as a journey residence, however with out exploring way more of Valinor’s significance to elves usually, or to Galadriel and her kinfolk in particular. It could also be that the present has extra rationalization up its sleeve, particularly because it seems to be like Galadriel will likely be spending a bunch of time with human characters subsequent — they’ll in all probability have questions on how she wound up in the midst of the ocean.

But in case you simply can’t wait, let’s unpack all the pieces that’s happening right here.

What is Galadriel giving up?

Image: Prime Video

As typical for J.R.R. Tolkien, he had loads of methods to seek advice from the Undying Lands, the mysterious elven homeland. If you wish to speak concerning the continental landmass, it’s Aman. If you wish to speak concerning the nation of elves and gods there, it’s Valinor. And in case you simply wish to typically seek advice from all of that, you possibly can name it the Undying Lands or simply the West with a capital W.

Most of the elves in broader Middle-earth have by no means seen Aman, however they know it’s a homeland the gods ready for them, one they’ll transfer to ultimately as soon as they turn out to be weary of residing in Middle-earth — and one their spirits will go to for resurrection in the event that they ever die. But for Galadriel and her kin, a tribe referred to as the Noldor, it’s one thing a bit of totally different. The Noldor have all truly been to Valinor and lived centuries amongst its splendor — Galadriel was even born there, as Rings of Power reveals in its opening scenes.

In the start of the warfare of the elves in opposition to Morgoth, the Noldor left Valinor to hunt revenge on the darkish god for stealing the work of their best craftsman. The gods suggested them to not, however they did it anyway, and within the course of they received right into a combat over boats that escalated into the primary time elves had ever killed different elves. In punishment, the gods cursed the Noldor massive time.

Under that curse, the Doom of Mandos, all of the Noldor’s objectives would flip to evil, the treasures they sought to retrieve would at all times slip from their grasp, and their quest could be marred by duplicity and betrayal even from their very own kin. They have been banned from returning to Valinor endlessly, but in addition cursed to develop shortly weary of the broader world and yearn for a house they may by no means see once more.

By the time Morgoth had been defeated, many of the Noldor had died violently a technique or one other, however in recognition of their assist, the gods pardoned any of the Noldor who stood in opposition to Morgoth. That’s why Galadriel’s troopers are so strident about setting apart their activity and getting back from the sector. They haven’t come again from the entrance because the warfare’s ending, and as soon as they do, they’ll go residence. They can unburden themselves of centuries of craving beneath the Doom of Mandos.

But there’s an additional, private significance of returning to Valinor for Galadriel. The last side of the curse was maybe its most horrible: The Noldorin elves that left Aman could be denied their immortality, as Galadriel references in The Rings of Power when she says that her folks had no phrase for loss of life.

Wait, how does that work?

Image: New Line Cinema

Elves are immortal, however not indestructible. If an elf is killed in battle, her spirit separates from her bodily kind and travels to a spot in Valinor referred to as the Halls of Mandos, overseen by Middle-earth’s god of the afterlife, a man named (you guessed it) Mandos. His realm is a system of nice caverns and underground chambers lined with god-woven tapestries depicting all of historical past.

Most elves are then given new our bodies for his or her spirits to inhabit and be part of all the opposite elves residing in Valinor. Some elves keep within the Halls for some time as a result of their experiences — like violent trauma — could make them sort of bored with life for some time. And as within the Doom of Mandos, the gods may simply ban sure folks from getting new our bodies, forcing them to stay as unhappy, disembodied shades within the Halls of Mandos till the tip of time.

Tolkien himself by no means settled on the rationale that Galadriel stayed in Middle-earth after the Noldorin ban was lifted, which provides Rings of Power loads of room to create its personal. In these first episodes, it’s that Galadriel desires to complete the job her late brother began and put a cease to Sauron’s machinations. This doesn’t essentially contradict with Tolkien both; Galadriel did have a brother, Finrod, who was captured by Sauron and died in the dead of night lord’s dungeons in single, unarmed fight with a werewolf, whom he additionally killed.

That’s not significantly related, however I simply actually wished to say the werewolf combat.

Until the lifting of the Doom of Mandos, Galadriel would have had no cause to hope that Finrod would by no means dwell once more, not till the tip of days when Middle-earth’s supreme god Eru Ilúvatar would destroy the world and restore it to his unique excellent intention.

So Galadriel isn’t simply giving up on going residence and being relieved of divinely-inspired longing, like her kinsmen. She’s additionally giving up on seeing her brother once more, no less than for a superb lengthy whereas. No surprise it takes her till the final minute to make her alternative.

But why does Galadriel quit?

I can’t say for sure. But I did ask Galadriel’s actress, Morfydd Clark, for her take.

Clark mentioned {that a} easy approach of placing it could be that Galadriel doesn’t really feel that she deserves to return to the elven promised land, as a result of she has a duty to guard Middle-earth from Sauron. The issue of that call comes from the eager for the Undying Lands within the west that each one elves really feel to no less than some extent, even characters like Legolas and Elrond.

“There’s this Welsh word, hiraeth, that has no English translation,” Clark informed me over Zoom. “It’s a yearning and longing for a place that you can never return to, almost a place that you might not even have experienced. Memories of your ancestors and things like that.”

As an instance, she cited “Hiraeth,” by Welsh entertainer Max Boyce. The music’s single English verse goes: “Tell me then, you men of learning, why is hiraeth more than yearning? Why when darkness minds to hide me, hiraeth comes and sleeps beside me?”

But for Clark, Galadriel’s hiraeth for her homeland is balanced by her hiraeth for her duty. Galadriel fears that “if she goes back to Valinor without finishing what she was meant to do, the hiraeth will still be there. And that would be the most unbearable thing.”

A eager for greater than easy heavenly existence was key to Tolkien’s imaginative and prescient for Galadriel, probably the most singular characters he created for Middle-earth, and Clark’s interpretation of Rings of Power’s improvisation matches the theme fairly effectively. It’s arduous to think about something worse than being denied your destined place in heaven — apart from being the one individual in heaven who deeply longs to go away.