Sauron’s The Rings of Power love interest should have been the elf character, not Galadriel

This article contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Clearly has no problem with teasing romance between Tolkien characters, but it left one Sauron romance angle sadly unexplored. The rings of power Season 1 ended the season-long mystery box, confirming that Halfrand is Sauron. This left Season 2 free to focus on its alien mystery box while exploring Sauron in depth. While the show symmetrically ended season 2 by opening his Stranger mystery box and confirming that he is Gandalf, it had an entire season to develop its Sauron-Galadriel romance tease and explore Sauron’s relationships with other characters.

Poppy’s courtship with one of the pre-Hobbit stores and Isildur’s Estrid romance do little to discredit them, offering decent and emotional pull for a modern audience without altering high fantasy master JRR Tolkien’s source material. The Elendil-Miriel romance and the Sauron-Galadriel romance distort the characters that Tolkien portrayed, making them more problematic. But the show used subtext very well, leaving multiple interpretations of the relationships possible. Cast and crew often share their opinions, but leave their romance open where it counts – on screen. So, there was room for a more subtextual romance.

Sauron & Celebrimbor’s relationship would have worked with romantic undertones

Funny subtext would have enhanced their relationship

It’s a hot take, though Rings of power Season 2 should have sensitively applied subtle queer subtext and tropes to Sauron and Celebrimbor’s relationship. This would have made their power play more convincing. Annatar and Celebrimbor are a popular pairing in the fandom, referred to as Silver Gifting – “celeb“meaning silver and”anna” meaning gift in the Elvish language of Kenya. Showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne even confirmed that Annatar’s seduction was suggested in the show, admitting “It is easy for your imagination to go there“(by THR). Committing more to this bold but understandable headcanon would have paid off.

The show clearly wanted to portray a level of genuine connection and respect between Sauron and Celebrimbor – one that transcended Sauron’s deception. This was genius The show framed Sauron’s killing of Celebrimbor as a conflicted and emotional loss of controlProving that the partnership was totally real to Sauron. The tension between fake and real affection is what makes Sauron and Galadriel’s relationship compelling, and the show was right to try and apply that here. This psychological depth is precisely what makes a five-season TV show a glorious sandpit for Tolkien’s sweeping epic.

However, the true love of Sauron and Celebrimbor did not completely land. Celebrimbor is not rising to Sauron’s level in creative or spiritual inspiration, power, wit or potential, reactively follows. Meanwhile, Sauron is not credibly vulnerable with Celebrimbor. If Sauron really believed that everything was Celebrimbor’s fault, as he said, he would not have found his loss so heartbreaking, because he would not have respected him enough. The show’s attempt to depict Sauron opening up to Celebrimbor was marked by a compromise of a faithfully hideous Sauron with good drama.

But the reality is that only when performing a good drama can one really achieve the most faithful possible treatment, because only then do one really allow the core themes of the source material to resonate with today’s audience. Rings of power Should have plumbed the depths of two letters gone too far and working too hard together in close quarters. It required Sauron and Celebrimbor to increasingly consume themselves in rarefied, ephemeral truth at the end of long days when they were both too exhausted for anything else.

Subtly funny subtext and tropes could have underlined this dynamic perfectly. They could have produced so many analogies about “Forbidden“But genuine emotion, affection and respect between two people on opposing sides. Sensitively applied, this could have avoided both exploitation and canon contradiction. Tolkien’s sublime, sweeping epic can be sustained Only by not openly shattering its reality. Meanwhile, the long glances, sparkling laughter to flirtations, and penetration metaphors like knives thrown into the wall could support the dangers and the sticks. From this connection.

Dangerous people deserve dangerous dialogue. An incredibly subtle romance tease of Sauron and Celebrimbor would have worked on many levels Because, in some ways, it’s more believable for Sauron to have sexual motivation than actual affection. But the beauty of it is that the motivation may remain a mystery. The mounting effect of the romance undertones would have made it more convincing that Celebrimbor and Sauron had a good thing going mutually, making the breakdown of their relationship actually sad instead of just a canonical inevitability.

Celebrimbor makes more sense as Sauron’s love interest than Galadriel

Celebrimbor and Sauron canonically developed a working relationship

Celebrimbor might have made more sense as a romance tease for Sauron than Galadriel. Galadriel was married to Celeborn in the Second Age, which Rings of power Had to interrupt to make room for his Halbrand Galadriel bow. But Celebrimbor has no such obstacles to fall for someone. moreover, Celebrimbor’s arc in Lord of the Rings really pushed him close to Annatar. Galadriel met Sauron in Eregion in the Second Age in Unfinished TalesBut it was far from the dominant narrative – Tolkien had many versions of Galadriel’s story.

Celebrimbor’s cruel death in Rings of power Season 2 was one of the most triumphantly Tolkienian installments. But Sauron and Celebrimbor’s connection lacks a certain degree of closure. Sauron’s character must now evolve towards darkness, and further away from any real recognition of Celebrimbor’s impact on him. As long as the scope of the complex moral interplay of Tolkien’s second age was maintained, perhaps one moment of lucidity on Sauron’s part might be enough to somehow honestly say goodbye to Celebrimbor, as befits one of ancient intelligence.

Queer-baiting is a problem in television, but there is room for queer subtext

There is room for unfulfilled queer subtext

The application of unfulfilled queer subtext in movies and television is known as queer-baiting, and it is a real problem, but Strange and unfulfilled subtext is not categorically a bad thing. Unfulfilled homoerotic undertones and other kinds of queer coding can be used well. As an adaptation of a classic story so widely loved and so institutional to English literature, British culture and the worldwide imagination, Rings of power is entitled to work within a carefully outlined radius of suitable original material. Original material is needed in any adaptation, and this show is testing its boundaries.

The compromise that was Rings of power – that between fidelity and drama – is the same compromise that all adaptations have. But in no adaptation currently on television is the challenge so pronounced. One has to adapt such an old text, written in such an archaic style, into a modern format, Payne and McKay have a harder job than perhaps any other showrunner out there. But the rewards are irresistible. “I have been awake since before the break of the first silence” was a spine-tingling line, as Gandalf said his name for the first time.

The beauty of subtext is that it allows content to exist in multiple worlds, allowing many to be right about their interpretation. In adaptations like this, where huge compromise is inevitable, subtext is key to pushing the story forward. Sauron and Celebrimbor were on the right track The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power And the still queer subtext should have been so subtle it would hardly have been there, negating the commercial exploitation of queer struggle. It would only injure the relationship in his power zone – a dynamic so convincing that anything is possible.

Source: THR