I am not surprised by most of the reactions to Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I am an avid, passionate fan of all things Tolkien, and I myself have many complaints about how the streamer brought a gorgeous, ethereal story to the small screen.
I’m also part of the Star Wars fandom (and married to an outright Galactic expert) so I’ve seen the toxic depths to which passionate fandoms can fall. People can, and will, hate anything with a burning passion, and if you mix in a diverse cast with a weak approach, that hate will escalate to Middle-earth-shaking proportions.
But somehow, despite my cynical “excessively online” status, my longtime membership to the official Tolkien fan club, and my own massive issues with Prime’s money-hungry approach to telling its tale, I still somehow found myself surprised by a search term that began trending in the hours after Rings of Power aired its season 2 finale. That question, my good Eriador wanderers, is whether or not Galadriel, Elven queen of the Noldor and the Teleri, Lady of Lórien, of Light, of the Golden Wood, wife of Celeborn and mother of Celebrían, dies in the prequel trilogy that precedes The Lord of the Rings. Sigh.
Does Galadriel die in The Rings of Power?
I know this article’s headline says I have “one thing” to say to the absolute doorknobs wondering if Galadriel will meet her end in Rings of Power, but I actually have quite a bit to say. To begin, I suppose I should answer the brainless question so many newcomers to The Lord of the Rings are asking online: No, you ninnyhammers, Galadriel does not, and will not, die in The Rings of Power.
The Prime Video project is notably a prequel, which means it comes about long, long before the events of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. About 3,000 years, to be precise. And, since Galadriel is a prominent player in both trilogies — and played by the unforgettable Cate Blanchett, no less — it honestly boggles the mind that so many people are confused about her survival in a story that happened thousands of years ago.
Now I’m going to give about two-thirds of the people asking this question the benefit of the doubt and assume they are young newcomers to Middle-earth who are beginning their journeys with The Rings of Power. If that’s the case, and you’ve simply never seen or read The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, I forgive you. That’s a reasonable question to ask, particularly considering the events of the season 2 finale, and I am happy to answer it for you.
Now, I turn my focus to the one-third of curious minds who no doubt simply lost their sense at some point in the last decade of unprecedented happenings. You sweet, silly dotards, you forgetful tomnoddies, what in all the Void outside creation are you thinking? Did the presence of such a vital character, a woman who weirdly became a romance for Gandalf in The Hobbit, and the subject of several utterly memorable quotes (including the opening that introduces us to the background of the world), just slip your minds? Or were you so utterly disgusted, so impossibly disappointed, in Prime’s blasphemous delivery that it escaped your memory? Or do you think so little of the streamer (reasonably) that you genuinely thought it would just kill off a vital canon character for shock value?
Regardless of what happened to steal your sense for a moment, let me be the one to correct you. Galadriel is alive and (mostly) well in Rings of Power, and she still has many a path to tread before her story ends. She will not die in future seasons of the series, nor will she die in any future remake of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. She shall remain Galadriel, a flawed but powerful pillar of femininity and grace, until someday, after passing the most demanding of tests, she quietly walks away from millennia of power, and departs into the West.