💍 How Rings of Power Links Galadriel’s Test With Sauron’s Temptation

The Dark Lord’s Influence on Her Beautiful and Terrible Vision

Credit: Amazon Studios

***SPOILERS for those who have not seen The Rings of Power, especially the episode 8 finale of season 1***

After a season of buildup, misdirection, questions about who to trust, and surprising revelations, season 1 of Amazon Studios’ The Rings of Power ends with the one reveal to rule them all. Halbrand, who has filled the Aragorn archetype all season (reluctant successor to a broken line of kings, attractive, dirty, rough around the edges but cleans up nice, and smoldering chemistry with the show’s leading lady) was actually revealed to be Sauron in disguise. 

It is Galadriel, whose fate has been seemingly randomly¹ intertwined with Halbrand’s from the beginning of the season, who first discovers his true identity and confronts him in the Elven city of Eregion. 

Not only does he confirm his identity² when she reveals her awareness that he is not the heir to the throne of the Southlands, he also makes her an offer: join him and rule Middle-earth by his side, the fair queen to his Dark Lord.

Credit: Amazon Studios

As he manifests a vision of their reflections in the nearby water showing him in his iconic armor and her beside him, he entices her with an offer:

Halbrand: All others look on you with doubt. I alone can see your greatness. I alone can see your light.

Galadriel: You would make me a tyrant.

Halbrand: I would make you a queen, fair as the sea and the sun, stronger than the foundations of the earth.

Galadriel: And you. My king. The Dark Lord.

Halbrand: No, not dark. Not with you by my side.

If his offer sounds familiar, it’s because it’s an intentional echo of another temptation of Galadriel thousands of years later.

Credit: New Line Cinema

This time it is Galadriel who intends to put another to the test. It is she, not Sauron, who casts visions in a pool of water: her mirror. But though she means to test Frodo, she is caught off guard as she herself becomes the tempted one when Frodo offers her the One Ring — Sauron’s Ring — genuinely and freely.

As she considers Frodo’s offer, Galadriel replies: “In place of a Dark Lord you would have a queen. Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn. Treacherous as the sea! Stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair.” As she speaks of being beautiful and terrible, she becomes beautiful and terrible — a dark inversion of herself. But the moment, like the temptation, passes and she reverts back to her usual appearance.

Notably, Halbrand’s offer to her to become his queen was worded slightly differently than this: he says she will be “[f]air as the sea and the sun,” not “beautiful and terrible as the dawn” and “[t]reacherous as the sea.” Is that an error? An intentional rephrasing? It’s actually neither: Halbrand’s language is borrowed from Galadriel’s extended and more descriptive speech in Tolkien’s original version of this scene:

You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen! And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!³

So The Rings of Power is not only drawing from Jackson’s adaptation but also Tolkien’s original version of this scene. By so closely mirroring both visual details and specific language from the scene in the film version of Fellowship and the novel, The Rings of Power attempts to bind its own scene of Galadriel’s temptation to the one from The Lord of the Rings as Halbrand is attempting to bind Galadriel to himself. Now we as the audience can see (if we choose) the older Galadriel in Fellowship recalling Sauron’s prior temptation of her as she wrestles with a similar dilemma. 

But when The Rings of Power takes these words from a memorable and original speech by Galadriel and retroactively turns them into a callback to Sauron’s prior temptation, does it work? Or does it demean a classic moment?  

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