Behind Galadriel’s life-or-death choice in the Rings of Power premiere

polygon.com:

The climax of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s first episode is a doozy. Weary warrior Galadriel spends the whole episode wrestling with a weighty decision, and in the final scene she makes a pivotal choice in a riot of light and music and ocean waters. It’s beautiful. It’s moving!

But also, what the heck just happened? Why was there all that light? This seems like a much bigger deal than just getting on and off a boat?

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.]

If you’ve watched the episode, then you know: Galadriel spends the hour weighing her conviction that the great war isn’t over with Sauron still at large against her desire to return home to the Undying Lands across the sea. In the end, just as her fellow soldiers break out into a song of homecoming and the divine light of the land of the gods breaks upon their ship, Galadriel leaps overboard. She gives her home one last glance, and then turns and begins her long swim across an entire ocean back to shore.

Because elves really just be like that, man.

Rings of Power shows all of this with only light explanation: It’s framed as a journey home, but without exploring much more of Valinor’s significance to elves in general, or to Galadriel and her kinfolk in specific. It may be that the show has more explanation up its sleeve, especially as it looks like Galadriel will be spending a bunch of time with human characters next — they’ll probably have questions about how she wound up in the middle of the ocean.

But if you just can’t wait, let’s unpack everything that’s going on here.

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