The Beauty Of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Beauty of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Rings of Power remains, if not faithful to the letter, faithful to the spirit of Tolkien and Middle-earth. All the locations, the little touches and cultural details are just right.

And it gets a lot more of the text right than some folks want to believe.

References to Tolkien's Legendarium THE RINGS OF POWER — 2.06

The funny thing is, even if a kiss happens between Hal and Gal, the antis will say that “it's not romantic”, “they're not in love”, “it doesn't mean anything”, “it's manipulation” and blah blah blah

I have noticed some recent conflict in the fandom over what exactly Sauron feels for Galadriel, and I don't want to insert myself into any of that. That being said, I do agree that what Sauron feels for Gal is complicated. I think there is love and there is obsession and probably other things that can't be boiled down nice and neatly into any one emotion.

With that preface, Tolkien actually talks about how Sauron's underlying driving motive is love. Love of order. Love of beauty. Love of perfection. He even says that in the beginning, these things were Sauron's virtue. Morgoth was a being driven by a nihilistic hatred for all things that he could not control and corrupt, but Sauron was driven by passionate love for Middle-earth and the things therein, and this was actually the core difference between them.

Of course, though we know that Sauron's love (as Mairon) started out as something good, it was quickly twisted into obsession to control what he loved. And eventually, when he was not allowed to control it, it twisted into hatred just as passionate as his love had been.

I love that we're actually getting a microcosm of that with Sauron and Galadriel, and I think how Sauron feels about Galadriel is very Tolkienian, given the above passages from "Morgoth's Ring" that I referenced. I think at the beginning, Sauron-as-Halbrand's love for Galadriel was actually pretty genuine and as pure as it could be for a being like him. He connected with her (genuinely, I believe), he admired her, he found her beautiful, and he saw a kindred spirit within her. And I think those were all pretty wholesome feelings.

However, we've already seen those feelings begin to warp into obsession to possess and control. We saw it even by the end of Season 1, when we saw how manipulative and angry he got when Gal rejected his marriage/partnership proposal. We're definitely seeing it in Season 2 with his creepy, possessive behavior towards Mirdania in the last episode.

I think over the course of the series, we'll see Sauron's love become a darker and darker thing, more and more obsessive, more possessive than a genuine connection: mirroring how his love for Middle-earth fell into something dark and twisted. By the very end of the series, I could even see Sauron coming to hate Galadriel - much as he comes to hate Middle-earth - because he can't possess or control her, but I think it will still be an obsessive hatred that is, in part, a love gone terribly wrong.

All this is to say, I think the best characters are complex characters. Is Sauron in love? Yes, I think he is. Is he also manipulating Gal? Yes, I think he is. Is his love something dark and controlling and possessive? Yes, I think it is. These are all things that can co-exist. The one thing that I do vehemently disagree with is that "it doesn't mean anything" or that Sauron and Galadriel's connection doesn't mean anything to Sauron. I think it means everything to Sauron. And if there is a kiss, I think it will be an extension of that. At least, I would hope so.

THE RINGS OF POWER 1.06 "Udûn" || 2.06 "Where Is He?"

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