Galadriel and I are both grappling with the Middle-Earth route. In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the hero is faced between returning to the West with the rest of her company and continuing to hunt Sauron, whom she knows is alive.
As the elves granted passage stand upright on the ship's deck with swords in hand, there are a long line of elf maidens who file out and begin to prepare them for the end of their voyage. They take their weapons and their cloaks, throwing them on the ground with every motion. And then they just drop them on the ship?
Susana Polo, a Polygons expert, asked me why were they all women, as she often does; Tolkien wasnt very specific about these things. I pushed a bit harder, expecting there was certainly some explanation behind the graceful visuals: Why did they take the weapons only to throw them away a few feet from the people they took them from?
Susana had no answers for me. Tolkien doesnt really go into detail on how elves decide what to do with their lives. We have the broad strokes of the major families or ruling parties, but beyond that Tolkien (who, Susana notes, was very Catholic) went long on marriage, children, and employment.
I am unsure what this imply for the elf maidens, as they may be a lower level of elf servant, and that their actions may be different from those shown in Rings of Power. Is this akin to the idea that pharaohs may be buried with their servants, and that they are only paid when the ships doors are locked?
If you allow them, they will fuck you all the way up, and you will likely leave the room as you continue to yell about the Rings of Power elf ascension scene. They are not the purpose of this divine moment at all, yet they do represent the cracks in the Rings of Power.
The purpose of the film is to ground us in Galadriels' struggle, turning away from the afterlife so many of her kind seek in order to endure even more conflict and suffering in order to fulfill her promise to her brother. Its the sort of thing that feels in the moment cool and in keeping with the elves' elegant stoic aesthetic.
This is the first hour of a billion-dollar series, and a world as rich as Tolkiens requires more than superficial visuals that seem so subdued. The fate of the elf servants/choir/shiphands on the journey to Elf Heaven should not be one of these mysteries.