Galadriel and I are both debating the path of Middle-earth. In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the hero is forced to choose between returning to the West with the rest of her company and continuing to hunt Sauron, who she knows is alive.
As the elves granted passage stand upright on the ship's deck with swords in hand, a line of elf maidens prepares them for the end of their voyage, taking their weapons and their cloaks, throwing them on the ground. Whats more, once the ship itself (minus Galadriel) approaches the Undying Lands, the maidens remain still aboard the ship?
Susana Polo, a Polygons expert on Tolkien, replied politely, anticipating (as there often is) some deeper meaning behind the graceful visuals. I pushed a little harder, anticipating there was surely some explanation behind the scenes. Why did they take the weapons only to discard them a few feet from the people they took them from?
Susana had no answers for me. As Susana explains, Tolkien does not really go into the details of how elves decide what to do with their lives. We have the main lines of the major families or ruling parties. However, beyond that, Tolkien (who, Susana notes, was very Catholic) went long on marriage, aging, children, and employment.
I am not sure what that means for the elf maidens, since they might be a lower level of elf servant, and that their actions might be different from those seen in Rings of Power. I can assure you that mine has already been invited onboard the ship to Valinor, and that they have had a chance to return to Valinor due to their previous expulsion. Is this akin to the (inflated) notion that pharaohs would be buried with their servants, or
If you allow these thoughts, you will fuck you all the way up and will likely enrage many people as you continue to yell about the implications of the Rings of Power elf ascension scene. They aren't the purpose of this divine moment at all, but they are representative to me of the cracks in the Rings of Power.
The purpose of the play is to ground us in Galadriel's struggle, turning away from the afterlife many of her kind seek in order to pursue her (presumably) through more conflict and suffering in order to fulfill her promise to her brother. Theyre the sort of thing that feels in the moment in keeping with the elves elegantly stoic aesthetic.
But scratch at it for even a minute and everything falls apart; these maidens appear to exist solely to decipher Galadriels' reluctance, something that was already fairly well established throughout the first hour. A world as rich as Tolkiens deserves more than superficial representations of themselves.