LOTR Rings Of Power Season 2: Who Is Galadriel's Husband & How Did They Meet? - Looper

LOTR Rings Of Power Season 2: Who Is Galadriel's Husband & How Did They Meet? - Looper,Galadriel's husband is mentioned in "The Rings of Power" Season 1, but it doesn't match Tolkien's accounts of Celeborn. What could this mean for Season 2?

LOTR Rings Of Power Season 2: Who Is Galadriel’s Husband & How Did They Meet? – Looper

Galadriel is one of the greatest characters in all of Middle-earth. She’s an ancient Elf with an intimidating amount of experience. Men refer to her as a witch and sorcerer. The book “Unfinished Tales” says that even Sauron sees her as “his chief adversary and obstacle” the first time they meet.

Everywhere you look, on the page and on the screen, Galadriel soaks up the limelight as one of the major players on Tolkien’s Middle-earth chess board. The Elf-woman is so important as a geopolitical figure that it’s easy to forget that she’s also a wife and mother. Her daughter, Celebrían, marries Elrond Half-elven. Her granddaughter, Arwen, becomes the queen of Gondor. And her husband? He’s an Elven royal called Celeborn.

Galadriel and Celeborn make one of the most fearsome power couples in Middle-earth. They’re together from very early on, right through “The Lord of the Rings.” But in Amazon Studios’ Middle-earth adaptation, “The Rings of Power,” Celeborn is nowhere to be seen. In the entirety of Season 1, we get only one brief reference to him (in Episode 7, “The Eye”), when Galadriel quickly mentions that she had a husband but he was lost in the wars of the First Age.

The thing is, Celeborn doesn’t disappear in the source material. He’s around the whole time and doesn’t go MIA in a war. We also know that Celeborn is present much later in “The Lord of the Rings.” So he needs to be alive, one way or another, in “The Rings of Power.” This makes Celeborn’s arrival on the show highly probable, and now, fan site Fellowship of Fans has reinforced that likelihood with an exclusive new scoop that claims, “Calam Lynch will play ‘CELEBORN’ in season 2 of ‘THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER.'”

Who is Celeborn?

Warner Bros.

Most fairweather fans of Middle-earth know who Celeborn is in relation to Galadriel. He’s the silvery dude who slowly walks around with her in the “Lord of the Rings” movies. In the books, he has a few more lines, but he hardly says anything of consequence. When you add it all up, while it’s implied that he’s important off-page, Celeborn is one of Tolkien’s most underdeveloped characters and one that is forgotten in most instances. However, if you dig deeply enough, it’s possible to cobble together a patchwork image of who Galadriel’s husband is.

The first thing to point out is that Celeborn doesn’t remain consistent in all of Tolkien’s writings. Some versions of the legendarium have the Elf originating in Valinor away over the seas in the West, while others have him starting in Middle-earth. In some places, he’s a bona fide prince. In others, he’s only distantly related to royalty.

Tolkien never nailed down Celeborn’s origins. But his son, Christopher, chose to semi-codify the character’s genesis when, after his father’s death, he published an “official” version of Celeborn in “The Silmarillion.” There, he is described as an “Elf of Doriath, kinsman of Thingol.” Thingol is the king of Doriath, which is the main kingdom of a group of immortal beings called the Sindar, or Grey Elves. That makes the official printed version of Celeborn a royal family member of the Grey Elves, which is the iteration we’ll go with for now.

How do Celeborn and Galadriel meet in the books?

Amazon Studios

Once you get past Celeborn’s confusing origins, it doesn’t take long before he links up with Galadriel. Again, there are a couple of versions of this, but the primary one is in “The Silmarillion,” where we get a simple explanation. Galadriel and her brother, Finrod, visit Thingol in Doriath, to whom they’re also distantly related. (Tolkien’s monarchical tendency to link up distant cousins is common in his world.)

While there, Finrod makes plans to establish his own kingdom called Nargothrond. When he heads off to do that, though, the text says, “Galadriel his sister went not with him to Nargothrond, for in Doriath dwelt Celeborn, kinsman of Thingol, and there was great love between them.”

That’s it, folks. While there are some alternatives to this story (which we’ll get to in a second), the canon meeting of the power couple is sweet and simple. They bump into each other at the Elven king Thingol’s court and become enamored. The attraction is so strong that Galadriel decides to stay behind to be with her new Elven princeling, and the rest is history.

Alternatives to the Celeborn/Galadriel love story

Amazon Studios

Galadriel and Celeborn’s initial meeting isn’t very glamorous, overly epic, or even particularly romantic. However, Tolkien did come up with plans to revise it. In the book “Unfinished Tales,” Christopher Tolkien summarizes a later version of their story that his father outlined, in which they meet in Valinor rather than Middle-earth. There, they plot to build a ship and sail back to Middle-earth together. While this is a fascinating new take on their story, it was never completed enough to take the place of the simpler version we do have in “The Silmarillion.”

The other elephant in the room is the version of Galadriel and Celeborn’s initial meeting that shows up in “The Rings of Power” Season 1. The adaptation of showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay fills in some detail gaps, such as having Galadriel say that they met in a glade of flowers where she was dancing. The interesting thing is that this detail isn’t made up. It pulls straight from one of the most famous meet-cutes in all of Tolkien’s writings: the tale of Beren and Lúthien. In that First Age saga, the Man Beren first meets the Elf Lúthien (according to “The Silmarillion”) “on the eve of spring, and Lúthien danced upon a green hill.” In the “Lord of the Rings” books, Aragorn also talks about this meeting, mentioning things like flowers, a glade, and dancing.

On top of that, Lúthien’s parents — Thingol and his queen, Melian — also meet in a similar way. Yeah, maybe it really was very similar for Galadriel and Celeborn in Payne and McKay’s iteration. In the source material, though, the event is much less detailed and doesn’t copy any other couple’s meet-cutes in the process.

What does the potential arrival of Celeborn bring to The Rings of Power?

Amazon Studios

Celeborn’s vague history and confusing early love story with Galadriel are interesting subjects for “The Rings of Power” to tackle. However, the juicier question is where they’ll go moving forward if the rumors are true and Celeborn really is introduced in Season 2 (or beyond). Galadriel’s central part in the show’s story makes Celeborn a major potential influence on her story arc. Actor Morfydd Clark has already told Looper that Galadriel is at her lowest and darkest in Season 1. Could finding Celeborn help lift her from the depths of despair?

Additionally, the pair’s daughter in the books, Celebrían, ends up marrying Elrond. Is that in the cards here? In Tolkien’s writings, Celeborn also leads armies against Sauron during the Second Age and is with Elrond when the latter founds Rivendell.

There’s a lot to unpack with the character, and the fact that he was unceremoniously written out of Season 1 was a bummer. Here’s hoping the delay pays off if and when he is finally reintroduced at a later point in the show’s story.