Shipping Me This, Shipping Me That, The Rings of Power’s Writers And Fans Are All Twats – Elrond and Galadriel’s Kissing Aftermath

We could feel it in the water. We could feel it in the earth. We could smell it in the air. All that Tolkien was, is lost…especially when it comes to Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. But the inevitable has finally happened. The Rings of Power season 2 showed Elrond kissing Galadriel causing Tolkien fans to recoil while Faulkiens rejoiced. It is, up to this point, the penultimate example of one, out of many, things the show has done wrong and poorly: romance.

The Rings of Power’s writing is atrocious, abhorrent, boring, bland, and pretentiously ponderous when it comes to its original dialogue. But those traits manage to extend to lines stolen from superior work. Hearing lines from The Lord of the Rings movies, and the books, grates on the ears of Tolkien fans for it is chopped up, turned around, and delivered poorly in a sad attempt by the writers to create a bridge between Amazon’s The Rings of Power and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies. 

There is no reason to even mention J.R.R Tolkien at this point since The Rings of Power has done everything it can to distance itself from Tolkien’s work.

So you would think that, with all of this bad writing, the show would excel at something. Well, it has excelled at something. Amazon’s The Rings of Power excels in shipping, or imply something of the sort, to a large percentage of characters in a show and failing to make it work.

I don’t care how the writers contrived Elrond kissing Galadriel. This fanfiction is disgusting.

The writers and fans are weirdos.

Amazon’s #TheRingsofPower Is An Expensive Lesson In Bad Writing – https://t.co/ZqHNN2bpCd #RespectforTolkien #LOTR #Tolkien #RingsofPower https://t.co/2KrhNM3Ym1 pic.twitter.com/Ab1z6uyVeJ

— Sean D Knight (@SeanDKnight) September 26, 2024

When it comes to romance in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it is non-existent in the first and lives on the edges of the latter. In The Lord of the Rings books we have Aragorn and Arwen, Faramir and Eowyn, not to mention Sam and Rosie, while we got to see husband and wife Celeborn and Galadriel. Suffice to say, romance in the books was not the focal point but a nice ending and reward to the story. 

In the movies, romance in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings was more prominent for Aragorn and Arwen while Faramir and Eowyn’s relationship was sacrificed. Then Peter Jackson decided there needed to be a love story in The Hobbit movies by creating a non-canonical romance between Kili and the non-canonical character Tauriel. Say what you want about it, but at least their romance in The Hobbit movies was more believable and endearing than the ones in The Rings of Power. 

But when it comes to the First and Second Ages, Tolkien wrote about a number of epic and heart-wrenching romances in a history full of Shakespearean-like tragedy. So you would think that the writers for The Rings of Power would have used some of those in a show set in the Second Age.

So what happened with The Rings of Power? All of Tolkien’s work was thrown to the side for some fanfiction-type shipping for Faulkiens and the general audience on par with Harry Potter fanfics shipping Hermione with Malfoy.

Rather than having romances that are developed, deep, soulful, heartwarming, and tragic, the romantic overtures in this show suffer from the same problems as the overall writing. They are shallow, underdeveloped, and unrewarding to see played out. Just like the myriad of plotlines making the show a convoluted and disjointed mess that the general audience loses interest in, the same for all of the shipping taking place. 

Think about it.

Durin and Disa, Miriel and Elendil, Islidur and Estrid, Eärien and Kemen, Arondir and Bronwyn, Poppy and Nobody, are couples or soon-to-be-couples in this show. But most of these aren’t properly fleshed out and developed. In fact, Durin and Disa’s are the most developed in the entire show and we don’t see them enough. But then you have the implied romantic tensions that the Faulkiens run with when it comes to Annatar (Sauron) and Mirdania, or Annatar (Sauron) and Celebrimbor (weirdos).

At this point it is surprising that Nori and The Stranger haven’t been shipped together by a weird fan. Or that the writers haven’t shipped Theo, Gil-galad, Celebrimbor, and Adar. 

Or have they with Adar?

As is the case now, of the couples shipped in the show, most of them don’t exist in the books which would be Disa, Eärien (Isildur didn’t have a sister in the books), Estrid (Isildur’s wife was never named though assumed to be Numenorean), Arondir, Bronwyn, Poppy, and Nobody. The only character, that we mentioned before, who seemed to have some depth and relevance is Disa, even though she is manipulative and power-hungry. Meanwhile, the “romance” between Poppy and Nobody is a great example of how bad the writing in this show is and their ability to insert romance into a story.

As for The Rings of Power’s celebrated couple because one was black and the other a single mother, Arondir and Bronwyn, it just didn’t work. There is nothing compelling about Bronwyn and the show does a horrible job of trying to make her relevant and a single mother girl boss – essentially a blatant Emeldir ripoff. 

But the show doesn’t stop at just creating non-canonical characters and shipping them with canonical ones. It takes canonical characters and ships them as well. A major example would be Miriel and Elendil who never really interacted with each other in the books and certainly didn’t become romantically involved. 

Then we finally come to…Galadriel.

If you had “Elven Slut” on your The Rings of Power Galadriel bingo card, you get a gold star. What The Rings of Power has done to Galadriel, one of the greatest female characters of all time, is an abhorrent desecration on a level that will be studied in literary classes till the end of time. Not only is ROP’s Galadriel completely out-of-character in the show compared to the books, she is also not elven when it comes to romance.

Hence, why the term “slut” is appropriate in this context. 

When Tolkien created elves, he had a clear idea of how they approached romance. When they marry, they are married for life and they are seldom swayed by the desires of the body or influenced by lust. Of course, there are some exceptions such as Feanor’s father, Finwe, who was allowed to marry again and, as a result, we see how that worked out in The Silmarillion. 

However, The Rings of Power purposely and blatantly ignored Galadriel’s history during the Second Age when it comes to her being married to Celeborn and raising her daughter Celebrian. Galadriel thinking that Celeborn is “dead” was done so that the writers could create a “romance” between Galadriel and Halbrand (Sauron) for the sake of Faulkien shippers and cheap thrills to drum up “viral” moments. A romance that couldn’t happen unless they dumbed down their version of Galadriel since Sauron was never able to gain her trust in the books. 

Despite Galadriel and the Halbrand arc being completely contrary to the books, ROP fans lapped it up with #Haladriel being celebrated by these Faulkiens. But it didn’t stop there. The writers also made it appear that there was more going on between Elrond and Galadriel with  the slight expectation being that the writers might have them kissing for one reason or another. 

Which finally happened.

The Rings of Power had Elrond and Galadriel kiss in a lazily contrived way that, no matter what, would never be accepted by Tolkien’s fans since they are distant cousins and, eventually, in-laws considering that Elrond marries Galadriel’s daughter Celebrian and Galadriel becomes Elrond’s mother-in-law. Even the ploy itself, where Elrond uses the kiss to pass something to Galadriel to help her out of her situation, is lazy writing. This ploy wouldn’t fool elves, no matter how “convincing” the kiss is. So Adar, who is an elf, falling for a pathetic trick can be attributed to the asinine writing of this show. 

Then, if you take into account the fact that some Faulkiens theorize that Adar is Celeborn, suddenly the scene becomes even worse because now Adar/Celeborn is a cuck. To reiterate, the scene is lazy writing and was made for a fanbase that thrives on shipping anyone with whoever and to hell with canon. There were a number of ways the scene could have played out and provided a distraction. From both characters having heartfelt apologies to  kissing on the forehead or check and even having an argument of epic proportions where Elrond then punches Galadriel in the stomach in order to pass off the item. But no, the writers chose the most over-used trope in cinema – the kiss.

The kiss that, if you paid attention, didn’t really work since there were a couple of orcs looking directly at Elrond as he passed the item to Galadriel and only worked because of bad writing and plot armor. The kiss itself, despite what some Faulkiens claimed, wasn’t one that was chaste, or platonic, or between friends as some Faulkiens have argued. In fact, the “romantic” kiss is also supported, and implied to be more than just a kiss, by the music playing in the background as Elrond and Galadriel live out their redneck relationship fantasies.

It’s cheap, revolting, and feels like the plot was stolen from pornhub. 

One could imagine how family dinners would transpire at Lothlorien or Rivendell with Elrond joking to Galadriel, “Hey, mother! Remember that time I kissed you deeply in order to help you escape from your husband in that Orc camp?” Then turns to his wife Celebrian who is braiding Arwen’s hair while talking to their sons Elladan and Elrohir, “Honey, could you pass the braised leeks?”

Or, if they had celebrated Christmas in Middle-earth, Elrond’s sons and daughter could be singing the song “I Saw Daddy Kissing Grandmama.”

Sounds stupid and asinine, right? But that’s what this show has set up in their redneck version of Middle-earth.

And it didn’t have to be like this. There were other ways for Elrond to assist Galadriel in escaping that didn’t require a kissing scene. Such as, for example, a big argument between the two, allowing them to air out their issues, in which Elrond walks up to her and punches Galadriel. The problem, and it is one that keeps popping up, is that the writers are lazy, unintelligent, and keep trying to placate the lowest common denominator while attempting to keep to their original goal of making a show more like Game of Thrones than Lord of the Rings. Whoever this scene was written for, are going to be very few and far between. 

But the backlash will be tremendous. 

Possibly even more detrimental because this scene has the potential of driving out the few Tolkien fans who genuinely enjoyed the show despite everything it has done in contention with Tolkien. Which is not good considering that Season 2 is already performing worse than Season 1 which Amazon is trying to downplay.

Amazon’s The Rings of Power Season 2 continues to build on the issues set in Season 1 and is reaching new levels of stupidity. It’s amazing how low the bar keeps dropping. It is obvious, at this point, that the show was never about adhering to Tolkien’s world, views, and works. So why would the romance be any different?

These are not fleshed out characters with developing relationships. They are just plot points to try and make the show interesting for a small subset of “fans” – Faulkiens and shippers. The Rings of Power fandom who are defending Elrond kissing Galadriel because it was a strategic kiss, it was platonic, etc. But they show their ignorance about Middle-earth, Tolkien, and Tolkien’s elves. 

The Rings of Power Season 2 has failed, so far, to gain any traction with the general audience as we have seen. In fact, it has been performing worse than Season 1 though Amazon is trying to obfuscate that fact by trickling out numbers for the show. But the kiss between Elrond and Galadriel will be the kiss that turned Tolkien fans off of this show for good.

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