Galadriel actor was "totally unprepared" for wave of backlash after The Rings of Power came out

The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is off and running on Prime Video, and Galadriel — a millennia-old elf who will one day be the mysterious lady of Lothlórien whom Frodo meets on his journey to destroy the One Ring — is a big part of it, if not so much a part as in the first season, where she was practically the main character.

Galadriel is played by Morfydd Clark, who was recently profiled in Elle. According to co-showrunner Patrick McKay, the decision to make Galadriel the protagonist of the show was a “day one, minute one” choice, although they didn't want to have the same stately Galadriel from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, played wonderfully by Cate Blanchett. “What if you go back thousands of years before [the Jackson films] and she’s on a battlefield with a sword? That was the first image I remember really grabbing onto and going, ‘Okay, this could be something so distinct and different from, maybe, what people are expecting,’” McKay said.

Co-showrunner J.D. Payne explained how that version of the character is rooted in the work of Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, who “gives us hints that [Galadriel] was prideful, that she was a warrior at various times in her history.” The Rings of Power will take Galadriel “from being an impetuous, prideful young warrior to the wise Lady of the Wood.'”

Clark is solid as Galadriel; I especially like her lilting voice, which is good for speaking Tolkien's Elvish languages. But there was a lot of backlash to the character in season 1, some if it nuanced and legitimate — if you found Galadriel dull or immature or out of step with canon, I'm not going to argue — and some of it tailored to fit political narratives, like billionaire Elon Musk opining on Twitter (while he was in the process of buying it, incidentally) that Galadriel was the only “brave, smart and nice” character while the male characters were all “coward[s], jerk[s] or both.”

I think there are valid criticisms to make of the show and of the character, but I'm not surprised to hear that Clark also received a lot of straight-up hate messages, which are unacceptable. “I was just totally unprepared when season 1 came out,” she said. “I’ve seen a really dark side of what it means to be someone who [anyone] can write a message to on Instagram, and a really lovely side.”

The lovely side got her through the “negativeness, primarily from men.” She said that “lots of the criticism I got from some [fans] were for the things making other people feel liberated while watching [Galadriel]...What certain people didn’t necessarily enjoy about her, other people did. She takes up space; she’s unapologetic. I didn’t want her to act like a human woman who’s been taught not to be abrasive. Every other character I’ve played, because they’re human women, there’s shame built in. [In season 1], Galadriel doesn’t have that. I’m glad I committed to that.”

I like that take on this younger Galadriel — elves, being a bit closer to the divine, are often above human emotions like shame — and more or less enjoyed her in season 1; my main criticisms are that she's a bit dull and that the show crafts a story for her that goes against what Tolkien wrote in books like The Silmarillion, where we learn that Galadriel was one of the elves immediately suspicious of Sauron when he returned in the guise of a strange being known as Annatar. Instead, The Rings of Power season 1 has Sauron come back disguised as a mortal man named Halbrand, and Galadriel is fooled to the point where he offers to make her his dark queen.

That's the kind of thing that annoys me in adaptations; I know things are going to change, but I think you've gone too far if you're writing a story where a character does the opposite of what they do in the source material. Executive producer Lindsey Webber feels differently, reasoning that this set up Galadriel for a longer arc. “It’s fun to think about what Galadriel’s ‘unlikable’ decisions led to — would Sauron have found his way to power so quickly if she didn’t help him?” Weber said. “Or will it turn out, in the end, that she might be able to defeat him one day because she helped him and got to know him in the process? These are the kinds of delightful dramatic questions that come from having an imperfect character.”

The Rings of Power is already thinking of Galadriel's arc in season 3

in the second season, Galadriel is more humbled, having been fooled by Sauron and taken a "massive blow to her pride," according to MaKay. While she spent most of season 1 on a solo mission, Clark says that she's now open to collaboration. “Galadriel had no fellowship in [season 1]; she was an elf alone,” she said. "[In season 2,] she is accepting that she’s part of something more than herself, and she can’t do this alone. She’s open; she’s painfully open. She’d like to be closed, but she knows she can’t be.”

“Because of the nature of where the story has been so far, it’s been rather grim,” Payne added. "[Galadriel was] like the Terminator or something. She’s just on a mission. But the character has a lot of other registers and tones that we are excited to play in—some of which you see in season 2, and some of which we’ve already started to think [for] season 3.”

I'm all for a more nuanced Galadriel in season 2; new episodes drop every Thursday on Prime Video. And I like Clark's take on the character; if fans didn't enjoy the angry, single-minded Galadriel from season 1, things may be changing. “But what’s wonderful about elves is that they don’t become jaded,” Clark said. "They become more and more convinced that they have to maintain the loveliness of the world, and continue to see goodness. I think that’s quite a nice thing to be reminded of myself, as a mere mortal.”

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