Elrond kisses the captive Galadriel to distract attention while passing her a brooch; its pin helps her free her bindings. Robert Aramayo says the gesture is also an apparent farewell: Elrond fears he may not see her again and wants her to survive.
Why does Elrond kiss Galadriel?
In the second season’s penultimate episode, Elrond has negotiated with Adar, but Galadriel is still a prisoner and battle for Eregion seems unavoidable. The kiss looks like a goodbye. It also gives Elrond a moment to pass her a brooch from his cloak. Galadriel uses its pin to undo her bindings.
Aramayo described the kiss as both emotional and practical. “It says a lot about their relationship,” he said. He added: “It is probably the last time he’s going to see her, he’s fulfilling his promise: He’s putting everything before her, and he doesn’t want her to die. He doesn’t want this to be the last time.”
That reading makes the gesture do two things at once: express Elrond’s fear of losing Galadriel and create an opening for her escape. Aramayo summed up the combination this way: “It’s emotional, but also, it’s a very practical reasoning in terms of his tactics, and what he needs to do.”
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![Wagner: Der Ring Des Nibelungen [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41UCNYLqPgL._SL160_.jpg)
- ISBN: 978-0-7697-9238-5
- Color
- Running Time: 917 minutes
- Subtitles: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish
- Sound: LPCM/Dolby 5.1/DTS
Why did the moment surprise Aramayo?
Aramayo said the scene caught him off guard when he first read it: “It shocked me when I read [that moment].” He described Elrond and Galadriel’s relationship as complicated, and connected the scene to Elrond’s changing place in the story.
In Aramayo’s account, Elrond has moved from seeing himself as a herald toward taking on leadership. That transition is difficult for the character and affects his relationship with Galadriel, who had been commander of the Northern Armies before him. This is Aramayo’s interpretation of the character’s emotional context, rather than an explanation stated by the scene itself.
What the interview says about the battle scenes
The conversation also touched on the siege of Eregion, including the fighting at its walls and the confrontation with the Hill-Troll Damrod. Aramayo joked about the challenge of performing opposite a creature that was not physically there: “Well, he’s not there!” He described a large sandbag foot used as a stand-in, which made it harder to judge the troll’s scale and position.
Benjamin Walker, who plays Gil-galad, recalled a different on-set challenge: working with a horse near battlefield fires. He said the crew lit fires across the set after filming began and that the horse-wrangling team helped manage the animal. Walker called the challenge, “My challenges were the horses.” His description of “100 fires” was an anecdotal recollection, not a verified production count.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsInterview context
James Whitbrook’s interview with Aramayo for Gizmodo’s io9 was published on September 27, 2024. At that time, the article described season two as streaming on Prime Video; that historical statement does not establish current availability or availability in every region.
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