"For A Moment, Standing There, You Were The Very Image Of Your Father...Do You Know, I Remember Once,

"For a moment, standing there, you were the very image of your father...Do you know, I remember once, he said to me, one day my future would be in his son's hands. He said it quite casually, as if one might speak of tomorrow's rain" - Celebrimbor S1.E4 ∙ The Great Wave / S2.E8 ∙ Shadow and Flame

annatar + celebrimbor // dangerously, yours.

Broke: Gondolin was a serious, conservative, prudish city.

Woke: The Gondolindrim were stuck in one city for 400-ish years with no Morgoth threatening them and basically nothing do to. If anyone in Middle-Earth was entertaining themselves with festivals and ragers, it was them. We're talking drunken moshpits, people getting thrown into fountains, endless romantic intrigue between most of the Lords, the whole nine yards.

Bespoke: The Gondolindrim were party animals but they all agreed that what happens in Gondolin stays in Gondolin and never talked about the parties after the fall; which is why Gondolin gets a reputation for being so serious and boring. Most of the Gondolindrim, and especially Turgon, think this is hilarious.

In the not so distant future, Celebrimbor comes to Aman.

He didn't respond to the summons right away, which surprised many, though they didn't comment on it, and once re-embodied Celebrimbor is very quiet, and very still, and doesn't say or do much beyond what is necessary.

His convalescence is not quite in keeping with what is usual, but the Valar and the Maiar who work among those who have recently appeared in Aman treat his new body carefully; they know that the soul inside it is still hurt, still damaged, still withered and gasping, and the day when Celebrimbor will be truly healed is far, far away.

There are elves among them, of course, and they escort Celebrimbor outside every day. They take him to places of surpassing beauty and he is gently complacent, acknowledging their kindness with a smile that's barely there, or a nod of thanks, but nothing more, until the movement and migration of the kingfishers along the lakeshores and up the major river valleys in Aman captures his attention.

There is no winter in Aman, just spring and summer and spring again, but the birds move into the valley where the newly awakened reside with some regularity, and their calls at dawn and midday make Celebrimbor sit upright in wonder, every time. Finally he asks for charcoal and paper, for paints and watercolor, and begins to draw the kingfishers and all their variations through the seasons.

This goes on for some time.

(When a well-meaning elf asks if he wouldn't rather work with metal, wouldn't rather hold a hammer and strike an anvil instead, he drops his brush and walks away suddenly, one hand cradling the other, and the elf has to collect his scattered drawings before they are taken by the wind. They do not ask again.)

One day an attendant loses track of Celebrimbor in the wild. Hours turn into days and soon a search is on. Some of the elves don't understand. They ask, what harm could possibly come to him here? One of the Valar who lingers nearby cuts the air with a gesture, his expression grave, and they fall silent.

Celebrimbor is found by the shore of a small, clear lake, hidden among the grasses with an injured kingfisher in his arms. He is filthy, and he is crying.

"It fell from the sky," he tells the same Valar who silenced the elves. "Can we save it, please? It's so badly hurt, it might be dying, it's done nothing wrong."

"Of course, of course," is the answer. "Of course, we can but try."

Finale thoughts ... Nothing to see here, just thinking about Celebrimbor's brilliance and heroism in his last moments, his prophecy, and the absolute crying rage-fueled tantrum Sauron is likely to have when he has a moment to sit and think about how and when, exactly, Galadriel got her hands on the Nine.

Because in that last scene Celebrimbor wasn't just playing their game of "whose will is mightier," he was stalling to buy time for Galadriel. (Which he said he would do and somehow delivered on. Honestly what a stellar badass.)

He wasn't thinking only of Sauron during his last moments, his thoughts were on Galadriel and the safety of his people too; Celebrimbor's last words were meant for Sauron, yes, but those words also goaded Sauron into killing him and bought a few extra seconds for Galadriel.

So during their last (precioussss) moments together, Celebrimbor was supposed to be focused on Sauron alone, but he wasn't; instead Celebrimbor deceived him, and in Sauron's mind that is not acceptable.

When he puts that together and really sits down to digest that timeline he's going to be even more difficult to be around. I pity the Uruk even more now.

The way I see it, Sauron wanted three things during those last few episodes: Celebrimbor's compliance (following the pattern, the abuser trying to win over the abused again), the Nine, and the Uruk army. He got two out of three, but at a huge cost that he's hardly aware of yet, even though Celebrimbor's last words are probably forming shadows and doubts in what passes for his mind.

Then there was the bonus fourth thing that he wasn't aware he wanted until close to the end: Galadriel's ring, Nenya. But that slipped through his fingers literally, in much the same way Celebrimbor's soul slipped from his grasp metaphorically. (I really like that symmetry too, even if it was absurdly painful to watch.)

And Galadriel was fantastic because she played him too! I didn't see that coming, thought she was just going to throw herself backwards off the cliff, but instead she taunted the bastard and, in a move that mirrored Celebrimbor's goading of Sauron, took a fall that could have killed her rather than cede a millimeter of her will to the Enemy.

So Sauron has his army, and he has the Nine, but he's not quite winning. Not at all.

And that look at Fëanor's hammer? Well. I just responded to another post about this where we were talking about how a theme this season is that Celebrimbor is (the original) preciousss to Sauron (for all the wrong reasons) but I do hope that future seasons give us a call back to the hammer, and to Celebrimbor's dying words as Sauron's inspiration for the forging of the One.

Because I think Sauron is going to be compelled by equal parts fear and grief to forge that ring, and I hope they show that the forging of it is not quite a consensual act.

I really love this version of Sauron so far, and I want to see him suffer through that forging, I want to see him try and fail to break out of the pattern of maladaptive attachment he fell into with Melkor, and to have many flashbacks and references to our beloved Tyelpë throughout that process.