This week’s episode of Rings of Power he began the siege of Eregion in earnest, and with it, he shed light on a character we haven’t seen much of so far this season in Elrond. Going from the voice of no one trusts anyone against the Elven rings to the commander of Lindon’s forces in a desperate attempt to save Eregion put a lot of weight on Robert Aramayo’s shoulders… not just in every fight scene Elrond was involved in, but in one, surprisingly. It’s a smart choice for him to make that will make some fans raise their eyebrows.
That decision, of course, is how Elrond bid farewell to the captive Galadriel, after last-minute negotiations between the elves and Adar made war inevitable. Risking his life for the mission, Elrond is given what he believes to be a farewell to his old friend… culminating in a shocking kiss.
“It says a lot about their relationship,” Aramayo recently told io9 at the press event for the final two episodes of the season. “It is almost the last time that he will see, he fulfills his promise: He puts everything before him, and he does not want him to die. He doesn’t want this to be the last time.”
But as stunned viewers quickly learn, Elrond’s moment of love has more than just emotion behind it—he kisses her to distract from the fact that she’s given him a brush of her coat, which Galadriel uses a pin to loosen her bonds. “It’s emotional, but also, it’s a practical thought in terms of his tactics, and what he has to do. That’s the last kind of hope, he can do there. But it it was scary. It scared me when I read it [that moment]. It felt like they weren’t expecting that, but it’s a strange relationship between the two of them — Elrond is kind of growing, changing, becoming a leader himself. Although in the first season, I felt that he was always too much of an announcer. Now he is stepping into many leadership positions, which is difficult for him, and difficult for him [his relationship with Galadriel]because he is the commander of the Northern forces before him.”
They’re wearing fancy helmeted ears, it seems—which made for quite a challenge for Aramayo and Elrond when he was thrown into a brutal battle on the walls of Eregion in the episode. Watching his soldiers get decimated, not facing the orcs on the ground next to High King Gil-Galad (and the surprising resilience from the wandering warden Arondir) stopped filming those fight scenes from being a major challenge on set. Especially when one of Elrond’s defining moments came when three heroic elves combined to take down the giant Hill-Troll, Damrod, before it could break through the defenses of Eregion.
“Well, there is none!” Aramayo made a joke of filming the sequence. “Yes, that’s a big problem. It was the size of a sandbag foot. That thing was the biggest challenge, you just didn’t know how big he really was. ‘I stand to him now? He is in his stomach. You have to move.’”
For Benjamin Walker, who plays Gil-Galad—and it’s the first time we’ve seen the High King in action on the show so far—his help in bringing down the ground requires more bending than CG considerations. “My challenges were horses. I love horses. I always ride horses in movies, but anyone who knows horses knows that do not like fire,” Walker added. “So you’re standing there. They set up this battlefield full of whisperers and orcs and mud and say ‘it’s rolling!’ The next thing they do is light a hundred fires. You feel your horse begin to tense up. Calming the animal and interacting with the animal was a challenge. But we had a great team vying for horses and I think we got there in the end. We did, but I would have been scared, I think.”
“[The horse] he did not I want to go. He didn’t get the temptation. And I don’t blame him,” Walker continued.
“Because there was fire and orcs on either side of you!” Aramayo showed helpfully.
“Oh yeah, and the orcs caught fire,” Walker said. “It wasn’t like a campfire. This is a torch. It was fun!”
Rings of Power The first episode of season two is now streaming on Prime Video—stay tuned to io9 this week and next week for more behind-the-scenes from the final episodes!
Looking for more io9 news? Check out when you can expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe in film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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