This week’s episode of Rings of Power began the siege of Eregion in earnest, and with it, put the spotlight on a character we haven’t gotten to see too much of so far this season in Elrond. Going from a distrusting voice against the Elven rings to a commander of Lindon’s armies in a desperate bid to save Eregion put a lot of weight on actor Robert Aramayo’s shoulders… not just for all the fight scenes Elrond was involved in, but for another, surprisingly tactical choice he has to make that will have some fans raising their eyebrows.
That decision, of course, is how Elrond bids farewell to the captive Galadriel, after a tense last-minute negotiation between the elves and Adar makes the battle to come an inevitability. Putting her life on the line for the sake of the mission, Elrond is granted what he believes is a farewell to his old friend… climaxing in a shocking kiss.
“It says a lot about their relationship,” Aramayo recently told io9 at a press event for the final two episodes of the season. “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.”
But as surprised viewers quickly learn, Elrond’s moment of passion has more than just emotionality behind it—he’s kissing her to distract from the fact he’s handed her a broach from his cloak, which Galadriel uses the pin from to free her bindings. “It’s emotional, but also, it’s a very practical reasoning in terms of his tactics, and what he needs to do. That’s the last sort of hope, that he’s able to act on there. But it was shocking. It shocked me when I read [that moment]. It felt like they were not expecting that, but it is such a complicated relationship between the two of them—Elrond is sort of growing, changing, becoming more of a leader himself. Whereas in the first season, I had the feeling that he’s always been very much the herald. Now he’s moving into more of a position of leadership, which is difficult for him, and also difficult for [his relationship with Galadriel], because she’s the commander of the Northern Armies before him.”
Heavy are the elf-ears that wear the fancy helmet, it seems—which made a major challenge for Aramayo and Elrond alike when he gets thrown into the front lines of the brutal fighting at Eregion’s walls in the episode. Watching his soldiers be cut down, not even facing the orcs down alongside High King Gil-Galad (and a surprise reinforcing boost from wandering ranger Arondir) stopped filming those fight scenes from being a huge challenge on set. Especially when one of Elrond’s decisive moments came when the trio of heroic elves tag-teamed bringing down the huge Hill-Troll, Damrod, before it could tear Eregion’s defences apart.
“Well, he’s not there!” Aramayo joked of filming the sequence. “Yeah, that’s a big problem. It was a big sandbag foot thing. That thing was the biggest challenge, you just didn’t know how big, really, he was. ‘Am I standing in him now? You’re in his stomach. You got to move.’”
For Benjamin Walker, playing Gil-Galad—and the first time we really get to see the High King in action in the show so far—his assist in the takedown required a bit more of a logistical bent beyond CG considerations. “My challenges were the horses. I love horses. I’ve always ridden horses in films, but anyone who knows horses knows they don’t like fire,” Walker added. “So you’re standing there. They’ve set this battlefield full of stunt people and orcs and mud and they say ‘rolling!’. And the next thing they do is light up 100 fires. You feel your horse start to tense. To pacify the animal and also work with the animal was a challenge. But we had a great horse wrangling team and I think we got there in the end. We did, but I would have panicked, I think.”
“[The horse] did not want to go. She didn’t get the temptation. And I don’t blame her,” Walker continued.
“Because there was fires and orcs either side of you!” Aramayo helpfully pointed out.
“Oh yeah, and orcs holding fire,” Walker quipped. “It wasn’t like a campfire. This is a torch. It was exciting!”
Rings of Power season two’s penultimate episode is now streaming on Prime Video—stay tuned to io9 this week and next week for more behind-the-scenes coverage from the final episodes!
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