Habrand or Sauron?

Facing Annatar and seeing Halbrand again, was a heart-shattered-all-over-again moment for Galadriel. But thinking about my own viewing of Sauron, I realized that she needed her heart broken again.

I don’t know who else had the same reaction, but I, for the most part, was unable to process that Halbrand and Sauron are the same. We were introduced to Halbrand specifically. Halbrand is who we got to know. The reluctant king running from his past. We spent over a month with that character. In Alloyed, they revealed that Halbrand is actually Sauron, but that was only at the end of the episode. After the hours' worth of time with Halbrand, it was but a few minutes that we spent with Sauron. I knew consciously that the two were the same, but there was still a subconscious separation. Since we spent so much time with Halbrand and so little with Sauron, regardless of how many times I rewatched, my mind still made a distinction between the two characters. Even with the two-year hiatus, I was unable to process that the two are one and the same. This changed with season two.

We went into season two knowing that Halbrand is Sauron. Then fairly early on, we saw Halbrand transform into Annatar, who we already knew to associate with Sauron. Then throughout the season, we saw Annatar blatantly lying to and deceiving people and becoming more unhinged, ending in murder. And if that wasn’t enough, he assumed the form of Halbrand during his confrontation with Galadriel again, with actually subtle but existing physical differences to the original Halbrand. All that allowed for me to finally think of Halbrand and Sauron as the same. That distinction I was subconsciously pulling disappeared allowing me to think of Halbrand and know, on all levels, that he is Sauron.

And I think Galadriel went through something similar. Similarly how we as an audience spent weeks with Halbrand and then mere minutes knowing he’s Sauron, Galadriel spent weeks in Halbrand’s company, then a brief time knowing he’s Sauron, and then he took off to Mordor. She knows consciously that Halbrand and Sauron are the same, but with everything that happened all at once and her tendency to not let herself feel her emotions, there is a divide. Which even shows in the scene where she is trying to convince Gil-Galad to send her to Eregion. She refers to Sauron as Halbrand, Gil-Galad angrily corrects her, to which she responds with a pain- and guilt-filled look. She is processing her pain about the whole thing throughout the season, but this comes to a true close when she and Annatar face off in the season finale. She witnesses Sauron turning Adar’s orcs against him and he fights her. It is worth noting, that Sauron isn’t pulling any appearances for most of that fight but is being his unhinged self. He even transforms into Halbrand and Galadriel and Celebrimbor even. For the first time, Galadriel saw him for who he truly was. And with that, she was able to see that Halbrand was no more than just another form of The Great Deceiver. She was finally able to think of Halbrand as Sauron and therefore close herself off to him.

Or at least that’s how I see it. But whatever the case, as painful as it was, she needed her heart broken again in order to be able to shut Sauron out.

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