What Happened to Galadriel’s Husband on ‘The Rings of Power’?

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 7.

Fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy might remember Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband and Lothlórien co-ruler, played in the movies by actor Marton Csokas.

But while Galadriel is a lead character in Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — with Morfydd Clark playing the Elven warrior — we’ve only heard about her husband in passing on the Prime Video series so far. So what happened to the Rings of Power version of Celeborn?

In The Rings of Power’s seventh episode, “The Eye” — which started streaming on Friday, Oct. 7 — Galadriel tells Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) that she lost her husband in the war against Morgoth and Sauron.

“Celeborn was his name,” she says. “We met in a glade of flowers. I was dancing and he saw me there. … The war seemed so very far away then. When he went to it, I chided him. His armor didn’t fit properly. I called him a silver clam. I never saw him again after that.”

Note, however, that Galadriel doesn’t say that Celebron is dead — she only says that she never saw him after he went off to war. So there’s a chance that Celebron is still alive. And for that matter, Galadriel might even know that Celebron could still be alive.

In a Q&A with reporters about “The Eye,” The Rings of Power’s co-showrunner J.D. Payne addressed that uncertainty. “[Galadriel] says she never saw him again,” he said, per NME. “Ambiguous. And we know there are things that the two of them do together in terms of progeny that they will issue, realms they will found, all kinds of things. So it would be very hard to believe that she would never see him again. But let’s see.”

Potential spoilers for the rest of The Rings of Power ahead!

Unless the writers are messing with J.R.R. Tolkien canon, we can expect to see or hear from Celeborn at some point on The Rings of Power. As Inverse recaps, Tolkien wrote that Celeborn remained in Middle-earth with Galadriel after the defeat of Morgoth, and the couple welcomed a daughter named Celebrían. Celebrían later became wife of Elrond (played in the movies by Hugo Weaving and in the TV show by Robert Aramayo) and mother of Arwen (played in the movies by Liv Tyler).

Later, Galadriel and Celeborn gave the Fellowship of the Ring supplies on their quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat Sauron, as depicted in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring and its movie adaptation.

Inverse’s Mónica Marie Zorrilla expects to see Celeborn on The Rings of Power at the end of Season 1 or in Season 2, adding, “It wouldn’t make sense to keep him dead or missing. The romantic tension between Galadriel and Halbrand [Charlie Vickers] has been juicy to watch unfold, but it’s time for Galadriel to reunite with her husband.”