Thank you, @Eickerlyc and @Ian Forty-two. It is a lot of work, because it's hard to just summarize. So much depends on what is actually said between the characters. (For which reason I am very grateful that Eickerlyc took up half the burden. Though the fact that he did it so well put me on my mettle, and prevented me from even considering getting lazy.) One good thing about doing the synopses was that it made me attentive to many things that may not have seemed important at the time, but that did figure into the last episode, and I was able to appreciate how so many of them fell into place at the end.
If Adar actually killed one of those bodies, as seems increasingly likely, he must have taken Sauron by surprise. And note that he didn't just stab him in a vital organ or anything like that. Adar says he split him open, which sounds like extensive and serious damage. The body could not be repaired just by changing shape, and apparently Sauron left it and set about the task of making a new one. But making a new body is different from changing the shape of one a maia already has. It takes time, sometimes years, and the oftener Sauron is obliged to do this the longer it takes, and once it is done there is a period where that body is weak in mind and power. (This is also apparently what happens to any maia when they create and inhabit a new body—as demonstrated by what happened to our friend the wizard.) I think we can assume that if Adar's story is true, then when we first meet Sauron as Halbrand, he is not in possession of his full powers, though I believe he grows stronger as the series goes on. Also, at the end of the First Age, with the defeat of Morgoth, Sauron supposedly repented and reformed—at least, as much as he was capable of repenting and reforming, which is not so much like what the rest of us might mean by those words. He did want to create a perfect world, one that was peaceful and organized, one that lasted forever in the perfect form that he would create. And to accomplish that last, of course, he had to do away with all that messy free-will that Men and Elves and Dwarves and other intelligent species had. I think when we meet him he is near the end of that period of "repentance," his better (you note that I don't say good) intentions were wearing thin, but what he says when he is trying to corrupt Galadriel is all the truth—as he sees it, anyway.
He starts with the words that every girl or woman who ever fell for a bad guy and was convinced that she could reform him wants to hear. (The stuff of thousands of romance novels, but I've spoken with many women who have really fallen for this kind of thing in real life. These women don't lap up this kind of story because it is more romantic and exciting than their own lives, but because it validates the lives they live. One of these days, they are sure, their creepy husbands WILL change.) But Galadriel isn't and never was and never would be one of those women. She's already in love with somebody else—though I don't think Sauron knows about her marriage to Celeborn—a very different type of person.
And yet, believing herself widowed, she has allowed some sort of attraction to grow between herself and Halbrand, some sort of chemistry, though I think it is more friendship and companionship than love. But it is plain that she IS attracted to power. In The Fellowship of the Ring when she goes into her scary speech about what she would be and do if she accepted the Ring from Frodo ("all shall love me and despair") though she doesn't fall to the temptation, it is at least pretty clear that she has previously thought about what she could do with Ring if it ever came her way ... probably thought about it a lot. And her whole reason for being in Middle-Earth has to do with a desire for power. She didn't join the flight of the Noldor because she cared about the Silmarils or meant to go to war with Morgoth. The Silmarillion tells us that the lure for her was the dream of ruling broad realms.
And then he goes on to playing on her sources of pain. The way she has been treated by her own people: her company of warriors in the frozen north, her King, and even her best friend, Elrond. Back when the show had only aired a few episodes, I read a conversation—I don't remember where, Facebook maybe—between women who were wondering why all the male elves acted like such jerks to Galadriel. (Only that is not exactly the word they used. It was not a plural form of jerk, but of a slightly longer word, one that did end in K though.) Now I see that this treatment was woven into the story to make her more vulnerable to Sauron when the time came.
(And I felt a disturbance in the Force, as of countless ROP fan-fic writers stampeding toward their keyboards.)
Well, neither do I, and I think neither does anybody else. His powers were formidable and various, but Tolkien left a lot to the imagination. Sauron is a spirit that has literally existed since the dawn of creation. He was originally good, or at least neutral, since he hadn't yet been tempted to do anything evil. As one of the maiar—the lesser angels, as it were—once our world had been created, if he wanted to visit it and interact with those who lived there he was able to create a fleshly body for his spirit to inhabit. When in that body he could be killed—but not, as I might put it killed dead, since his spirit still lived and could eventually build itself a new body and become incarnate again. Though these bodies were hard to kill, because among his other abilities he was not only a shapechanger, but one who could easily slip from one form to another.
If Adar actually killed one of those bodies, as seems increasingly likely, he must have taken Sauron by surprise. And note that he didn't just stab him in a vital organ or anything like that. Adar says he split him open, which sounds like extensive and serious damage. The body could not be repaired just by changing shape, and apparently Sauron left it and set about the task of making a new one. But making a new body is different from changing the shape of one a maia already has. It takes time, sometimes years, and the oftener Sauron is obliged to do this the longer it takes, and once it is done there is a period where that body is weak in mind and power. (This is also apparently what happens to any maia when they create and inhabit a new body—as demonstrated by what happened to our friend the wizard.) I think we can assume that if Adar's story is true, then when we first meet Sauron as Halbrand, he is not in possession of his full powers, though I believe he grows stronger as the series goes on. Also, at the end of the First Age, with the defeat of Morgoth, Sauron supposedly repented and reformed—at least, as much as he was capable of repenting and reforming, which is not so much like what the rest of us might mean by those words. He did want to create a perfect world, one that was peaceful and organized, one that lasted forever in the perfect form that he would create. And to accomplish that last, of course, he had to do away with all that messy free-will that Men and Elves and Dwarves and other intelligent species had. I think when we meet him he is near the end of that period of "repentance," his better (you note that I don't say good) intentions were wearing thin, but what he says when he is trying to corrupt Galadriel is all the truth—as he sees it, anyway.
I agree. Or it would be laughable if it wasn't so sinister. There is no way that an elf of Celebrimbor's pride would have listened to such a person as Hal appeared to be. There had to be some "magical" mental manipulation going on. (I put that word in quotes, because magic is something mortals may practice, but maiar and elves and the like apparently do something else, that only looks like magic to us poor benighted mortals. And since we haven't been provided with any other words for it, beyond innate power, which is too vague, I intend to use magic for convenience. ) This was Galadriel's first clue that something was very, very wrong. Of course there were others, more obvious, that followed. It seems stupid—or maybe just arrogant and over-confident—of Sauron to think that he could get away with it with Galadriel looking on, since at that point he doesn't seem to have tried any magical manipulation on her just yet. He is depending largely on his ability to manipulate and deceive in ordinary ways.
I agree with you and @svalbard about this scene. In fact, I'll go farther and say that their confrontation made the episode for me. I knew that there was absolutely no way she would forgive what had been done to her beloved brother, yet I was on the edge of my seat, because he was so convincing and so masterful in his manipulations. He knew her so well. (Except for the part where she was never going to forgive him for what happened to Finrod. That was his one mistake.)
He starts with the words that every girl or woman who ever fell for a bad guy and was convinced that she could reform him wants to hear. (The stuff of thousands of romance novels, but I've spoken with many women who have really fallen for this kind of thing in real life. These women don't lap up this kind of story because it is more romantic and exciting than their own lives, but because it validates the lives they live. One of these days, they are sure, their creepy husbands WILL change.) But Galadriel isn't and never was and never would be one of those women. She's already in love with somebody else—though I don't think Sauron knows about her marriage to Celeborn—a very different type of person.
And yet, believing herself widowed, she has allowed some sort of attraction to grow between herself and Halbrand, some sort of chemistry, though I think it is more friendship and companionship than love. But it is plain that she IS attracted to power. In The Fellowship of the Ring when she goes into her scary speech about what she would be and do if she accepted the Ring from Frodo ("all shall love me and despair") though she doesn't fall to the temptation, it is at least pretty clear that she has previously thought about what she could do with Ring if it ever came her way ... probably thought about it a lot. And her whole reason for being in Middle-Earth has to do with a desire for power. She didn't join the flight of the Noldor because she cared about the Silmarils or meant to go to war with Morgoth. The Silmarillion tells us that the lure for her was the dream of ruling broad realms.
And then he goes on to playing on her sources of pain. The way she has been treated by her own people: her company of warriors in the frozen north, her King, and even her best friend, Elrond. Back when the show had only aired a few episodes, I read a conversation—I don't remember where, Facebook maybe—between women who were wondering why all the male elves acted like such jerks to Galadriel. (Only that is not exactly the word they used. It was not a plural form of jerk, but of a slightly longer word, one that did end in K though.) Now I see that this treatment was woven into the story to make her more vulnerable to Sauron when the time came.
A similar thought occurred to me. I would have been outraged if they had actually gone that way in this episode, but I did briefly think "Wow, what a story that would make. If only ..."
(And I felt a disturbance in the Force, as of countless ROP fan-fic writers stampeding toward their keyboards.)
