Celebrimbor’s story works because his ambition is understandable. He wants to make something extraordinary, something beautiful enough to outlast the world’s decline. Unfortunately, the person offering technical support is Sauron.
Across its first two seasons, The Rings of Power turns that disastrous partnership into one of its most compelling storylines. Charles Edwards gives Celebrimbor warmth, vanity and an increasingly painful awareness that his greatest achievement might become his greatest failure.
The adaptation takes substantial liberties with Tolkien’s chronology and the mechanics of ring-making. Some deserve scrutiny. Yet its portrayal of a gifted craftsman being flattered, isolated and exploited often understands the tragedy better than a simple checklist of matching events would suggest.
Spoiler warning: This article discusses Celebrimbor’s complete storyline in Seasons 1 and 2, alongside his fate in Tolkien’s writings.
Who Is Celebrimbor in Tolkien’s Lore?
Celebrimbor is the great Elven smith associated with Eregion and the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, its brotherhood of jewel-smiths. In the familiar published account, he is the son of Curufin and grandson of Fëanor, the creator of the Silmarils.
That ancestry matters. Celebrimbor inherits a formidable artistic tradition, along with the uncomfortable prospect of spending eternity being compared with his grandfather. Family expectations are exhausting enough without everyone involved being immortal.
His surviving work also reaches beyond the Rings. The inscription on the Doors of Durin records his collaboration with the Dwarven craftsman Narvi, reminding us that he could create through friendship as well as ambition.
I find that distinction essential. Celebrimbor should feel like someone whose talent could have enriched Middle-earth for centuries. Otherwise, his downfall becomes merely a warning about accepting help from suspiciously attractive strangers.
The Show Understands His Hunger to Create
One of the adaptation’s strongest choices is making Celebrimbor’s ambition feel personal.
He wants his work to matter. Recognition appeals to him, but so does the possibility of achieving something worthy of his gifts. Edwards plays those desires together, allowing generosity and vanity to occupy the same expression.
There is textual grounding for that approach. Discussing his preparation, Edwards identified a passage in Unfinished Tales concerning Celebrimbor’s desire to rival his grandfather’s fame and skill. His interpretation therefore draws on more than the convenient assumption that every brilliant fictional artist needs an ego problem.
For me, this is where the character becomes interesting. His ambition does not make him secretly wicked. It makes him vulnerable to someone who knows exactly which promises he wants to hear.
The danger lies in his growing belief that the importance of the work can justify the conditions under which it is being made.
Annatar Makes Sauron’s Deception More Convincing
Season 2 gives the relationship its strongest dramatic foundation by introducing Annatar, Sauron’s beautiful guise as a supposed divine emissary.
The offer is carefully pitched: knowledge, assistance and the opportunity to create something beyond Celebrimbor’s previous achievements. Amazon’s own account describes Annatar winning acceptance through precisely this promise of help and expertise.
Charlie Vickers makes the deception unsettling because Annatar rarely needs to begin with an obvious threat. He listens, praises and presents his preferred course as the natural expression of Celebrimbor’s own brilliance.
Watching their scenes, I kept returning to how unpleasantly familiar the pattern feels. Someone offers support, makes themselves indispensable, then gradually claims authority over the person they supposedly came to help.
That psychological detail is the adaptation’s achievement. Tolkien supplies the betrayal; the series spends time inside the relationship that makes it possible.
The Forging Order Is a Major Departure
The series changes the order in which the Rings are made, and that affects more than the dates.
| Element | Tolkien’s published account | The television adaptation |
|---|---|---|
| The Three Elven Rings | Made after the other sixteen Great Rings | Forged first, at the end of Season 1 |
| Sauron’s involvement with the Three | Celebrimbor makes them alone, using knowledge derived from Sauron’s teaching | Halbrand influences the work leading to their creation, but leaves before they are completed |
| The Seven and the Nine | Precede the Three | Made afterwards during Season 2 |
| Discovery of the betrayal | The Elves perceive Sauron’s purpose when he first uses the One | Different characters uncover his identity and deception at separate points |
In Tolkien’s account, the Three are Celebrimbor’s culminating achievement. Sauron never touches them, although their making still draws on knowledge he helped introduce. They remain subject to the One Ring. The show’s decision to begin with the Three substantially rearranges that relationship. Tolkien Gateway
I understand the appeal of giving the first season a recognisable destination. Three beautiful Rings make a more satisfying finale than an extended research programme.
Still, the change costs something. Tolkien’s sequence gives Celebrimbor’s independent work a particular significance that the adaptation has to express through other means.
Preservation Is Faithful in Theme, Mithril Is Different
The series correctly recognises that the Elven desire to preserve beauty belongs near the centre of the story.
In Tolkien’s writings, the Three have powers associated with preservation and resistance to decay. Their purpose helps explain why such objects would appeal to people who experience the passing of centuries as loss.
The show translates that longing into an urgent crisis, with mithril presented as crucial to saving the Elves from fading. Its account of mithril’s supposed origin and restorative properties is an adaptation invention, rather than Tolkien’s explanation of the Rings.
There is a useful distinction here:
- The thematic connection works: the Rings answer a desire to preserve what is loved.
- The material explanation changes: mithril becomes part of a much more immediate solution.
- The dramatic emphasis shifts: a long struggle against change becomes an emergency with a deadline.
I prefer the quieter anxiety of Tolkien’s version. Wanting the world to remain beautiful is sympathetic. Being unable to accept that beauty changes is where that sympathy becomes uncomfortable.
The television version is easier to communicate quickly, but loses some of that ambiguity.
Charles Edwards Makes the Tragedy Feel Human
Edwards gives Celebrimbor a vulnerability that makes the forge scenes worth watching even when the wider plot becomes crowded.
His pleasure in being understood is especially effective. Annatar appears to recognise the scale of his ambition, and Celebrimbor responds before he fully examines the offer. Later, pride makes retreat more difficult. Admitting that the partnership is dangerous would also mean admitting how badly he has misjudged it.
My reservation is that the writing occasionally makes him seem too easily managed. A craftsman of his stature needs enough visible judgement for his deception to feel like a formidable achievement by Sauron.
The strongest scenes maintain that balance. Celebrimbor can recognise problems while still finding reasons to continue. That is more convincing, and considerably more painful, than simple gullibility.
His Defiance Matters as Much as His Failure
The show is right to give Celebrimbor’s final resistance emotional weight.
In Tolkien’s account, Sauron captures and tortures him after Eregion falls. Celebrimbor refuses to disclose the whereabouts of the Three. His body is subsequently used as a hideous battlefield banner.
The adaptation changes the staging, but retains the essential movement towards suffering and defiance.
What matters to me is that Celebrimbor does not finish as a man whose only function was being fooled. His mistakes are catastrophic, yet he still has choices once the deception becomes clear.
Edwards makes that late clarity count. The need for approval falls away, leaving someone who can finally judge his supposed collaborator without admiration getting in the way.
Recognition arrives terribly late. It still matters.
What The Rings of Power Gets Right About Celebrimbor
The most convincing part of this adaptation is its understanding that Sauron needs something Celebrimbor already possesses: the desire to create.
He does not have to manufacture that desire. He redirects it, praises it and gradually makes it serve his own purposes.
The altered chronology, mithril mythology and compressed development remain substantial departures. Enjoying the performances does not make those differences disappear.
Yet Celebrimbor’s storyline earns its emotional force. Edwards and Vickers make artistic collaboration feel increasingly claustrophobic, until a workshop built for creation becomes a place of control.
That is why this version stays with me. We can see the disaster approaching, but we can also understand why Celebrimbor keeps working. For a while, the promise of making something wonderful is enough to drown out almost everything else.
