Empire Online has the exclusive: Jamie Campbell Bower, best known as Stranger Things’ terrifying Vecna (wait what?!), has been cast as Celeborn in Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Bower joins the show as the Elf lord, warrior, and canonical husband of Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel. The Rings of Power Season 3 streams on Prime Video beginning November 11.
If you have watched the first two seasons wondering where Galadriel’s husband was, the show has an answer of sorts. In Season 1, Episode 7, Galadriel explained that Celeborn went off to war in the First Age and never came home, leaving her to believe he was dead. He has not appeared in a single episode across either season.
What makes that absence more pointed is what the show chose to fill it with. During Celeborn’s off-screen centuries of “MIA” status, Galadriel spent Season 1 in an emotionally charged, romantically framed relationship with Halbrand, who was revealed to be Sauron (Charlie Vickers). Then, in Season 2, Episode 7 during the Siege of Eregion, she and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) shared an on-screen kiss, framed with full romantic weight by the production—ostensibly to pass her a lockpick pin, but shot with every hallmark of a romantic moment. The show managed to entangle Galadriel with both the Dark Lord and a fellow Elf lord while her actual husband waited in the wings for three seasons.
In Tolkien’s writing, none of this makes any sense. Celeborn, a grand-nephew of Thingol of Doriath (or a Telerin prince in Tolkien’s later drafts), met Galadriel during the First Age in Doriath. They married and remained together through the ages, ruling in Eregion and later Lothlórien. Tolkien called him “Celeborn the Wise.” He was a respected commander who stood alongside Galadriel throughout the Second Age—present, active, and very much not missing.
Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay describe Bower’s Celeborn as a “lover-boy,” and frame his long separation from Galadriel as a reflection of Tolkien’s own longing for his wife Edith during the years they were kept apart. Bower leaned into that reading: “This idea of longing and yearning is so pervasive in Tolkien’s relationship with Edith for the time that they were apart. I really feasted on that idea. Celeborn has had to find a way to survive whilst longing for something that he so dearly loved and so dearly missed as well.” Clark, for her part, noted that Galadriel is “kind of rude to him in the books” before adding, “But Jamie looks exactly like how I would imagine Celeborn. He’s such an Elf.”
Payne says that after seeing hundreds of audition tapes, Bower’s voice made him stand out, and a chemistry read with Clark sealed it. Celeborn was previously played by Marton Csokas in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy. Empire’s full Rings of Power Season 3 cover story hits stands July 30.
