The first episode of the long-awaited Rings of Power series certainly ended on a cliffhanger, with Galadriel jumping ship as the boat full of her elven brothers crossed the threshold back to Valinor. It is clear in the moment that this was a very difficult and painful decision for her to make. She deliberates between leaving Middle Earth and staying, right up to the last second, which makes for a very intense scene.
Ultimately, as those who have seen or read the original Lord of the Rings would know, she chooses to stay, sacrificing her chance to return to her home in Valinor. This left fans shocked at this sudden ending, in which the protagonist is left stranded in a dangerous sea, beneath a dark and ominous sky. Until the next episode's release, it was unknown how she would survive. This poses the question: should Galadriel have gone back to the Undying Lands when she had the chance?
Right from the beginning, this is a tumultuous question for Galadriel. Her chance to return home is presented as a ‘gift’ from the leader of the elves, Gil-galad. It is a reward of high honor for Galadriel and her team of soldiers, as a recognition for their bravery in chasing the evil Sauron into the North to discover if his poison and malice still existed in the world. However, this gift comes at time in which Galadriel is very close to achieving her mission. As such, it seems to her like she is being sent away before she is completely ready to leave the world, almost as if there are ulterior motives or nefarious intentions involved. Galadriel already has a sense of this warning in her heart, which is what spurs her decision to abandon her home and stay to fight for Middle Earth instead.
It is a gift and a privilege to be offered a place back in the Undying Lands, which so many elves long and pine for. However, also comes with very high stakes, as Elrond warns Galadriel:
“No one in history has ever refused the call. Do so now, and it may never come again. You will linger here, an outcast, poisoned in dark whispers and dreams.”
Luckily for Galadriel, this is not the case. She refuses the initial call, but she does eventually make her way to Valinor at the end of the Lord of the Rings. However, this is thousands of years later, and those years are indeed filled with dark whispers just as Elrond warns. In this sense, perhaps it would have been better for Galadriel to have accepted the gift of the valar and gone home when she was given the opportunity. If she had, she could have avoided all the terrible events in the War of the Ring that happen across The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. She would have existed beyond the knowledge of the fate of Sauron and his evil.
But in this case, ignorance would not have given her the rest that she so greatly desired in returning to the Grey Havens. She explains to Elrond:
“And in the west, you think my fate would be better? My song would mock the cries of battle in my ears. You say I have won victory over all the horrors of Middle Earth, yet you would leave them alive in me, to take with me. Undying. Unchanging, unbreaking.”
It is clear that Galadriel feels tied to the fate of the world that her brother died to protect, and feels responsible for helping to protect it from the evil that she feels in her heart is still out there. Her brother taught her to trust her instincts and do follow what she believed in, which is exactly what she is reminded of when she looks at his dagger aboard the boat. Therefore, her heart never would have rested and found salvation in Valinor, afraid that she had abandoned Middle Earth to darkness. She would have been ever at odds with the tranquility and the beauty all around her.
This is a feeling and a knowing that exists within her that none of the others can understand. It is a disquiet that would eat away at her, even in the heaven of her people. Elrond urges her:
“Only in the blessed realm can that which is broken in you be healed. Go there! Go, and I promise you, if but a whisper of a rumor of the threat you perceive proves true, I will not rest until it is put right.”
But for Galadriel, there is no healing until she knows that the evil is truly gone, and that the world she has so long watched over is finally safe. That is why she could not leave, and why, ultimately it was better for her to stay and fight. This way, when she does eventually make her journey to the Undying Lands in the Third Age, she knows that she is leaving the world in the safe hands of Aragorn, Eomer, and the hobbits. Thus, she can actually find peace in returning to the starlit world of her childhood, having finally completed the mission that she tasked herself with so long ago.