Galadriel in The Rings of Power was quite different from her counterpart in Lord of the Rings. In Amazon's long-awaited series The Rings of Power, Galadriel's character was portrayed as an abrasive and arrogant warrior princess. The Galadriel of Lord of the Rings was kind, warm, and gentle, with great beauty and charisma. It's difficult to imagine her as a wrathful soldier clad in a suit of armor. Her elegance and stature didn't mesh with the unpleasant she-elf in The Rings of Power. This disparity could be explained by the thousands of years that separated young Galadriel from older Galadriel.
In The Rings of Power, the story follows events that took place in the Second Age of Middle-earth, though in the prologue Galadriel can be seen placing an elven helmet upon a massive pile of helmets belonging to the elves slain in the War of Wrath, which ended the First Age. Her experiences surrounding that war made it difficult for her to believe evil was not gone. She tells Gil-galad that, "Evil does not sleep; it waits." In The Rings of Power, Galadriel's conviction came across as arrogance and anger.
In Lord of the Rings, Galadriel was not shown as a warrior, which makes the comparison with the character depicted in The Rings of Power jarring and difficult to reconcile. There's considerable contention surrounding the idea that she was a warrior with many battles under her belt. While Tolkien made no specific mentions in The Silmarillion of Galadriel fighting in battle, Tolkien wrote, in the Unfinished Tales, "She was proud, strong, self-willed ... and she fought fiercely against Fëanor in defense of her mother's kin." He strongly insinuated that she was a warrior in her youth. Galadriel in The Rings of Power is a depiction, albeit possibly embellished, of a younger fighter fueled by anger.
Galadriel in Rings of Power Bears Little Resemblance To Her Lord Of The Rings Character
The Rings of Power showed Galadriel as bitter and impatient. She was driven by a desire for revenge. Her father and three of her brothers has been killed by Morgoth. Galadriel was very close to her brother Finrod, who could be seen in episode one of The Rings of Power, and when he was mortally wounded by a wolf of Sauron, Galadriel swore vengeance. She, like her Lord of the Ring's parallel, had a deep sense of right and wrong, of light and dark. As shown in The Rings of Power, she traveled to the ends of the Middle-earth to seek out Sauron. Her consuming anger was born of loss and suffering.
Depending on the calculation, Galadriel was anywhere from 1,200 to 2,200 years old at the time of The Rings of Power, and in Lord of the Rings, she was roughly 7,000 years old. This was a substantial age differential. To illustrate the point in human years would be comparing an eight-year-old's level of experience and knowledge to that of a forty-year-old. The young Galadriel was still maturing, still learning. Her brash belligerence was a function of deep loss and monumental grief. The Rings of Power showed Galadriel as she was on her journey toward the powerful, serene Galadriel with whom viewers are most familiar.
Morfydd Clark, the actor who portrayed Galadriel in The Rings of Power, said of her character, "Humility is going to be a big part of her [character] arc." The off-putting and unlikeable nature in a Galadriel that was much-loved part of Lord of the Rings was merely a matter of age. Tolkien himself wrote that she changed and grew, and this was what The Rings of Power depicted in Galadriel.