In a Sophomore season filled with standout moments, Season 2, Episode 7 of The Rings of Power delivers the most thrilling installment of Prime Video’s Tolkien adaptation yet, giving audiences one of Middle-Earth’s most exhilarating on-screen sieges since Helm’s Deep. Between the installment’s muddy battle sequences and Celebrimbor’s (Charles Ewards) gut-wrenching realization that he’s been manipulated by Sauron (Charles Vickers) this whole time, “Doomed to Die” is an excellent yet brutal episode of television that raises The Rings of Power’s stakes ahead of this week’s Season 2 finale. What’s more, despite Sauron’s dramatic illusions and the arrival of the Elves’ glittering army, the episode actually contains a brief name-drop that is just as important to the series as the fall of Eregion.

During his negotiation with Elrond (Robert Aramayo) towards the beginning of the episode, Sam Hazeldine’s Adar urges the Elf commander to trade the imprisoned Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) for her ring of power, Nenya, in order for him to combine its power with Morgoth’s Crown and kill Sauron once and for all. Towards this end, Adar compares Elrond directly to his foremother, “Melian of the Valar,” before urging him to possess even a sliver of her wisdom. The scene quickly moves on from this mention, pivoting into that shocking Galadriel-Elrond kiss in a way that makes Melian feel like just another name dropped from Tolkien’s vast legendarium, but the figure is nonetheless crucial to understanding the full history behind The Rings of Power.

Just Who Is Melian, and How Does She Connect to ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2?

Despite being mentioned solely in relation to Elrond during The Rings of Power Season 2, Episode 7, Melian is actually an ancient spirit whose roots go back to the beginnings of Middle-Earth and the larger world of Arda. In The Silmarillion, she is initially described as being of the race of the Valar, but she is specifically a spirit of the Maiar, the people of the Valar who possess similar attributes though less overall strength. Melian, in particular, is said to be the most beautiful Maia in Valinor’s Gardens of Lórien during her early days in the West, and she is described as serving the Valar Vána and Estë, the former called the Ever-young and the latter known for healing pain and weariness. Around this time, Melian also gains renown as Valinor’s most skilled singer, enchanting the Valar with her beautiful melodies as the lights of Valinor’s Two Trees meet and even teaching nightingales their song.

When Middle-Earth’s first Elves awaken in the Bay of Cuiviénen, Melian leaves Valinor to fill Middle-Earth’s silence with her songs and the music of her birds, and this flight proves incredibly consequential for the history of Tolkien’s Elves. Shortly after their awakening, three groups of Elves trek west towards Valinor at the Valar’s request, and the last of these early migrants, the Teleri, are resting in East Beleriand when their king, Elwë, becomes drawn to Melian’s nightingales in the woods of Nan Elmoth. What follows is one of Middle-Earth’s most infamous love stories, as Melian and Elwë are so enchanted by one another that years pass before they break their amorous trance with words. Afterward, Elwë becomes known as Elu Thingol, king of the Grey-elves, or the Teleri that stay behind with him on Middle-Earth. Melian subsequently assumes the Queenship of this new kingdom, and it is from this mixed line that The Rings of Power’s Elrond is eventually born.

Melian’s Legendary Marriage Offers a Stark Warning to Galadriel in ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2 Finale

Aside from experiencing a magical love story that created one of the most famous Elf lineages in the history of Middle Earth, Melian also protects her kingdom’s borders of Doriath with a magical girdle upon Morgoth’s return from his imprisonment in Valinor, and she is equally infamous for her daughter with Elu Thingol, Lúthien, who is said in The Silmarillion to be the most beautiful being that was or ever will be born in Arda. In an early parallel to Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and Arwen’s (Liv Tyler) love story in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Lúthien subsequently marries the mortal man Beren Erchamion in an early example of an Elf-human relationship in Middle-Earth’s Second Age. This union solidifies Melian’s association with cross-species couples in Tolkien lore, but this overarching association also offers an increasingly important precedent for The Rings of Power’s Galadriel.

As the only Maia in the history of Middle-Earth to have married an Elf, Melian’s relationship with Elu Thingol directly parallels the unresolved tension between Galadriel and Sauron in Season 2 of The Rings of Power. Sauron, a member of the Maiar who served the Vala Aulë before being corrupted by Morgoth, has already attempted to introduce a dark foil to Melian and Elu Thingol’s marriage with his proposal to Galadriel in Season 1, and the Dark Lord’s desire to set things right with his would-be queen will undoubtedly come to a head in this week’s finale. As the carrier of the nine rings of mortal men, Galadriel must keep Celebrimbor’s final creations out of Sauron’s hands in order to prevent the creation of the Nazgûl, but as this season has repeatedly proven, the Great Deceiver’s influence is hard to banish once he worms his way inside your head.

Given the fact that Melian’s marriage ends in tragedy with the death of her husband, whose slaying at the hands of Dwarves permanently damages Elf-Dwarf relations on Middle-Earth, the dark conclusion to the loving Maia’s story serves as a warning to Galadriel heading into this week’s episode. Just as Sauron is corruption incarnate, Elu Thingol’s greed over his possession of a Silmaril marks the end of Doriath’s legendary union, demonstrating that a Maia-Elf pairing can’t survive so long as one member of the couple is driven by darkness. As one of the most sensitive and beautiful of all the Maia mentioned in Middle-Earth, not even Melian is able to protect her personal life from dark influences, so her brief mention in The Rings of Power ultimately provides a blunt reminder that Galadriel cannot allow herself to be deceived again.