I’ve seen some the Shadow of War scenes and I just... Celebrimbor seems so out of character for me. Now I say thins having played the first game and I’ll readily acknowledge that I haven’t played through ME:SoW.
It’s just Celebrimbor had seen what betrayals like his do to people, he knew how Talion trusted him. Further he had worked to rebuild that trust, the pieces lost at the end of the first game, and he threw it away? It seems very uncharacteristic to me, but it’s not my story so I worked on figuring out what could make him behave that way. Sadly I didn’t come up with much more than what I did regarding the Bright Lord dlc from ME:SoM.
So again it’s the Ring and it’s influences. Maybe he too poured too much of himself into the Ring he created with Talion’s help or maybe he poured just enough he left himself weakened without it. At the start he looses the Ring and is captured by Shelob, who has worked for Sauron in the past. Perhaps while he was there defenseless Sauron tried to reach him, he knew Celebrimbor was still alive because of their joint power in the One Ring.
It seems more likely to me that Celebrimbor would lash out, pushing others away possibly even to extreme extents, if he felt Sauron’s corruption trying to sink into him. The whole game though he never truly is somewhere safe for him so he never steps back and looks at what he’s doing. So he lashes out and keeps lashing out until he hurts his most trusted ally at the time and thus destroys the trust they shared again, completely this time. Yet he has to live with it, he has to watch as Sauron corrupts Talion and he sees just how his actions affected his friend and ally.
