I went back to watching that playthrough of Shadow of War and I’m surprised by how much I missed listening to Talion and Celebrimbor bickering. I kind of wish the final showdown to defeat Sauron actually just consisted of the two getting into some petty argument or other and Mairon just has to stand there awkwardly, maybe at first trying to pretend that he can’t hear them. You know, to be polite. Then when it starts to escalate he decides to join in because, from his time as Annatar, he knows “there’s no point in trying to reason with Celebrimbor when he’s being Like That”. Cue what is centuries worth of pent up sniping at each other. So now we have the ringwraiths or whoever just standing around because the big fight that they had been gearing up for has turned into a shouting match between their boss and his deceased ex-husband and some random human guy who never asked to be a part of this nonsense. You think this argument is about rings of power, world domination and who murdered who? Oh no. We’re bringing up “that time you got too drunk at that banquet and embarrassed me” and “I embarrassed you? Do I need to remind you of a certain speech??”. At some point Talion actually agrees with something Mairon says because he too is sick of having to deal with Celebrimbor’s sour attitude and now Celebrimbor is informing him of all the ways he isn’t too fun to work with either. And basically it’s all just petty, petty chaos and I think this would be the perfect end to an already very strange story.
