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Right now Galadriel (or the character with the name Galadriel) is an awful brat. We're three episodes in, out of what I think are going to be eight episodes for the first season, and so far she has scowled, snarled, and whined her way from Middle-earth to Númenor. She is such a pain in the backside that Gil-galad put her on a ship to Valinor, in the guise of a 'reward', to get rid of her. And at the last moment, as the ship was about to be brought into the Undying Lands, she jumped overboard to, apparently, swim her way back to Middle-earth rather than dock in Valinor. Just let that piece of show-writing sink in for a moment.
Even if this is meant to be Young Piss And Vinegar Galadriel, she is both immensely stupid (see: jumping overboard to 'certain death' as she puts it in a later episode) and immensely, well, stupid. She is arrogant, entitled, and driven by a personal quest for vengeance. Allegedly she is Commander of the Northern Armies, but she shows the leadership skills of a pot of yoghurt: she leaves her men (and yeah, men is the defining term here) far behind as she zooms her way up the ice waterfall, she shows no concern about morale or the issues they raise with her, she's perfectly happy to leave one behind if he falls in the snow, and while the ice troll is smashing them into the walls of the cavern, she then steps forth to dispatch it with a twirly-twirl of her sword in a fight that is over so fast, it is anti-climactic. Why does she have even a squad with her, she plainly doesn't need any of them and they only hold her back?
She is curt and rude to Elrond, she is rude to Gil-galad, she is rude to Tar-Míriel, she is rude to Elendil - you get the gist. We're supposed to sympathise with her being driven by her vengeance quest for the death of her beloved brother, and that she is indeed and in fact right about the danger of Sauron, but she's just too damn unpleasant and borderline unhinged for it to work. And I don't know how fair I am being to the actress, but she has about two expressions: Resting Bitch Face and Weird Eye-Twitch.
I just saw a funny (and very tongue-in-cheek with how it phrases the political elements) video about the real villain in The Rings Of Power.
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