Prime Video has revealed the names of three additional characters in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Prime Video debuted the show’s first teaser trailer during Sunday’s Super Bowl game. It featured some prominent elves from Middle-earth history, and now they’ve confirmed another in High King Gil-galad, played by Benjamin Walker. Gil-galad is the High King of the Ñoldor, a clan of elves, in Middle-earth, and will be the last to hold that title. The Ñoldor were known as “those with knowledge.” Their love of knowledge is what Annatar, supposedly the Lord of Gifts, preyed on to insinuate himself into their midsts (more on that in a moment).
Prime Video has also named its hobbit. Markella Kavenagh is Elanor ‘Nori’ Brandyfoot, whose monologue opens the Super Bowl teaser. Technically, she’s a harfoot, one of the three related subspecies of what would later be known simply as hobbits. Nori is a character created new for The Rings of Power.
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Finally, there’s the Stranger, played by Daniel Weyman. That title seems to be keeping his true identity under wraps. Three names have popped concerning this figure.
Before Prime Video named him Stranger, some fans wondered — or perhaps hoped — that the being with the dirty hands holding an apple would turn out to be Tom Bombadil. Bombadil is a mysterious figure in J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology. His nature and origin are never fully explained, but Tolkien implies that he may have been the first living thing in Middle-earth. He aids Frodo on his journey out of the Shire early in The Fellowship of the Ring, and some fans have never forgiven Peter Jackson for not including Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. However, wishful thinking aside, this seems like a long shot.
Another possibility is that this is Annatar, Lord of Gifts, as mentioned above. Annatar is Sauron’s disguise when he attempts to lure the Elves under his sway. Elrond and Galadriel are suspicious of him, but the elves of Eregion welcome him and learn from him to forge magic rings. The figure is this character poster holding an apple may allude to the Bible’s Garden of Eden and the idea of a duplicitous serpent offering gifts of knowledge. However, there’s also another, still-unidentified Rings of Power character poster that looks like Sauron in full armor.
The last possibility is that this is one of the five wizards of Middle-earth, most likely Gandalf. Gandalf is said to have mingled among the elves for a time without revealing who he was, which would make him a “stranger,” and the figure in the poster — what we can see of him — does fit Gandalf’s description. Yet, the wizards, or Istari, did not come to Middle-earth until its Third Age, according to Tolkien’s writing in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, while The Rings of Power takes place during the Second Age. However, in The Peoples of Middle-earth, part of The History of Middle-earth series of unpublished Tolkien manuscripts, the Istari arrived in Middle-earth during the Second Age, around the time of the One Ring’s forging. That’d be precisely when . Perhaps the show’s writers use this writing to justify having Gandalf involved in the series.
We can’t say for sure, but it’s an exciting mystery for fans to ponder while they wait for The Rings of Power‘s debut. The series arrives on Prime Video on September 2nd.
