Which Rings of Power Characters are from the LOTR Trilogy?

This week we finally get to see the first two episodes of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the most expensive TV show ever made. In Part One of our Rough Guide, we considered when in Tolkien’s legendarium the show is set as well as what rights Amazon has to certain parts of the story.

Now, let’s take a look at which characters from Peter Jackson’s movies will be reappearing in The Rings of Power, to get you ready for your return to Middle-earth!

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Which familiar characters might we meet?

The Rings of Power is set in the Second Age of Arda, Tolkien’s realm. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books — and therefore Peter Jackson’s movies — take place many, many years later, towards the end of the Third Age. (See Part One of the Rough Guide for more information about this!) However, the good news is that Professor Tolkien recreated characters who are immortal: Elves! So even though thousands of years separate plot points, we can expect to see some familiar faces, including the following Elves.

Galadriel in The Rings of Power

Our incredible Elven matriarch, ruler of Lothlorien, bearer of Nenya, one of the three Elven rings of power, and fierce beauty (whom we saw in full battle mode, rescuing Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) is a key player in this new show. A High Elf, born even before the First Age, in the time when Valinor, the home of the Elves, was still lit by the Two Trees, Galadriel has been prominent in the trailers we’ve seen from Prime Video. It’s clear they have made her the hero of the show. Played by Morfydd Clark, (who certainly lives up to the ethereal beauty of Cate Blanchett in PJ’s films), this Galadriel will be a more active warrior than we’ve seen before. This has created some controversy, with some fans feeling that Galadriel leading armies goes against what Tolkien wrote. The problem is, Tolkien wrote several versions of Galadriel’s backstory, and they don’t agree; so this allows some room for interpretation. At any rate, we’re going to see this Elf in her younger, feistier days.

She should be married at this point in her backstory, but so far we’ve seen no sign of her husband Celeborn. His part was drastically cut in PJ’s The Lord of the Rings movies (though slightly restored and improved in the Extended Editions). Has the poor fellow been expunged entirely from this retelling? We’ll see…

Elrond in The Rings of Power

Played by Hugo Weaving in Jackson’s films, Elrond was born in the First Age, and was the son of Eärendil and Elwing. He is known as “Half-elven” because his father Eärendil was the son of an Elf and a mortal. (His mother Elwing was the grandaughter of the most famous match between Elf and mortal, that of Beren and Luthien; so I supposed that makes Elrond more than half Elf, but I can’t quite work out what his fraction should be. Anyway, ‘Elrond Five-eighths-elven’ isn’t very catchy…)

In The Rings of Power, Elrond is played by Robert Aramayo – and fans have been shocked to see this Elf with short hair! The trailers suggest he will be the “politician” to counterbalance Galadriel the warrior. He eventually bears an Elven ring of power – Vilya – but obviously those rings haven’t been crafted yet. Their making is presumably going to be a big plot point somewhere in the five seasons of The Rings of Power…!

Elrond and Galadriel are related through marriage – he married her daughter, Celebrían. That spouse, however, fared even worse than Celeborn in Jackson’s movies – we didn’t see her at all – and she doesn’t appear until later in the Second Age, so we’ll see if she crops up sometime in a later season of The Rings of Power…

Gil-galad

We will also meet the High King of the Elves in Middle-earth. Gil-galad dies at the end of the Second Age – but we did see a glimpse of him in PJ’s films, as he appeared leading the armies of the Last Alliance in the prologue. He’ll have much more to do in these tales from the Second Age!

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Will we see Hobbits?

Not exactly; but we do get Harfoots. These are the ancestors of Hobbits; nomadic tribes who haven’t yet developed the habit of building holes in the ground. They don’t play a prominent part in any of the Professor’s tales from before the Third Age, but we do know that Harfoots existed in the Second Age; and the showrunners have commented, “…really, does it feel like Middle-earth if you don’t have hobbits or something like hobbits in it?” So, Harfoots it is!

What about the world of Men?

The Second Age is the time of Númenor, an island kingdom of Men. There are two of these chaps who will be familiar to you – Elendil and his son Isildur. In The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, we only see them in the prologue, back at that battle of Dagorlad where we also met Gil-galad. Elendil was a mighty ruler, leading the armies of Men, and his son was the one who cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand – but whose heart was easily corrupted. These characters don’t actually come into being until pretty late in the Second Age – Elendil was born in the year 3119, and his son in 3209 (remember, these Númenorean Men live very long lives); but as we touched upon in Part One of our Rough Guide, the showrunners are going to compress the timeline of the Second Age, so things which occurred hundreds of years apart happen at the same time in the show. We’ll see Elendil and Isildur – and meet more of the family – as they fight to keep Númenor loyal to their ties to the Elves.

And what of wizards?

Well – this is a cause of much speculation. Strictly speaking, the Istari – the five known wizards, of whom Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast were three – didn’t come to Middle-earth until the Third Age. They were sent to help the free peoples of Middle-earth against the resurgence of Sauron (more of him in a minute!), in about the year 1000 of the Third Age. So, based on Tolkien’s writing, there should be no wizards in the Second Age.

However, in the trailers, we have seen the Harfoots Poppy and Nori encounter a being, referred to by Amazon as “The Stranger,” who falls to earth in some kind of meteor. His disheveled appearance (and grubby, grey garments), plus his naked “birth” in the meteor crater, call to mind both the grey version of Gandalf, and his rebirth as Gandalf the White. So fans have been wondering – could the writers have taken the liberty of bringing Gandalf to Middle-earth an Age too early? Or might they perhaps have created a new wizard? Just because we only KNOW of five Istari sent to Middle-earth in the Third Age, does that make it impossible that some were sent in the Second Age…?

There are other theories about who The Stranger might be – no time to go into them here! — and the revealing of his identity is certainly going to be a big plot point of The Rings of Power.

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The various plot strands of LOTR: The Rings of Power

So we have Galadriel leading troops, and Elrond playing politics, all under the watchful eye of the High King Gil-galad. We have Elendil and Isildur on Númenor, seeking to keep the island loyal to their alliance with the Elves. Plus, we have Harfoots encountering the strange Meteor Man and all the various plot threads from characters we haven’t met before – the Dwarves who built the incredible citadel of Khazad-dûm, for example. This location was only seen after its fall in PJ’s The Fellowship of the Ring, but in The Rings of Power we will see it at the height of its splendour. But who is the big baddy of this show?

Sauron

Yep, Sauron was the villain who dominated The Lord of the Rings, and he’s up to his old tricks (or younger tricks?) in The Rings of Power. Or is he…? Sauron’s big boss, Morgoth, was defeated at the end of the First Age, and it was assumed that Sauron was destroyed, too. He made his reappearance in the Second Age, but at first he appeared in the form of Annatar, with a “fair visage” – the better to seduce and deceive his enemies. When The Rings of Power begins, the trailers have suggested that only Galadriel believes Sauron still to be a threat. We as viewers have no idea when he will appear in the show, which actor is playing him, nor even what form he will take. Be prepared to be tricked – Sauron is the great deceiver, after all! We expect to spend much of season 1 wondering which of the characters we are watching may turn out to be The Enemy…

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All this and more will be revealed, beginning when Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts on September 1.

What predictions for The Rings of Power do you have? Join the conversation alongside other LOTR fans in the Let Your Spoiler Sideshow Facebook Group, and don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!