The entire first season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was shrouded in mystery until days before the series premiere, but no aspect of the show was kept more vague than Daniel Weyman’s character dubbed The Stranger. We learn in the first episode that The Stranger arrives in Middle-earth via comet and for a while, he was suspected to be Sauron in a new form. We soon learned that Sauron was actually masquerading as Hallbrand (Charlie Vickers), but we learned that The Stranger is an “Istar” or, as the Harfoots say more colloquially, a wizard.
That narrows down who The Stranger is in Lord of the Rings lore quite a bit, with all signs pointing to him evolving into the Gandalf we all know and love. Officially, the character is still nameless in Season 2 and setting out on an adventure to find himself with Nori (Markella Kavenagh). Weyman revealed to GameSpot at a recent press junket that The Stranger starts the season in a great place and is excited to learn more about himself, but it doesn’t take long for the dangers of travel to present themselves.
“It was really exciting to know that we were going to go on an adventure together, with people that I–The Stranger–trusted and cared about, and was excited to be with. It’s like a young person’s wonder about the possibility. I don’t think The Stranger knew what was going to happen, but he was just so excited about heading into this new landscape and finding out about himself,” Weyman explained. “It all very quickly goes horribly, horribly wrong. That is The Stranger’s rude awakening. He’s going to have to relook at himself and understand why this has all gone wrong and how [he can] make amends later on. It was open-eyed wonder at the beginning.”
Weyman still couldn’t reveal many specifics about The Stranger’s journey in Season 2, but he did tease that the character will be interacting with more than just Nori and the Harfoots in the upcoming episodes.
“There are some places that have never been represented on the telly before or on film,” he teased before name-dropping a potential new ally for The Stranger who was never depicted in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. “That landscape is something that we can properly bring to life and meeting a few different people, like Tom Bombadil pops up. Different creatures pop up, so there’s quite a lot of excitement to come.”
The possibility of bringing more people into The Stranger’s world is very intriguing for Weyman, but he knows the show’s creative team does not want to color outside the lines of the Tolkien framework they are working in. “I do remember that being quite an exciting thing, would we cross with any other worlds? It’s such a balance between respecting the lore.”
So we’ll have to see what The Stranger discovers about himself when Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 premieres Thursday, August 29 on Prime Video.
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