‘Rings of Power’ Season 1 Finale: Is The Stranger Gandalf?

“When in doubt, Elanor Brandyfoot, always follow your nose,” The Stranger tells the younger Harfoot in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s Season 1 finale.

The line is sort of an identical to what Gandalf (performed by Ian McKellen) tells Pippin in Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring, leaving many questioning if The Stranger — who was revealed to be an Istari — is the famed Grey Wizard. Adding to hypothesis is his friendship with Nori and the opposite Harfoots, which feels reminiscent of Gandalf’s relationships with each Bilbo Baggins and Bilbo’s nephew Frodo.

But does Daniel Weyman, who performs the Stranger, additionally see the parallels? According to the actor, The Stranger had a “more visceral relationship” with the land and water and hearth, and Nori was “interacting with him as if she were another one of those things.”

“His relationship with Nori, certainly in the beginning, is as if she is an energy of this world that he comes into,” he explains. “I didn’t really think about those overtones of the later work or all of that, but it’s lovely if people get resonances.”

The reveal that The Stranger is an Istari got here as a shock to some — together with the wizard himself — however a key clue to his id lay in his tattered gown. “I don’t know whether people have noticed, but the costume changes slightly over the course of the season,” Weyman notes.

The Rings of Power staff went with the concept the material was self-healing, virtually dwelling off The Stranger’s presence. “The fact that they were surrounding The Stranger meant that they subtly changed and altered themselves,” he shares. “It’s like they all got pulled in, and so it goes from being a very big, wild costume to being more of a costume of an Istari.”

Season 1 ended with The Stranger and his Harfoot companion staring down a brand new journey. They didn’t know precisely the place they had been going, solely that discovering the celebrities was extraordinarily necessary. 

“When you get that moment of ‘Follow your nose,’ that’s a moment of almost putting their arms around each other just going, ‘This is our adventure. This is us going off and doing this together,’” Weyman says. “It’s a great place to leave it.”