Rings of Power’s Stranger Actor on How Tom Bombadil Shakes Up the Mystery

Who is the stranger? The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Creators JD Payne and Patrick McKay laid the groundwork for an overarching mystery in Season 1, and don’t seem eager to reveal anything too early in Season 2. But actor Daniel Weyman tells Polygon that a meeting later this season may not open the mystery box, but it does promise to shake up what’s inside.

When The Rings of Power The story continues with the magic man who has fallen to Middle-earth in a meteor. The magician and his harfoot companion Nori (Markella Kavenagh) travel to the land of Rhûn to (checks notes) find a star pattern that will unlock his memories? Wizard Business. The deeper The Stranger — and the series itself — delves into Rhûn, the more Payne and McKay will hew to what JRR Tolkien left to the imagination in his original writings and weave more mystery into it; the three premiere episodes also introduce a new Dark Wizard (played by Ciarán Hinds) whose identity will no doubt be a point of speculation for fans as well.

Which means that the reintroduction of Weyman’s character does little to debunk theories about who or what the Stranger is in the broader context of Middle-earth — but the possibilities seem more limited than ever. At this point, now that we know Sauron’s identity, the Stranger is a “i am a star,” and that Tom Bombadil is already roaming the woods, there seem to be three options:

Would Gandalf arrive in a giant ball of fire? It’s a strong connection, and true to the istar’s history as a wizard known for his handling of fire. (In the books, he calls himself “a bearer of the Flame of Anor!” meaning he literally wields the power of the sun.) The film in The Rings of Power also draws heavily on the iconography of Gandalf as depicted in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, from his appearance to his ability to sing songs to hobbit-like creatures.

There are many more small connections between the characters. Many believe that the Stranger drew the same runic symbol that Gandalf scrawled on Bilbo’s door in The Hobbit back in season 1 — but perhaps the biggest discrepancy is the timeline. But so far in season 2, the Stranger has also been desperately searching for his name… and there aren’t many wizards with names that would fit the bill of a kind-hearted, staff-supported, bearded man from Middle-earth.

Gandalf isn’t the only star of Middle-earth, and Tolkien paved the way for Payne and McKay to create their own magical icon if they didn’t want to be too neat about building connections with The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The theory is that there were two Blue Wizards roaming Middle-earth during the Second Age (one of Tolkien’s retcons that helps with the timeline issues) and the Stranger could be one of these istar “tests” set by the Valar. A reveal might not have the same power as “Hey, it’s Young Gandalf!”, but the Stranger’s Gandalf-ness could simply be more of an echo of a classic character than a literal reinterpretation.

The stranger is both Gandalf and Saruman, but he gets struck by lightning or something and is split in two.

I just wanted to get this off my chest.

Despite all the theorizing and seismic godlike activity that could be at the core of his character, Weyman’s goal in playing the Stranger is to keep him as close to the Earth around him as possible. The actor tells Polygon that the Stranger’s Season 2 storyline is all about harnessing his raw magic and becoming comfortable in his own body.

“I really wanted to avoid some of the mistakes, or I felt like the Stranger wanted to avoid, that he made in Season 1,” he says. “So some of the ways that he channeled energy, he wanted to avoid in Season 2.”

The unexpected chaos of a self-aware istar comes into play early in Season 2, when Nori, desperate for food, begs the Stranger to use his powers and produce some food. The spell backfires, blowing the tree to pieces (though Nori does get some literal food, in the form of a colony of insects flying in all directions). The failure is indicative of what Weyman sees as the Stranger’s larger horde.

“At the end of Season 1, he used a staff to, I think, connect the sky, the metaphorical sky, to the earth,” Weyman says. “That seems to work for him. And so he yearns to do the same thing — he thinks he’s figured it out. And when he gets to this tree, instead of that raw, aggressive force, he wanted to do something that was more nurturing. And so he basically went to the root. That feels to me like a repetitive thing that he’s trying to do when it’s not working. He’s trying to find a new way to use energy. Well, if that wasn’t the right way to use my powers, how could I do it? He always tries to think outside the box, and I think that’s part of his problem. He doesn’t really trust, he doesn’t really relax. He tries to force the problem all the time. He’s impatient. He thinks he has an idea of ​​how it should be. And I think that’s where a lot of the problems come from.”

As teased in trailers, the Stranger’s world will be turned upside down by Middle-earth’s most esteemed motivational speaker and life coach, Tom Bombadil. “Tom’s going to turn his world upside down and take him completely out of his comfort zone, and maybe that’s what he needs to reset and finally be present enough to make things happen. We’ll see.”

Whether he’s filming in New Zealand in Season 1 or England in Season 2, Weyman emphasizes that when it comes to feeling connected to the Stranger, it’s less about knowledge than about country. But the connection took a bit of a risk in Season 2 thanks to the addition of footwear. The second biggest question the actor faced in Season 1 after “Who is the Stranger?” was “When is the Stranger going to get shoes?” and while his wizard did purchase slippers for his trip to the Rhûn in Season 2, Weyman struggled with the wardrobe choice.

“With the Stranger, a lot of Season 1 came from his feet in the earth, in the ground, and the elemental forces around him, you know, the wind, the natural world,” he says. “I think we were very worried about his feet getting ripped to shreds on the rocks of Tenerife[in the Canary Islands]. I was a little bit worried about losing that connection to nature. But for me, that’s the thing I try to hold on to, because I think it’s such a central, core part of him, and everything will come from that.”

New episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Stream every Thursday on Prime Video through October 3.