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As Rings of Power‘s sophomore season prepares to bring us closer and closer to Sauron’s rise, it’s also preparing us to actually get around to those titular rings of power existing, too. Which means we’re going to need some fingers to put those rings on: and one in particular is going to prove very interesting for this season.
Amazon recently gave use our first look at Ben Daniels as Círdan, one of several new major characters tooling around Middle-earth in season two. Círdan is a character we briefly got to meet in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies—he appears briefly in Fellowship of the Rings‘ prologue and in some of the final scenes of Return of the King, played there by Michael Elsworth. But he’s going to be a majorly fascinating character in Rings of Power season two as it sets the stage for the war between Sauron and the elves, and the eventual climactic events of the Second Age that eventually set the stage for Lord of the Rings itself.
Why Círdan Is Important to Rings of Power Season 2
Círdan, better known as Círdan the Shipwright, is one of the oldest living elves on Middle-earth by the time of Rings of Power, and the harbormaster of the Grey Havens: the port city established after the elves’ wars against Morgoth in the First Age, and where any elves on Middle-earth seeking to take the Straight Road westwards to Valinor would set sail from. An important bridge between the elves’ presences in the West and the rest of Arda, Círdan was one of the most influential of his kind for much of Tolkien’s chronology, but that didn’t stop his advice being ignored when he warned against the creation of the Rings of Power, and their mysterious benefactor in Annatar, the Lord of Gifts.
Despite this, once the rings were forged and Annatar revealed himself as a guise of the returned Sauron—and war broke out in Eregion in the Dark Lord’s attempts to bend the elves to his total will—Círdan was eventually named by Celebrimbor, alongside Galadriel and Gil-Galad, as one of the bearers of the three rings intended for the elves. Círdan inherited Narya, the ring of fire, and eventually passed it on to Gandalf the Grey some time during the Third Age, recognizing him as one of the Maiar.
We already know that at some point in Rings of Power season two all three elven rings will be with their bearers—a shot in the first trailer released for the season highlighted Galadriel, Gil-Galad, and Círdan’s hands as the leaves of Lindon’s trees flourished with new life. But given that another major part of the season will focus on the journey of Daniel Weyman’s mysterious Stranger—revealed at the climax of season one as one of the Istari, who many have presumed to be Gandalf himself—offering a mirror in Círdan in the elven storyline of the season is an interesting parallel. Especially so as Círdan will apparently spend at least some time in the season alongside Elrond, who will form a major part of the series’ take on the aforementioned war between the Elves and Sauron. “It was exciting, selfishly, to be a part of that character’s introduction, because he’s such an amazing character,” Robert Aramayo, who plays Elrond, said in a new interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar). “He’s absolutely fascinating and so unique.”
Just how unique we’ll begin to see when Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returns to Amazon Prime next month, on August 29.
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