“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” has embraced the mystery box concept in two major ways so far. The first was the “Who’s Sauron?” question, which was answered at the end of season 1, when the exiled (and apparent human king) Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) turned out to be the Dark Lord all along. The other mystery, though, dragged into season 2, and it focuses on Daniel Weyman’s character, commonly referred to as “The Stranger.”
The question of who The Stranger is technically remains a mystery. But the camp that claims he’s Gandalf has been loud from day one — and they just got another bit of ammunition in season 2 episode 4, where a character referred to him as a “grand Elf.”
In this busy installment (one that includes meeting Tom Bombadil and seeing our first Entwife in action), we also meet the proto-Hobbit race called the Stoors. When Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy (Megan Richards) are questioned by the Stoorish leader Gundabel (Tanya Moodie), Nori explains that her friend, The Stranger, is a giant. Worried, the Stoors ask for clarification. When one of them asks if he’s like an Elf, Poppy clarifies, “Bigger than that,” to which the Stoor matriarch responds, “Oh, so he’s a great, big, grand Elf.”
Did you catch that? Grand elf? Say it five times fast. See what they did there? Grand elf sounds an awful lot like the name of a Wizard, one that is a frontrunner for the Second Age Wizarding guessing game that we’re all waiting to be over at this point.
What are the other hints about The Stranger?
Calling The Stranger the suspiciously Gandalf-sounding “grand Elf” might be just a coincidence, if it weren’t for the barrage of similar hints and riddles that the show has included along the way. In season 2 episode 2, Poppy and Nori refer to The Stranger’s need for a “gand,” which is another name for a staff but also happens to, once again, sound an awful lot like Gandalf (which etymologically translates to something like “Elf with a wand”). Season 1 had its fair share of teases, too. For instance, one major hint about the Stranger’s identity came in the finale when he told his Harfoot companion, “When in doubt, Elanor Brandyfoot, always follow your nose,” an instruction viewers of “The Fellowship of the Rings” might recognize.
Despite all of these hints, there is still doubt that The Stranger is, in fact, Gandalf. In fact, there are a couple of other people he could be. We know, thanks to the season 1 finale, that he is an Istar (another word for Wizard), so that much is certain. That means he’s likely Gandalf, Radagast, Saruman, or one of the Blue Wizards. (These are the five main Wizards in Lord of the Rings lore.) The only reason the stranger could be Saruman is that, in Tolkien’s writings, he technically wanders east with the Blue Wizards before coming back on his own. But The Stranger is a good guy, which makes it hard to buy that idea. He could be Radagast or even another Wizard entirely (Tolkien technically says their number is unknown), but the biggest possibility other than Gandalf is that he is a Blue Wizard. This pair of Wizards specifically is sent to fight Sauron in the east of Middle-earth, in areas like Rhûn, which Tolkien didn’t say much about and which the show is currently exploring. While the larger sweep of The Stranger’s story arc may point toward him being a Blue Wizard, the little hints at a Gandalf reveal are certainly piling up.
When will we know the Stranger’s identity?
The different Wizarding camps are firmly established at this point, with the Gandalf crowd clearly backed up by a host of hints and callbacks and the Blue Wizard hold-outs hanging on to the fact that theirs makes the most sense for the story and is canonically plausible. (The Blue Wizards are the only ones who technically are around in the Second Age in any of Tolkien’s manuscripts.)
The question is, when will we finally get a resolution about this guy? Good news: We actually know the answer, at least as far as timing goes. In an interview with IGN, showrunner JD Payne stated, “We can say that yes, the name will be revealed by the end of season 2.” Thank you. Thank you so much.
We can hold out for a few more episodes to find out. But the truth is, if this massive, multi-arc show is going to stop moving forward in fits and starts (pacing has been an issue all along so far), we need to clear the air about some of these lingering questions, get everyone on the same page, and then start pushing the primary Sauron narrative forward at full speed. It worked in Tolkien’s books (where Sauron drives all of the main events of the Second Age after the Rings of Power are forged), and the showrunners could benefit from leaning on some of that villainous energy if they want to keep people in their seats and glued to their streaming screens for the full five-season experience they have mapped out.