With production supposedly set to begin on Amazon Prime Studios’ The Lord Of The Rings prequel series in February, the streaming service has found a new lead to replace departing star Will Poulter: Game Of Thrones‘ Robert Aramayo will take over the coveted role.
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There is no indication, as of yet, which role Poulter and now Aramayo are set to play, though the Tolkien fandom had largely arrived at the conclusion that Poulter, who bears a striking resemblance to actor Hugo Weaving, would be playing the younger version of Weaving’s Lord Of The Rings character, Elrond Half-Elven. Aramayo, on the other hand, is best known for his role as a young Ned Stark (also played by Sean Bean, who portrayed Boromir in The Fellowship Of The Ring) on the HBO fantasy drama Game Of Thrones, a character he played for just four episodes – I bring up that last point in an attempt to allay Tolkien purists’ fears that casting Thrones actors automatically indicates that the Lord Of The Rings prequel will be a knockoff of the former series, despite the fact that only two Thrones actors have thus far been cast in LOTR, and neither had any sort of substantial role on Thrones.
Aramayo’s casting is an exciting addition to the high-profile series, which recently cast Welsh actress Morfydd Clark as a young Galadriel in the epic fantasy, which will explore a period of time long before the events of The Lord Of The Rings, during the War of the Last Alliance, the heyday of the kingdom of Númenor, and the first downfall of Sauron. So far, Galadriel is the only named character to have been cast, though Aramayo’s character is being referred to by a codename, Beldor.
How do you feel about Aramayo joining the series? Share your thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!
As production begins on not one, but two seasons of Amazon Prime’s hugely ambitious prequel series to the classic novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, it can’t be long before the cast and characters are revealed to the public – so far, we only have four actors supposedly set to join the series’ ensemble cast, yet none of them have been officially confirmed by Amazon, and we still have no idea which characters (either from Tolkien’s expansive mythos or the showrunners’ imaginations) they might be playing. Today, though, some tantalizing new clues have leaked – not just about the holy quartet, as I’ve begun to call them, but also about a slew of new characters rumored to have prominent roles in the series. All of the following character names are presumably code-names put in place by Amazon to protect the secrets, and absolutely none of this is official.
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Firstly, the obvious, or least, unsurprising. Markella Kavenagh is rumored to be playing the inquisitive teenager Tyra, who is wise beyond her years and all that. We met her in those leaked audition tapes from a while back, remember her? At this point I’d be very surprised if Kavenagh doesn’t end up playing the Tyra character, considering how strong the rumors are – we do have a new tidbit of information about her: she is suspected to be both a dramatic and a comedic character.
Will Poulter is rumored to be playing Beldor, something I suspected: Beldor, a young, politically savvy protagonist, seems like he could very well be the young Lord Elrond of Imladris. The new hints suggest that Beldor will be paired up with more dramatic characters who will provide a stark contrast to his reserved, perhaps even solemn nature. Yep, sounds like Elrond to me. If not, I suspect he’s probably Elrond’s mentor Gil-galad.
Game Of Thrones‘ Joseph Mawle is still rumored to be a central antagonist for the series, though this new report is beginning to confirm our suspicions that his character, Oren, is in fact the deceiver Sauron. A personality “built around a wounded and fallen nobility”, who projects “a sense of timelessness” – those are basically the hallmarks of the fallen demigod Sauron, who turned away from the wisdom of the gods and chose to walk a path of darkness into ruin. It’s unclear whether Mawle will also portray the Dark Lord in his form as the Elven lord Annatar, or whether the character will take many different guises during the series’ run.
The protagonist is rumored to be a woman, the character Eldien, whose description is particularly interesting. Yet another timeless character, Eldien is “complex, unique and formidable”. Who else is complex, unique and formidable? The Elven lady Galadriel, a battle-hardened leader and warrior whose morals are much more gray in the Second Age of Middle-earth than they were later on in her long life – at the time this series takes place, Galadriel, like Sauron, has just rejected the mercy of the benevolent gods and has turned away from their guidance to seek glory and fortune in Middle-earth. I would be very happy if the spotlight is on Galadriel for at least the first season.
Now we move into the rest of the ensemble cast, briefly but vividly sketched out: there’s Neldor, who’s a “similar archetype” as the similarly named Beldor – Elrond’s twin brother, Elros, perhaps?
We have Brac, a character who provides the other half of a dramatic duo – described as “irascible and cantankerous”, Brac’s description isn’t really ringing any bells for me. I suppose he could be somebody like King Oropher of the Wood Elves – in which case, it would be funny if the other half of the duo was Beldor (if Beldor is Gil-galad). The only description we have of Oropher from Tolkien’s own works is that he disobeyed Gil-galad’s orders to halt during the War of the Last Alliance and ended up being killed in a reckless charge at the gates of Barad-dûr. That’s a possibility, but it’s more probable that Brac is a completely invented character.
Eira is next on the list – “a warm and maternal woman”. There’s not much to go on here.
Aric, whom we encountered in the audition tapes, is still on board to be a main character – or at least a series regular. His character, a charismatic rogue, was very well defined in the leaked dialogue, so I don’t feel like there’s too much new material to go over. I’m beginning to guess that Maxim Baldry, the last rumored cast member, is playing this character (not for any particular reason: just because).
Calenon is a “ruggedly-handsome” war hero. He’s also described as “brooding”, which is never a fun character trait. But there is a prominent Tolkien character who does nothing but brood, and that’s Celeborn, the husband of Galadriel. That’s as good a guess as any. Plus, it would be amusing to see Celeborn as a handsome heartthrob, since by the time of The Lord Of The Rings, he, well, isn’t.
As if on cue, we come to Loda, the “earthy” fellow who “doesn’t give his feelings away easily”. Yet another boringly unoriginal trope. Earthiness suggests a human character, though perhaps not a Númenórean (they seem more like lofty, spiritualistic types): so let’s mark Loda down as a possible man, maybe even a Wose of the Woods.
Kari, the next character on the list, is a deserter from the nearest Dungeons & Dungeon campaign, it seems. A “self-sufficient single mother”, she would seem to fit the bill for the character of Erendis, the Second Age’s most iconic unique female character, if not for the fact that she’s a “village healer with a secret”. If we really want to believe she’s Erendis, we could come up with theories that Amazon Prime is changing the story so that the proud Númenórean queen flees to the countryside to be alone with her daughter and there becomes a rural medic, hiding the shocking secret that her daughter is the heiress to the throne – but it’s somewhat more plausible, in my opinion, that she’s playing Tyra’s mother.
Hamson is one of the weirdest names on the list – whereas most of the code-names are vaguely archaic in a watered-down sort of way, Hamson sounds more Old English; more like a certain Hamfast Gamgee of the Shire, right down to the character description as a “loving family man with health issues”. But Hamfast Gamgee wasn’t born in the Second Age, and wouldn’t be born until many thousands of years later, so unless there’s some extreme timeline-muddling going on here, I very much doubt this character is a Gamgee, or even a hobbit in general. Hobbits probably existed in some form or another during the Second Age, but nobody knew about them. To keep continuity with Tolkien’s writings, it would be best if hobbits never showed up in the Amazon Primes series, or only appeared in the story’s peripheries. But in that case, I can’t imagine what or who Hamson is, and what’s he doing in this story.
Finally, there’s Cole, another “charismatic” character: this time, one who carries “the weight of the world” on his shoulders. That could be literally anyone in the Second Age, but for some reason I’m locking in my guess that this character is Celebrimbor, the Elven craftsman who designed the Rings of Power in a desperate attempt to try and rebuild Middle-earth in the image of paradise. He literally carries that burden and responsibility with him until he get killed in a particularly brutal way by Sauron during the Dark Lord’s war against the Elves.
There’s a lot here that could potentially be interesting, even engrossing, when executed. On paper, some of these character descriptions are bound to look a little off-putting to Tolkien purists – brooding heroes, charismatic rogues – but it’s better not to get too freaked out about any of this right now. The series is still very early on in its development, and no footage has yet been shot. Some (or all) of this is susceptible to change. Nonetheless, it’s fun to theorize about these things and wonder what it means for the series.
What do you think of the code-names and character traits? Do you agree with my assessments? Share your thoughts and theories in the comments below!
Last night, we learned that Amazon Prime’s The Lord Of The Rings has added one new actor to its steadily growing cast: the secretive streaming series is a slow burn, and Tolkien fans are beginning to get impatient with the unpredictable trickle of news – or, at least, I am. So far, we’ve got three actors (none of whom have actually been confirmed by Amazon Prime), a filming location and date, a general idea of setting, and a long list of behind-the-scenes crew, including directors, writers, costume designers, consultants, etc. But as for the story that’s going to be told, there are only vague hints and guesses; and, most frustratingly, we still have no actual title – not even a working title – for the series.
The newest member of the cast is supposedly Maxim Baldry, a young English actor best known for his role in the HBO semi-dystopian epic Years And Years. Baldry has also landed a role in the next season of Dr. Who. So he’s not a complete unknown, as first castmember Markella Kavenagh was, but he’s also not a big-name like Will Poulter (and, let’s be frank, Poulter isn’t really a big-name). We don’t have any idea who Baldry is playing, though the original article states his role will be “significant” – that could honestly be anybody, but let’s take a guess as to which Tolkien character he could be portraying on the big screen.
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Baldry has facial features that immediately scream elf: defined cheekbones, luscious locks, even pointy ears. Based off the clips I could find of him in interviews and onscreen, he is soft-spoken, with a very distinct English accent. There are several Elven characters (that we know of) who he could be playing – Celebrimbor, the craftsman who designed the Rings of Power, is one of my favorite suggestions: Baldry looks like he could bring a sensitivity and coolness to the role. Readers of the books will know that Celebrimbor was an ill-fated but well-intentioned leader who was deceived by the Dark Lord, Sauron.
But that got me thinking: what if – and hear me out – what if Baldry is playing Sauron? Fans of Peter Jackson’s iconic trilogy only know Sauron as an armored giant or a massive floating eyeball, but Tolkien’s novels and unpublished writings lay out a great deal of backstory for the character, who isn’t quite the clear-cut “evil bad guy” that Tolkien’s detractors seem to think he is: in the Second Age, when this series takes place, Sauron is disguised under another name, that of Annatar, and another guise; that of a handsome, charismatic Elven lord. He seduced the Elves to their destruction, tempting them with gifts and good advice: he became a close confidante of Celebrimbor’s, and helped him to forge the Great Rings, before stealing the secrets of the Elf’s craft and designing his own ring, the One Ring. And though he quickly turned to evil to achieve his goals, Sauron did at least try, for a time, to put on a semblance of good intention, and in fact intended to reform Middle-earth and create there a paradise fit to rival the dwelling-place of the Gods: long story short, Tolkien’s Elves originally lived in a beautiful land called Valinor, from which they were mostly banished to Middle-earth by the gods, after a really nasty incident involving a whole bunch of bloodshed and death; then, after the end of the First Age, those Elves were offered the opportunity to repent for their crimes and return to Valinor, or stay in Middle-earth, as outcasts. Those who stayed were obviously not too pleased with the gods, which is why Annatar’s promises were so appealing – he played on their greed and their desire for vengeance, and offered them the chance of a lifetime. Baldry has that endearing charm that one would expect from Annatar/Sauron – not to mention the ability to plausibly pass as an Elf.
Then again, he could be someone entirely different. We have no idea, and we’re not likely to find out for some time yet. So, while we wait, leave your own thoughts, theories and opinions below!
This news means little, as of right now, with no name attached to Poulter’s character, but I’m going to freak out about it regardless, because it’s casting news, and we haven’t had any in a while, and I’m dying for more. We have so little solid information about this series as of right now, and with other Amazon Prime shows like The Wheel of Time already on their way, with major casting announced, filming locations locked down, and scripts ready to go, it feels like Lord of the Rings (by far superior to Wheel of Time in all regards, sorry) isn’t getting the respect it deserves, and isn’t even being prioritized. How is that fair?
We don’t yet know whether Poulter’s role is a recurring one, though he is specifically described as one of the show’s leads in Variety‘s press release: with the little information we have so far, I’m going to take a wild guess and speculate that Poulter will be portraying a younger version of the immortal half-elf Elrond: his facial features, especially his eyebrows, match up closely with those of Hugo Weaving, who portrayed Elrond in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – and we already know that this series will combine elements of Jackson’s trilogy with material from J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels and unpublished writings.
How do you feel about the news? Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’ll be over here, hyperventilating with excitement.
