Warning: this article contains spoilers for season 2 of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
The season 2 finale of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power included some major bombshells, a major confrontation between two of the show’s main characters, and one hugely significant reveal. The Stranger, who first dropped down to Middle Earth in the show’s very first episode, now has a name. That’s right, everybody! He was Gandalf the whole time.
This has been theorized since Gandalf first showed, up, and now that it’s been confirmed, it turns out that Markella Kavanagh, who plays Nori Brandyfoot in the show, was among those doing the theorizing.
“I definitely had my own suspicions early, and I made them known,” she explained in an interview with Collider. “I had the very first rehearsal with Daniel Weyman, who plays The Stranger. And I don’t know why, but I was like, this is the right time to ask this question. I just met him and I was like, ‘So are you playing Gandalf? Is that what’s happening?’ And Patrick [McKay] exploded, because he was drinking something, and Daniel had a really, really smart response. He was already media trained at that point, but he basically just said, ‘The Stranger doesn’t know who he is at this point. And so that’s the only thing that’s important, we need to take The Stranger at face value.”
Kavanagh said that from that point forward, she didn’t focus on the character’s identity. She took her lead from Weyman, acknowledging that even if we might have our suspicions, Gandalf himself didn’t know who he was.
“It was pretty surreal to actually finally be like, oh, we’re acknowledging, we’re acknowledging this. It’s a thing,” she added.
