Spoilers for the recent season of The Rings of Power can be found throughout this article.
For two whole seasons, we were theorizing about what The Stranger’s name was on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Then, at the very end of Season 2, it was officially revealed that Daniel Weyman’s character was, indeed, Gandalf. However, even though that was a popular theory early on in the show’s run, it actually wasn’t always the official plan, as showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne explained.
It turns out that Gandalf was never fully in the cards from day one. While The Stranger was revealed to be a wizard in Season 1, his identity wasn’t revealed until the end of Season 2. With that in mind, while on the House of R podcast, McKay explained that they actually didn’t fully know where they were going with this character at first, saying:
I don't know that we did know from the start that this is where we were going. There’s a story that is really funny. I told it to somebody the other day, and Markella Kavenagh, who plays Nori, told it the other day at an event, which is the very first rehearsal that the Harfoot ladies had with Mr. Stranger and J.A. Bayona five years ago, the first thing before we did anything Markella was like, ‘I have a question. Is he Gandalf?’
While the Harfoot actress had an inkling from the jump, at the time, his identity seemingly wasn’t locked in. Even if it was, Daniel Weyman, who plays Gandalf, didn’t want to know, as the showrunner explained:
And Daniel Weyman, in his very Daniel Weyman way, took the answer, and he was like, ‘Well, I don't want to know, because he doesn't know yet. He's in like alpha state, like an infant who has to, kind of piece together who he is and what the world is, and every step of that journey is important and to somehow make it about a name or have prior knowledge would actually not tell that story.’ And I think, whether consciously or unconsciously, that's very much the approach we took for a very long time.
So, there you have it. While signs pointed to The Stranger being Gandalf, it wasn’t necessarily planned that way.
They did have options too. There were five wizards total they could pick from -- Radagast, one of the two blue wizards, Saruman or Gandalf. And it seems like they considered all of that for a while. However, eventually, they came to the realization that Weyman’s character was in fact the wizard who is played by Ian McKellen in the films. To that point, McKay explained how they came to that conclusion:
Then it became clearer and clearer the more time we sat with the character that it was also obvious who he was the whole time. And at some point, it was like, ‘Oh, OK then, I guess that's what we're doing, more or less.’ Which is to say that we never wanted the name to be something imposed upon the show or the character. We wanted the character to come to that at a point in his evolution where it felt like maybe he'd earned the mantle of it in a way that felt distinct from things that anyone would be bringing to it, including him.
After that, J.D. Payne said that they were asking all sorts of questions about The Stranger that would lead to his name. He noted that what his powers were, how he controls them, what they were meant for and more all helped reveal his moniker. Then, by the end of Season 2, his name felt super obvious.
It was indeed obvious. If he didn’t end up being Gandalf, I would have been shocked, because the groundwork they laid made it so all signs pointed to the beloved wizard.
Ultimately, it's fascinating to look back and realize that the showrunners weren’t 100% sure that The Stranger was Gandalf at first. However, the fact that they went on the same journey of discovery that The Stranger went on, meaning they let the signs of his name reveal themselves rather than fully plan them from the start, is wonderful.
Now, I can’t wait to see how this wizard’s story expands in Rings of Power Season 3. To go back and see the evolution of this wizard from The Stranger into Gandalf, you can stream the Lord of the Rings prequel with an Amazon Prime subscription.
