The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power may have already divulged plenty of plot points and characters, but details are still being doled out to would-be viewers as the calendar counts down to the extravagantly produced Amazon television show’s September premiere. Case in point, a new character, named Theo, has been properly unveiled. While we still don’t know that much about the character, the first full image of him reveals an intriguing reverential reference to a J.R.R. Tolkien concept altered in the Rings Trilogy: A broken sword.
Meet Theo, as played by Australian teenage newcomer actor Tyroe Muhafidin, for whom The Rings of Power will serve as the very first prominent project. While the official reveal (which also provided a full photo of Nazanin Boniadi’s previously revealed Bronwyn,) manifested without context, the accompanying image sheds significant light on the barrage of face-cropped character posters unleashed back in February. One of those posters depicted a person holding something that resembled the end of a wizard’s staff; an idea boosted by the robe of the object’s wielder. However, the image of young Theo (the article’s title image,) not only identifies him as the poster character but provides a closer look at his weapon, which doesn’t quite look like a staff now. Based on the broken blade affixed to a grip resembling a pommel, it looks more like an ancient sacred sword; one akin to another iconic sword from the franchise. Yet, there appears to be a tremendous Tolkien-esque twist regarding this particular token.
Of course, director Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy prominently utilized a broken sword, specifically Narsil, the sword of Gondor’s King Elendil, that, upon being shattered into pieces by the evil Sauron himself in The Fellowship of the Ring’s prologue battle, would be used by Prince Isildur (who will be played on the upcoming series by Harry Sinclair,) to cleave the One Ring from his finger, thereby ending an epochal battle, and marking the end of Middle-earth’s Second Age. The broken sword and all its shards would be kept by the Elves on a sacred altar in Rivendale, where, in a manner adherent to the principle of Chekhov’s gun, it would serve as a symbolic trinket for Aragorn’s eventual royal ascension, which begins to occur with the re-forging of the sword into the new form of Andúril. However, the sword’s treatment in the films represented a major divergence from Tolkien’s novels.
While the events leading to the One Ring being cut from Sauron’s finger played out similarly in the author’s original literary epic, Narsil was not shattered into shards. Rather, the blade, more symbolically, was broken into two, rendering it into a rough-looking, but still-usable weapon. Consequently, the narrative in which the sword sat on an altar at Rivendale—presumably for multiple millennia—was not reflected in the novels in the same manner. Rather, Narsil, in its shorter, bisected form, was treated as an heirloom passed down across the generations of Isildur’s uncrowned royal heirs until it was ultimately inherited by Aragorn. Thus, the book version of Aragorn actually carried Narsil around, and even used it as his primary weapon.
Aragorn’s wielding of Narsil was a concept with which Rings director Peter Jackson struggled during the films’ conception since the image of his hero carrying a broken sword seemed a bit absurd, especially in live-action form, and would potentially detract from the seriousness of the story. Thus, Jackson and company enacted the aforementioned movie compromise—with Aragorn wielding a regular sword until Narsil is reforged—which now stands as the default in the minds of most mainstream fans. However, that is not to say that Aragorn’s Narsil hasn’t been used onscreen. Indeed, long before the beloved cinematic trilogy launched in 2001, fans had to make do with another onscreen adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, the 1978 hybrid animated feature from legendary director Ralph Bakshi. That version, in contrast to Jackson’s films, adhered to Tolkien’s broken sword concept in a more purist manner, depicting a very different-looking Aragorn—one more adherent to the book’s description—as voiced by John Hurt, carrying the broken blade sheathed by his side. In fact, Bakshi’s Aragorn, after briefly using his Strider pseudonym, actually shows the sword to Frodo and company during their initial meeting at the Inn at the Prancing Pony, immediately disclosing his birth name, making his renown lineage known (as seen in the video above).
Pertinently, we still have no idea why The Rings of Power’s Theo is carrying around his own version of Narsil, but it does seem reasonable to speculate that showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are using the character—and his broken sword—as a tribute to a Tolkien-esque, sword-centric concept in which he’s the last of a long-dormant powerful lineage of some kind. As to what lineage or lands might be connected to him and the weapon, that remains to be seen. Yet, if existing speculation holds true, then Theo and his quasi-Narsil wouldn’t even be the only lost Tolkien concept set to belatedly manifest on the series since the movie-ignored forest-dwelling ancient singing hermit of The Fellowship of the Ring novel, Tom Bombadil, is believed to be among the characters yet to be confirmed.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, September 2.
