The Rings of Power Episode 1-2 Ending Explained: Who Is The Meteor Giant And What Does It Mean?

The first two chapters of The Rings of Power have already been released and confirm that this is the biggest, most magical and spectacular series that we are going to see this year. The chapters tell us different stories that take place in parallel, on the one hand we have Galadriel, an elven warrior who is convinced that Sauron has not been defeated, on the other we have the dwarves, who are visited by an elf with a mission, then there are the humans, who face their tragedies, and finally, there are the Harfoot, who are a nomadic branch of hobbits dedicated to working and enjoying nature.

The story of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) is undoubtedly the most interesting and is connected with that of the rest of the characters (the chapter shows us that it is dangerous to be an elf alone and that there are problems with humans, but that they will have to work together), but it is in the world of the Harfoot where the greatest mystery of this story is presented. After meeting Nori Brandyfoot, we discover that she is more adventurous than the rest of her kind and that her curiosity leads her to places that can be dangerous.

That curiosity leads Nori to the woods in the middle of the night, where she runs into a giant man who falls from the sky in the form of a meteorite, he is played by Daniel Weyman and in the credits of the series he appears only as The Stranger. At this point in The Rings of Power, we don’t know who he is exactly, but it’s clear that he can be dangerous and that he has an important role to play in all of this.

The Rings of Power Episode 1-2 Ending Explained: Who Is The Meteor

Who is the meteor man in The Rings of Power? It’s not just any question. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power plays clueless with viewers. And it does so much with the experts in the Tolkien Universe, who have read every one of the books of The Lord of the Rings and who know perfectly well where Sauron and Gandalf are during the Second Age of Middle-earth when it was still flat, and those who only know this universe from the movies and are now attracted to the continuation of this universe in prequel form and are lost and for them, it is a new enigma (come on, they don’t even wonder if it could be that ragged-looking man, with a beard and dirty hair and who arrives on a meteorite curiously wearing a loincloth, look how modest whoever sent him).

When we met this character in the official trailers of the series, we already raised our hands to our heads wondering if it could be Gandalf who was going to appear in The Rings of Power series. Just from the trailer info, which we already know is biased and intentional, he just seemed lost and ragged and strongly reminiscent of Gandalf, although, you know, he couldn’t be Gandalf. Nori (Markella Kavenagh), our hairy person in charge of taking us through this old new Middle-earth, hands him an apple, a universal symbol of good faith when the person who delivers it is a good person (and a symbol of the opposite when it is delivered by someone chungue). The thing is that after watching the first two episodes, A Shadow from the Past (episode 1) and Adrift (episode 2) the narration of the series plays the confusion. He arrives on Earth in a strange meteorite and does so shrouded in mystery and elements that do not bode well, starting because the fire that surrounds him does not burn. As Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) has told us at the beginning of episode 1 that near Sauron, near evil, fire does not burn… we begin to suspect.

In the books Sauron also arrived like this… but also Gandalf and any other preternary being (both are Maiar), before the very creation of the planet on which the characters live. So it is ruled out that those live embers that do not burn are an omen of villainy, which does not mean that they are not related to the villain, that now we are going with it. One aside: Daniel Wayman, the actor who brings the Stranger to life, is undeniable that he has very Jamie Campbell Bower vibes, to the point that seeing the first two episodes of the series and browsing his photos on the Internet, he could perfectly have done of Vecna ​​in Stranger Things. But going back to the series: what other information do they offer us about the character, about that stranger, about that man from the meteorite? That he doesn’t have a special respect for life in his obsession with achieving what we still don’t know he wants to achieve? What are those stars that he looks for? What constellation? What else do we know: that he gets on well with fireflies?

The fact that he has no special respect for life is not indicative of villainy either. A magical being who had to stop the arrival of Sauron at all costs before it was too late, he would do anything to achieve it. Heroes with great powers (read in this case magic), in addition to great responsibility, carry a series of fabulous collateral damage. So when it comes to stopping Sauron, it’s like anything goes, right? What is a cow here, a father with a sprained ankle there, a few acres of withered forest? Sauron wants a musty universe. So it is not valid as a villainous element for now If he killed a hairy it would be something else. The fact that Nori’s father only sprains his ankle and doesn’t, say, get blown to bits, even plays into the stranger’s kindness. What if,

As this arrival in Middle-earth is not recorded in the books as they are telling us, we cannot resort to the books. Just as we cannot trust the original dates of the books to conclude because the series, as they all do, although they respect the universe, play for dramatic purposes with when exactly what happens and how old exactly who is (Game of Thrones did it, The House of the Dragon does it and it is going to be done by The Rings of Power). Sauron is supposed to show his eye in the Second Age around the year 500 and Gandalf does not appear until the 10th century of the Second Age… well, a mess.

In the same way that the confusion is played by letting it be the villain (until an elf smells it we will not know for sure), some signs point to Gandalf. Fire is also related to the physical manifestation of Maiar spirits, and Gandalf is a Maiar. He remembers when Gandalf stands on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum and says: “I am the servant of the Secret Fire, bearer of the Flame of Anor!” (He says it right after yelling his iconic “You can’t comeaaaaaay in!”). But with Gandalf, the dates don’t add up. What they are telling us is supposed to happen 3,000 years before it arrives… it’s a mess. It’s one thing to move dates, but 3,000 years? He waits: what if the fire refers to another Maiar? And there we enter the Esquire theory. We may be wrong, but he hears, and makes a certain sense: what if it’s another Maiar? What if that visual reference to Gandalf has to do with another Maiar who tried to stop Sauron, but failed? It would be a way for the series to maintain the lore but without upsetting the main events, or the timeline.

The Dark Lord (Sauron And His Shapeshifting Ability)

The Stranger doesn’t seem to understand Nori’s language, plus he shows her a kind of constellation that reveals where she’s coming from (or maybe where she wants to go), and there are moments when it’s terrifying. This character could be Sauron and there are some clues. We know that Sauron had the power to shapeshift and that he was a great manipulator (that’s why he calls him The Deceiver), and we also know that he shapeshifts to trick the elves into creating the rings of power.

The character seems to have something to do with Nori’s dad’s accident, and we can’t ignore the fact that he came into the world in a ball of fire, like a meteorite, and that when he touched it, Nori realized that it wasn’t hot, that could be a reference to what happens to the ring of power when Gandalf puts it in the fire and it doesn’t get hot. What happens with Nori could be happening before Sauron came to Celebrimbor, this means that it was a hobbit who helped create the rings, and it makes sense that it is a hobbit who must destroy Sauron’s.