Over on Twitter, Fellowship of the Fans (FOTF) has posted some new rumours about LOTR on Prime’s series that are sure to provoke head-scratching and even more rampant theorising about the composition of the initial two episodes.
Warning: these are, potentially, spoilers. If that’s important to you, what are you even doing here? Run away!
According to Fellowship of the Fans’ sources:
- Actor Robert Aramayo was on the production’s dwarven sets and filmed scenes with the dwarves.
- Actor Owain Arthur plays an important dwarven character in the same scenes.
- The dwarves wear “amazing dragon/dragon scale armour”.
- The dwarven king is said to look strikingly similar to Tormund from the HBO Game of Thrones telly series.
- Scenes in the first two episodes will show dwarves climbing a mountain, or ravine, and there is an “underground pub set piece”.
You can read the full run-down here.
However, dwarven sets? Is this cold water being tipped over the Year of the Trees brigade? Regardless, the Valinor image still exists and it seems beyond belief that the production would lead with an image like that purely as fan catnip.
Keep in mind, this is not confirmed, while the Valinor image is most certainly official.
But it may be that that segment is shorter than we want to believe. Maybe it’s a short PJ-style prologue per Fellowship of the Rings. Because dwarves do not belong in Aman (unless it’s in Aulë’s workshop, or your name is Gimli), and the most natural place for dwarves and elves to be seen together is Eregion and Khazad-dûm, during the Second Age.
If it is Second age, the dwarven king is likely to be Durin III. Owain Arthur might be Narvi. Narvi most famously had a close friendship with Celebrimbor, but I wonder whether Celeborn might fit in there somewhere too.
Food for thought.