There aren’t many new characters introduced throughout the first three episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power‘s second season. The Prime Video series has returned from a two-year break with a trio of installments that do a lot to follow through on the promises made at the end of its first season. It, consequently, spends most of its latest season’s first three hours pushing characters like Sauron (Charlie Vickers), Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), and Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur) down paths that will seem very familiar to hardcore J.R.R. Tolkien fans.
The few new faces that have been spotlighted so far throughout The Rings of Power Season 2 have been largely supporting figures like Estrid (Nia Towle), Mirdania (Amelia Kenworthy), and Narvi (Kevin Eldon). The latter character is introduced as one of King Durin III’s (Peter Mullan) closest advisors and the so-called “Delve-master” of Khazad-dûm — and he seems primed to be a relatively key figure in this season’s Dwarven storyline.
What most viewers might not know about Narvi, though, is that he’s actually a famous figure in the history of Middle-earth — one who is directly connected to an important and memorable scene in The Fellowship of the Ring.
“I have called it ‘ithildin.’ Made from our last sliver of mithril.”
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While he was still alive, Tolkien ultimately wrote very little about Narvi. As a result, in the wider history of Middle-earth, the legendary Dwarven craftsman is mostly known for just two things. The first is his friendship with Celebrimbor, which purportedly helped the Dwarf and the Elf oversee and maintain a uniquely healthy alliance between Eregion and Khazad-dûm in the Second Age. Above all else, though, Narvi is known as the co-creator of the Doors of Durin, the Western entrance to Khazad-dûm that he and Celebrimbor famously made together.
The Doors of Durin were designed by Celebrimbor and Narvi to look, at first, like nothing more than two slabs of rock that fit so seamlessly together into the outer walls of Moria that they’d be easy to miss most of the time. The entrance was, however, inlaid with ithildin, an Elven substance that reveals itself in the starlight and moonlight. The Doors of Durin should, of course, be familiar to even casual Lord of the Rings fans. They are, after all, featured prominently in The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo, Gandalf, and co. use them to get into Khazad-dûm (a.k.a., the Mines of Moria) in the Third Age.
Having now introduced both Celebrimbor and Narvi, The Rings of Power has paved the way for it to depict — in one fashion or another — the actual creation of the Doors of Durin. The second episode of The Rings of Power Season 2 even features a brief scene in which Celebrimbor shows off his latest invention, ithildin, to his apprentice, Mirdania, and explains that he used Eregion’s “last sliver of mithril” to create the substance. In doing so, The Rings of Power has just further primed fans for the Doors of Durin’s eventual debut, which will almost certainly come sometime this season.
“Speak, friend, and enter.”
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Considering that The Rings of Power has already dived headfirst into Sauron’s deception of Celebrimbor, it seems unlikely that the series will be able to dedicate as much time this season to the creation of the Doors of Durin as some Lord of the Rings readers may want. Either way, though, there’d be no real reason for the Prime Video series to go out of its way to introduce a character like Narvi if it wasn’t going to feature the very thing that he’s most well-known for at some point. It is, therefore, exciting to know that The Rings of Power doesn’t intend to pass up on such an organic and canonical connection between its story and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
