Can’t get the staff these days.

Now that Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 has wrapped up, fans finally know the identity of the Stranger and are debating whether the character’s inclusion in the show marks a significant break from the canon established by The Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien.

Last chance spoiler warning for the Season 2 finale of The Rings of Power!

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 Finale Gallery

Perhaps surprising no-one, the Stranger is confirmed to be Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings’ most famous wizard. But how is it that Gandalf is roaming Middle-earth during the Second Age (the period in which The Rings of Power is set), when according to The Lord of the Rings itself Gandalf and the other wizards only arrived on Middle-earth as part of their anti-Sauron support mission during the Third Age?

There’s no such thing really as canon in Tolkien.

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In a lore-focused interview released by Prime Video, Dr. Corey Olsen, dubbed ‘The Tolkien Professor,’ offers his thoughts on this most vociferous of debates. According to Dr. Olsen, there is no Tolkien canon, and that’s because Tolkien himself was always rethinking his world-building even after his books were published.

“First thing to specify is that there’s no such thing really as canon in Tolkien,” Dr. Olsen insisted. “Tolkien’s ideas were ever evolving.”

Dr. Olsen went on to say that Tolkien considered tweaking the Middle-earth timeline after the fact, “playing around” with the idea that Gandalf and his fellow Istari arrived during the Second Age and thus took part in the wars of the Rings of Power. It’s this suggestion, then, that the showrunners are leaning on when it comes to Gandalf’s appearance here — if Tolkien had considered popping his premier wizard into the Second Age, perhaps it’s perfectly fine to imagine a Middle-earth history with that consideration realized.

Here’s Dr. Olsen:

“In the text of The Lord of the Rings we are told that Gandalf, with the other wizards, arrived at around year 1,000 of the Third Age. And in his later years, he was playing around with the idea of maybe Gandalf coming sooner, maybe some of the wizards coming in the Second Age and taking part in the wars of the Rings of Power.”

Gandalf’s appearance during the Second Age isn’t the only deviation from the text that The Rings of Power makes, of course. In a bid to condense hundreds, if not thousands of years of history into a multi-season TV show, Amazon has created brand new characters and shifted major events around to fit its new timeline. Fans have debated these changes ever since Season 1 hit Prime Video in 2022, with some going down better than others.