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    Will Gandalf Meet Shadowfax in Rings of Power Season 2? – Let’s Get Nerdy!

    Ashley Victoria RobinsonBy 7 Mins Read

    Amazon Studios The Rings of Power is here. The Second season is on its way. We want all Spoilerites to have the best viewing experience possible and have the widest knowledge base about the Second Age of Middle-Earth. This is a weekly Let’s Get Nerdy article series highlighting a different piece of Tolkien I think you need to know about!

    In past articles I have answered the question: 

    Last week I asked Will Tom Bombadil Appear in Rings of Power Season 2? based on a rumour/spoiler post from TheOneRing.net published at the end of last year. Among the claims made in the article is a name Lord of the Rings fans from across mediums – “Mithrandir”.

    Gandalf and Shadowfax in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

    If you need a refresher or if “Mithrandir” is pinging something in the back of your brain, but you can’t quite reach it: Mithrandir is one of Gandalf’s many names. 

    So is “Olorin” the name spoken by The Stranger at the end of The Rings of Power season 1. 

     

    TheOneRing.net throws the name “Mithrandir” and “Gandalf” around along with the phrase “Meteor Man” which is funny if you are into 1990s superhero movies and addresses the dangling participle of this character’s still obscured identity. Their claims include:

    1. Mithrandir (Gandalf) is in this scene.
      The above refers to: “After the fourth interruption of the Song, several Maia meet and discuss Melkor’s discordance.”

    2. Mithrandir (Gandalf) is “almost” convinced to support Mairon’s (Sauron) agenda.

    3. Gandalf (Meteor Man) meets Shadowfax.

    There are so many keywords and phrases straight from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, but you can probably guess from the title of this feature that “Shadowfax” is the word which most captured my interest. If you’ve watched The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers or The Return of the King you’ll remember Shadowfax as the white horse Gandalf the White rides. 

    The character of Shadowfax is notably from Rohan, which is interesting since at this point in Middle-Earth’s

    Shadowfax, Lord of Horses (Magic: the Gathering)

    history Rohan as we think of it from the events of The Third Age does not exist. It’s also not until The Third Age of Middle-Earth when King Théoden gave Gandalf a horse of his choosing and he chose Shadowfax. 

    Yes, that Théoden. Feel free to imagine Bernard Hill.

    Now the rumour phrase squarely states “meets” which is very different than being chosen/partnered/ridden/taken or anything else I would imagine evokes images of The Strange riding Shadowfax off into the distance.

    Shadowfax is the fastest horse – potentially ever – and known to outrun Nazgûl riding Fell Beasts being swift “like an arrow”. He is also Chief of the Mearas. The Mearas are a breed of horses from the north of Middle-Earth. I don’t think of Rohan as being particularly “northerly” in terms of geography, but there you have it. Aragorn is also referred to as a “man of the North” despite being the King of Gondor. Being Chief of the Mearas is cool because by extension it gives Shadowfax dominion over all horses in Middle-Earth.

    The silver/white coat Shadowfax has makes him also invisible when running under the dark of night and is capable of understanding humans when they speak. In The Lord of the Rings movies we see some of this transferred to the horse character Brego, Aragorn’s horse, whom only Aragorn is capable of speaking to and riding. 

    I’m not foolish enough to think if Shadowfax appears in The Rings of Power we will never see him again. Purely from a production standpoint that’s completely ridiculous and a waste of time/money/resources. The choice to introduce Shadowfax would certainly muddy the waters on canon timeline, however if the writers have a creative way to do it I’m not totally against it. 

    What I really think the inclusion of Shadowfax applies is The Stranger will be abandoning Nori and the Harfoots soon after he meets his horsey soulmate. Why would you give a character access to super speed if you weren’t going to use it? Comic book readers know!

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    She/her. Canadian actress. Bi Queen. Canadian co-host of Geek History Lesson. Canadian comic book writer: Witchblade, Apollo IX, Jupiter Jet series, Science! The Elements of Dark Energy, Aurora and The Eagle. Award-losing: actor, writer, podcaster. https://linktr.ee/AshleyVRobinson

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