Amazon Studios The Rings of Power is here. The Second season will debut on Amazon Prime August 29th of this year. 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!
This post contains potential spoilers for The Rings of Power’s second season. At the time of writing these are based on what we’ve seen in trailers and early looks, but if you may want to avoid spoilers come back later and see if I was right!
First we learned Joseph Malwe would not be reprising his role as Adar in The Rings of Power season 2 and a recent Instagram post from actress Nazanin Boniadi’s official account revealed she would not be stepping back into the boots of Bronwyn ever again.
View this post on Instagram
The post reads as follows:
I made the choice not to return for season two of ‘Rings of Power.’ This was unrelated to my subsequent decision to prioritize my advocacy.
Throughout my career, the values I have held most dear are honesty, empathy and integrity. My character Bronwyn was committed to these same ideals in striving for a fairer world, which is why I connected so deeply with her.
I look forward to sharing my latest projects with you soon.
At the time I sit writing this for you there are no further details available from either Boniadi, nor Amazon, nor the showrunners, nor The Rings of Power.
As audience members we are left to wonder if this was a personal choice or do to the proposed narrative of The Rings of Power season 2.
(read back in this feature series for some rumours and spoilers about the plot …)
As delicately as possible, part of those rumours allude to a romance between two other main cast members of The Rings of Power which will be brought to the forefront throughout the second season and may possibly be retold from a different perspective than we saw in the first season.
Boniadi played Bronwyn (as mentioned above), the female Southlander who drove the main romantic subplot throughout the first season of The Rings of Power alongside Ismael Cruz Córdova’s Arondir. Their story is an inversion of the Beren and Lúthien or Arwen and Aragorn dynamic where a female elf and male human fall in love. Bronwyn is a female human and Arondir a male elf. Bronwyn is also a mother to a child (Theo, played by Tyroe Muhafidin), who fans have theorized may be Arondir’s son as well.
The loss of Boniadi certainly feels as though it is leaving a major storyline incomplete. Adar was recast with English actor Sam Hazeldine and makes me wonder if Bronwyn has potentially already been recast by The Rings of Power production and this is the first inkling we are getting about the actor’s departure.
It does feel a touch strange for a big budget, high production series like The Rings of Power to have two recognizable cast members elect not to continue on with the show following the first season.
Could Bronwyn have been cast aside and cut from the second season of The Rings of Power entirely because (possibly along with Theo and Arondir?), the other vague-posted-about love story above is being brought to the forefront? There has also been frighteningly little stated about Arondir and Ismael Cruz Córdova’s potential return to the series. In fact, it was recently announced on Deadline that he had been cast in Amazon’s upcoming The Buff feature film.
Fun fact: Amazon also produces The Rings of Power.
