The Lord of the Rings has a lot going for it right now. Next year, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is set to release from director Andy Serkis, who brought Gollum to life in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as the trilogy for The Hobbit. He is, in many ways, the most iconic character in the franchise and is easily the most quoted. You can’t talk about Lord of the Rings without someone saying “My precious.” Now though, a new character has taken the place of Gollum within the franchise. Meaning a new creature being dragged into things with our main characters.
Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power began releasing on Prime Video on November 11 and a new character has captured the hearts of fans in the first four episodes. The series, much like the films before it, use the orcs as Sauron’s (Charlie Vickers) soldiers. The first two seasons had Adar (played by Joseph Mawle in Season 1 and Sam Hazeldine in Season 2) that fans were obsessed with and now a new orc has taken over as the new chosen one. Marnûkh (Adam Young) embarks on a quest with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the rest was television history.
Part of what makes Marnûkh such a wonderful addition to The Lord of the Rings and the lore of the orcs is that he’s so incredibly funny. As Galadriel and Arondir are trying to follow Marnûkh and what he’s willing to tell them about Sauron’s quest to create the one ring to rule them all. Marnûkh’s quest is to help Galadriel and Arondir infiltrate the orc army at Gundabad but it leads to a lot of exploration for both Galadriel and Arondir, who have to learn how to trust an orc as elves after everything in them is telling them to distrust Marnûkh. Luckily, they go along with what the orc is trying to tell them and it leads to one of the best dynamics on all three seasons of The Rings of Power.
There’s Nothing Like an Unlikely Pairing
Part of why fans loved watching Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) and Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) with Gollum was that the two hobbits knew and understood each other and then they were forced to deal with a creature that thought differently from themselves. In many ways, that’s the dynamic we’re seeing with Marnûkh as he leads Arondir and Galadriel to Sauron. Even if it doesn’t end on the best of terms for Arondir by the end of this quest. But what really makes the inclusion of Marnûkh so special is that it gives us a new way to look at the orcs rather than just seeing a group of beings who are almost blindly following Sauron into battle, as has been the case within the franchise prior to Season 3.
Often, the orcs are depicted as the evil, dark-side of elves. In Jackson’s films, they are monstrous beings that don’t really have any real depth to them. The Rings of Power showrunners, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, have been using the orcs to show more dimension in the other creatures of Middle Earth that often get the short end of the stick when we’re exploring J.R.R Tolkien’s beautiful story. A character like Marnûkh helps change the idea of what an orc is supposed to be because he’s compassionate, poetic, and someone who is just trying to do what he thinks is right instead of giving his blind faith to Sauron, like other orcs.
So yes, on paper, Marnûkh is the new Gollum. He is taking the spot of “creature people are forced to trust” like Gollum was with Frodo and Sam but to take it one step further, Marnûkh is also a character that forces you to have compassion for a being you thought you understood. The orcs are just trying to find a place to belong and Marnûkh realized that the war was not the way to do that and took matters into his own hands and that’s why he’s kind of the best.