The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season three has promised to reveal several iconic moments that J.R.R. Tolkien fans have been waiting to see. Sauron crafting the One Ring is the chart-topper, of course, but we’ll also get to witness Gandalf picking up his wizard’s hat and donning it for the first time.
It might be a seemingly small gesture amid all that dire Middle-earth drama, but the Lord of the Rings faithful know how important it is.
That includes Daniel Weyman, who plays Gandalf on the Prime Video series. At a recent press day ahead of The Rings of Power season three, he told io9 what it was like getting the hat just right.
“That was a joy,” he said. “You go into a costume fitting and you’ve got this great costume team, and Janet [Spriggs], who made the hat, would come in. It was a sort of royal artifact … I wouldn’t put it on myself. It would be put on me, and measurements would be taken, and pictures would be taken, and conversations would happen, and notes would be given. It would be changed a bit, and I’d come in again. So it was a whole thing getting it to the right place.”
He continued, putting the hat in context for how it passes to Gandalf in The Rings of Power. “It’s obviously Tom [Bombadil]’s hat, but Rory [Kinnear]’s head might not be the same fit as mine. So it was a joy to work with Janet on that, and I think she’s done an extraordinary job. By the time you get to film with it, not only does it [embody] all of Tom Bombadil’s whimsy, wonder, and eternal being, but it also has that backstory for me of my relationship with Janet and my work with the whole costume team. So suddenly you get an understanding as to why one small thing, a person’s hat, can become a massive thing for a human story but also a show’s story.”
For Weyman, The Rings of Power season three felt especially exciting because—after all the backstory and setup of the first two seasons—the characters are finally diving into the meat of the story.
“For a long time, we were sort of on our own journeys in these other parts of Middle-earth, and now it feels like if we don’t all get our acts together, darkness is going to take over very easily,” he said. “I felt like [Gandalf] was aware of [the other characters’] storylines, that there’s something in the earth that has changed. There is a resonance, a vibration, that Gandalf picks up on, which says we all have to start making choices that might be very, very difficult, but to come together and unite against this darkness, otherwise it’s all going to be over.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season three begins November 11 on Prime Video.
Want more io9 news? Check out the best movies and TV shows to stream this month and all the upcoming sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books that should be on your radar.
