Tolkien spent years wrestling with one of the harder questions his legendarium posed: could Orcs be saved? In Letter 153 and in the essays collected in Morgoth’s Ring (Volume X of The History of Middle-earth), he turned the problem over repeatedly. Because Morgoth could corrupt but could not truly create, the Orcs bred from enslaved Elves retained something of the soul they were twisted from. Yet in the stories themselves, Orcs act under fear and domination, and Tolkien never resolved whether any individual Orc could exercise genuine moral agency and turn away from the Shadow. That tension, left open in the source texts, is exactly the territory The Rings of Power Season 3 is moving into with its newest original character.
Not the territory they should be going into.
Arondir, Galadirel, and Marnukh-in-The-Rings-of-Power-season-3-920×518
At San Diego Comic-Con, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay unveiled Marnûkh, played by Adam Young (no, not from Owl City), as a new figure in the Season 3 story. According to Nerdist’s coverage of the panel, Marnûkh claims to have renounced Sauron and seeks to help the Elves bring the Dark Lord down. The showrunners describe him as “poetic and soulful” (good lord!), a character who writes poetry and possesses a sensitivity that sits uncomfortably alongside the brutality the Orcs carry. Payne put it plainly: “He constantly keeps everyone guessing.”
WRITES POETRY!?!
Galadriel, who has spent an Age fighting Orcs and losing people she loved to them, is now placed in the incredibly assanine position where she must decide whether Marnûkh can be trusted. Actor Ismael Cruz Cordova told Nerdist that Arondir sees Orcs as victims of their own origin, a perspective that doesn’t make trusting one any easier after everything he has suffered. The three form an uneasy company whose dynamic the season will build around.
Marmuhk and Arondir – Behind the Scenes
This show seems to love dredging up the worst possible ideas despite having the possible worst history in adaption in the history of publishing.
Marnûkh follows Adar, the Uruk father introduced in earlier seasons, as the second major Orc figure the series has used to press this question directly. Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Prime Video on November 11.
