The first season of The Rings of Power is in its house stretch, and the dominoes are starting to fall, reminding even essentially the most informal viewer that finally all this can develop into the world of The Lord of the Rings. The fantastical cities and societies we’ve seen this season will crumble to spoil over the subsequent 4 seasons — some sooner than others.

This week, we noticed precisely how the gorgeous dwarven metropolis of Khazad-dûm will remodel into the darkish and cursed spoil of Moria, within the type of probably the most harrowing and iconic scenes in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. There’s a Chekhov’s gun on the mantelpiece of Khazad-dûm, and a technique or one other that is all going to finish in fireplace.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power episode 7, “The Eye.”]

As Durin (son Durin) and his father, Durin (dad Durin), have a consequential falling out, the dwarven monarch orders the mithril the prince found to be sealed up — however not earlier than meaningfully tossing Elrond’s corrupted-leaf-for-demonstration-purposes down into the chamber. The digital camera follows the leaf’s light fall till it reaches the rocky flooring and is rejuvenated by the mithril veins crisscrossing each floor.

Then the leaf is incinerated by a rush of flame from a well-recognized type: a balrog.

The balrog that killed Gandalf?

Yes, that is the balrog that the Fellowship encountered hundreds of years later within the ruins of Moria. In Tolkien’s books, it’s the solely balrog identified to have survived Morgoth’s defeat, by fleeing east and hiding itself within the roots of the Misty Mountains, till it was found by the dwarves of Khazad-dûm hundreds of years later.

As described within the appendix of The Return of the King, the dwarves of Khazad-dûm “roused from sleep a thing of terror that […] had lain hidden at the foundations of the earth since the coming of the Host of the West: A Balrog of Morgoth. Durin was slain by it, and the year after Náin I, his son; and then the glory of Moria passed, and its people were destroyed or fled far away.”

Or, as immortalized within the voice of Christopher Lee in Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring: “The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm: shadow and flame.”

Is this the identical balrog they have been speaking a few couple episodes in the past?

Image: Amazon Studios

Back in episode 6, “Partings,” King Gil-galad recounts the story of an elven warrior and a balrog dueling atop the Misty Mountains, a battle that inadvertently created mithril deep underground. But there’s a couple of balrog, in spite of everything, and we haven’t been advised a technique or one other in the event that they’re the identical being. The complete story is unique to Rings of Power, so there’s no Tolkien lore to fall again on right here, both.

Wait… there’s a couple of balrog?

Image: New Line Cinema

Oh, completely.

The balrogs have been Maia — like Gandalf and Saruman and Sauron himself — and no less than some have been amongst Morgoth’s oldest allies, who’d descended with him into darkness when he first betrayed the Valar through the creation of the world. As Middle-earth grew to become the battlefield between Morgoth and the remainder of the gods, these spirits grew to become guised in horrible type. “Their hearts were of fire,” says The Silmarillion, “but they were cloaked in darkness, and terror went before them; they had whips of flame.”

Though they have been small in quantity, in comparison with a military, they have been Morgoth’s most horrible servants. They have been his generals, his honor guard, and his enforcers — in primarily the identical capability that the Black Riders served Sauron. There are solely three tales of a balrog’s defeat in single fight, and in all circumstances, as with Gandalf, the opposing hero was slain. Only two balrogs have been ever distinguished from the remainder: Gothmog, their chief; and the unnamed balrog identified solely as “Durin’s Bane.”

So are we gonna get to see it… bane every part up?

Image: New Line Cinema

That’s an attention-grabbing query! It positive looks as if Rings of Power is hinting that manner, with the youthful Durin swearing that when he’s king he’ll mine out the mithril and produce his individuals a prosperity exceptional. But if Rings of Power needs to get up the balrog quickly, it might be a break with Tolkien’s canon.

The appendices of The Return of the King state that the balrog buried itself so nicely that dwarves didn’t uncover it till the Third Age, a time exterior the purview of Rings of Power. The fall of Khazad-dûm came about through the reign of Durin VI, moderately than the present’s Durin IV and Durin V — and in Tolkien’s lore, Durins have been normally nonconsecutive dwarven rulers, very similar to the British monarchy.

But then once more, Rings of Power is already taking occasions that occurred over hundreds of years of historical past and condensing them to a single human era. And that signifies that Durin’s Bane may actually be a possible menace; a sword of Damocles dangling on a flaming whip over a whole dwarven civilization.