The Rings of Power main cast member not returning for season 2

Not long ago, we got our first teaser trailer for the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon's wildly expensive series set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, long before the likes of Frodo, Bilgo and Aragorn were born. During this era, Sauron is only just emerging as a new dark lord, and it's up to folks like Galadriel and Elrond to stop him.

Galadriel and Elrond will be familiar to fans of The Lord of the Rings, but The Rings of Power also introduced us to a few new characters, including the elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), who's in a forbidden relationship with the human woman Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), the mother of young Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin).

Córdova and Muhafidin will be back as Arondir and Theo in season 2 of The Rings of Power, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, Boniadi won't be returning as Bronwyn. Bonidadi took a step back from acting in 2022 to focus on activism, and although she was drawn back to the profession for the indie film A Mosquito in the Ear, she didn't return to The Rings of Power.

THR doesn't mention how the show will handle Boniadi's absence, although given that Córdova and Muhafidin are still around, I figure they either must have recast the role of Bronwyn or cooked up a story to explain why she's no longer on the show. Maybe she died offscreen, or left.

The Bronwyn-Arondir subplot was pretty forgettable in the first season of The Rings of Power, so I'm willing to go with whatever fix they choose. The Rings of Power season 2 premieres on Amazon Prime Video on August 29.

Sure, Viggo Mortensen would return for the new Lord of the Rings movie, if it wasn't "silly"

As long as we're talking about The Lord of the Rings, you may have heard that Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Peter Jackson's famous movie trilogy, is returning to the character in a new movie called The Hunt for Gollum, which he will also direct.

That movie will cover the period during the original Lord of the Rings story when Gandalf and Aragorn are looking for Gollum, who is intimately wrapped up in the events of the War of the Ring. In Jackson's trilogy, Gandalf was played by Ian McKellen and Aragorn by Viggo Mortensen. Speaking to GQ, Mortensen sounded open to the idea of reprising his role, provided the film could get around the fact that he's 20 years older now.

“I don’t know exactly what the story is, I haven’t heard,” Mortensen said. “Maybe I’ll hear about it eventually. I like playing that character. I learned a lot playing the character. I enjoyed it a lot. I would only do it if I was right for it in terms of, you know, the age I am now and so forth. I would only do it if I was right for the character. It would be silly to do it otherwise.”

The hunt for Gollum takes place towards the start of The Lord of the Rings story, so it might be hard for the 65-year-old Mortensen to look like he did back in the early 2000s when Jackson's trilogy was coming out in theaters. But with what they can do with de-aging technology these days, who knows?

In the meanwhile, Mortensen is directing and starring in a western called The Dead Don't Hurt, which comes out in theaters today in the U.S. Even though it's a western, apparently there's a scene with a knight in it, and for that they needed a sword. Naturally, Mortsenen thought of Andúril, the sword Aragorn used in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But for that, he'd need permission.

“I did ask Peter Jackson if he’d be all right with it, and he said, ‘Well, is it very important in the story?’ I said, no, it’s not, actually,” Mortensen remembered. “You hardly notice it, but somebody will, probably. He said it was okay with him but that I should ask the movie company. So I contacted them and they were fine with it. They realized it wasn’t essential, it wasn’t going to draw a lot of attention to itself. And they were very nice about it, and they gave us permission. That’s why we did it, just because it seemed right. It was kind of a last-minute accident.”

Time will tell if picking up Andúril again gives Mortensen a yen to return to Middle-earth.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.