Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power, just gave fans a glimpse of the final doom of its dwarven characters — the terrifying balrog that battles Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings.
The first season of The Rings of Power is in its home stretch, and the dominoes are beginning to fall, reminding even the most casual viewer that eventually all this will become the world of The Lord of the Rings. The fantastical cities and societies we’ve seen this season will crumble to ruin over the next four seasons — some faster than others.
This week, we saw exactly how the beautiful dwarven city of Khazad-dûm will transform into the dark and cursed ruin of Moria, in the form of one of 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 one way or another this is all going to end in fire.
[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 discovered to be sealed up — but not before meaningfully tossing Elrond’s corrupted-leaf-for-demonstration-purposes down into the chamber. The camera follows the leaf’s gentle fall until it reaches the rocky floor and is rejuvenated by the mithril veins crisscrossing every surface.
Then the leaf is incinerated by a rush of flame from a familiar form: a balrog.
Yes, this is the balrog that the Fellowship encountered thousands of years later in the ruins of Moria. In Tolkien’s books, it is the only balrog known to have survived Morgoth’s defeat, by fleeing east and hiding itself in the roots of the Misty Mountains, until it was discovered by the dwarves of Khazad-dûm thousands of years later.
