5 Lord Of The Rings Characters The Rings Of Power Season 3 Needs To Introduce

Like most Middle-earth projects, "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" has an ensemble cast. There are Elves, Humans, Orcs, and angels all jockeying for screen time — and things are about to get more crowded than ever in Season 3.

Amazon has already announced a slew of new actors and confirmed characters, like Galadriel's previously missing husband Celeborn (played by Jamie Campbell Bower). Andrew Richardson will also step in as the long-awaited second son of Elendil, Anarion, and Eddie Marsan will play now-King Durin IV's (Owain Arthur) older brother Thrain.

While there are plenty of new names in the mix for the upcoming third season, there are still several major characters from Tolkien's source material that haven't been confirmed — or even mentioned in some cases. Here are five overlooked characters that we're hoping to see sooner rather than later.

Celeborn is finally in the show. Thank goodness. His entire "missing in action" story arc has been one of the biggest book changes in "The Rings of Power" so far. The "where's Celeborn?" question will finally be answered this season, but it opens up another can of worms: where is Galadriel and Celeborn's daughter, Celebrían? In the source material, Celebrían is born early in the Second Age (so before the part of the story we're in), and she's already centuries old by the time she falls in love with Elrond later in the age. They get married and have three kids, including Arwen.

In the case of "The Rings of Power," Celebrían is nowhere to be found. Odds are that she isn't even born yet, which raises a big question: how are they going to get her into the story and then grown up enough to have a relationship with an Elven dude who just kissed her mom last season? Sure, they're immortal Elves, and time is relative to them, but there has already been a lot of time compression in "The Rings of Power" and it'll take a lot more if they intend to stick with the source material when it comes to Celebrían and Elrond.

The Elf-lord Glorfindel is one of the best characters Tolkien ever created. Long story short, he's an overpowered Elf who dies in the First Age fighting a Balrog one-on-one. Eventually, he's reincarnated and returns to Middle-earth. We see him in the Third Age when he helps Frodo and his friends avoid the Black Riders (Peter Jackson swapped him out for Liv Tyler's Arwen).

Here's the thing. While Glorfindel's two lives bookend the Second Age, Tolkien also dabbled with the somewhat undeveloped idea that Glorfindel actually returned earlier than the Third Age and helped out during the time when the "Rings of Power" story is set. That opens the door for Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne to integrate the Elf into their story — and with almost no Tolkien source material to restrain them.

He would basically be a wild card. An overpowered, super awesome wild card. And don't think for a second that they aren't aware of that fact — the showrunners actually hinted that this forgotten character could show up in "The Rings of Power" back in 2024. Payne's words when asked about Glorfindel were: "50 hours is a long time. We've got a long story to tell. So, there's room for a lot of surprising people to show up."

The Army of the Dead is a creepy part of the "Return of the King" story. Aragorn confronts a horde of ghosts and demands that they fulfill an oath they failed to keep to his ancestor to help resist Sauron. He then leads them on a rampage against Sauron's armies. The group is terrifying and undeniably awesome, but the backstory of the Army of the Dead is a good one, too, and that connects right to "The Rings of Power."

Remember that broken oath? It was sworn to Isildur (Maxim Baldry in the show), who is a member of Aragorn's family tree. We already have Isildur in the story, but what about the King of the Dead, who makes the oath and fails to keep it? We don't actually know if he's in the story yet. There's a chance that "The Rings of Power" already introduced the future King of the Dead.

It could end up being Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), but there hasn't been anything in his storyline in the first two seasons to point definitively toward that being the case. Whoever it is, we need to get the King of the Dead in there soon, so he can swear the oath, fail to keep it, and set the stage for Isildur's distant descendant to finally get him and his army to fight.

During the week of San Diego Comic-Con, several characters were confirmed for the show, including the Ringwraiths as a collective whole and the one named member of the group in all of Tolkien's writings, Khamûl the Easterling, who is being played by Zubin Varla ("Andor"). That was fun, but we still don't know if Season 3 will introduce the most important Nazgûl of them all: the Witch-king of Angmar.

Nameless, heartless, and arguably Sauron's most feared servant, the Witch-king heads up the hunt for the One Ring, stabs Frodo on Weathertop, leads the Dark Lord's armies, and is eventually killed by Éowyn in battle in "The Lord of the Rings." He's Sauron's go-to guy — and he's lurking somewhere around Middle-earth as we head into Season 3.

There's a moment in the "Rings of Power" Season 3 trailer that plays like an homage to the Witch-king attacking Frodo on Weathertop, so maybe that's a hint that he'll appear this season. But will we know who he is under the mask? He could be a pre-existing character, like Pharazôn's (Trystan Gravelle) son Kemen (Leon Wadham). Either way, here's hoping we get to see the evolution of this fallen Lord of Men as he becomes Sauron's top Nazgûl.

Everyone and their mother knows who Legolas is. We see some of his dad's (Lee Pace's Thranduil) shenanigans in the "Hobbit" trilogy, too. But what about Legolas' grandad? King Oropher isn't just the grandpa of one of the most popular members of the Fellowship of the Ring. He's also the guy who establishes the Elven kingdom in Mirkwood that we see in "The Hobbit." We don't know much about Oropher himself, but we do know that he established his kingdom during the Second Age, so he could easily pop up in "The Rings of Power."

In terms of the overarching story, Oropher is important because he ends up bringing a large number of Elves to the War of the Last Alliance. That is the name given to the mega-conflict between Sauron and all of the other Peoples of Middle-earth. We see part of it recapped in the opening minutes of Peter Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring" movie — the part that ends with the One Ring cut from Sauron's hand.

Oropher and the Elves of his realm are at that battle, and the king himself actually dies in the war in Tolkien's writings. That's how his son, Thranduil, comes to rule the Elven kingdom after his father. The lives and events of Oropher, Thranduil, and Legolas are all vague in Tolkien's legendarium, making this an attractive sandbox for J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay to play in as they continue building toward the epic War of the Last Alliance.