For two seasons, he was The Stranger – a mysterious Middle-earth figure who hotfooted it around with Harfoots and gained a mentor in the one and only Tom Bombadil. But in Season 3 of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, actor Daniel Weyman is a Stranger no more. It just takes one look at that beard, the staff, and – yes – the pointy grey hat to know that he is, in fact, one of the most beloved creations of J.R.R. Tolkien: Gandalf The Grey.
Heading into the new season, Weyman was told by the Rings Of Power showrunners J.D Payne and Patrick McKay that it was time to go full-Gandalf. “Just before we started Season 3, J.D. and Patrick told me: ‘We want to see that Gandalf has arrived. We want to see him as the wizard we all love from Tolkien’s writings’,” the actor tells Empire. It was exactly what he wanted to hear. “I found this new side to him, the side that we all hopefully recognise: the mischief, the twinkle in his eye.”
As well as finally donning the full Gandalf get-up (wearing the hat is “unbelievably spine-tingling,” Weyman says, “I was pinching myself all the way through”) there is much for the wizard to get to grips with, as Middle-earth gets darker and Sauron makes big moves. This season, explains Payne, Gandalf is “going from learning how to control his powers, to understanding that wizards actually have a prophetic dimension. That their job is to inspire the hearts of the people around them to find their own courage to unite against the darkness.” Who can remember the Elvish word for ‘friend’?
Read Empire’s full The Rings Of Power Season 3 cover story – spending three days on set of the epic Middle-earth saga, and speaking to Patrick McKay, J.D. Payne, Charlie Vickers, Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo, Daniel Weyman and more – in the September 2026 issue, on sale Thursday July 30. Pre-order a copy online here. The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Season 3 streams on Prime Video from November 11.
