Ismael Cruz Córdova wishes Arondir and Adar had more time together on “Rings of Power.”
Season 2 has kept viewers hopping all over Middle-earth but thanks to clues and trailers, it was clear a big battle was on the horizon. Episode 7 finally began the long-awaited Siege of Eregion. Among all the fighting and carnage, Arondir finally caught up to Adar (Sam Hazeldine) on the battlefield.
Arondir’s had a rough season, losing his love Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) to attacks from Adar’s orcs. Córdova tells TheWrap his character hasn’t had “the chance to grieve” at all this since the death and has been driven by a need for revenge.
What Córdova says is unfortunate, is that Arondir only wants Adar from a place of revenge. Where all the other characters have written Adar off as a villain for raising up the orcs, Arondir left his encounter with the scarred elf back in Season 1 with a bit of respect.
“He’s going after the man that killed the love of his life,” he said “He’s not going after Adar for what he represents like everyone else. They’re thinking ‘he’s a baddie, he has the orcs’ and I’m like no. What he’s trying to do is what nobody does – protect these underdogs, these discarded beings.”
It’s unfortunate that the one hero from Season 1 who looked at Adar as more than a monster, sees him on the battlefield in Episode 7 and has a one-track mind to kill him. Córdova wishes the two had a longer moment together because their brief fight ends with Arondir wounded and Adar leaving him discarded.
Below, Córdova talks helping to alter the fight choreography to make the pair’s fight more believable, Arondir and Isildur’s budding bromance, and the freedom of playing a show-created character in Middle-earth.
As the show has started adapting more of these big tentpole moments from the text in Season 2, has it felt a bit more freeing taking part in them as a character created for the series?
I love that tightrope because I have a lot of freedom to do stuff and I’ve taken advantage of it completely. I still shape it with the lore, I shape it in relationship to Gil-Galad, I shape it in relationship to Elrond. Like ‘who are they?’ That allows me to have a dialogue with what the contrast is because I think Arondir is completely different than they are and it’s great to show the difference of hierarchy of the elves.
It’s both freeing but at the same time gives me quite a tight structure and I honestly thrive in it, I love it.
Arondir has had an emotionally exhausting season so far. Is it more grief or anger. that has fueled him up to the Battle of Eregion?
I think the guy doesn’t even get the chance to grieve. Suddenly he’s just looking for this teenager – who’s just trying to find an outlet himself but is a teenager none-the-less.
Is he enjoying the multiple distractions he’s been busy with this season so he doesn’t have to think about losing Bronwyn?
Yeah, in a way he’s just like ‘let’s go.’ Life just continues and there’s very quick decisions that you have to make and pivot. Either he just gets out of their or follows the crowd.
I think he does not in any moment let go of the fact that once this is taken care of he’s going to take care of business. Even when you see him fire out of that cart in the beginning, the way he kills all those men is with anger. There’s a man that’s running and he shoots an arrow into his back. That’s questionable.
He’s angry and that revenge is present and he is driven by that. There is a darkness that’s reflected in him.
Were those discussions you had when it came to his choreography this season? He does fight more brutally and is always moving forward – sometimes recklessly.
Absolutely. I try to have these conversations at the top of it all. The showrunners know how I like to work and we sit down and have these conversations. There’s a through line – he’s not a talker, he’s quite economical so you learn about the character through what I do quite often. So I was like we need to score physically through the show so you can track it all the way to that encounter with Adar in Episode 7.
The issue I had – there was a choreography build for that part – but I just couldn’t understand why Arondir didn’t beat Adar with that choreography. There needed to be a mistake because we know that he’s capable of facing this guy. Vic Armstrong, legendary stunt coordinator, allowed me to rechoreograph the whole thing.
He ends up hacking away in a completely non-Arondir kind of way. It’s not as graceful and that’s the opening that I choreographed. That mistake that he slowly becomes emotional by the end.
I’ll jump ahead to that moment. It unfolds quicker than I expected. Did you have conversations about how long they should fight or if they should fight at all yet?
Listen, I would have had a preference for them to fight longer. I have no control of that final edit but we’ll see how it reads, I haven’t seen it yet. In my opinion it would be better to see them fight longer so you can establish that back and forth and total war.
At the end of the day, through the quality of the movement I hope it shows that he was just kind of reckless.
Going back a bit to Theo, when it comes to his relationship with Arondir how do you see it? Sometimes it feels parental and other times it feels older brother/younger brother.
It goes both ways. You’re clocking it how it is. Sometimes it’s ‘I have to protect this child, this kid, the offspring of my great love.’ In those moments it’s like yeah you’re my boy. I think there’s an aspect of mentorship as well just from an outside family perspective.
I think Arondir understands Theo very well. He’s a 14-year-old kid that has done a civil war essentially, has fought orcs, has been in touch with the dark energy of Sauron, and he’s lost his mom and is displaced. He understands the kid has gone through a lot and has risen to the occasion in many moments. I think he sees Theo more than anybody else including sometimes the audience.
Seeing Arondir and Isildur’s budding bromance has been one of the more fun moments of this very dark season. How did you and Maxim want to play that out?
It pretty much came from the energy of his character and mine meeting each other and both of us being like what is this going to be like? Why are we in the same scenes? It was just an unlikely pairing and I was surprised by it. Maxim is a goofball. He’ll be playing an air guitar while I’m crying looking at an Ent. It almost became like a challenge to make Arondir laugh which kind of happens. He cracks that very Arondir joke ‘This one we shall call supper.’
I think it’s a budding bromance that’s bridging worlds. I think it’s a little deeper than just them – it’s elves and humans actually working out together.
Arondir was part of the big battle in the Southlands in Season 1 but the Siege of Eregion feels so much bigger. What were those days on set like?
A lot of the stuff compares to choreography. For example in Season 1 I’d be shooting arrows from the top of a thing, then I’d have a battle with a berserker and it’s just me and him going at it. Now you have four or five times as many orcs – a lot of which are physically there – big walls, many trained archers, and then you have these guys Gil-Galad, Elrond. The stakes are so much bigger.
It was a trip. Doing the stunt jumping from the wall, to the troll – I did all that as well. It’s a massive wall I’m jumping out of, it’s a bit scary to be honest.
Arondir and Adar have always had an interesting relationship to me. He’s the only character to really acknowledge Adar’s past and elven roots. You don’t have really any scenes with him again until they collide on the battlefield, but how has their relationship changed from Season 1 to the Battle of Eregion?
If you would have asked me I would have maybe had another scene with him or maybe face off different. I think because, as you said, he’s the only being that sees this guy and is moved by him. I think the only reason he has this anger is Adar killed the love of his life. That’s the no-no.
He’s going after the man that killed the love of his life. He’s not going after Adar for what he represents like everyone else. They’re thinking ‘he’s a baddie, he has the orcs’ and I’m like no. What he’s trying to do is what nobody does – protect these underdogs, these discarded beings.
Anything you can tease for next week’s season finale?
I think the crescendo continues when you think it’s reached a peak. There’s a few more worlds colliding. It goes to a very interesting place, a cool place to culminate until we see you guys again in 2047.
