Tyroe Muhafidin has talked with The Rings of Power’s showrunners more than once about whether Theo becomes the Witch-king of Angmar. But the actor says he doesn’t know their plans. There’s still a gap between what season three appears to be setting up and what the series has confirmed.
Asked about the theory in an exclusive interview with Nerdist, Muhafidin said, “It’s been discussed. I talk about it with the showrunners a lot, but they’ve got their plans that I don’t know, and I try to poke and figure it out, but they know what’s up.”
His answer confirms that Theo’s possible future as the Nazgûl’s leader has come up between the cast and creators, not just among viewers. It doesn’t confirm that this is where his story ends.
In The Rings of Power season three, Sauron is assembling his Nazgnagôl, the name the showrunners created for the proto-Nazgûl. These mortal ring-servants are destined to become the Dark Lord’s nine Ringwraiths. Theo is now among them, wearing a Ring of Power and a dark crown. He has also killed Arondir, who was trying to save him, and Nerdist reads that as a strong sign of how far he has fallen.
What Tolkien left unknown about the Witch-king
The Witch-king of Angmar leads the Nazgûl, the nine mortal men Sauron bound to himself through rings of power during the Second Age. Known from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he was a powerful sorcerer who ruled Angmar in the north. In The Return of the King, he famously falls to “no man”: Éowyn.
Tolkien never revealed the Witch-king’s specific identity. He supplied relatively little about the men behind the Ringwraiths, although he established that three were Númenóreans. Only one received a name: Khamûl, an Easterling king who ruled in Rhûn. The Rings of Power introduced Khamûl in its first batch of season-three episodes.
Those gaps leave the series free to invent identities and histories for the Nine, including their leader. Season three has shown Sauron giving rings to the King of Lossoth, the King of the Haradrim, and Theo, but none of that settles who becomes the Witch-king.
Nerdist argues that such a major figure would likely emerge from the show’s most important human characters, with Theo a candidate from the beginning. That’s an interpretation of the storytelling, not a detail Tolkien supplied about the Witch-king’s origins.
Why Theo fits the theory, and why it remains a theory
The case starts well before Theo receives his ring. He lived in a former southern stronghold of men who had been loyal to Morgoth during the First Age. He bears Sauron’s mark, and in season one he was drawn to the Dark Lord’s broken sword hilt. When Theo’s blood touched it, the weapon briefly reformed in dark smoke.
The hilt also served as the literal key to unleashing Mount Doom, where Sauron will forge the One Ring. Back in season one, Nerdist proposed that the hilt might become part of the Witch-king’s own sword. The outlet sees season three as further support for that possibility, with Theo potentially becoming the Ringwraith who wields it. Neither connection has been confirmed.
Newer clues concern Theo’s father, whom he never met or knew. During a dark ritual, Sauron claims to communicate with the dead man through a coal fire. Sauron can communicate with the Unseen world, but he’s also a manipulator and liar, so his account can’t simply be treated as reliable family history.
According to Sauron, the spirit says Bronwyn, Theo’s mother, killed his father, Fäldred, Son of Hammethreg. Sauron also claims Theo descends from a noble house of Mordor with a name sounding something like Gorthmundor. He describes that family as Mordor’s sworn stewards, a show-created lineage that Nerdist interprets as a dark mirror of Gondor’s sworn stewards in the Third Age.
Sauron says Theo’s family is “blessed with certain powers, a heritage passed from father to son.” In his telling, that inheritance explains Theo’s attraction to the sword hilt. It also explains why Bronwyn killed Fäldred: because of “what he was.” Had she not done so, Sauron claims, Theo might have come to rule the Southlands.
The pitch gets even more pointed when Sauron tells Theo he was “born to have power over them all” and has the capacity “to be a conqueror, a sorcerer, a king.” Sauron is then seen giving him a ring. That combination of kingship, conquest, and sorcery closely matches the Witch-king, a once-mortal ruler whose power extends well beyond carrying a sword.
For Nerdist, these details make Theo the strongest candidate: a descendant of Morgoth’s followers, marked by Sauron, drawn to his weapon, and now wearing his ring. Yet the outlet also acknowledges a substantial alternative. Three Númenóreans must become Ring-servants, and until their identities and powers are known, they can’t be ruled out as candidates for the Witch-king.
Muhafidin’s comments leave that choice with the showrunners, and his answer doesn’t say whether Theo’s path leads to Angmar or another place among the Nine.
