Marnûkh says he wants to help the elves defeat Sauron. That doesn’t mean Galadriel and Arondir can trust him. Played by Adam Young, the new Orc in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season three has a reason to oppose the Dark Lord beyond earning elven approval: according to showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, some Uruk see Sauron as an existential threat to their entire race.
His loyalty is a question of survival as well as sincerity. Marnûkh carries forward Adar’s dream of a free Uruk nation, but the elves must decide whether accepting his help is a risk they can take. The season-three San Diego Comic-Con presentation introduced that uncertainty directly, describing him as someone who “claims that he has turned his back against Sauron and he wants to now help the elves defeat the Dark Lord. But can you trust an orc?”
Payne’s description offers no easy answer. He credits Young with making Marnûkh sweet, funny, sensitive, poetic and soulful, but also gross and frightening, constantly undercutting those softer qualities. As Payne puts it, “And so he constantly keeps everyone guessing.” This isn’t simply a redemption label attached to a new character. His allies have to work out what those contradictions mean.
Adar’s dream survives Sauron’s takeover through Marnûkh, whose story grows out of the conflict surrounding Adar, the Orc, or Uruk, father in the first two seasons. Adar insisted that every one of his children “has a name, a heart… Are creations of the One, Master of the Secret Fire, the same as you. As worthy of the breath of life, and just as worthy of a home.” He wanted to give them a life in which they could thrive and be treated as equally important as any other race.
Nerdist’s assessment of Adar’s complicated heroism calls that ambition noble while criticizing how he pursued it. Sauron, the Great Deceiver, ultimately exploited Adar’s love for his children and persuaded them to kill their father. As Adar lay dying, Sauron told him, “They are not children anymore.”
That leaves a question Nerdist identifies as central to the series: are the Orcs defined by the violence expected of them, or can the Uruk choose something else? The show’s earlier exploration of Orc and Uruk identity now has another character through whom to examine nature, nurture and the possibility of freedom.
Payne and McKay say Adar’s dream “did not die with him.” Not all Orcs and Uruk welcome Sauron as their new master. Some still hold the hope of an independent Orc nation deep in their hearts, and Marnûkh is one of those the season follows.
The showrunners describe this as going deeper with the idea of an “orc with an arc” introduced last season. They want a genuinely three-dimensional character: someone viewers may inherently distrust because he’s an Orc, yet can also laugh with, smile at and come to love. Nerdist’s writer sees him as a new hope for the Uruk, rather than someone whose origins have already decided his fate.
Galadriel and Arondir take very different routes toward trusting Marnûkh. For Galadriel, he tests whether her experience with Adar has changed how she sees his children. Payne says she despises Orcs and has fought them for years because they have taken everything she loves. Now she must decide whether she can trust one.
In Nerdist’s reading of Galadriel’s season-two journey with Adar, she never quite apologizes for killing many of his children in her pursuit of vengeance. By the season’s end, however, she appears more willing to accept that Uruk might have a purpose beyond evil, and hearts worth saving. Asked whether she remembers those encounters after years of war against Sauron and the Orcs, McKay replied, “Well, I think Marnûkh is hoping she does.” Whether Marnûkh himself remembers Adar received no clear answer.
Later comments from Payne and McKay explain how that history shapes the trio. They recall Galadriel’s threat to Adar: “I’m going to kill every last one of your children. I’m going to kill all of the orcs.” Having developed some trust in him during the previous season, she’s now slightly more willing to trust Marnûkh. At times, she must hold Arondir at bay and keep relations friendly enough to find out whether their unlikely companion is telling the truth.
Nerdist also observes that Galadriel uses Uruk rather than Orc more often, at least in Marnûkh’s presence, and interprets that as a change Adar would have appreciated. It’s a small linguistic detail that reflects a difficult shift: she doesn’t have to know Marnûkh is honest to give him a chance to prove it.
Arondir’s starting point is less welcoming. At the Comic-Con panel, actor Ismael Cruz Córdova described their dynamic bluntly: “We have this relationship, this odd couple relationship, we don’t trust each other, we don’t like each other. He stinks.” Yet Cruz Córdova also told Nerdist that Arondir wants to trust Orcs.
The actor traces Arondir’s struggle with darkness to “minute 1, second 27” of the first episode. He says the elf has found little redemption since that experience but remains curious about what lies on the other side of darkness, his own purpose and whom he can trust. In his interpretation, Arondir sees Orcs as victims and, in some sense, as his own people.
That doesn’t erase his anger. Cruz Córdova connects Arondir’s vendetta against Adar to a measure of respect followed by devastating loss: Adar killed the love of his life. The actor describes Arondir’s response as emotional and understandable, without suggesting he has surrendered completely to darkness.
Nerdist’s earlier discussion of Arondir praises his ability to look beyond fixed divisions, recognizing the shared origins of elves and Orcs and the circumstances that made the Orcs what they became. It argues that such understanding could offer healing for both Arondir and Marnûkh, provided they can trust each other. Cruz Córdova describes this season’s approach as follows: “There’s a softness and openness and different colors that we placed in this story this time around.”
In later interviews, Payne and McKay confirm that the hostility develops into friendship. They call it an unexpected journey for perhaps the most Orc-mistrustful of their principal elves, who, in his mind, lost the woman he loved to Orcs. They find the move from enemies to frenemies touching and sometimes funny, jokingly describing the relationship deeper into the season as an “orc-elf bromance.”
Cruz Córdova attributes Arondir’s ability to forgive Marnûkh and build a friendship to compassion and curiosity, with curiosity often coming first. He describes an impulse to ask who another being is: a father, mother, brother or sister. It’s the same impulse he sees in Arondir’s dealings with Adar, humans and himself.
But that goodness has repeatedly been tested. The actor lists a lost best friend, a commander who was like a father, all his soldiers and the love of his life, before asking, “Where is Theo?” Those losses help explain the emotional wall Marnûkh encounters. Marnûkh triggers Arondir’s pain, Cruz Córdova says, but doesn’t extinguish his desire for compassion.
Nerdist’s later update says the first episodes had aired, allowing viewers to see both odd-couple relationships unfold. It describes Arondir and Marnûkh’s bond as a beautiful friendship by episode four, then reports that Arondir dies and Marnûkh’s fate remains unknown. That leaves the friendship’s promise painfully unfinished, even as the showrunners identify Marnûkh as a bearer of Adar’s surviving hopes.
The Rings of Power season three premiered on Prime Video on November 11. For the remaining episode dates, consult the full release schedule.
