The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power cast — who plays Adar, and why he looks different in season 2
The leader of the Orcs came back for his second season with somebody else's face, and the show carried on as if nothing had changed.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiered on Prime Video in September 2022. Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay set it in the Second Age, thousands of years before Frodo, when Sauron is still hiding in plain sight and the Rings haven't been forged yet. Season 3 premieres today, November 11, 2026, with four episodes, followed by two more on November 18 and the last two on November 25. It picks up five years after the fall of Eregion.
Adar is one of the few major characters Tolkien never wrote. He's an Elf from the First Age, captured and twisted into one of the first Uruk, who calls the Orcs his children. The name itself means "father" in Elvish.
Who plays Adar
Two actors, one per season:
- Season 1 — Joseph Mawle, best known as Benjen Stark on Game of Thrones.
- Season 2 — Sam Hazeldine, from Peaky Blinders.
Mawle's Adar was the quiet one, mostly seen in shadow, explaining very calmly why the Southlands should belong to the Orcs. Hazeldine took over a character who, in his words, "doesn't see himself as a villain."
"He's just trying to protect his children, the Uruk," Hazeldine told Entertainment Weekly.
Why Adar was recast
Prime Video announced the change on December 1, 2022, folded into its first batch of Season 2 casting news. Hazeldine's name sat among the new arrivals. No reason was given then, and none has been given since.
Mawle's own statement, posted on social media, framed it as his decision. "I loved my time exploring Middle-earth," he wrote, but moving on is "my job description to explore new characters and worlds."
He signed off warmly: "I'll be cheering you on from the sidelines."
Why he looks different
Partly because it's a different man under the makeup, and partly because the makeup was never simple. Jamie Wilson, the show's head of prosthetics, who worked at Weta Workshop on Peter Jackson's trilogy, built the Season 1 look around one rule.
"It was important that we definitely kept the elfness there," Wilson told /Film.
The skin was the other half. "The color of his skin was meant to look septic or toxic," Wilson said. The scarring, in his words, "adds more of a story to it, rather than just being some crazy monster."
For Season 2, the design had to fit a new face. Hazeldine's makeup took seven hours to apply at first, and the team got it down to five. He didn't pretend the switch was invisible: "Obviously we don't look the same, but the character is instantly recognizable."
Inside the story, nobody notices. Adar simply walks into Season 2 as Hazeldine.
The one time Adar changes on purpose
There is a moment when the show changes Adar's face deliberately, and it's in the Season 2 finale, "Shadow and Flame." Adar has taken Nenya, Galadriel's ring. While he wears it, the ring heals him and gives him back the face of the Elf he used to be.
He doesn't keep it. Adar takes the ring off, lets the scars return and hands Nenya back to Galadriel, asking her help to earn back his name.
He never gets the chance. Sauron arrives as Annatar, the Orcs switch sides, and Adar's own children stab him to death. Season 2 opened with a flashback of Adar and his Orcs stabbing Sauron in exactly the same way.
The Season 3 cast
Neither Mawle nor Hazeldine is in the announced Season 3 cast. The returning leads:
- Charlie Vickers — Sauron
- Morfydd Clark — Galadriel
- Robert Aramayo — Elrond
- Benjamin Walker — Gil-galad
- Daniel Weyman — Gandalf
- Owain Arthur — Durin IV
- Sophia Nomvete — Disa
- Lloyd Owen — Elendil
- Maxim Baldry — Isildur
- Cynthia Addai-Robinson — Míriel
- Trystan Gravelle — Pharazôn
- Ismael Cruz Córdova — Arondir
- Ciarán Hinds — the Dark Wizard
- Rory Kinnear — Tom Bombadil
The new faces include Jamie Campbell Bower as Celeborn, Galadriel's long-absent husband, Eddie Marsan as Thrain, Zubin Varla as Khamûl, Andrew Richardson as Anarion and Adam Young as Marnûkh.
The biggest new name you won't see is Simon Pegg. He voices the Balrog.
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