Lord Of The Rings: War Of The Rohirrim Features A Most Unexpected Character Reference

You shall not pass ... unless you've already watched "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim," that is. This article contains major spoilers.

As sprawling and expansive as the world of Middle-earth is, there's something to be said for how so many stories set in the Third Age all tend to tie back to the events of the "The Lord of the Rings." The franchise's first anime offering, "The War of the Rohirrim" (which I reviewed for /Film here), shows plenty of promise as a standalone feature debuting a whole new cast of characters. The war between the Dunlendings and the Rohirrim takes centerstage for much of the action, and Hèra (Gaia Wise) and Wulf (Luke Pasqualino) develop a love/hate dynamic that fans will almost assuredly feel drawn to throughout the film. By the end, however, director Kenji Kamiyama and his creative team leave behind all sorts of bread crumbs hinting at the wider concerns in the canon. The biggest of them all has to do with a famous, fan-favorite character ... who never actually shows up, intriguingly enough.

Unlike the reveal that the late Christopher Lee would reprise his role as Saruman the White, the news that his fellow wizard Gandalf would play a role in the movie has been kept tightly under wraps. Star Ian McKellan has made headlines for different reasons lately, first for his frightening fall from a theater stage (he quickly assured fans he's recovering nicely) and again for causing some confusion over whether the upcoming "The Hunt for Gollum" feature would be one film or two. (It's since been confirmed to be just one.) But despite never actually cameoing as the heroic wizard, his presence in "The War of the Rohirrim" casts a long shadow and even puts a new twist on the lore. Here's how.

Gandalf certainly has a well-established history with the people of Rohan. When last we saw him visiting the grounds of Edoras, the royal court of the Rohirrim, he was busy calling poor hobbit Pippin (Billy Boyd) a "fool of a Took" for communicating directly with the Dark Lord Sauron himself and inadvertently giving the enemy the upper hand in "The Return of the King." More memorably, in the film prior, he came to the city of the horse-lords just after his reincarnation as Gandalf the White and helped cure King Théoden (the late Bernard Hill, whom "The War of the Rohirrim" is dedicated to) from falling under the influence of Saruman. Canonically, author J.R.R. Tolkien never actually specifies Gandalf's whereabouts during the events of this prequel story, set almost 200 years before the events of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings."

But all that changes in a big way in "The War of the Rohirrim," right as the film comes to a close. In an unexpected reveal, Hèra receives an invitation to meet a wizard to talk in depth about what she's seen and heard during her adventures — specifically, the scene where she overhears a pair of orcs (voiced by hobbit actors Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd) collecting rings for Mordor. Not only does this give fans a taste of Hèra's story beyond the pages of Tolkien's works, but it also hints that Gandalf has been keeping an eye on Sauron's subtle rise to power and his obsessive quest to recover his various rings of power. The full scope of this evil plot wouldn't come to light for another few centuries, of course, as only Frodo's (Elijah Wood) inheritance of the One Ring and Gandalf's subsequent research in the early portions of "The Fellowship of the Ring" confirms what he had only suspected. But for the first time in the franchise (outside of Prime Video's "The Rings of Power" series, which isn't connected to the continuity of these movies), we've received a look at Gandalf's activities long before the events of the other movies.

"The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" is now playing in theaters.