The first two episodes “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” are already full of exciting questions: What is it about the mysterious man who landed in Middle-earth with a meteorite? What’s behind Theo and the broken sword? And what shimmers so mysteriously in the chest that Durin IV. (Owain Arthur) and his father Durin III. (Peter Mullan) open at the end? Our YouTube moderator Sebastian addresses this question in his video above, but we also go through the possibilities in this article:
The most obvious suspicion: It is the Arkenstein, also known from the “The Hobbit” films by Peter Jackson – After all, it also glows whitish and is already closely connected to the dwarves.
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The Arkenstone in The Hobbit movies
However, this is very unlikely: Because the Arkenstein was not found until many thousands of years later and by a completely different dwarf king and not in Moria or Khazad-dûm, but under the far away Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. That would be a pretty significant break with the canon – and that shouldn’t and shouldn’t exist in the serieswas always assured by those responsible.
And the history of the Arkenstone is so narrowly defined in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels – the Tolkien material to which the creators of The Rings of Power have the rights – that there is little leeway for interpretations. There it says clearly that the Arkenstein was found in Erebor and worked and polished by the dwarves – there is little to shake about that.
From the Arkenstein, however, one comes very quickly to other famous jewels: the Silmaril, also mentioned earlier in “The Rings of Power”. A popular, though unlikely to be true, fan theory is that the Arkenstone is one of the three gems created by the Elf Fëanor.
Then the Arkenstein and the Silmaril are described as beautiful and also glow by themselves. In addition, the two Durins in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power hint at the need to keep the secret of the chest’s contents from the Elves. Doesn’t that strongly suggest a Silmaril?
However it’s also very unlikely that the dwarves have any of the Silmaril hidden in their chest here. There are similar reasons against it as against the Arkenstein-as-Silmaril theory: In Tolkien’s “Silmarillion” it says, for example, that the lost Silmaril can only be found again when Arda (that’s the name of the world on which the continent of Middle-earth is located) goes under and is recreated.
So the appearance of a Silmarils in the Second Age would also be a major canon break.
So it’s very likely that the chest doesn’t contain either the Arkenstone or a Silmaril, but series creators JD Payne and Patrick McKay certainly don’t want to accidentally remind you of these two well-known jewels (and the famous suitcase scene from “Pulp Fiction”).
It is also possible that there is mithril in the box – the very light and particularly hard metal could also give off a silver shimmer. We know that the dwarves discover the valuable and rare metal, which will then also be in great demand among the elves, in the mines of Khazad-dûm aka Moria (hence the alternative name “Morian Silver”) and then mine it exaggerating a bit…
Because they were too greedy and dug too deep, they awaken the demonic Balrog. We will see this event in the series because the Balrog has already appeared in the trailers. So mithril will definitely play a role and could be in the mysterious box…
We may find out more about the actual contents of the box in episode 3 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”, which can be seen on September 9, 2022 from 6 a.m. on Amazon Prime Video.
