Summary
- Isildur’s scene in The Rings of Power references Aragorn, highlighting their differences in how they relate to horses, emphasizing Isildur’s ignorance.
- Isildur’s betrayal with the One Ring led to his death, while Aragorn joins the fellowship to destroy it, showcasing their contrasting motivations.
- The horse-whispering scenes in The Rings of Power depict Aragorn easily bonding with his horse, highlighting Isildur’s lack of maturity and setting up his future as a power-hungry character.
One Isildur scene in Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power works as a direct reference to Aragorn. A scene that expands on Isildur’s relationship with Elendil in The Rings of Power echoes a scene from the second installment of the Lord of the Rings franchise, The Two Towers. The scene shows the differences between Isildur and Aragorn through how they relate to horses.
In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Isildur is mostly spoken of as the man who took the One Ring from Sauron but refused to destroy it. Isildur’s One Ring betrayal eventually led to his death. Thousands of years after the events of The Rings of Power, Aragorn, Isildur’s descendant, used this relationship to claim his place as the ruler of Arnor and Gondor. Unlike Isildur, who wished to keep the ring as a prize for his family, Aragorn joins the fellowship in order to see it destroyed.
The Rings of Power’s Brilliant Isildur-Aragorn Horse Connection Explained
The horse-whispering scene in The Rings of Power showed how Aragorn and Isildur grew to make the decisions they did. In The Rings of Power, season 1, episode 6, “Udûn”, Isildur struggled to calm his horse, Berek. His father, Elendil, explained that the horses of Númenor form strong bonds with their riders, even sharing their feelings. This bond is shown in season 1, episode 7, “The Eyes” when Isildur’s horse ran away after Isildur’s presumed death. Isildur’s inability to understand why Berek was upset demonstrated how much he still had to learn. The emphasis was on Isildur’s failure to understand Berek, rather than the two’s inability to understand each other.
Aragorn’s ability to easily bond with a horse in The Two Towers serves to deepen the message The Rings of Power was trying to send about Isildur. When everyone decided to leave Rohirrim, one horse seemed unwilling to go. Just as Elendil did, Aragorn spoke to the horse, named Brego, in Sindarin. Brego immediately began to relax and later, when Aragorn was dragged off of a cliff, came to his aid and brought him to Helm’s Deep. With just a few words, Aragorn created a bond between himself and Brego that Isildur struggled to form with Berek. Aragorn understood Brego just as much as Brego understood him.
The Rings of Power’s Horse Scene Continues Its Isildur Insult
Through the horse-whispering scene, The Rings of Power directly compared Isildur to Aragorn. Isildur’s inability to understand and calm his horse signified a lack of maturity that was not seen in Aragorn. All of this was meant to set up for Isildur’s future in The Rings of Power as the man who chose power over peace. By highlighting the selfishness that leads to the events of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power made Isildur seem destined to fail from the very beginning. Aragorn’s horse-whispering scenes showed his kindness while Isildur’s showed his ignorance.
